Mac Duffs of Fife

A name mostly associated with the Thane of Fife in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the real MacDuff story aligns only slightly with the fiction

DR BRUCE DURIE

In ‘the Scottish play’, MacDuff suspects Macbeth of regicide (murdering King Duncan) and eventually gets to kill Macbeth in the last act; the avenging hero who saves Scotland from tyranny. But this was Shakespeare writing PR as usual, in this case for the new Stuart King, James VI and I. The first documentation of a Duff was a 10th-century King of Alba (Scotland), called Dubh mac Mhaoil Chaluim (962–967), the 10th monarch after Kenneth MacAlpin. He first crops up in John of Fordun’s Chronica Gentis Scotorum (written in the late 14th century) and then in The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland in the early 15th century, which was attributed to Andrew of Wyntoun. Fordun has Duff plagued by persistent witchcraft and treason, and Wyntoun suggests that Duff was murdered. All of…

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Scotland (Digital) - 1 Issue, November - December 2023

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