Several of the kings, wavering between
service of two masters, had quietly yielded to the persuasions of King
Alexander's ambassadors. But it must be said that, despite their seeming
compliance, they were ready to turn the other way again with equal ease,
or even to evade their duties to either monarch and assume the dignity
of independent rulers. In a political sense the result of the expedition
was a failure, the conquests being incomplete, and the compliance of the
less warlike kings being of the very shortest duration.
The misfortunes that had attended Kenric of Bute and Sir Piers de Currie
were due almost entirely to the bad work of the wild men of Galloway,
whose lust for slaughter and pillage, whose wanton plunderings of
churches and slaying of women and children brought down upon the Scots
the hatred of the Norsemen in whose lands these depredations had been made.
It was not long ere the word had travelled far and wide among the
Western Isles that the barbarities committed by the Gallwegians were the
work of young Kenric of Bute. It was said that Kenric of Bute alone had
ordered the massacre of the children of Colonsay. It was said that he
had wantonly ordered similar atrocities in Jura, in Barra, and indeed in
all those isles which the unruly men of Galloway had invaded. Upon
Kenric and his people, therefore, the sons of the vikings swore deadly
vengeance, calling upon their patron saint to aid them.
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