The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

3i8 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
CHAPTER VIII.
III.— Ross.
The district of Ross is very frequently mentioned in the Norse
Sagas along with the other districts which were ruled by
Maormors or larls, but we find it impossible to extract from
these authorities the names of many of its Maormors, for the
proximity of the extensive district of Moray, and the very gr^at
power and influence to which its chiefs attained, would naturally
force the less powerful Maormor of Ross into a subordinate
situation, and thus prevent his name from being associated with
an}' of the great events of that early period of our history.
It was consequently only upon the downfall of that powerful
race that the chiefs of Ross first appear in history, and by that
time they had already assumed the new appellation of Comes
or earl. That these earls, however, were the descendants of the
ancient Maormors, there can be little doubt, and this natural
presumption is in this instance strengthened by
the fact that
the oldest authorities concur in asserting the patronymic or
Gaelic name of the earls of Ross to be O'Beolan, or descendants
of Beolan ; and we actually find, from the oldest Norse Saga
connected with Scotland, that a powerful chief in the north of
Scotland, named Beolan, married the daughter of Ganga Rolfe,
or Rollo, the celebrated pirate, who became afterwards the first
earl of Normandy. From this account, extracted from almost
a contemporary writer, it would appear that the ancestor of the
earls of Ross was chief of that district in the beginning of the
tenth century.
The first known earl of Ross is Malcolm, to whom a precept
was directed from Malcolm IV., desiring him to protect and
defend the monks of Dunfermline in their lawful privileges,
possessions, &c. This precept is not dated, but from the names