The book Arran; - Cook Clan

44 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
Here is a loss in money alone of £41, 15s. 4d., and,
adding in the money values of the other losses, we have a
total shortage of £50, 12s. 7d. for one year alone on a rental
of £69, 10s, 8d. And we must remember that these abatements,
in more or less, had been going on since 1444, and
appear on a smaller scale in the account following. Whether
the result of one sweeping raid or of successive raids is not
made clear, but the damage inflicted is serious enough, and
is a woeful reflection on the weakness of the Scottish executive
at the time. If a single raid, it must have occurred after the
accounts were closed for 1442, as the first abatements are
in 1444 for the two previous years ; if there was more than
one, the first must have been about that time, probably
in the autumn of 1441. And here, as in intimate connection
with these operations, and as a concrete example of the possi-
bilities of Arran life in the first half of the fifteenth century,
may be told the story of Ranald MacAlister, whose name
so significantly appears in the final citation from the records
given above.
II
Ranald MacAlister,^ or, as he is sometimes anglified,
Reginald MacAlexander, rented a line of farms on the narrow,
clayey shelf of land, backed by quick rising ground and heavy
hills, that runs from Loch Ranza round the west side to
Machrie Bay— ^leaving out the portion between Whitefarland
and Achancar. His farms were Lochede or Kin-Lochransay,
Catacol, the two Thundergays, Penriach, Altgoblach, Machriemore,
Auchagallon, and Machriebeg ; for which he was
due a rent of £14, 6s. 8d., 12 bolls of barley, and 4j marts,
the barley rent being laid only on the first four. Unhappily,
from their position, these lands were the most exposed to
the incursions of the Kintyre ravagers, this being the part
1 MacAlister should be spelled with one / if the Gaelic foi-m is followed, but it is
just as frequently found with two, and always has two tl's in the Accounts. It is not
possible to be uniform.