The victory by King Brude of the Picts over King Ecgfrith of the Angles on this date is arguably the most significant in British domestic history, towering over Bannockburn in that without Brude's annihilation of the Northumbrian Angles and their king there would not have been an eventual Kingdom of Scotland for which Bruce could fight in 1314, over 600 years later. This page is not going to be written as an academic essay, just as the background to a gig. For those interested in the detail we recommend John Rhys's Celtic Britain or William Skene's Celtic Scotland and, for the particular detail, Graeme Cruickshank's booklet, still available from Pinkfoot Press, Balgavies, by Forfar, Angus – ISBN 1 874012 00 8 (email: inbox@pinkfootpress.co.uk)

The Angles had arrived in Britain, at least for the first time on record, with Jutish relatives in the middle of the 5th century AD, supposedly as mercenaries invited by the British king Vortigern. They seem to have embarked on a mission northwards to quell the unruly Scots and Picts who had the annoying habit of travelling south in winter to raid the comfortable convenience stores of middle Britain's barns and fields of beasts.

The story goes that they had only journeyed a few miles when they were met by a Pictish ‘delegation' if you can use such a term for hundreds of heavily armed raiders on horseback who are effectively saying ‘Where the f*** do you think you're going?!', or the contemporary vernacular equivalent. The dissuaded Angles returned to Vortigern and abused both his hospitality and his daughters and over the next 200 years settled their families in Britain, along with waves of Saxons, although we had seen them previously as sea traders and raiders.