Following the ancestral trail of the Cenel Loairn and its descendents through more than 600 years to illuminate the emergence of the medieval kingdom of the Scots, this well-researched study throws an unfamiliar light on one of the principal dynastic kindreds of Dalriada, the embryonic kingdom of the Scots in Argyll. Describing how Cenel Loairn displaced the Cenel nGabrain as kings of the north, achieving their pinnacle of ascendancy when Macbeth seized the high kingships of Scots in 1040, only to be thrown into terminal decline at his death--and that of his kinsman and successor Lulach--which prompted the resurgence of the Cenel nGabrain, this intensive discourse reveals a sequence of rebellions, kingships, and downfalls, that continued well into the second quarter of the 13th century, and formed the fascinating history of medieval Scotland.