It is scarcely possible to claim that they are in any way decisive. Nor
can any further light be gained from the story of what Mr. Lang has
happily termed the apocryphal eight which the King of Scots stroked on
the Dee in the reign of Edgar. In connection with this "Great
Commendation" of 973, the Chronicle mentions only six kings as rowing
Edgar at Chester, and it wisely names no names. The number eight, and
the mention of Kenneth, King of Scots, as one of the oarsmen, have been
transferred to Mr. Freeman's pages from those of the twelfth-century
chronicler, Florence of Worcester.
We pass now to the third section of the supremacy argument. The district
to which we have referred as Lothian was, unquestionably, largely
inhabited by men of English race, and it formed part of the Northumbrian
kingdom. Within the first quarter of the eleventh century it had passed
under the dominion of the Celtic kings of Scotland. When and how this
happened is a mystery. The tract _De Northynbrorum Comitibus_ which used
to be attributed to Simeon of Durham, asserts that it was ceded by Edgar
to Kenneth and that Kenneth did homage, and this story, elaborated by
John of Wallingford, has been frequently given as the historical
explanation. But Simeon of Durham in his "History"[32] asserts that
Malcolm II, about 1016, wrested Lothian from the Earl of Northumbria,
and there is internal evidence that the story of Edgar and Kenneth has
been constructed out of the known facts of Malcolm's reign.
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