The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

i84 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
foreign origin, but that they were a part of the original nation,
who have inhabited the mountains of Scotland as far back as
the memory of man, or the records of history can reach— that
they were divided into several great tribes possessing their
hereditary chiefs ; and that it was only when the line of these
chiefs became extinct, and Saxon nobles came in their place,
that the Highland clans appeared in the peculiar situation and
character in which they were afterwards found.
This conclusion, to which we have arrived by these general
remarkable cir-
arguments, is strongly corroborated by a very
cumstance :
for, notwithstanding that the system of an Irish or
Dalriadic origin of the Highland clans had been
^f a'^Hc'tTsh introduced as early as the beginning of the fifteenth
be'trac^edtn ccntury, wc can still trace the existence in the High-
landa^'^''" lands, even as late as the sixteenth century, of a still
older tradition than that contained in the MS. of
1450 ; a tradition altogether distinct and different from that one,
and one which not only agrees in a singular manner with the
system developed in this Work, but which also stamps the
Dalriadic tradition as the invention of the Scottish monks, and
accounts for its introduction.
The first proof of the existence of this tradition which I shall
bring forward, is contained in a letter dated 1 542, and addressed
to King Henry VIII. of England, by a person designating him-
self "John Elder, clerk, a Reddschanke." It will be necessary,
however, to premise that the author uses the word " Yrische "
in the same sense in which the word Erse was applied to the
Highlanders, his word for Irish being differently spelt. In that
letter he mentions the " Yrische lords of Scotland, commonly
callit Redd Schankes, and by Jiistoriagraphonris, PiCTIS."
He then proceeds to give an account of the origin of the Highlanders
; he describes them as inhabiting Scotland " befor the
incummynge of Albanactus Brutus second sonne," and as having
been "
gyauntes and wylde people without ordour, civilitie, or
"
maners, and spake none other language hut Yrische that ; they
were civilized by Albanactus from whom they were " callit
Albonyghe." And after this account of their origin, he adds,
" which derivacion the papistical curside spiritualitie of Scotland,
will not heir in no maner of wyse, nor confesse that ever such a