Cé (Pictish territory)

The seven sons, or provinces, of Cruithne represent divisions within the Pictish nation. The kingdoms were ruled by hereditary chiefs (later known as mormaers). Irish sources sometimes refer to them as kings (ríg), although it was standard practice for all Irish rulers to be so named, with their actual rank denoted by an adjective. In times of weak central control, these local rulers would have certainly been more independent.^[3]

Cé appears in the titles of two lost sagas recorded in 10th and 11th century Irish tale-lists:

After the Roman period, a number of Pictish kingdoms formed in Eastern Scotland. The kingdom of Circind, which was further divided into the kingdoms of Fotla (Atholl), Fib (Fife) and Circind (county of Angus), bordered the kingdom of Cé to the south. In the west, around modern Inverness, might have been the kingdom of Fidach. In the far north and the Northern Isles was the kingdom of Cat, which later gave the name to the county of Caithness.^[9]

By the 6th century, the Pictish people were divided into the larger kingdoms of the Northern and Southern Picts.^[9] Cé can be regarded as a frontier region between northern and southern Pictish influence.^[6]

Cé may also have included Mortlach, near modern Dufftown, which was the original seat of what became the later Diocese of Aberdeen, whose origins may lie as the episcopate of the district of Cé around 700.^[10]

Nothing is known of the political status or structure of Cé^[6] and there is no evidence that it had its own kings.^[11]

See also

• Fortriu
• Scotland in the Early Middle Ages

References