The many legendary founders of Scotland
One remarkable thing about Scottish legend is just how many beginnings the country's pseudo-history seems to have. In my article on the legend of King Galdus, I looked at two of these: the stories of Gathelus and of Cairbre Riata: but they are far from the only ones. Let's examine them all in (as far as possible) chronological order. 1: Gathelus and Scota Briefly, as gone into in the Galdus article: an Egyptian princess in the time of Moses, married to an exiled Greek or Scyt
King Galdus
The fourth book of Hector Boece's History of the Scottish People tells the epic story of the hero-king Galdus. (A still more stirring version is found in the vernacular verse rendition by William Stewart, written in the 1530s but not published until 1858.) A nephew of both Caratacos and Boudicca (here called Voada), he has a troubled childhood: fostered by his famous aunt, and forced to return home after her uprising against the Roman Empire ends in defeat and death; orphaned
