The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

264 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
family, to which they were entitled to succeed, or as a com-
pensation fur the loss of the crown. The earldom was enjoyed
in succession by his son Malcolm, and his grandson Henry, and
on the death of the latter, in the beginning of the thirteenth
century, his granddaughters, by his eldest son, who predeceased
him, carried the earldom into the families of Galloway and
Hastings, from whom it latterly came to the family of De
Strathboggie.i When the Celtic earls of Atholl thus became
extinct, and in consequence the subordinate clans assumed
independence, we find the principal part of Atholl in the
possession of the clan Donnachie or Robertsons.
Clan Dotuiachie.
The tradition which has hitherto been received of this clan,
indicates, that they are a branch of the clan Donald, and that
Duncan Reamhar, the first of the Robertsons of Struan, was
a son of Angus Mor, lord of the Isles. Unfortunately, the
Robertsons are not one of the clans noticed in the manuscript
of 1450 ; but nevertheless, that manuscript affords a strong
presumption that this tradition is unfounded,— for although it
details all the branches of the Macdonalds with great minute-
ness and accuracy, and especially the descendants of the sons
of Angus Mor, it does not include the Robertsons among them,
and this presumption will appear the stronger when we consider
not only the great extent of territory which this Duncan, as
we shall afterwards see, possessed in the district of Atholl, but
that the arms of the two families are quite different, and that
they do not appear ever to have had any connection, as a clan,
with the Macdonalds. There is also another fact which renders
it impossible that this Duncan could have been the son of
Angus of the Isles, and which consequently throws additional
doubt upon the tradition, viz., that in several charters Duncan
is designated " filius Andrece de Atholia,"^ and this designation
''
de At/iolia" continued in the family for several generations
afterwards.
• The peerage writers have been teenth century there is scarcely a
more than usually inaccurate in their single step in the genealogy which
account of the earldom of Atholl. is correctly given in the peerage.
From its origin down to the four- 2 Eobertson's Index.