Page:The Celtic Review volume 3.djvu/19

4 Ewen. John was the missing link. The lairds and chieftains were:—Donald, Ewen, Lachlan, eldest son of Ewen, John, only son of Terlach, second son of Ewen, Allan, son of John, son of Allan, third son of Ewen, and Ewen, son of Allan. It will be seen that whilst the genealogy is correct, though not full, the history is very far astray. It makes chieftains of Allan, third son of Ewen, and of John, his son. Then, it omits two very prominent chieftains, Lachlan and John MacTerlach.

The facts that I have now given regarding the genealogy and history of the Ardgour MS. teach us two things; first, that we are not to assume that the men whose names are given in a genealogy were all chieftains; and, secondly, that there were chieftains whose names are not in the genealogy, and could not be in it.

The term clan is employed in two distinct senses. It means, first, the children or descendants of the man whose name they use as their surname; and, secondly, a confederacy of clans of different origins, as in the case of the Clan Chattan and the Clan Cameron. In the latter sense each clan had its own chief, whilst the chief of one of the clans was captain or leader of the whole. The captain might call himself chief of all the clans under him, but he could not possibly be chief in the Highland sense of the term Ken-Kinnie of any persons except those who had the same origin as himself and bore his surname. Certainly, he would be land chief, or chief in the feudal sense of the term, of all the men who lived on his estates, no matter what their origin might have been.

The original Clan Chattan, or the Clan Chattan by blood, included at least the Macphersons and the Davidsons. The Clan Chattan Confederacy embraced the Macphersons, the Davidsons, the Mackintoshes, the Shaws, and other clans. The Clan Millony consisted of the Macgillonies and the Camerons. To the Clan Millony or Clan Cameron Confederacy belonged the Macgillonies, the Camerons, the Macmartins, and the Macsorlies. The Macgillonies, the Camerons, and the Macmartins had a common origin.

Among the genealogies in the Skene MS. are the following:—