Giric

Giric mac Dúngail (Modern Gaelic: Griogair mac Dhunghail; fl. c. 878–889), known in English simply as Giric and nicknamed Mac Rath ("Son of Fortune"), was a king of the Picts or the king of Alba. The Irish annals record nothing of Giric's reign, nor do Anglo-Saxon writings add anything, and the meagre information which survives is contradictory. Modern historians disagree as to whether Giric was sole king or ruled jointly with Eochaid, on his ancestry, and if he should be considered a Pictish king or the first king of Alba. Although little is now known of Giric, he appears to have been regarded as an important figure in Scotland in the High Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages. Scots chroniclers such as John of Fordun, Andrew of Wyntoun, Hector Boece and the humanist scholar George Buchanan wrote of Giric as "King Gregory the Great" and told how he had conquered half of England and Ireland too. The Chronicle of Melrose and some versions of the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba say that Giric died at Dundurn in Strathearn. Giric's name Giric's name is associated with that of St Cyricus, who, as a small child, was martyred along with his mother during the Diocletianic persecution in the early fourth century. According to the Chronicles of the Kings of Scotland, St Cyricus was Giric's patron saint, not only because his name is homophonous with the Latin form of the saint's name, Ciricum, but also because the first church dedicated to St Cyricus was established during Giric's reign at a place called Ecclesgrieg (now St. Cyrus) in Aberdeenshire. The saint's feast day is 16 June, and on (or near) that day in 885 there was a solar eclipse, which has become associated with the kingship of Giric and Eochaid, inasmuch as not long after the occasion of the eclipse, the two "were expelled from the kingdom."