The airy notion of ancient family, which, by extending our thoughts, we shall find may be claimed by all mankind. Edward Burt 1728.
A considerable amount of information about prehistoric social organisation in Scotland can be recovered from a study of that much-abused institution, the Highland clan. When Scottish prehistory regains its proper focus we can see the clan to be a prehistoric social unit which evolved in response to pressure on settlement land and the demands of communal deer hunting.
There have been many attempts to define the clan, each rendered inadequate by limitations of historical or linguistic or even legal perspective, for clans are now governed by Scots law. It is generally agreed that a clan consists of a chief and his followers but not everyone would agree with the very narrow terms used by the historian, Donald Gregory. ‘In all the instances which have come under the Editor’s notice’ he wrote, ‘where native men are mentioned, it is evident that they were not, nor did they claim to be, of the blood of the individual whom they acknowledged to be their chief. They appear to have made up the bulk of the population of the Highlands, and to have descended from the ancient occupants of the soil; whilst the clan properly so called consisted only of the blood relations of the chief.’1 Gregory’s recognition that native men represented the pre-feudal population is important but his ‘clan’ appears to be nothing more than a feudal family with Highland estates.
George McMichael, a Perthshire historian, recognised that the ‘native men’ were the dispossessed remnants of pre-feudal clans.2 "As is well known, the ancient clans or families of Scotland held their land without any charter from the crown or anyone, having possessed them from the times before the art of writing was known in the country. With the introduction of the feudal system from the Normans in England, the country was divided or grouped into large districts, each of which was chartered to one man as a feudal chief or factor for the crown. Thus, by a few strokes of a pen, the crown dispossessed all the clans or families of their properties without their knowledge. Many of the feudal chiefs or crown factors, from their own clan relationship or from leniency or fear, allowed some of the families to remain in undisturbed possession so long as they were loyal and peaceful."
Information about the pre-feudal situation can be teased out of various aspects of the native-feudal interface and from surnames, place-names and Gaelic tradition, all of which I will touch on here. Scholarly attention focuses on documented families but tends to ignore the background to their activities. Why did the Macleods of Lewis want Assynt? Who were the families who signed bonds of manrent with the Campbells of Glenorchy? Why was the expansion of the Campbells so bitterly resented? Or was it?
In the modern language, G. clann is understood to mean ‘children’ but this may be poetic usage. A more useful meaning is given by Jamieson’s Dictionary of the Scottish Language for the Scots-Gaelic word clahynnhe or clachin: ‘a clan or tribe of people living in the same district’. Scots clachin links the clan with the clachan ‘stones, a circle of stones, a settlement with a church, a hamlet’. A clachan was a gathering place, where the beacon was lit, where the parish church was built. This suggests that a clan was the people living in a district or parish marked by a central beacon site.
The 'kindly' tenancy seems invariably to reflect the residual presence, under feudal rule, of a native clan. According to I.F. Grant3: ‘There was a widespread belief that the prolonged occupation of land gave a right to a 'kindness', a right of permanent occupation (not possession) of it. There was no general principle as to the length of time required to acquite this right and the definiteness of the claim varied in different districts.’4 The kindly tenants of Lochmaben acquired legal status. In Kintyre ‘kindness’ was acquired after occupation by three generations over eighty-two years. A Mackintosh sold his right to occupy a half-davoch in Strathnairn and in addition got twenty pounds from his Superior, the Earl of Moray. In another case Clan Chattan retaliated with armed force to the removal of its members from land owned by the Earl of Moray. The Macgregors, during the period of their dispossession in the sixteenth century, ‘again and again vainly claimed a right of “kindness” to them, often on very flimsy pretexts’. Their claims were based on oral tradition and so not likely to succeed in a court of law or impress a historian but they were essentially true and made in good faith, and their dispossession caused justifiable resentment.
The evidence from the Isles.
The origins of many modern clans are disguised by feudal developments, real or alleged, such as the granting of charters to native chiefs. But in the case of Clan Donald the feudal process preserved the earlier structures and in the case of Clan Gregor the confrontation with feudalism provides us with most of our evidence for their earlier importance.
As everyone knows, the MacDonalds expanded from Armadale, Skye, to become Lords of the Isles and their sphere of influence eventually encompassed most of the Islands and much of the West Highlands. It included many dispersed groups of MacDonalds, MacDonells, MacIains and others who claimed common ancestry5 but it also attracted the affiliation of many unrelated groups: ‘The race of Somerled and the retainers that were attached to it … never occupied the whole of the great dominions claimed by the Lord of the Isles [but] a considerable number of other clans acknowledged him as their superior.’6 That they acquired people as well as lands is shown by their history. A handful of Macdonalds-by-blood move against the backdrop of contemporary Scottish history, marrying and giving in marriage, but, when need arises, each local chief or agent appears at the head of several hundred fighting men. Very few of these followers were Macdonalds-by-blood.
The Lords of the Isles tempered feudal control with a recognition that one willing follower was worth ten pressed men, particularly when surrounded by open sea, and in consequence ruled the Hebrides with a competence and popularity seldom if ever matched by those who ruled the Scottish mainland. The Lords were in consequence seen as a threat by various Scottish kings and the Lordship was forfeited in 1493 by James IV, an active, popular but short-sighted monarch. He filled the power vacuum he had created by giving much of the confiscated territory to the equally ambitious Campbells. However the native population at least initially stayed put. Many of the clans had kept their separate identities despite their submission to Clan Donald and the later forfeiture of the Lordship and were still in place as independent units in the seventeenth century. Grant thought ‘their origins are so shadowy, and to trace them out would be so controversial, that they are better left undefined’.7 But there is no real difficulty when they are seen as native clans, prehistoric entities which were already in place before Clan Donald began its great expansion. Clan Donald itself was once such a body, occupying Ferindonald at Armadale, before the great Somerled led it out of the shadows.
The distribution of the related branches of Clan Donald suggests that the Lordship was based on mutual interest rather than ambition or coercion. This mutual interest had a geographical explanation. There were Macdonells in Lochalsh, Knoydart and Glengarry, Clanranalds in Moidart, Morar, Lochaber, and Rum, and Maciains in Glencoe and Ardnamurchan. Of these, Lochalsh, Knoydart, Morar, Moidart, Ardnamurchan and Rum are within sight of the Clan Donald beacon at Armadale in Sleat or another beacon elsewhere in Skye, and so were natural satellites. (Glenelg was also a natural satellite but it was owned by Macleods.) These settlements formed a natural unit with easy communications which is enough to explain the dominant position of the Skye branch of Clan Donald. The groups in Glengarry, Lochaber and Glencoe may have exploited some other links. The spread of Maclean influence into Morvern and Ardgour and the islands of Coll, Tiree and Jura can likewise be attributed to the range of the beacon on Ben More on Mull. We know from various traditions, discussed above in Chapter 2, that the men of Mull and the men of Morvern were in the habit of hunting together and that the signal for such a gathering was a beacon on Mull. Macleod control of the great deer forests of Assynt, Coigeach and Gairloch may reflect their value as food resources, exploited by beacon and by galley across the Minch.
The ten adoptive clans listed below represent sixteen separate units if their main branches are regarded as autonomous, and at least thirty units of local settlement which by definition predate the rise of the Lordship. All but one persisted on the same lands into the reign of Charles I (1625-1649). The exception is Macleod of Lewis, who competed with the Mackenzies but lost8
- Clan Gillean (Maclean) had four branches which occupied parts of Mull, Tiree, Islay, Jura, Scarba, Morven, Lochaber, Knapdale, Duror, Glencoe, Coll, and Ardgour. Duart was the most powerful but the seniority was claimed by Lochbuy. In the time of Charles I they retained their lands under Argyle as their feudal superior.
- Clan Leod (Macleod) had two branches: Siol Torquil or Macleod of Lewis and Siol Tormod or Macleod of Harris. Torquil in archaic Gaelic is ‘deer forest of the beacon site’ and Tormod is ‘deer forest of the gathering’. Siol Torquil expanded to occupy Raasay, Assynt, Coigach, and Gairloch, but lost everything except Raasay to the Mackenzies. Siol Tormod expanded from Harris into Glenelg, Dunvegan, and Duirinish which they kept.
- Clan Cameron had three branches: the Macsorlies of Glen-nevis, the Macgillories of Strone and the Macmartins of Letterfinlay, all in small possessions in Lochaber. They broke their connection with the Lords of the Isles before forfeiture and made good their claims in the seventeenth century under Argyle.
- Clan Neil. The name means ‘of the island’ (clann an-eil) and was found with the same meaning at Stronfearnan, Lochtayside. There were two distinct island clans – Clan Neil of Barra and Clan Neil of Gigha. There are still Macneils on Barra. Gigha was sold but bought back again.
- Clan Fingon (Mackinnon) was part of Siol Alpin. Its chief, Lauchlan Mackinnon of Strathordel, signed a Bond of Friendship with the chief of Clan Gregor in 1671. A.G. Murray MacGregor 1901, 108-9. The Mackinnons still occupied their lands in Skye and Mull in the time of Charles I.
- Clan Guarie (Macquarrie) was part of Siol Alpin. They occupied the small island of Ulva until the line of chiefs died out in 1609.
- Clan Duffie (Macphee) was part of Siol Alpin. They lived in Colonsay until the line of chiefs died out in 1615.
- Maceacherns of Killellan, Kintyre continued to occupy the same land under Campbell superiors after the line of chiefs died out.
- Mackays of Ugadale, Kintyre (Adam says, of the Rhinns of Islay), persisted until their lands passed with the marriage of an heiress to the Macneils.
The most notable feature is that each of these clans or their constituent parts occupied a single, defined territory which was part of a decentralised but, on the whole, co-operative settlement pattern. Attachment to a particular district has always been a marked feature of the smaller Highland clans. Dispossession and change were certainly possible in prehistory, but the survival of a clan was so closely bound up with their lands that dispossession must invariably have led to their extinction as organised bodies. The dispute over seniority between the branches of Clan Gillean and the comparable divisions in Clan Leod and Clan Cameron suggest that these branches were originally of equal importance. Since kinship was acknowledged, such a situation most probably reflects the expansion of a related people at an early date, when settlement land was still freely available.
Siol Alpin
Several of the smaller groups – Mackinnons, Macquarries and Macphees – claimed to belong to Siol Alpin ‘the seed of the Highlands’, a kind of prehistoric federation. Other members were spread over the Hebrides, Argyll, Dunbarton, Perthshire and as far as Speyside, for the Macaulays of Ardincaple, the Macnabs of Killin, the Macgregors of Perthshire and Argyll, and the Grants of Strathspey also claimed to be Ailpeineach. Old traditions link Clan Gregor to Dunstaffnage and Loch Awe in Argyll. Doubt has been cast on the existence of such a grouping, on no good grounds. Indeed, after 1600 the clans involved risked a great deal by claiming kinship with the outlawed Clan Gregor. They all accepted that the kinship was remote, but Macaulays, Macgregors, Mackinnons, Macnabs and Grants all demonstrated their belief in its reality at different times and in various ways. In addition to the bond of 1671 mentioned above, the chief of the Macaulays entered into a bond of manrent with Macgregor of Glenstrae in 1591, ‘at a time when there could be little profit in such an admission’, on the grounds that the Macaulays were cadets of Clan Gregor.9 In 1606 Macnabs and Mackinnons signed a bond of friendship at Killin, on the grounds that they were ‘come of ane house and being of ane surname and ane lineage’.10 About 1725 there was ‘a celebrated meeting’ at Blair Atholl between the Grants and the Macgregors, whose name was then proscribed, to discuss the proposal of becoming a single clan under a single chief. This ambitious idea did not win support but several gentlemen are said to have changed their surname at that time to Macalpin.11 Siol Alpin is a remarkable survival of a prehistoric organisation. Further north, Clan Chattan represents a comparable grouping of native Gaelic clans.
The eclipse of the last four clans on the list – Macquarrie, Macphee, Maceachern and Mackay – does not appears to have been due to their small size - though they had no more than a single hunting-forest each - but to the difficulty of sustaining a hereditary chiefship within a small group. It is almost inevitable in such a situation that the male line will fail and the smaller group will be assimilated into a larger one. The more natural native system, discussed below, allowed the election of any competent man as chief.
The evidence from Perthshire
McMichael’s description of feudal imposition, given above, is true for Highland Perthshire, though the process was more complex and not accomplished so readily. Feudal interference is visible in the visit by Alexander I in 1122, when he renovated many of the crannogs in Loch Tay but its full impact is not felt until the fifteenth century under James IV. This late date provides some evidence of interaction between feudal incomers and the native clans whose elite once controlled the area and whose followers continued to make up the bulk of the population. Stewarts, Menzies, Murrays and other feudal families were also players but the Campbells of Glenorchy provided most of the action.
The Campbells appear to be feudal adventurers whose supported the right side in the Wars of Independence and who were rewarded with advantageous marriages with native heiresses. According to their own documents, they are known as O’Duine or Mac Duine, and their oldest territorial designation is ‘of Lochow’. They acquired both in the thirteenth century when Gillespie Campbell, who held the lands of Sauchie and Menstrie in Clackmannanshire in 1263, a convenient distance from the court at Stirling.12 He married an heiress, Eva O’Duine, daughter of the King’s Treasurer and took her name.13 The Campbells became established on Loch Awe probably at this early date. The castle on Innis Chonaill is a typical feudal construction of the right period.14 The Glenorchy Campbells also had a link with Kilmartin in Argyll, for when Colin Campbell died in Strathfillan in 1480, he was carried to Kilmartin for burial.15 Was their urge to birze ayont, their hunger to acquire more and more land, which is so much at variance with the ageless native pattern, due to their landless origins?
The first Campbell acquisitions in Breadalbane provide a lesson in strategic thinking. The process began when Colin, first Laird of Glenorchy, got Auchreoch in Strathfillan. He fortified the island and built a tower at Auchreoch, thus securing the route that crossed Scotland from Loch Awe through Glendochart and the major beacon site of Fiarach to the south (NN3426). In 1473 he acquired the Barony of Lawers and the Port of Loch Tay which included the beacon island Eilean Aidan (the Isle of Loch Tay) and part of Drummond Hill. This gave him control of Loch Tay.16 Later generations merely consolidated this achievement. In 1488 James IV gave responsibility for law enforcement in Discher and Toyer (north and south Lochtayside), Glenlyon, Rannoch, Dull, and Glenfalloch in Perthshire, and Glenorchy in Argyll, into the hands of Neil Stewart, Duncan Campbell, 2nd Laird of Glenorchy, and Ewen Campbell. By 1498 Duncan Campbell was in sole control of this extensive district and the Campbells continued to gain power through the lawless years of the sixteenth century.17
Problems arose from the fact that in 1498 all these lands from Loch Awe to Balloch were occupied, admittedly without title, by various ancient branches of Siol Alpin. We do not know how they had reacted to earlier feudal expropriations, but the dereliction of the crannogs suggests a confrontation which they lost. Their failure to secure title to any of their many properties also suggests that, with few exceptions, they were already seen as intransigent rebels. In 1504 Macgregor of Innervucht, chief of the Glenlyon branch, was accused of treason. That the natives objected to the new arrangements is only too clear, despite the paucity of evidence.18 Within a century James VI had begun his campaign of genocide aimed at the extermination of the rebellious 'MacGregors'. Thus were founded the fortunes of the feudal Campbells of Glenorchy and thus began the long war of attrition which finally destroyed the old native families of Perthshire.
Glenorchy
The feudal takeover of Glenorchy can be reconstructed to some extent. The Campbells claim to have acquired Glenorchy by marriage with a Macgregor heiress at the time of Robert Bruce (d. 1329). This seems entirely plausible: apparently coming from nowhere, they became suddenly important, wealthy and well in with the Stewart kings. This would also explain a curious fact in the MacGregor genealogy of 1512, published as an appendix to the Book of the Dean of Lismore. It states that the three earliest generations are Malcolm died ca.1360, Duncan died c.1330, and Duncan Beg of Strwlee died c.1300. The curious thing is that Strwlee (G. Sruithla or Sruileadh) is Stirling. Duncan Beg lived in or near Stirling and the Court. This is not where we would expect to find a MacGregor chief. As Duncan Beg appears to be the founder of this family he or perhaps his son was most probably the Campbell who married the Glenorchy heiress. He may have fought for Robert Bruce and been given her inheritance as his reward. The form of his name, 'A of B', is a typical feudal form. His father or grandfather may have been the Gillespie or Archibald Campbell mentioned already. An ‘incoming husband’ in such a case would adopt the surname Macgregor as he inherited the title. John of Glenorchy, a knight who was taken prisoner at the battle of Dunbar in 1296, is assumed to be an early Macgregor but was presumably another member of this hybrid family.19 The Macgregors of Glenorchy were not ambitious, despite their feudal pretensions. Over the next few centuries they conformed with native rather than feudal custom, remaining from first to last within their traditional boundaries and on good terms with their neighbours.
But they lost their title to Glenorchy before 1432 when the younger son of Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochawe became Sir Colin Campbell of Glenorchy, mentioned above.20 The last mention in the Chronicle of the Macgregors of Glenorchy comes shortly after, with the death there of Malcolm, son of John Dow, in 1440. In the same year Sir Colin built a stone castle at Kilchurn and installed a family of tame Macgregors as hereditary keepers.21 In 1461 the Chronicle records the death of Patrick Macgregor, another son of John Dow but now only Laird of Glenstrae, part of the previous holding. His son John, the last of this line, died in 1519.
In 1519 John Dow was followed in Glenstrae by John McEwen McAllaster, probably from Balquhidder, who was probably chief of Clan Gregor but was described only as ‘Captain of the Clan Gregor of Glenstrae’ when he died in 1528. In April 1570 his grandson Gregor Macgregor of Glenstrae was heddyt at Balloch by ?Colin Campbell, probably for rebellion. Gregor's followers retaliated by killing thirteen of Glenorchy’s men in Glenfalloch. However this family retained their rights to the chiefship and to Glenstrae and other property. Gregor's son Alastair of Glenstrae (executed in 1604), was in turn recognised as chief of the clan, though by then he was little more than a legal pawn. His brother John Dow (killed at the Rout of Glen Fruin in 1603) lived at Stronvar in Balquhidder, on a crannog known as Innis MhicGhriogair, ‘Macgregor’s island’.22 The end of the story came in 1624, when, having first taken the precaution of confirming John Dow's sons and heirs in possession, Duncan Campbell bought Glenstrae from them for ten thousand pounds Scots.23
By the time of Black Duncan of the Castles (d. 1631), he and his formidable family had fortified Balloch, Ardeonaig, Morenish, Finlarig, Glendochart, Achallader, Kilchurn, Barcaldine in Benderloch, and Edinample on Loch Earn and thus controlled the main routes across the southern Highlands, by land and by water, from the Lowlands to the Atlantic. Despite their early importance and relative sophistication, events show the inexorable replacement of the MacGregors of Glenorchy by incomers who were differently educated, more ambitious, and infinitely more worldly-wise. Duncan, like others of his race, was ‘notorious for his greed of land, as well as for the unscrupulous methods by which he sometimes acquired it.’24
Breadalbane
Events in Breadalbane to the east took a similar course. From such scraps of evidence as survive, the native chiefs here were the Dougalsons of Balloch, a branch of Clan Gregor long established at the east end of Loch Tay. They are first noted when the Chronicle in 1491 notes the ‘death of John Duncanson McGregor at Bellycht, buried at Inchadney on the north side of the great altar.’ Local tradition refers to Bealach nan laogh aig deagh Mhac Griogoir ‘Balloch of the deer in the hands of the worthy Macgregor’. G. bealach is a deer ambush and in modern Gaelic laogh is ‘calf’. The ford on the Tay below Kenmore was known as25 ‘MacDougal’s Crossing’. The elite centre at the east end of Loch Tay was the Isle of Loch Tay, a crannog or artificial island built in the Late Bronze Age and properly known as26 'beacon island’ or Eilean Aidan 'fire island'. This little island had an importance beyond its size. It appears to have served as a royal centre in the twelfth century when Queen Sybilla, wife of Alexander I, died there in 1122. In her memory the king granted it to the monks of Scone Abbey who founded St Mary’s Augustinian Priory there.27. Local people long remembered this visit which probably provided them with their first taste of centralised authority.28 Duncan Campbell acquired charter to the island in 1491 and lived there himself until he had built a castle at Balloch on the mainland.
The reasons for the significance of this little island can be stated with some confidence, for its old names tells us it was the site of a beacon. The comparable site at the west end of the loch is Eilean Ran, another crannog occupied by Macnabs, until they also were evicted by Colin Campbell, who built a castle at Finlarig half a mile away. Loch Tay is some 30 km (20 miles) long, with a pronounced dog-leg, and it would have needed further relays to link its two ends, perhaps at Fearnan ‘fire place’, Ardtalnaig, Ardeonaig ‘height of the fire’, Lawers ‘fire place’, or Morenish. We find Macgregors at Balloch at the east end, Macinvallichs or Mallochs, a Clan Gregor family, at Ardeonaig on the south side, MacDiarmids at Morenish, and Macnabs, a related family, at Killin at the west end. Fearnan belonged to the Robertsons of Strowan but was tenanted for several centuries by Macgregors. A place at Morenish was known as Baile mòr MhicGrigoir ‘MacGregor’s great town’.29 Clan Gregor traditionally claimed to control the whole basin of Loch Tay: it was their hand-basin, they said,30 and common sense suggests that it must have been governed as a single unit, even though the population was divided into many local groups. The high-status native families who lived at all these places were gradually replaced by Campbells families as their numbers grew.
The Dougalson Macgregors continued as tenants at Balloch until Whitsunday 1552 when Colin Campbell, the 6th of Glenorchy, evicted Gregor Dougallson from Balloch. This event warranted an exceptional entry in the Chronicle. Gregor died at the Carse of Dull on 1 May 1555 and the Chronicle entry again bears a unique testimony to his importance and the depth of feeling aroused by this event: ‘he was buried at Inchaden on the second day of May by a great assemblage of people and women.’31 Inchadney, a sacred site near Kenmore, was completely obliterated by the third Earl of Breadalbane shortly after 1760. In addition to these two suggestive entries, the main reason for awarding the MacDougals of Balloch elite status is not what they are known to have done – we know almost nothing about them – but the importance attached to Balloch by their successors. Having evicted the Dougalsons, Colin Campbell immediately began to build a stone castle there and it and later Taymouth Castle were the principal residences of the Glenorchy Campbells.
The native family persisted on Lochtayside for the Chronicle notes the death in 1564 of John Dougallson at Fearnan ‘in his own house’.32 In 1601 Robertson of Strowan conformed with the letter of the law and moved to evict his Macgregor tenants but did not press them very hard. At that time William McNeill VcEwin McGregour in Borland alleged that he and his predecessors had been ‘in possessioune thrie hundredth yeiris or thairby as native and kyndlie titularis and possessouris thereof.’33 Against all the odds there were still families of Macgregors at Borland and at Stronfearnan in 1769.34
Native traditions in this area provide us with a dim impression of what went before. When the study of Clan Gregor is limited to historical documents such as leases and charters this prehistoric element becomes invisible. The native elite and its attachment to certain specific sites tend to disappear and we see only a few families named MacGregor who arrive in Perthshire, apparently riding on the coat-tails of Campbell expansion. This reversal of the true picture is an artefact of the historical process. Macgregors certainly interacted with Campbells at every stage of the latter’s expansion, - in Glenorchy, in Glenlyon, and no doubt elsewhere there were close family ties - and one family were even employed at Kilchurn in a position of trust, but it is a verifiable fact that wherever a family of Campbells acquired title to lands in Argyll or Perthshire, a native family disappeared. It does not help the historian to understand the true picture that the surname ‘Macgregor’ did not come into general use until c.1600 and was rare even then. Before then and to a large extent after then the history of this clan is hidden under a variety of surnames - Dougalson, Fletcher, Malloch, McNeish, McNeil, Crerar, Livingston, White, Black, Gregg, Grewar.
The feudal clan
Most of what now passes for clan culture, if not entirely spurious, was created after the native clans had been destroyed. Great noble families such as the Campbells, Menzies, Murrays, Gordons and Stewarts adopted the trappings of native chiefship with enthusiasm. Their coats of arms and mottoes were regulated by Scots law but their war-cries, plant badges, tartans and pipe-tunes were inspired by the earlier culture. They perpetuated the old practices of fosterage and manrent as they found them useful in strengthening the emotional adherence of local leaders over whose persons, followers and properties they now had absolute legal authority. Many bonds of manrent undertaken by the elite of doomed native families are published in the Black Book of Taymouth. These guarantees of mutual assistance were more appropriate to an earlier age, and not popular with the Crown.
The relationship between feudal landlords and their tenants was very different from that which had formerly existed between the native chiefs and the same families. Both could call out their followers on military service, which caused acute conflicts of interest when feudal tenants also had ties to a native chief. But the feudal superior could also ‘decide questions of debt, and many of possession, within their baronies, regulate work and wages, and enforce the payment of their rents: all criminal cases fell under the cognisance of the laird, except treason and the four pleas of the crown: he had the power of pit and gallows, or drowning female and hanging male culprits convicted of theft or robbery; and his jurisdiction comprised many penal statutes’.35 The sterner measures were seldom needed, for the mass of the people were conditioned to obedience and loyalty. But a centralised system of legal and fiscal control, backed up by military force, is incompatible with a voluntary system of mutual support for mutual benefit and in the long term the cain hen gave way to cash rents and the income tax demand. The position of the natives also changed with the arrival of feudalism. They no longer had any rights at all.
A native chief was an illiterate Gael whose sphere of influence was limited to a local area, whose material standard of living was indistinguishable from that of his followers, and whose existence is only rarely and briefly attested when he resisted eviction or offended in some other way against feudal law. The new feudal landlords, on the other hand, documented their lives in a very un-Gaelic way. They were quarrelsome and ambitious and used literacy, money, land, law, religion, the royal favour, and their power over their tenants like pieces in a game of chess. They built stone castles and parish churches and employed clerks in holy orders to pray for them and write their business letters. They shopped around for rich wives, improved their policies, counted their money, planted trees, sent their sons to Eton, were regularly involved in political intrigue and rebellions, had their portraits painted, bought furniture in Flanders, and married their daughters as cheaply as possible. They were important national figures who spoke English, had town houses in Edinburgh, and attended the Court and Parliament. Many also spoke Gaelic, identified with Scotland, and were immensely popular with their tenants if not with those they bested. John Campbell, first Earl of Breadalbane, was one such ambiguous hero.
The end of this particular story came in 1748 when hereditary jurisdictions were abolished by act of Parliament.36 This was applauded by Lowland liberals as a step towards the emancipation of the Highlands, but Highlanders saw it more accurately as a further step in the long and bewildering process of their abandonment by a world where no-one represented their interests. Landlords were already part-time but were now free to detach themselves altogether from any responsibility for their properties. One by one they moved to the Lowlands and employed factors to run their Highland estates. When Dorothy Wordsworth visited Glengyle on Loch Katrine in 1803, she was told that the neighbouring laird had gone, ‘like the rest of them, to Edinburgh, left his lands and his people, spending his money where it brought him not any esteem, so that he was of no value either at home or abroad’.37
Continuity in Perthshire Surnames.
There are two further indications of continuity: surnames and physical appearance. The question of surnames was investigated in north-west Perthshire. The exercise was designed to test the idea that the native population persisted over the period of disruption which coincided with the first records. Three sources of names were used, two of them specific to this area. The earliest are the lists of outlawed Macgregors compiled by the Privy Council and other authorities in 1586 and 1589.38 They provide us with several hundred Gaelic personal names used at that time by members of this clan living in north-west Perthshire (specific locations are also provided). Surnames were not yet in regular use but these Gaelic names can be regarded as proto-surnames, the sources from which the named individual or a legal authority got their eventual surname. The second source is the Survey of Lochtayside of 1769, which names some 400 tenants.39 Between 1590 and 1769, under the influence of English-speaking clerks, simplified Lowland or English surnames had largely replaced the complex Gaelic patronyms. The third category contains all the surnames claimed to be Clan Gregor surnames by emigres in all parts of the world. Until this comparison was made it was not known how reliable this third category was, or if these assorted claims had any validity at all.
When I compared the names from 1769 with the earlier lists I found an almost total concordance, suggesting that the population of 1769 in the main descended from and derived their surnames from the families listed in 1589. The main exceptions, as one would expect, were a few specialists brought in from outside the region to work for the Earls. At this period only a handful of families on Lochtayside used the surname MacGregor, and yet the entire native population has links to individuals listed as members of Clan Gregor in the sixteenth century. This impression of continuity, hidden but powerful, is enhanced by the fact that a number of the 1769 surnames are peculiar to Breadalbane. Francis Diack found a like continuity between the names found in early rent rolls and present-day surnames in Deeside, Aberdeenshire.40 This is hardly enough to claim continuity for the entire rural population of Scotland from prehistory onwards but these are straws which point that way.
A further comparison was made between the Breadalbane names from both sources and the large number of surnames - more than 200 - which are now claimed as Clan Gregor names on the basis of family traditions maintained, sometimes over several centuries, by families now living in different parts of the world, from Canada to Australia. The claim of Clan Gregor ancestroy is seldom supported by documentary evidence good enough to convince a historian but it was again remarkable how closely this third category of surname matched the Gaelic names given in the Privy Council lists of 1586-9. This again points to continuity in the local population from the sixteenth century, through a period of persecution and more recent emigration. The only exceptions were the names chosen at random to serve as legal aliases in Lowland Scotland. These names mark a distinct and deliberate break with tradition; they are often quite rare; they are often documented as aliases.
The persistence of the native population in Breadalbane after 1590 is all the more remarkable in that most of its population belonged to a clan that was outlawed during most of the period from 1603 to 1775 and subjected to the most savage sanctions aimed at its total extinction. The MacGregors of Fearnan, noted above, suffered various atrocities in the seventeenth century but there were still MacGregors at Fearnan in 1769. It seems that the bulk of the population around Loch Tay continued to live under various landlords as they had lived under their native chiefs and avoided the prohibited and problematic name MacGregor which most of them, in any case, had never used.
Placing a Highlander
The Gaels of Scotland shared a nation-wide identity, a common language and many of their customs but they were equally noted for the regional distribution of their prehistoric monuments, the disparity of their local dialects, and the varied appearance of their local populations. The most logical way of explaining such a picture is to attribute the shared features to an original settlement by a homogeneous settler population and the divergent features to local evolution within communities separated from each other by geographical barriers and reflecting variation in the founding population.
Local variation was marked among the Highlanders, where it was rare for a person to marry out of his native district, though as an adult he might travel considerable distances. Only the chief himself was exogamous. His younger brother might marry a cousin, or not at all. We have seen that, to judge by their surnames, the population of Lochtayside did not change materially between 1586 and 1769, a period of considerable social disruption. There are stories which propose migration as an explanation for every different local surname, as Duncan Campbell does for Fortingall, for example,41 but Stewart, a more reliable source, confirms that ‘even in removing from one part of the Highlands to another, the sacrifice was regarded as severe.’ D. Stewart 1822, I, 94. Parish registers for the period 1650 to 1850 confirm that most men married women from their own or a neighbouring parish. Only the marriages of the elite served the ends of diplomacy at a greater distance, and to some extent set them apart from those who lived around them. This limited range of genetic contact, together with the well-defined limits of many Highland districts, is matched by recognisable and deeply entrenched local types. The evidence is anecdotal but any Highlander can confirm its truth.
My first encounter with this phenomenon made a deep impression. I went to a clan dinner , knowing almost nobody and found later that I had correctly distinguished almost all the members of the clan (my remote relatives) from their spouses. In a few cases I was uncertain and afterwards found that these were spouses who had their own more remote clan connection. Years later I met a woman with this same familiar look. She confirmed that she came from Perthshire and that her surname was one of those traditionally associated with Clan Gregor, though she denied any link. Several months later I met another familiar-looking person and again established a Perthshire link and, to my surprise, the same surname. In fact, by an immense coincidence, the two were cousins. When staffing a clan booth some time later, the next booth was occupied by two members of a Hebridean clan. They were tall, dark, good-looking people, very different from my own type, and evidently related to each other. No, they said, with some surprise, looking at each other, not so far as we know!
They may have been Macleods. Osgood Mackenzie (born 1842) could distinguish the Macleods who had remained on in Gairloch from the Mackenzies who had replaced them: ‘My dear mother and I often remarked about the few scattered remnants of that clan among our crofter population, that they were distinguished by a very superior personal beauty. Often on our making enquiries regarding a specially handsome family of Mackenzies or some other clan, it would turn out that the mother or grandmother had been a Macleod. Another thing we noticed was the similarity of the type of face of our crofter Macleods to our friends the Dunvegan and other Skye Macleods. They are usually tall, with pale oval faces, blue eyes, and specially fine aquiline noses, never with flat and broad faces, sandy hair, snub noses, and red cheeks, such as are to be found in other clans’.42 Unfortunately he does not disclose these other clans. The spread of the Macleod ‘type’ that he notes is interesting in view of the origins proposed for the native clans discussed elsewhere. It shows that Gairloch and Skye were colonised by Macleods, not simply controlled by them.
Local populations in the Hebrides were extremely varied. The MacCodrums of North Uist were ‘brown-haired, brown-skinned, with curiously set ears and round bullet-shaped heads. Most of the men of North Uist have fair hair, and grey or blue eyes, and are unmistakably Scandinavian in their colouring.’43 Campbell of Islay, when collecting traditional tales among the MacNeils of Barra in 1860, encountered another Campbell who had come to Barra ‘from some other place’ and found the contrast remarkable: ‘His hair was yellow, though tinged with white; and amongst the short, dark natives of Barra, he looked large, and gaunt, and bony.’44 The natives of Harris in the early part of the nineteenth century had prominent cheek bones and short noses, ‘the space between it and the chin being disproportionately long’.45 As for Clan Chattan, any kilt-maker will confirm that a kilt which is broader than it is high will almost always be in Macpherson tartan. With or without such a garment, a mature person of this name can very often be picked out by his distinctive physique.
Before clans became extinct, it was no doubt possible to 'place' a Highlander on sight. The very expression means both 'to identify' and 'to locate'. The existence of distinct types in defined areas points to a very long, uninterrupted, and closely interwoven descent from a small founder population whose characteristics have been enhanced and reinforced, perhaps since the time of settlement. In its anecdotal way, this feature of the Highland population is a striking sign of continuity.
There is no certain way of proving continuity of population, though advances in DNA analysis will eventually provide it. But the history of the clans of Scotland, for too long seen as a fringe study suitable only for romantic escapism or the minority interests of family historians, has a great deal to contribute once the existence of native clans is recognised and they are put into their correct prehistoric perspective. The parsimonious view of settlement in Highland Scotland takes it back to the Mesolithic, not only on the grounds of culture but on the degree of fit between people, their organisation and traditions, the landscape and its resources.
