The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

i82 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
from a certain Colin Fitzgerald, a scion of the noble family of
Kildare, who is said to have greatly contributed to the victory at
Largs in 1266. This origin, it has been seen, was altogether
unknown in 1450, at which period the Mackenzies were uni-
^versally believed to have been a branch of the Rosses.
The last system of Highland origins did not appear till the
seventeenth century, and is not the production of the
The last tradition
assigns Highland Sennachies. It may be termed the Nor-
Norman and . • t^ i
Norwegian wcgian ^ or Danish system, and sprung up at the
' ^
ancestors to
\
. ^ .
, ,
many of the time whcii the fabulous history of Scotland first
clans.
it was considered to be
began to be doubted ; when
a principal merit in an antiquary to display his scepticism a.^
to all the old traditions of the country ; and
when the slender
knowledge of the true history, which they did possess, produced
in their minds merely a vague idea of the immense extent of
the Norwegian conquests and settlements in the north of Scotland.
Not only was every thing imputed to the Danes, but
every one was supposed to be descended from them. This idea,
however, never obtained any great credit in the Highlands.
The greatest effort of the favourers of this system was that of
making the ^Nlacleods the direct descendants of the Norwegian
Icings of j\Iann and the Isles, a descent for which there is not a
vestige of authority. Besides this, I possess a MS. genealogy
of the INIacleods, written in the sixteenth century, in which there
is no mention whatever of such an origin.^ I mav also mention
the Camerons, who are said to be descended from Cambro, a
Dane ; the Grants from Acquin de Grandt, a Dane ; the Macdonalds
from the Norwegians of the Isles ; the Campbells from
de Campo-Bello, a Norman ; many others, but all of which
and
are equally groundless, as will be shewn in the sequel.
Such is a short view of the different systems of descent
which have sprung up in the Highlands, and of the causes which
apparently led to their being adopted ; and from these few
remarks which have been made upon the origin of the Highland
clans, we may draw two conclusions. In the first place, we
may conclude that circumstances ma}' cause the traditionary
origin of the different Highland clans to change, and a new
^ MS. penes Highland Society of Scotland.