The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

AND NOTES] OF SCOTLAND 415
it gave way before the Macphersons, ivho camefrom Strathnairn originally.
In Celtic Scotland Skene makes the combatants to be the Mackintoshes and
Camerons. This is the usual view now, but it is not correct. No early
Macphersons had names like Sha Ferchar-son. In the later work Skene
gives the Macphersons as ancestor, Duncan Persoun (1438), a personage
imprisoned with the Lord of the Isles. Their own genealogy names the
Parson as Muireach, and his date, according to the length of their genuine
genealogy, is about 1400, thus : Andrew, in Cluny (1591), son of Ewen, son
of Donald Og (1562 ?), son of Donald Dall, son of Donald Mor (his brother
Bean of Brin appears in 1490), son of Duncan (Skene's Parson !), son of
Kenneth, son of Ewen Ban, son of Murdoch Parson, whence Clann Mhuirich
(about 1380). This Murdoch was great grandson of Gillicatan, who flourished
400 years before I He was also great grandfather of Eva of Clan Chattan,
who married Angus Mackintosh in 1291, and brought him the Clan Chattan
lands and chiefship I
As a matter of fact Skene himself hit upon
the truth. It was
Huntly that raised the Cluny chiefs to check Mackintosh's rising
power. The Strathnairn Macphersons he bands in 1543 against Mackintosh,
and in 1591 he bands the Badenoch Macphersons. Besides, they were
Huntly's tenants. In 1603, Andrew Macpherson iti (not of) Cluny had land
to the extent of " 3 pleuchs in Laggan," of which he was tacksman. And this
is the family that Mr Andrew Lang, following Skene's 1837 vagaries, ranks
as ! royal Skene's argument about "captain" of Clan Chattan gets a good
back-hander on p. 291, 1. 13 from bottom, in the present work: "Hieland
Captains."
The legitimacy of a Parson's son has also to be considered in the case of
a Highland chief If Muireach lived in the 14th century, down tumble the
Macpherson claims. A surname— or Highland Mac surname— cannot go
back to the Culdees.
The Macduff nonsense in the Mackintosh genealogy may really be
explained by the curious fact that the allied Macbeth genealogy is called
"genealogy of Clan Duff." The Mackintoshes are probably of Macbeth's
lineage. There was no thane of Fife, and Macduft" himself is doubtful :
Macduff could not be a surname.
Eva, of Clan Chattan, has been usually regarded as mythical by those
who have studied this question unbiasedly ; but Mr Murray Rose has tried
to prove her identity. A lady Eva in 1296 supplicates her maintenance from
Edward I., her husband having been taken prisoner at Dunbar. It runs thus
— " Eva, uxor domini Alexandri Comyn de Badenaghe, qui captus fuit apud
Dunbar, supplicat regi sustentationem suam de 40 £ terra de dote Domini
Alexandri de Moravia quondam viri sui." An old antiquary — Rose, of
Moncoffer— left among his innumerable papers a statement that Eva, heiress
of Lochaber of the Isles (= Eva Macdonald, of Lochaber) married firstly,
Alexander Murray, Freskin of Dufifus' brother ; secondly, Alexander Cumming,
son of John Cumming of Badenoch and ; thirdly, she married Mackintosh of
Clan Chattan. The weak point in the statement is that Eva was heiress of
Lochaber, for in her time, the eastern portion, at least, of Lochaber belonged
to the Cummings.