CRAILTNG OR TRAVERLINN 145 



The best known Gaelic word for water is uisge ; it forms 

 uisge-be, water of life, and is used for rain. Sea- water is 

 salus. 



Duncan, King of Cumbria, appears by another designation, 

 which is of interest, both as a historical point, and as yet 

 another case in which Mr Skene was right, on grounds which 

 he had hardly understood himself, or at least which seem 

 very slight. 



He says there is a personage in the northern Sagas who 

 can be nobody but Duncan I. of Scotland, but he is called 

 Kali Hundasoii, of which he (iVEr Skene) can make nothing 

 but the Carle, the Son of the Hound. 



The father of Duncan was Crinan, the lay-abbot of Dunkeld, 

 and a great secular chief, who had married one of the 

 daughters (Bethac, I think) of Malcolm II. 



And I only noticed lately that in the next generation 

 there is a member of the Scotch royal family called Madach, 

 Earl of Athol. It is not certain whether he was a son of 

 Duncan I., a younger brother of Malcolm and Donaldbane, 

 or a son of Malcolm's first marriage with Ingebiorg, widow 

 of the Earl of Orkney, and a brother of Duncan II. ; but he 

 is one of themselves. Now Madach means hound, and as 

 Crinan is almost obviously a sobriquet, being the exact 

 equivalent of the English Tiny, which, whether applied to 

 a very big or a very little man or woman, is sufficiently 

 familiar, it is likely that Madach, Earl of Athol, had received 

 the Christian name as well as the territory of his ancestor, 

 the latter modernised from an abbey to an earldom. 



It is in the Orkneyinga Saga that Kali Hundason appears, 

 fighting his northern cousins — Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney, was 

 the son of another daughter of Malcolm II. — but in the 

 Niala Saga Earl Hundi, who I have no doubt is Crinan 

 himself, is seen also fighting the Norsemen, along with Earl 

 Malsnati, a Gaelic Malsnechtan. 



It is possible the common old Gaelic name of Madach may 

 have been given in the sense of wolf, which is the wild hound 

 in Gaelic ; Polmadie is understood to be the Wolf's Pool ; and 

 from the analogy of Ethelwulf and the Welsh Bleddyn, Breoch, 

 meaning wolf, which is said to have been St. Columba's 

 baptismal name, is probably the real Gaelic word. 

 T 



