The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. IX] OF SCOTLAND 351
possession of cadets, who came off before his acquisition of
property in Argyll.
Allan Mac Rory obtained a grant of the lordship of Garmoran
about 1275 ; his feudal heir was his daughter Christina, and
her first act of possession is a charter Arthuro Campbell filio
Domini Arthuro Campbell militis de terris de Muddeward
Ariseg et Mordower et insulis de Egge et Rumme et pertineri.
Christina was never in actual though in feudal possession of
the lordship, for though vera h^eres, her nephew Ronald ^ was
verus dominus, this is therefore apparently a feudal right given
to an old possessor, otherwise we do not see its object.
Thus, when we find from the manuscript genealogies that
the Macleods and Campbells were branches of the same ancient
tribe, and when we find that the oldest notices of each tribe
separately, connect them with the district of Garmoran, there
can be little doubt that these two clans are the remaining
descendants of the ancient inhabitants of that district.
Clan Leod.
There are few clans whose Norwegian origin has been more
strenuously asserted or more generally believed than that of the
Macleods, and }-et, for that origin there is not the vestige of
authority. In this matter it is usual to find the chronicle of
Man referred to as expressh^ sanctioning the assertion, and this
reference has been again and again repeated, but notwith-
standing the confidence with which this chronicle has been
quoted as authorit)-, it is a singular circumstance that that
record is nevertheless destitute of the slightest hint of any such
origin, or even of an\- passage which could be assumed as a
eround for such an idea. Neither does the tradition of Nor-
wegian descent, if such a tradition ever did exist, appear to be
very old, for in a manuscript genealog}' of the Macleods,
written in the latter part of the sixteenth centur\-, there is not
a trace ol such a descent, but, on the contrary, as we have seen,
they are deduced from one common ancestor with the Campbells,
and were certainly a part of the ancient inhabitants of
the earldom of Garmoran.
' Ronald and Christina are so styled in a charter in the Inchaffray Chartulary.