The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. IX] OF SCOTLAND 361
The oldest Gaelic clan which we find in possession of this
part of the ancient district of Caithness is the clan Morgan
or Mackay.
Clan Morgan.
There are few clans whose true origin is more uncertain
than that of the Mackays. By some they
have been said to
have descended from the family of Forbes in Aberdeenshire ;
by others, from that of Mackay of Ugadale in Kintyre, and
that they were planted in the North by King William the
Lion, when he defeated Harold, earl of Orkney and Caithness,
and took possession of these districts. But when we take into
consideration the very great power and extent to which this
clan had attained in the beginning of the fifteenth century, it
is difficult to conceive that they could have been a mere offset
from families in the South of comparatively small extent, or
to give credence to stories in themselves improbable, and
which have nothing further to support them than similarity of
name in the one case, and of armorial bearings in the other.
It happens, unfortunately for the solution of this question,
that the clan Mackay is not contained in the manuscript of
1450 ; and in the absence of direct testimony of any sort,
the most probable supposition seems to be that they were
descended from the ancient Gaelic inhabitants of the district
of Caithness. If this conclusion be a just one, however, we
can trace the early generations of the clan in the Sagas, for
we are informed by them that towards the beginning of the
twelfth century " there lived in the Dolum of Katanesi (or
Strathnaver) a man named Moddan, a noble and rich man," and
that his sons were Magnus Orfi, and Ottar, the earl in Thurso.
The absence of all mention of Moddan's father, the infallible
mark of a Norwegian in the Sagas, sufficiently points out that
he must have been a native ; but this appears still more strongly
from his son being called an earl. No Norwegian under the
earl of Orkney could have borne such a title, but they indis-
criminately termed all the Scottish Maormors and great chiefs
€arls, and consequently Moddan and his son Ottar must have
been the Gaelic Maormors of Caithness, and consequently the
Mackays, if a part of the ancient inhabitants of Caithness,
were probably descended from them.