Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Lulach
LULACH, LUTHLACH, LULAG, LAHOULAN, DULACH, or GULAK (d. 1058), king of Scots, was son of Gilcomgan, mormaer of Moray. His mother, a daughter of Boedhe, of the house of Kenneth I [q. v.], was probably Gruoch, the wife, after Gilcomgan's death, of Macbeth [q. v.] Lulach was the representative of the house of Kenneth, and was brought up under Macbeth's guardianship. On the death of Macbeth in 1057 he succeeded to the mormaership of Moray, and was set up as king by the people of Alban; but he had no real power, and after a nominal reign, said to have begun on 8 Sept., was slain by craft by a son of Malcolm, son of Duncan, at Essy in Strathbolgy, on the border of the present Aberdeenshire, on 17 March 1058, and was buried in Iona. By Latin writers he is called ‘fatuus,’ and in the ‘Prophecy of St. Berchan’ ‘the Tairbith’ (i.e. misfortune). In the same poem he is said to have dwelt ‘at Loch Deabhra’ in Lochaber. He left a son named Maelsnechta, who succeeded him as mormaer of Moray, and died in 1085, and a daughter, whose son Angus succeeded his uncle as mormaer, or, as it was then called, earl, of Moray, rebelled against David of Scotland, and was slain in 1130.
[Marianus, an. 1079 (1057) ap. Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptt. v. 558, ed. Pertz; Tighernac ap. Rerum Hibern. Ann. ii. 300, 301, ed. O'Conor; Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, with extracts about Lulach from both the above, the Prophecy of St. Berchan, p. 102, and other notices, passim, ed. Skene (Chrons. and Memorials, Scotland); Fordun's Scotichron. v. c. 9, ed. Hearne, pp. 398, 399; Robertson's Scotland under her Early Kings, i. 111, 124; Skene's Celtic Scotland, i. 411, 460; Burton's Hist. of Scotland, i. 347; Rhys's Celtic Britain, pp. 191, 195.]