The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. VII] OF SCOTLAND 107
the time. The chief, besides this, retained a sort of right of
superiority over the whole possessions of the clan, and received
from each of the dependent branches a proportion of the produce
of the land as an acknowledgment of chiefship, as well as for
the purpose of enabling him to support the dignity of his
station and the hospitality which he was called upon to exercise.
Although this system is so adverse to feudal principles, it
is nevertheless clear that it was the only one which could exist
among a people in the condition that the Highlanders were,
and that it was in fact produced by the state of society among
them ; for when there was no other means of subsistence or
pursuits open to the branches of the families during peace,
except those derived from the pasturage of the country, and
during war that of following their chief, whose interest it
accordingly became to retain upon the property as great a
number of men as possible, and to secure the obedience of as
large a clan as he could, it naturally
followed that a division
of the property among them was expedient, as well as that the
patriarchal right of government and chiefship should descend
to the lawful heir alone. A system so directly opposed to
feudal principles as this could not maintain its existence in
the Highlands under any modification, but still it was a system
so well adapted to the Highland constitution of society, that it
was only after a long struggle that it was finally given up, and
even at a comparatively late period instances of its operation
among them ma}' be observed.
The most remarkable instance of this system, perhaps,
appears in the history of the Macdonalds. Sommerled divided
his immense possessions among his three sons. Another divi-
sion took place by Reginald, his eldest son, among his three
sons. And again, in the fourteenth century, by John, Lord
of the Isles, who had obtained nearly the whole of the territories
which had belonged to his ancestor Sommerled, among his
finally, as late as the fifteenth century, we
seven sons ; and
find the possessions of his eldest son Reginald, the founder of
the clan Ranald, divided among his five sons. One effect
produced by this system was, that the branch of the family
which had been longest separated from the main stem, in
technical language the eldest cadet, became the most powerful