Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kenneth III
KENNETH III (d. 1005?), son of Duff, the elder brother of Kenneth II [q. v.], succeeded Constantine, the son of Culen [q. v.], as king of the Scottish Pictish monarchy in 997. He is sometimes called the Donn or Brown, sometimes the Grim, and is said, in the prophecy of St. Berchan, to have come from ‘strong Duncaith,’ perhaps the hill of that name on the Sidlaws, the range which separates Strathmore from the Carse of Gowrie, where the descendants of Kenneth I [q. v.] appear to have held several forts. The single event of his reign recorded in the ‘Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ is a raid made upon Cumberland by Ethelred the Unready [q. v.] in 1000; and the ‘Ulster Annals’ assign his death to a battle fought ‘among the men of Alban themselves’ in 1005. One of the later Scottish chronicles gives the place as Monaghavard (Monzievaird) in Strathearn, and his successful opponent as Malcolm II, Kenneth II's son, who succeeded him on the throne.
[Chronicles of the Picts and Scots; Wyntoun and Fordoun; Skene's Celtic Scotland.]