The ''Chronicle of the Kings of Alba'', or ''Scottish Chronicle'', is a short written chronicle of the Kings of

Alba ''Alba'' ( , ) is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. It is also, in English language historiography, used to refer to the polity of Picts and Scots united in the ninth century as the Kingdom of Alba, until it developed into the Kingdom ...

, covering the period from the time of

Kenneth MacAlpin Kenneth MacAlpin ( mga, Cináed mac Ailpin, label= Medieval Gaelic, gd, Coinneach mac Ailpein, label=Modern Scottish Gaelic; 810 – 13 February 858) or Kenneth I was King of Dál Riada (841–850), King of the Picts (843–858), and the K ...

(Cináed mac Ailpín) (d. 858) until the reign of

Kenneth II Cináed mac Maíl Coluim ( gd, Coinneach mac Mhaoil Chaluim, label=Scottish Gaelic language, Modern Scottish Gaelic, Anglicisation, anglicised Kenneth II, and nicknamed , "The Fratricide, Fratricidal"; died 995) was Kingdom of Scotland, King of Sc ...

(Cináed mac Maíl Coluim) (r. 971–995). W.F. Skene called it the ''Chronicle of the Kings of Scots'', and some have called it the ''Older Scottish Chronicle'', but ''Chronicle of the Kings of Alba'' is emerging as the standard scholarly name. The sole surviving version of the text comes from the

Poppleton Manuscript {{Use dmy dates, date=April 2022 The Poppleton manuscript is the name given to the fourteenth-century codex probably compiled by Robert of Poppleton, a Carmelite friar who was the Prior of Hulne, near Alnwick. The manuscript contains numerous work ...

, now in the

Bibliothèque Nationale A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. It is the fourth of seven consecutive Scottish documents in the manuscript, the first six of which were probably put together in the early thirteenth century by the man who wrote ''

de Situ Albanie ''De Situ Albanie'' (or ''dSA'' for short) is the name given to the first of seven Scottish documents found in the so-called Poppleton Manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. It was probably written sometime between 1202 ...

''. The ''Chronicle'' is a vital source for the period it covers, and, despite some later

Francization Francization (in American English, Canadian English, and Oxford English) or Francisation (in other British English), Frenchification, or Gallicization is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more ...

, is very much written in Hiberno-Latin, showing evidence of a scribe with some knowledge of contemporary

Middle Irish Middle Irish, sometimes called Middle Gaelic ( ga, An Mheán-Ghaeilge, gd, Meadhan-Ghàidhlig), is the Goidelic language which was spoken in Ireland, most of Scotland and the Isle of Man from AD; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old Engl ...

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

. The original text was without doubt written in

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

, probably in the early eleventh century, shortly after the reign of

, the last reign it relates.

Bibliography

*''Chronicle of the Kings of Alba'' ** Anderson, Marjorie O. (ed.). ''Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland''. 2nd ed. Edinburgh, 1980. 249–53. **Hudson, B.T. (ed. and tr.). ''Scottish Historical Review'' 77 (1998): 129–61. ** Anderson, Alan Orr (tr.). ''Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500–1286''. Vol. 1. Edinburgh, 1923. * Anderson, Marjorie O. ''Kings and Kingship in Early Scotland''. 2nd ed. Edinburgh, 1980. First edition: 1973. * Skene, William F.
''Chronicles of the Picts and Scots: And Other Memorials of Scottish History''.
Edinburgh, 1867.

Bibliography

See also