The Mormaer or Mormaerdom of Mearns is the most obscure

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the Post-classical, post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with t ...

Scottish

mormaer In early Middle Ages, medieval Kingdom of Scotland, Scotland, a mormaer was the Scottish Gaelic, Gaelic name for a regional or provincial ruler, theoretically second only to the Kings of Scots, King of Scots, and the senior of a ''Toísech'' (chi ...

dom. It is known only from one source, a source relating that Máel Petair, ''Mormaer of Mearns'', killed Donnchad II. There is good reason to believe that this is not some mistake, and that Mearns was once a Mormaerdom. The early thirteenth century source, known to historians a

de Situ Albanie ''De Situ Albanie'' (or ''dSA'' for short) is the name given to the first of seven Scottish documents found in the so-called Poppleton Manuscript, now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. It was probably written sometime between 1202 ...

, adds believability to this because it lists Mearns in a list of 13 Scottish regions which in 6½ pairs each formed one of the seven ancient Kingdoms of the

Picts The Picts were a group of peoples who lived in what is now northern and eastern Scotland (north of the Firth of Forth) during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Where they lived and what their culture was like can be inferred from ea ...

. Only two of the eleven other regions are not attested in sources as Mormaerdoms, those ones being

Fothriff Fothriff or Fothrif was a province of Scotland in the Middle Ages. It is often paired with Fife, not only in ''De Situ Albanie'', but also in early charters. The exact extent of early Fothriff is unclear, but in around 1300 the Deanery of Fothr ...

and

Gowrie Gowrie ( gd, Gobharaidh) is a region in central Scotland and one of the original Provinces of Scotland, provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It covered the eastern part of what became Perthshire. It was located to the immediate east of Atholl, an ...

. It is probable that by the time Mormaers begin to be consistently attested, i.e. roughly between 1150 and 1250, Mearns was absorbed by the crown and not regranted. Confusingly, ''Mormaer'' means ''Great Steward''; ''Maerns'' means merely ''Stewardry'', and would be expected to be ''Mormaerns'' if there was a Mormaerdom.

Bibliography

* Anderson, Alan Orr, ''Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500-1286'', 2 Vols, (Edinburgh, 1922), Vol. I, pp. 89–91 {{DEFAULTSORT:Mormaer Of Mearns Kincardine and Mearns Mormaers