The book Arran; - Cook Clan

18 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
out at sea early in the January of 1156, and the galleys of
Somerled took the victory. Arran no doubt had a share
in Somerled's fleet, for in 1154 we find an Irish king sending
to hire, against a rival, ships from Arran (first in the list),
Kintyre, Man, and the coasts of Alba ^ : Arran still preserved
its Norse seafaring character, and this would embroil
it in further western activities. But another family connection
brought the scheming Somerled into conflict with
Malcolm iv., king of the enlarging Scotia, and he fell mysteriously
in an invasion by the Clyde at Renfrew in 1164.^ His
eldest son Dugall had the Argyll possessions with some of
the islands, Reginald took Islay and Kintyre, and Angus
Bute, while the two latter seem to have quarrelled over Arran,
which might be grouped with either Kintyre or Bute, and
in the quarrel Angus and his sons are wiped out.^ There-
after both Dugall and Reginald figure as Kings of the Isles,
where ' King ' signifies only a leading power, and through
the whole of the next century, despite Norway on the one
side and Scotia on the other, the race of Somerled holds its
own in its western nook. At the time when ' King ' Reginald
flourished, another Reginald was King of Man and the north
islands beyond Mull, which were retained to that kingdom ;
and it is to this part of the eleventh century that the poem
Siih Eamhna, already cited, seems to refer, implying also
a supremacy of the Reginald of Man, which he is invited to
make good. Arran is its main subject, tricked out in the language
of mythology, so that, as between the two Reginalds,
the island was evidently a bone of contention :
A hillock like it in comparison,
Find ye it on the surface of the earth.
' Annals of the Four Masters.
Tulchan mar e (he) ne aghaidh
Faghaigh e (he) ar drumchlar domhain.
2 ' He was slain by his page, who took his head to the Kiug '
' : Book of Clanranald
in Reliquiae Celticae, ii. pp. 164-6. ^ Gregory's Western Highlands, p. 17.
'