The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. I] OFSCOTLAND 183
origin to be introduced, and gradually to obtain general belief;
and arguing from analogy, the real origin of the Highlanders
may be lost, and a different origin, in itself untrue, may be
received in the country as the true one. Farther, in this way
there may be a succession of traditions in the Highland families,
all of them differing equally from each other and from the truth.
In the second place, we may conclude, that although the general
system of the origin of the clans contained in a MS. may be
false, yet the farther back we go, there appears a stronger and
more general belief that the Highland clans formed a peculiar
and distinct nation, possessing a community of origin, and also,
that throwing aside the general systems, the affinities of the
different clans to each other have been through all their changes
uniformly preserved.
Such being the case, it is manifest that we should consider
these old MS. genealogies merely as affording proof
The old MS.
genealogies
merely prove
that the Higiiland
clans possessed
a common
ongm.
•
, t i i i i
that the Highland clans were all of the same race,
.
and that in order to ascertain w^hat that race was, we
should look to Other sources. It ha^ already been
•'
shewn, from historic authority, that the Highlanders
of the tenth century were the descendants of the Northern Picts
of the seventh and eighth. Now, when it appears that the
Highlanders at that time were divided into several great tribes
inhabiting those northern districts which were after-
....
reaiity de- warcls kiiown as earldoms, and that these tribes had
scended from ,
, .
. .
, ^ ,
,
the great hereditary chiefs, who appear in the chronicles in
tribes of the . .... .... , ,
tenth and connexioii With their respective districts, under the
eleventh cen-
•
y r -\rr i i
i
tunes, whose title of Maormors—and when it also appears that
chiefs were
afterwards in maiiv' of the districts these Maormors of the tenth
termed earls.
century can be traced down in succession to the
reign of David I., at which time, in compliance with the Saxon
customs then introduced, they assumed the title of Comes, and
became the first earls in Scotland :—and when it can be shewn
that in a few generations more, almost all of these great chiefs
became extinct in the male line ; that Saxon nobles came by
marriage into possession of their territories and honours ; and
that then the different clans appear for the first time in these
districts, and in independence ; we
are irresistibly drawn to the
conclusion, that the Highland clans are not of different or of