The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP, viii] OFSCOTLAND 319
of the witnesses it must have been granted before the year 1162.
The next earl who is recorded in history is Ferchard, surnamed
Macintagart, or son of the priest. At this period the tribe of
Moray, after a series of rebellions, of which each had proved
to be more fatal to them than the preceding, was rapidly
approaching its downfall ; and in proportion as it declined,
the earls of Ross appear to have obtained more and more of
the power and influence in the North, which had hitherto been
possessed by the Maormors of Moray. By the defeat of
Kenneth Macbeth, the last of the line of the old earls of
Moray, that family became extinct, and the ruin of the tribes
was completed, while Ferchard, earl of Ross, who had judged it
prudent at length openly to join the king's party, and had been
mainly instrumental in suppressing that insurrection, at once
acquired the station in the Highlands which had been formerly
held by the earls of Moray. The designation of this earl of
" son of the priest," shews that he was not the son of the
former earl, but that the older family must have become extinct,
and a new line come into possession of the dignity. Of what
family this earl was, history does not say, but that omission
may in some degree be supplied by the assistance of the MS.
of 1450. It is well known that the surname of Ross has always
been rendered in Gaelic, clan Anrias, or clan Gilleani'ias, and
they appear under the former of these appellations
in all the
early Acts of Parliament ; there is also an unvarying tradition
in the Highlands, that on the death of William, last earl of
Ross of this family, a certain Paul Mac Tire was for some time
chief of the clan ; and this tradition is corroborated by the fact
that there is a charter by this same William, earl of Ross, to
this very Paul Mac Tire, in which he styles him his cousin.
There appears, however, among the numerous clans contained
in the MS. of 1450, one termed clan Gilleanrias, which com-
mences with Paul Mac Tire, so that there can be little doubt
that this clan is the same with that of the Rosses, and in
this MS. they are traced upwards in a direct line to a certain
"
Gilleon na h'Airde," or Collin of the Aird, who must have
lived in the tenth century. In this genealogy occurs the name
of Gilleanrias, exactly contemporary with the generation preceding
that of Ferchard.