DALRIADA

Gaelic kingdom that, at least from the 5th century AD, extended on both sides of the North Channel and composed the northern part of the present County Antrim, Northern Ireland, and part of the Inner Hebrides and Argyll, in Scotland. In earlier times, Argyll had received extensive immigration from the Irish (known as Scoti) of northern Ireland and had become an Irish (i.e., Scottish) area. In the latter half of the 5th century, the ruling family of Irish Dalriada crossed into Scottish Dalriada and made Dunadd and Dunolly its chief strongholds. Irish Dalriada gradually declined; and after the Viking invasions early in the 9th century, it lost all political identity. Despite heavy onslaughts from the Picts, the Dalriada of the Scottish mainland continued to expand. In the mid-9th century its king Kenneth I MacAlpin brought the Picts permanently under Dalriadic rule; and thereafter the whole country was known as Scotland.