The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

200 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
people declared themselves v/illing to go, and four or five
hundred put themselves under his command. With this com-
pany Gillebride proceeded to Alban, and came on shore ." ^
Here, unfortunately, the fragment concludes abruptly, but it
would appear that this expedition was unsuccessful, for another
MS. history of considerable antiquity, but of which the
beginning is also lost, commences with these words— " Somer-
led, the son of Gilbert, began to muse on the low condition
and misfortune to which he and his father were reduced, and
kept at first very retired." But Somerled was a person of
no ordinary talents and energy ; he put himself at the head
of the inhabitants of Morven, and by a series of rapid attacks
he succeeded, after a considerable struggle, in expelling the
Norwegians, and in making himself master of the whole of
Morven, Lochaber, and North Argyll. He soon afterwards
added the southern districts of Argyll to his other possessions,
A.D. 1035.
and David I. having & at
.
islands of Man, Arran,
this
and
period r conquered M the
Bute, from the Nor-
wegians, he appears to have held these islands of the king of
Scotland ; but still finding himself unable, in point of strength,
to cope with the Norwegians of the Isles, he, with true Highland
policy, determined to gain these ancient possessions
of his
family by peaceful succession, since he could not acquire them
by force of arms ; and accordingly with that intent he prevailed,
by a singular stratagem, in obtaining the hand of the daughter
of Olaf the Red, the Norwegian king of the Isles, in marriage.
Of this union the fruit was three sons, Ducrall, Resfinald,
and Angus ; by a previous marriage he had an only son,
Gillecolum.
Somerled, having now attained to very great power in the
Highlands, resolved to make an attempt to place his grandsons,
the sons of Winiund or Malcolm ^NI'Heth, who had formerly
claimed the earldom of Moray, in possession of their alleged
inheritance. This unfortunate earldom seems to have been
doomed by fate to become, during a succession of many centuries,
the cause of all the rebellions in which Scotland was
involved ; and it now brought the Regulus of Argyll, as
^ MS. penes Highland Society of Scotland.