About the same period the line of the Celtic Mormaers or earls of Buchan had come to an end. The Book of Deer furnishes us with a tolerably complete list of these Mormaers, from Bede the Pict in the sixth century to Colban, earl of Buchan, in the reign of David the First; and we can see from the history of the last four that they followed in the main the Pictish law of succession, which preferred daughters to sons after brothers. Donald, son of Ruadri, appears as _Mormaer_ of Buchan in the reign of Malcolm the Second. He is followed by Donald, son of MacDubhacain, who is succeeded by his brother Cainneach. The next _Mormaer_ mentioned was his son Gartnait, but he appears to have derived his right through his wife Ete, daughter of Gillamithil. He appears with the title of earl in the reign of Alexander the First, and his daughter Eva carries the earldom to her husband Colban. He is followed by his son Roger, and he by his son Fergus, whose only daughter Margaret carried the earldom to William Cumyn, who became in his right earl of Buchan, and by Alexander the Second was made guardian of the earldom of Moray in 1222. Six years after, the districts of Badenoch and Lochaber were conferred upon his son Walter Cumyn, on the rebellion, defeat, and death of a certain Gillespic, by whom they had apparently been forfeited. [Sidenote: Atholl.] The same reign of Alexander the Second witnessed the termination of the line of the Celtic earls of Atholl and Angus. The former earldom appears to have been an appanage of the family from whom sprang the kings of the race of Duncan, the son of Crinan, and its earls were descended from his younger son, a younger brother of Malcolm Ceannmor.[406] The last of this line was Henry, earl of Atholl, who died before 1215, and the earldom passed to the eldest of two sisters, Isabella and Forflissa, who married Thomas, earl of Galloway. On the death of his son Patrick in 1242 he was succeeded by his aunt Forflissa, the other sister, who married David de Hastings, and by his daughter it was carried to the Strathbolgie family, a branch of the earls of Fife.[407] But while the earldom passed into the hands of a succession of foreign earls, a family bearing the title of De Atholia continued to possess a great part of the earldom, and were probably the descendants of the older Celtic earls. The Gaelic population of the whole of the north-western portion of Atholl, bounded on the east by the river Garry, and on the south by the Tummel, remained intact under them, but the possession of the great western territory of the _abthanrie_ of Dull by the Crown led to the introduction of a foreign element among the landholders of the rest of the earldom, and much of the land passed permanently into the possession of the families of Menzies and Stewart, while the Celtic character of the whole earldom was notwithstanding preserved. [Sidenote: Angus.]