Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

HISTORY OF THE WESTERN ISLANDS. 63
Lennox, among the first in point of power and territory
and to whatever dates we may refer what cannot be
proved, we are sure that the Camerons, Colquhouns,
Maco-reo-ors, Campbells, and many more of equal and
less note, were distinct Clans before the period of James
the first.
That these Clans conducted themselves in the same
manner as the insular ones, even at very early periods,
is unquestionable. Contests between the Murrays and
the Rosses are recorded. Perpetual warfare indeed seems
at all times to have raged in the shires of Sutherland,
Caithness, Ross, Moray, and Inverness. In later periods,
the feuds and wars among the Mackays, Macintoshes,
Forbeses, Erasers, Chisholms, Leslies, Leiths, and many
more, were quite worthy of comparison with those of the
several ramifications of the Macdonald dynasty. These
contests, while they troubled the repose of Scotland,
often defied its authority or interference ; and that, as
much in the very heart of the country as along its mari-
time out-posts. The celebrated battle fought at Perth in
1396 between two branches of Clan Chattan, the Mac-
phersons and Clan Cay, cum licentia superiorum, is a
good example of this :
; ;
the Earls of Crawford and Mur-
ray, who had been commissioned to reduce or pacify
these turbulent people, finding it out of their power to
effect it, and consenting to this species of duel if it may
be so called, in which the celebrated blacksmith of Perth,
Henry Wynd, called Gobh crom, gained immortal fame
honours that will rank him with the Horatii, when, in
after ages, the youths of Polynesia shall be flogged
into English and Gaelic as we have been into Greek and
Latin.
To return to the history of the Lords of the Isles ;
their
independence of Scotland, or at least their attempts to