Note 283 — Chapter XXIII · OF THE EARLS PAUL AND ERLEND, AND GENEALOGIES.

This marriage is unknown in Scottish history, and rests on the authority of the Sagas alone. Duncan is said by the Scottish historians to have been a bastard, while the Sagas make him the legitimate offspring of Malcolm and Ingibiorg, who must by this time have been old enough to be Malcolm’s mother. She was married to Earl Thorfinn before Kálf Arnason was banished by King Magnus (chap. xiv.), which was some time between 1036 and 1041. Earl Thorfinn died in 1064, seven years after King Malcolm was crowned at Scone, in 1057. Malcolm’s marriage with the Princess Margaret of England took place in 1067, or less than three years after Ingibiorg became a widow. Munch supposes that Ingibiorg must have died in childbed with Duncan, and suggests that the fact that Duncan claimed the crown before Edgar, the son of Malcolm by Margaret, may be taken as showing that he must have been the offspring of a previous marriage. Macpherson (Wyntoun, vol. ii. p. 472), while accepting the statement of the Saga, accounts for Duncan being called a bastard from the circumstance that Malcolm’s marriage with Ingibiorg was within the degrees of propinquity forbidden by the canon law.