For a while in the eighth century, the erstwhile Celtic kingdom of Gododdin was occupied and Pictavia was made a client kingdom of Anglian Northumbria. Indeed, Gododdin became a crucial region of Northumbria for some time after the Battle of Catraeth (c.600AD). But just as the Romans found the Picts impossible to subjugate effectively, the Pictish aspirations of the Northumbrians were to prove their downfall in the region, at least politically.
Ecgfrid:
For in his early years, while the kingdom was still weak, the bestial tribes of the Picts had a fierce contempt for subjection to the Saxon and threatened to throw off from themselves the yoke of slavery; they gathered together innumerable tribes from every nook and corner in the north, and as a swarm of ants in the summer sweeping from their hills heap up a mound to protect their tottering house. When king Ecgfrith heard this, lowly as he was among his own people and magnanimous towards his enemies, he forthwith got together a troop of horsemen, for he was no lover of belated operations; and trusting in God like Judas Maccabaeus and assisted by the brave sub-king, Beornhaeth, he attacked with his little band of God's people an enemy host which was vast and moreover concealed. He slew an enormous number of the people, filing two rivers with corpses, so that, marvelous to relate, the slayers, passing over the rivers dry foot, pursued and slew the crowd of fugitives; the tribes were reduced to slavery and remained subject under the yoke of captivity until the time the king was slain.
- Eddius Stephanus, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1927) ,p.19.
Annals of Ulster, 504 "The battle of Manu won by Aedán."
Annals of Ulster 582 "The battle of Manu, in which Aedán son of Gabrán sun of Domangart was victor."
Annals of Ulster 583 "The battle of Manu won by Aedán."
Chronicon Scotorum, 638 "The battle of Glenn Muiresan, in which the followers of Domnall Brec were put to flight, and the besieging of Eten."
Annals of Ulster 686 "The battle of Dún Nechtain was fought on Saturday, May 20th, and Egfrid son of Oswy, king of the Saxons, who had completed the 15th year of his reign, was slain therein with a great body of his soldiers; and Tula ( ?) burned Aman (?) of Dún Ollaig."
Annals of Ulster 698 "A battle between the Saxons and the Picts, in which fell Bernith's son, called Brectrid.
Annals of Ulster 711 "A slaughter of the Picts by the Saxons in Mag Manonn, where Finnguine son of Deile Roith met an untimely death.
U728.4 The battle of Monidhcrobh between the Picts themselves, in which Aengus was victor, and many were slain on the side of king Eilpín. A woeful battle was fought between the same parties near Caissel Créidi, where Eilpín was put to flight.
U729.3 The battle of Druim Derg Blathug in the territory of the Picts between Aengus and Drust, king of the Picts, and Drust fell.
U734.5 Talorg son of Congus was held captive by his brother, handed over to the Picts, and drowned by them.
U734.6 Talorgan son of Drostan is apprehended and manacled near Dún Ollaig.
In 685AD, the Anglian King Ecgfrid left his province of Lothian to push North into Southern Pictavia. Disastrously, on Saturday 20th May, he met the Pictish army under King Brude mac Bili at a place known to the Irish annalists as Dún Nechtain, now Dunnichen in Angus. For all we know, some remnants of the Gododdin warrior elite were also present attempting to avenge their forebears' loss at Catraeth, and given the apparent Pictish presence in Gododdin from Roman times through to the seventh century, it seems more than likely. We know that some of the Gododdin elite fled Westwards into Strathclyde following Catraeth, that being the route by which Aneirin's poem seems to have arrived in North Wales some centuries later, but given the apparently repeated Pictish-Gododdin alliances across several centuries, it is surely not unimaginable that many of them would also have escaped across the Forth into Pictavia.
But the Battle of Dunnichen was to go down in Anglian history as probably their worst defeat of all time, with both the majority of their army, but even more disastrously, King Ecgfrid, wiped out in a single day. In the Anglian language, it became known as Nechtansmere after the mere, or bog/loch which King Brude lured them into and massacred them as they became increasingly and hopelessly entrenched. At Aberlemno in Angus, just North of Dunnichen, there is a Pictish cross-slab often thought to represent the Battle of Dunnichen:
The Aberlemno Pictish Cross-Slab
The Aberlemno cross-slab may or may not refer specifically to the Battle of Dunnichen, but its iconography is clear, showing two types of warriors which appear to represent Picts on the one hand and Lothian/Northumbrian Anglians on the other. The Pictish warriors, as on so many other Pictish stones, are represented without helmets, bearded, long-haired, and carrying embossed shields:
Pictish Warriors on the Aberlemno Cross Slab
On the other hand, the Anglian warriors are shown wearing long-nosed helmets of the type found in Anglian and Anglo-Saxon archaeological sites, carry non-embossed shields, and do not appear to sport beards or long hair:
Anglian Warrior on the Aberlemno Cross Slab
Perhaps most intriguing is the figure represented in the bottom-right-hand corner of the scene, who appears to be an Anglian knocked off his horse, with a raven pecking at his head, suggesting death and defeat on the battlefield. It has often been conjectured that this unfortunate Anglian may represent none other than the defeated King Ecgfrid himself:
King Ecgfrid on the Aberlemno Cross Slab?
Dunnichen was a battle of major significance in Scottish and British history - more so, in some senses, even than the more famous later battles of Bannockburn, Flodden or Culloden. It was at Dunnichen that the supremacy of Celtic control in Northern Britain was finally and profoundly confirmed, absolutely halting the Northwards tide of Anglian invasions and thus opening up the possibility of the distinction between the medieval (and modern) nations of Scotland and England, even if "Scotland" and "England" as unified concepts were still distant political possibilities.
Immediately following their drastic defeat at Dunnichen, the Anglians retreated Southwards even, to some extent, from Lothian, with their monks abandoning Abercorn and fleeing to Whitby, a mere four years or so into the establishment of their famous Lothian bishopric. However, although Northumbrian control of the region was politically tenuous after Dunnichen, Lothian remained within the Northumbrian cultural circuit for some time, not least ecclesiastically and linguistically. Both St. Baldred and St. Cuthbert, ethnically Anglian, were from East Lothian and its adjacent territories. And while much of the local population still indubitably spoke Brythonic, the Anglian language increasingly embedded itself within the region to eventually develop into Scots. As such, the roots of these two nations, the Celtic Gododdin and the Germanic Northumbrians, remained the primary bases of Lothian culture for many years, and again, Lothian was a debatable border land between contesting cultural and political allegiances and claims.
Although the Brythonic language in Lothian was evidently under increasing pressure from Anglian from the seventh century onwards, most linguistic historians believe that it survived in the neighbouring kingdom of Strathclyde (which was taken over by Gaelic Alba, not Germanic Northumbria) well into the second millennium, and possibly even into the fourteenth century within the more remote upland communities. While this cannot be said for Lothian, nonetheless, to this day, many placenames still proclaim their Brythonic (Old Welsh) roots, from Traprain in the East to Abercorn in the West. And, of course, Edinburgh itself in the "Heart of Midlothian", the entire nation's modern capital, is still known in modern Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) as Dun Éideann, a direct cross-Celtic transliteration from the original Brythonic name, Din Eidyn (the myth that Edinburgh was named after the Northumbrian king Edwin was a later, and bogus theory developed by Symeon of Durham for purposes of English nationalist propaganda - furthermore, Edwin died before the Northumbrian conquest of the city anyhow). Equally, the very name "Lothian" appears to derive from Brythonic roots in Lleuddiniawn, from the old pagan Brythonic sun-god, Lleu, as discussed under the mythologies section. In this, Lleuddiniawn means literally "Land of Lleu".
Yet the Germanic language which was left by the Northumbrians developed, by the C13th or so, to become Scots, which is still, in its myriad forms, the majority language of the region, albeit under continued pressure from that Southern dialect of Anglo-Saxon known as "English" (indeed, ironically, modern Scots can be viewed as more authentically connected with its Germanic, Anglo-Saxon roots than can modern English!). Nonetheless, many composite placenames in Lothian such as Traprain Law (Brythonic "Tra Pren" and Scots "law") and Edinburgh (Brythonic "Eidyn" + Anglian "burh") give testimony to the welding-together of Lothian's combined Celtic and Germanic roots.