Scota

Scota (left) with Goídel Glas voyaging from Egypt, as depicted in a 15th century manuscript of the Scotichronicon of Walter Bower; in this version Scota and Goídel Glas (Latinized as Gaythelos) are wife and husband.

Scota, in Irish mythology, Scottish mythology, and pseudohistory, is the name given to two different mythological daughters of two different Egyptian Pharaohs to whom the Gaels traced their ancestry, allegedly explaining the name Scoti, applied by the Romans to Irish raiders, and later to the Irish invaders of Argyll and Caledonia which became known as Scotland.

The Scota who was allegedly the wife of Mil is named as the daughter to a pharaoh named 'Nectanebus' (a name which might be meant to identify either Nectanebo I or Nectanebo II), and in this myth it was the sons of Mil and Scota that settled in Ireland.

According to the early Irish chronicle Lebor Gabála Érenn the other Scota was the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh named Cingris, a name found only in Irish legend. She married Niul, son of Fenius Farsaid, a Babylonian who traveled to Scythia after the collapse of the Tower of Babel. Niul was a scholar of languages, and was invited by the pharaoh to Egypt and given Scota's hand in marriage. They had a son, Goídel Glas, the eponymous ancestor of the Gaels, who created the Gaelic language by combining the best features of the 72 languages then in existence.

Goídel (or his son Sru) was expelled from Egypt shortly after the Exodus of the Israelites by a pharaoh whom 17th century Irish chronicler Geoffrey Keating names Intuir. After much travelling his descendants settled in Hispania (or Iberia - modern Spain and Portugal), where Míl Espáine was born, and it was the sons of Míl, Eber Finn and Eremon, who established the Gaelic presence in Ireland.

According to Seumas MacManus in his book The Story of the Irish Race, Scota married Niul, but he was the grandson of Gaodhal Glas. Then another Scota, who was coincidentally also a daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, married Miled (or Milesius). This second Scota left Iberia with her eight sons and their families, after Miled died, and headed for Ireland. Many of the sons died en route, due to a storm, and Queen Scota died during the battle between the Milesians and the Tuatha Dé Danann.

South of Tralee town, in Ireland, in a valley is an area known as Glenn Scoithin, "Vale of the little flower", more normally known as Foley's Glen, reputedly the grave of Scota.

Sources

• Lebor Gabála Érenn [1]
• Geoffrey Keating, Forus Feasa ar Éirinn [2]
• Seumas MacManus, The Story of the Irish Race (February 1970 The Devin-Adair Company New York)
• Seumas MacManus, The Story of the Irish Race (1990 edition printed by Wings Books)
• Michael O'Clery, Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland (1616-1636 Donegal)
• Aidan Dodson, Monarchs of the Nile (1995)