The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

i88 THE HIGHLANDERS [part II
actual possession of the leading of the clan who has no right
b\' blood to that station ; and it will afterwards be proved that
every family who used the title of captain of a particular clan,
were the oldest cadets of that clan, who had usurped the leading
of it, to the prejudice of the chief by blood. Now, as the
identity of the false aspect which the true tradition assumes
in all of these cases, implies that the cause was the same in
all, we may assume that wherever these two circumstances are
to be found combined, of a clan claiming a foreign origin, and
asserting a marriage with the heiress of a Highland family,
whose estates they possessed and whose followers they led,
they must invariably have been the oldest cadet of that family,
who by usurpation or otherwise had become de facto chief
of the clan, and who covered their defect of right by blood
by den}'ing their descent from the clan, and asserting
that the founder of their house had married the heiress of its
chief
The general deduction from the MS. genealogies of the
Highland clans is, that the various clans were divided into
several great tribes, the clans forming each of these separate
tribes being deduced by the genealogies from a common
ancestor, while a marked distinction is drawn between the
different tribes, and indications can at the same time be
traced in each tribe, which identify them with the earldoms
or maormorships into which the north of Scotland was
anciently divided.
This will appear from the following table of the dis-
tribution of the clans by the old genealogies into different
tribes :—
I. Descend.\nts of Conx of the Hundred Battles.
The Lords of the Isles, or
Macdonalds.
The Macdougalls.
The Macneills.
The Maclauchlans.
The Macewens.
The Maclaisrichs.
The Maceacherns.
II. Descend.\nts of Ferchar Fata Mac Feradaig.
The Otd Maormors of Moray.
The Macintoshes.
The Macphersons.
The Macnauchtons.