Open [36.8 MB]

41
MACBETH.
ACBETH, MacBeath (or MacBeathad MacFinlegh, as he was called in contemporary
chronicles), was a King of Scotland. He ascended the throne in 1039, and reigned
seventeen years. According to one account he inherited the rule of the province of
Moray from Finlegh, his father ; according to another account he was by birth Thane
of Ross, and by his marriage with the Lady Gruoch, became also Thane of Moray
during the minority of Lulach, the infant son of that lady by her marriage with
Gilcomgain, the Maormor, or Thane of Moray. He was slain at Lumphanan in
Aberdeenshire on the 5th of December 1056. His body was interred in lona the
common sepulchre for many centuries of the Scottish Kings. His followers were
able to place his nephew, or stepson, Lulach, on the throne.
The following names occur in an old genealogy of the : MacQuarries mcBeathach
mcFinlaeic mcFearchar fada mcFearadaig mcFergusa.
In the Introduction to the Dean of Lismore's Book it is stated that many of the oldest Gaelic
MSS. preserved in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates belonged to the Betons, or, as
their name was in Gaelic, Macbheatha, who were hereditary physicians in Isla and Mull, and who
were also sennachies of the Macleans, and are said by tradition to be one of the twenty-four families
who accompanied a daughter of the great Irish house of O'Cathan, princes of an extensive territory
in the north of Ireland, when she was married to the Lord of the Isles towards the close of the thirteenth
century.
In a footnote in the same book it is stated that there is a charter of lands of Islay, written in
Gaelic by Fergus Beaton in 1411.