Dunmail

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Dunmail, last King of Cumbria (?-k. 945AD), a figure of both history and legend.

In 945AD the Saxon king Edmund I of England conquered Strathclyde and ceded Cumbria to his ally, Malcolm I MacDonald, king of Scotland. This historical conflict is the subject of a legend with strong echoes of the King Arthur myth of the Once and Future King, as follows:

According to the legend, Dunmail, king of Cumbria, was attacked by the combined forces of Edmund and Malcolm and retreated into the heart of the Lake District. Dunmail met the kings in battle in the pass that divides Grasmere from Thirlmere but was defeated, was killed in the fight (it is said at the hands of Edmund himself) and his sons were subsequently blinded by the victors. Some of the surviving Cumbrians, taken prisoner by Edmund, were ordered to collect rocks to pile on Dunmail's body, forming a cairn that still exists to this day and gives the pass its modern name, Dunmail Raise. Others of Dunmail's warriors fled with the crown of Cumbria, climbing into the mountains to Grisedale Tarn below Helvellyn, where they threw it into the depths to be safe until some future time when Dunmail would come again to lead them. Every year the warriors are said to return to the tarn, recover the crown and carry it down to the cairn on Dunmail Raise. There they strike the cairn with their spears and a voice is heard from deep inside the stones, saying "Not yet, not yet; wait awhile my warriors."

Dunmail features as a character (and his death is described) in the classic story of the Vikings in Lakeland Thorstein of the Mere by W. G. Collingwood.

It is possible that the figure of "Dunmail" is based upon Domnall III of Strathclyde, who seems to have been reigning in 945, though he is also attested 30 years later.