The chronology of this tale is quite clear. They came just at the time when the so-called destruction of the Picts by Kenneth mac Alpin took place; and they themselves perished by the Danes in the reign of his son Constantin. Of so remarkable an event, however, as the invasion of Fife by a body of six thousand and six Hungarians history knows nothing, and it is obvious that we have here to deal with a myth somewhat similar to that which brought St. Bonifacius and St. Servanus from Palestine. It appears, however, that there were two traditions as to the origin of these people, and Boece, who reports the fact, may probably here be trusted. He says—‘There are not wanting those who write that these holy martyrs of Christ were Hungarians, who, flying from the pagan fierceness which was then rampant in Germany, passed into Scotland to preserve their religion. Others say they were a company gathered together from Scots and Angles.’[589] The first refers to the legend in the Breviary; the second contains probably an admission of the truth; and an examination of the legend will confirm this. The names of most of the company are disguised under Latin forms, but one seems to preserve its original shape. Monanus is simply the Irish _Moinenn_, with a Latin termination. His relics are preserved at Inverry, now St. Monans, and he is venerated on the 1st of March; but this is the day of St. Moinenn in the Irish Calendar, who was first bishop of Clonfert Brenain on the Shannon, and whose death is recorded by Irish annalists in 571.[590] This leads us at once to Ireland as the country from whence they came; and, so far from being accompanied by a living St. Monan, who lived at Inverry, they had probably brought with them the relics of the dead St. Moinenn, bishop of Clonfert, of the sixth century, in whose honour the church, afterwards called St. Monans, was founded. But, when we turn to the history of Ireland at this period, we find Turgesius the Dane had placed himself at the head of all the foreigners in Ireland, and had brought the whole of the south of Ireland under subjection to him. In the year 832 he attacked Armagh and sacked it three times in one month. During the next nine years he appears to have remained content with his secular possession of the country, and did not attempt to overthrow the power of the ecclesiastical authorities; but in 841 he banished the bishop and clergy and usurped the abbacy of Armagh, that is to say, the full authority and jurisdiction in Armagh and the north of Ireland; and he seems not only to have aimed at the establishment of a permanent rule of the Northmen over Ireland, but to have attempted the establishment of his national heathenism in place of the Christianity which he found in the country.[591] This continued for four years, till his death in 845. Now, at this very time Kenneth mac Alpin was establishing his Scottish kingdom in Pictland, and reclaiming for the Scottish clerics their old