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quently, his subjects in the Isles, in so far as they were not Celtic, were Fiongall or Norwegians. It has been remarked by one writer,* whose opinion is entitled to weight, that the names of places in the exterior Hebrides, or the long island, derived from the Scandinavian tongue, resemble the names of places in Orkney, Shetland, and Caithness. On the other hand, the corresponding names in the interior Hebrides are in a different dialect, resembling that of which the traces are to be found in the topography of Sutherland, and appear to have been imposed at a later period than the first mentioned names. The probability is, however, that the difference alluded to is not greater than might be expected in the language of two branches of the same race after a certain interval; and that the Scandinavian of the Hebrides was, therefore, derived from two successive Norwegian colonies. This view is further confirmed by the fact, that the Hebrides, although long subject to Norway, do not appear ever to have formed part of the possessions of the Danes.+

We now come to consider more especially the origin of the Macdonalds, at one time, by far the most important, most numerous, and most powerful of the Western Clans. This noble race is undoubtedly descended from Somerled of Argyle, but his origin is involved in obscurity and surrounded with considerable difficulty. Of his father, Gillebride, and of his grandfather, Gilledomnan, little is known but the names. According to both the Highland and Irish genealogists, Gilledomnan was sixth in descent from Godfrey MacFergus, who in an Irish chronicle is called Toshach of the Isles, and who lived in the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin, Tradition asserts that Godfrey or one of his race was expelled from the Isles by the Danes. which assertion if correct, may apply to the conquest of Harald Harfager, who in all probability dispossessed many of the native Island chiefs, But the Celtic Seanachaidhs are not satisfied with a descent even so remote as Fergus. They trace, through a long line of ancestors, the descent of that chief from the celebrated Irish King, Conn nan Ceud Cath, or Conn of the Hundred Battles. So far the account of Somerled's origin according to those who maintain his Scoto-Irish descent. Others have maintained that he was undoubtedly a Scandinavian by male descent. "His name," says Gregory," is certainly a Norse one§; but then on the other hand, the names of his father and grandfather are purely Celtic; whilst the inter-marriages that must have taken place between the two races in the Isles and adjacent coasts, make it impossible to found any argument on the Christian name alone. Somerled is mentioned more than once in the Norse Sagas, but never in such a way as to enable us to affirm with certainty what the opinion of the Scandinavian writers was as to his origin. He appears to have been known to them as Sumarlidi Haullds, and the impression produced by the passages in which he is mentioned is rather against his being considered a Norseman. It is possible, however, as he was certainly descended from a noted individual of the name of Godfrey, that his ancestor may have been that Gofra MacArailt, King of the Isles, who died in 989. But, on the whole, the uni

* Chalmers' Caledonia, vol. i., p. 266.

+ Highlands and Isles, pp, 8.9.

Hugh Macdonald's MS. History of the Macdonalds, written about the end of the seventeenth century.

§ The Norse Somerled, and the Gaelic Somhairle, are both rendered into the English, Samuel.

formity of the Highland and Irish traditions, which can be traced back at least four hundred years, lead to the conclusion that the account first given of the origin of Somerled is correct."

We are informed by the Macdonald genealogists that Gillebride was expelled from his possessions, and that he and his son Somerled were obliged for a long time to conceal themselves in a cave in Morvean, from which circumstance the father is known in tradition as Gillebride na h'

Uamh, or of the Cave.* From certain circumstances, obscurely hinted at, continues Gregory, it would seem that Gillebride, after the death of Malcolm Ceannmor, had, with the other Celtic inhabitants of Scotland, supported Donald Bane, the brother of Malcolm, in his claim to the Scottish throne, to the exclusion of Edgar, Malcolm's son, and that, consequently, on the final triumph of the Anglo-Saxon party, Gillebride would naturally be exposed to their vengeance in exact proportion to his power, and to the assistance he had given to the other party. His possessions are believed to have been on the mainland of Argyle, but this has not been conclusively ascertained. Somerled when young was drawn from his obscurity, and placed at the head of the men of Morvern, to defend the district from a band of Norse pirates who threatened to ravage it. By his courage and skill Somerled completely defeated them; and, following up his success, he soon after recovered his paternal inheritance

"Fragment of a Manuscript History of the Macdonalds," written in the reign of Charles II., by Hugh Macdonald, is printed from the Gregory collection in the "ColJectanea de Rebus Albanis," pages 282-324. It is often referred to by Gregory in his "Highlands and Isles." It begins as follows:-"Sommerled, the son of Gilbert, began to muse on the low condition and misfortune to which he and his father were reduced, and kept at first very retired. In the meantime, Allin Mac Vich Allin coming with some forces to the land of Morverin for pillage and herships, intending to retire forthwith to Lochaber, from whence he came. From this Allan descended the family of Lochiel. Sommerled thought now it was high time to make himself known for the defence of his country, if he could, or at least see the same, having no company for the time. There was a young sprout of a tree near the cave which grew in his age of infancy. He plucked it up by the root, and putting it on his shoulder, came near the people of Morverin, desired them to be of good courage and do as he did, and so by this persuasion, all of them having pulled a branch, and putting the same on their shoulder, went on encouraging each other. Godfrey Du had possession of the Isles of the north side of Ardnamurchan from the King of Denmark. Olay compelled the inhabitants of some of these Isles to infest Morverin by landing some forces there. The principal surnames in the country were Macinneses and Macgillivrays, who are the same as the Macinneses. They, being in sight of the enemy, could act nothing without one to command them. At length they agreed to make the first person that should appear to them their general. Who came in the meantime but Sommerled, with his bow, quiver, and sword? Upon his appearance they raised a great shout of laughter. Sommerled enquiring the reason, they answered they were rejoiced at his appearance. They told him that they had agreed to make the first that would appear their general. Sommerled said he would undertake to lead them, or serve as a man otherwise. But if they pitched upon him as their com mander, they should swear to be obedient to his commands; so, without any delay, they gave him an oath of obedience. There was a great hill betwixt them and the enemy, and Sommerled ordered his men to put off their coats, and put their shirts and full armour above their coats. So making them go three times in a disguised manner about the hill that they might seem more in number than they really were, at last he ordered them to engage the Danes, saying that some of them were on shore and the rest in their ships; that those on shore would fight but faintly so near their ships. Withal he exorted his soldiers to be of good courage, and to do as they would see him do. The first whom Sommerled slew he ript up and took out his heart, desiring the rest to do the same, because that the Danes were no Christians. So the Danes were put to the flight; many of them were lost in the sea endeavouring to gain their ships; the lands of Mull and Morverin being freed at that time from their yoke and slavery. After this defeat given to the Danes, Sommerled thought to recover Argyle from those who, contrary to right, had possessed it, being wrung out of the hands of his father unjustly by Macbeath, Donald Bain, and the Danes,

and made himself master of a great portion of Argyle, and thenceforth assumed the title of Lord, Thane, or Regulus of Argyle, and became one of the most powerful chiefs in Scotland.

Smibert agrees generally with the better known writers already quoted, and considers it probable, from many concurrent circumstances, that while the Macdonalds were wholly Celtic fundamentally, they had the blood of the Irish Celts commingled in their veins with that of the Pictish Celts. The term Gall-gael applied to them by early writers, signifying strangers or Piratical Gaels, seems to him to prove that from the first they dwelt in the Isles or sea coasts of the west, and severed them broadly from the Norse pirates, who at the same time visited our western shores. "The Gall-gael appear to be clearly distinguishable from the primitive or Dalriadic Scots" who issued from Ireland, and originally peopled a considerable portion of Argyle, then termed Dalriada. "The sires of the Macdonalds arrived, in all likelihood, at a somewhat later epoch, fixing themselves more peculiarly in the Isles of the western coasts; though, when the Scots overturned the kingdom of the southern and eastern Picts in the ninth century, and shifted more or less extensively to the richer territories then acquired, the Gall-gael seem to have also become the main occupants of Argyle and the surrounding mainland. From that period they are closely identified with the proper northern and northwestern Gaelic Picts, with whom they, beyond doubt, formed connections freely. The interests of both were henceforth nearly the same; and for many successive centuries they struggled conjointly against the growing and adverse power of the Scottish monarchy of the Lowlands."

Of this view of "the descent of the Siol Cuinn (the special name given from an early chief, named Conn of the Hundred Battles, to the ancestors of the Macdonalds) it may at all events be said that there would be some difficulty in offering a more rational and intelligible one, and it may be justified by various and strong arguments. The early and longcontinued hostility which they displayed towards the Scots will not admit of their being considered as a pure Scoto-Dalriadic tribe. On the other band, their constant community of interests with the Gaelic Picts of the north and north-west goes far to prove a close connection with these, and a liberal intermixture of blood, though it does not altogether justify us in ascribing their descent wholly and primarily to that native and purely Celtic source. "Other facts indeed point strongly to an Irish original. Among such facts may be reckoned the repeated references of the Macdonald race, to Ireland for aid, in all times of peril and difficulty, for many consecutive centuries. From the Somerleds of the eleventh, down to Donald (called the Bastard) in the sixteenth century, the kings and chiefs of the house are again and again recorded as having visited that island and sought assistance as from undoubted relatives. Nor did they do so vainly, the Macquarries, for example, being almost certainly among such introduced auxiliaries. Moreover the line and range of their early possessions lead us directly towards Ireland. The Isle of Man was long one of their chief holdings, while Bute, Arran, and Islay, with Cantire, were among their first Scottish seats, all being in the track of Irish rovers or emigrants. Again the heads of the Macdonalds themselves seem to have entertained opinions as to their descent only explicable on the same supposition. Sir James Macdonald, writing in 1615, speaks of his family as

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having been 'ten hundred years kindly Scotsmen under the Kings of Scotland.' 'On the whole, the conclusion reasonably to be drawn from these and similar circumstances is, that the direct founders of the Macdonald race came primarily from Ireland at some very early period of the annals of the Dalriad-Scots; and that they were left (or made themselves) the successors of that people in place and power in the west of Scotland, at the precise time when the overthrow of the southern Picts drew their Dalriadic conquerors further inland. That the Siol Cuinn, or Race of Conn, then became deeply and inseparably blended in regard of blood, as well as of interests with the native northern Gael, is a farther conclusion equally consistent with facts and probability."

"The almost natural division between the Highlands and the Lowlands, conjoined with the remembrances which must long have existed of Pictish greatness, ever urged the inhabitants of the former region of all sections and descriptions to unite for the maintenance of its independence against the encroaching Lowlanders. Besides, the ties betwixt the Scots and the Gaelic Picts were broken up at a very early period. The former entirely lost their Pictish dialect, spoken in Bede's time, and became otherwise thoroughly saxonised. On the contrary, the Highlanders, whether natives or immigrants, Gaelic or Erse, were from first to last, of the same primary Celtic stock; and, accordingly, it was but natural that all of them should have combined against the Lowlanders as against a common foe, and should, in short, have been blended in the course of time into one people, and that people the Gael of Scotland." The same writer proceeds to say that various other clans of less note are implicated in the question of the origin of the Macdonalds as well as themselves; and he candidly admits, though personally disposed in favour of the Irish origin, that it is certainly enveloped in considerable difficulties. He then goes on to point out in reply to those who consider an Irish origin grading," that such parties appear to forget that whatever Ireland may have been since, that to the ancient western world it was the very cradle of religion and the nursery of civilisation. He asserts that undoubted evidences exist of the advanced state of the Irish people at a time when the Celts of Britain were comparatively in a state of barbarism. To belong to a race "which sent forth Columba, and through him originated an Iona, with all its concomitant blessings, might satisfy the pride of birth of even the haughtiest families." The settlement of the Saint in Iona would appear, he thinks, to confirm the supposition that the immigrants of the sixth century, which he thinks were accompanied by Saint Columba, and with which the ancestors of the Macdonalds came over from Ireland, only obtained possession at first of some of the smaller islands, and that they held little of the mainland until the tenth, eleventh, or twelfth centuries, after the removal further south of the Dalriadic-Scots.

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Summing up the views of other writers on this subject, particularly of those above quoted, the editor of Fullarton's "History of the Highland Clans" assumes that the clan governed by Somerled formed part of the Gall-gael, that their independent kings must in all probability have been his ancestors; and, therefore, that the names of these kings should be found in the old genealogies of Somerled's family. "But this appears scarcely to be the case. The last king of the Gall-gael was Suibne, the son of Kenneth, who died in the year 1034; and, according to the manu

script of 1450, an ancestor of Somerled, contemporary with this petty monarch, bore the same name, from which it may be presumed that the person referred to in the genealogy and manuscript is one and the same individual. The latter, however, calls Suibne's father Nialgusa; and in the genealogy there is no mention whatever of a Kenneth. But from the

old Scottish writers we learn that at this time there was such a Kenneth, whom they call Thane of the Isles, and that one of the northern maormors also bore the same name, although it is not very easy to say what precise claim either had to be considered as the father of Suibne. There is also a further discrepancy observeable in the earlier part of the Macdonald genealogies, as compared with the manuscript; and besides, the latter, without making any mention of these supposed kings, deviates into the misty region of Irish heroic fable and romance. At this point, indeed, there is a complete divergence, if not contrariety, between the history as contained in the Irish annals and the genealogy developed in the manuscript; for, whilst the latter mentions the Gall-gael under their leaders as far back as the year 856, the former connect Suibne by a different genealogy with the Kings of Ireland. The fables of the Highland and Irish Sennachies now become connected with genuine history. The real descent of the chiefs was obscured or perplexed by the Irish genealogies, and previously to the eleventh century neither these genealogies nor even that of the manuscript of 1450 can be considered as of any authority whatever. It seems somewhat rash, however, to conclude, as Mr Skene has done, that the Siol Cuinn, or descendents of Conn, were of native origin. This exceeds the warrant of the premises, which merely carry the difficulty a few removes backward into the obscurity of time, and there leave the question in greater darkness than ever."

Skene, in his "Highlanders of Scotland," writing of the "Siol Cuinn," says:-"This tribe was one far too distinguished to escape the grasping claims of the Irish Sennachies, and accordingly it appears to have been among the very first to whom an Irish origin was imputed; but later antiquaries, misled by the close connection which at all times existed between the Macdonalds and the Norwegians of the Isles, have been inclined rather to consider them as of Norwegian origin. Neither of these theories, however, admit of being borne out either by argument or authority. The followers of the Irish system can only produce a vague tradition in its support against the manifest improbability of the supposition that a tribe possessing such extensive territories in Scotland should have been of foreign origin, while history is altogether silent as to the arrival of any such people in the country." The writer then points out that it has been proved that the Irish traditions in Scotland were of a comparatively modern origin, and that the Norwegian origin of the race has been assumed without solid reasons, mainly from the fact that the Danish and Norwegian pirates ravaged the western shores of Scotland, and brought its inhabitants under subjection, when the conquered Gaels, to some extent, adopted the piratical and predatory habits of their conquerors. The traditions of the Macdonalds themselves, he says, tend to show that they could not have been of foreign origin. The whole of the Highlands, and especially the districts possessed by the Gall-gael, were inhabited by the Northern Picts, at least as late as the eleventh century. In the middle of the twelfth the Orkneyinga Saga terms Somerled and his sons, who were the

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