through Snaekoll's younger brother or sister, along with
the Moddan estates in Strathnaver and in various highland and Celtic
parishes in Caithness, to Johanna of Strathnaver as Ragnhild's heir;
but this share did not carry with it the title of Countess. It
was held for her in wardship, but it was not formally granted and
confirmed by the Crown to her or her husband Freskin de Moravia, who
had become Lord of Duffus by 1248, until their marriage, in or after
1245, or even later, and when the settlement was made, possibly South
Caithness was taken partly out of it.

If Earl John had left no daughter at all, the result in Caithness
might well have been much the same; for in that case the Caithness
title and lands might well have been conferred as to the title and
a share of the earldom lands on the elder surviving sister of Harald
Ungi, Ingibiorg or Elin, and her heir, while the other share without
the title would go to the heir of the younger sister Ragnhild. But
Magnus, if he had not married John's daughter, would not have got
North Caithness, and it seems essential that Magnus should have
married into the line of Earl John, in order to found a claim on his
part to the Jarldom of Orkney, which Harold Maddadson, David, and John
(with whom Magnus had no relationship at all, so far as is known)
had held in its entirety, in spite of the grant of a moiety of it
to Harald Ungi, ever since Harald Ungi's death in 1198, and to the
exclusion of the Erlend line from all share in Orkney, (save for
Harald Ungi's grant) ever since Jarl Ragnvald's death in 1158.

But who will find _evidence to prove_ our conjectures to be even
approximately true?

Till this is done, these matters rest upon mere conjecture, based
mainly upon known Scottish policy, the name of "Magnus," and the
probable situation of the lands owned by the parent lines and the
families known afterwards to have held them, namely, the families of
Cheyne, Federeth, Sutherland, Keith, Oliphant, and Sinclair, among
whose writs or inventories of them search might be made.

CHAPTER X.

_King Hakon and the North of Scotland._

We can now turn with some sense of relief from the intricate maze
of the genealogy of the Caithness earls to the more open ground of
Scottish history, which we left at the date of the death of William
the Lion in December 1214, when he was succeeded on the throne of
Scotland by his son, Alexander II, a youth who had then just entered
his sev