The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

198 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
immemorial ; and it is therefore scarcely possible to suppose
that they could have entered the country subsequently to the
ninth century. But besides the strong presumption that the
Macdonalds are of Pictish descent, and formed a part of the
great tribe of the Gallgael, .ve fortunately possess distinct
authority for both of these facts. For the former, John Elder
includes the Macdonalds among the ancient Stoke, who still
retained the tradition of a Pictish descent, in opposition to
the later tradition insisted in by the Scottish clergy, and this
is sufficient evidence for the fact that the oldest tradition
among
the Macdonalds must have been one of a Pictish
origin. The latter appears equally clear from the last mention
of the Gallgael, in which they are described as the inhabitants
and as these were at
of Argyll, Kintyre, Arran, and Man ;
this very period the exact territories which Somerled possessed,
it follows of necessity that the Macdonalds were the same
people.
The identity of the Gallgael with the tribe ov-er which
Somerled ruled as hereditary chief, being thus established,
the independent kings of the Gallgael must in all probability
have been his ancestors, and ought to be found in the old
genealogies of the family. The last independent king of the
Gallgael was Suibne, the son of Kenneth, whose death isrecorded
in 1034, and exactly contemporary with this Suibne,
the MS. of 1450, places a Suibne among the ancestors of
Somerled ; accordingly, as the Gallgael and the Macdonalds
were the same tribe, the two Suibnes must have been meant
for the same person. But the MS. makes the name of Suibne's
father to have been Nialgusa, and there does not occur a
Kenneth in the genealogy at all. As an authority upon this
point, Tighernac must be preferred, and his account is corroborated
by most of the old Scottish writers, who mention the
existence at that time of a Kenneth, Thane of the Isles ; and
farther, at the very same period, as we have seen, one of the
northern Maormors who opposed Sigurd, earl of Orkney, was
named Kenneth. We must consequently receive Tighernac's
account as the most accurate ; but above Kenneth we find
the two accounts again different, for there is no resemblance
whatever between the previous kings of the Gallgael and the