Battle of Harlaw - Background

Background

During the Dark Ages, the territory of what later became Scotland was divided between the Gaelic kingdoms of Dál Riata on the western seaboard and Alba in the southeast, and Pictish kingdoms in the northeast of which Fortriu was the most important. In addition were the Anglo-Saxon 'English' Kingdom of Bernicia, later part of Northumberland, and the Bryhtonic Kingdom of Cumbria. Viking influence increased in the west, with the Gaelic-Vikings that became Lords of the Isles taking control of much of Dál Riata in 1156. The Gaels of Alba acquired Brythonic elements from the conquest of the Kingdom of Strathclyde in the 11th century and increasingly absorbed Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon culture, influences which also spread to the Pictish areas of the northeast. The lands of Fortriu became part of the great Mormaerdom (kingdom) of Moray, which was conquered by Alba in 1130 and fragmented into territories that were semi-independent of the King in Edinburgh.

Thus there was a long history to conflicts between the Moray gentry and the clans of the West Coast, but some historians present Harlaw as a clash between the Scottish Highlands and Lowlands, or between Celt and Teuton. John Hill Burton (1809–1881) claimed that in Lowland Scotland Harlaw "was felt as a more memorable deliverance even than that of Bannockburn. What it was to be subject to England the country knew and disliked; to be subdued by their savage enemies of the mountains opened to them sources of terror of unknown character and extent". However Sir Robert Rait (1874–1936) detected no racial antipathy in the two contemporary accounts of the Scotichronicon and the Book of Pluscarden, and viewed Harlaw not as a conflict between races, but between two groups of Scots of which one spoke English and the other Gaelic. Rait mentions Buchanan's view that it was simply a raid for plunder.