[80] _Chron. Sax._ _An. Ult._ 943.--Roger of Wendover is the earliest authority for the tale of Edmund expelling Dunmail--hardly the same person as Donald MacEogan, who died in 975--and putting out the eyes of his two sons (vol. 1., p. 398). The story is probably about as true as the account of the same chronicler that the English king was assisted on this occasion by Llewellyn of South Wales. In 945 Howell Dha was king of South Wales, and as none of his sons bore the name of Llewellyn, the only person whom the Welsh writers can find to participate in the expedition is Llewellyn ap Sitsylt--who died 76 years later, in 1021--the father of Harold’s opponent, Griffith, and of Blethyn and Rhywallon, who figured, considerably more than a century later, in the reign of William the Conqueror. The next thing heard of this Llewellyn is in 1018, when, says Caradoc (_Hist. Wales_, p. 79), “Llewellyn ap Sitsylt having for some years (_seventy-three_) sat still and quiet, began now to bestir himself.” It was time! [81] _Sim. Dun. Twysden_, pp. 14, 74. [82] _Chron. Sax._ 945. _Midwyrhta_, “fellow workman,” is the expression used, which the feudal ideas of a later age naturally rendered _fidelis_; and an alliance, only lasting for the life of Malcolm, was accordingly transformed into a regular feudal transaction, existing for generations. The earlier authorities, from the chronicle and Æthelward, make no mention of any such thing; and Kenneth the Second appears to have been as ignorant of it when he harried Cumberland in 971, as Ethelred when he wasted the same province in 1000; nor could Simeon of Durham have been aware of such a compact when he wrote that, in 1072, Malcolm the Third held Cumberland “Non jure possessa sed violenter subjugata,” expressions which can scarcely be reconciled with the uninterrupted possession of the province as a feudal fief for 127 years. When John of Fordun compiled his history, he eagerly seized upon the means of escaping the numerous claims for homage put forward in the rival English chroniclers; and Cumberland, in his pages, becomes the counterpart of the earldom of Huntingdon during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Scottish king invariably granting it to the heir, or tanist, who duly performs homage to the Saxon monarch for the fief held of his crown. On one occasion a tanist is called into existence for this sole purpose, and the veracious historian, after fabricating the apocryphal being, is obliged to murder his own creation to account for his not appearing amongst the Scottish kings. The same _myth_, Malcolm, king of the Cumbrians, unites with Kenneth the Second in witnessing a charter which the latter is supposed to have signed as king five years before he ascended the throne, and is very appropriately placed amongst the eight oarsmen who manned the boat of Edgar in his apocryphal progress on the Dee.--_V. Appendix L_, pt. 1. [83] _Chron. Sax._ 946, 948.