By William Anderson

Excerpt …

Macrae, a minor clan of Ross-shire, which has from time immemorial been subordinate to the Seaforth branch of the Mackenzies. The badge of the Macraes was the fir-club moss, and they are generally considered of the pure Gaelic stock, although they have also been stated to be of Irish origin and to have come over to Scotland about the middle of the 13th century. They are said to have fought under Fitzgerald, the supposed founder of the clan Mackenzie at the battle of Largs in 1263. They settled first in the Aird of Lovat but subsequently emigrated into Glensheil in the district of Kintail, Ross-shire. Dr. Johnson has inserted in his ‘Tour to the Western Isles,’ a story which he says he heard in the Hebrides, that the Macraes “were originally an indigent and subordinate clan, servants to the Maclennans, who, in the wars of Charles I., took arms at the call of the heroic Montrose, and were, in one of his battles, almost destroyed. The women were left at home, being thus deprived of their husbands, like the Scythian ladies of old, married their servants, and the Macraes became a considerable race.” The writer of the account of the parish of Glensheil, in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, pronounces this an unworthy invention, “destitute of all foundation, and contradicted by ample evidence, written and traditional.” Someone had imposed on the credulity of the great lexicographer. At the battle of Auldearn, in May 1645, the Macraes fought under the Mackenzie chief in the ranks of Montrose, and more of their number fell than of the Maclennans. They were defeated at the battle of Glensheil, under William Earl of Seaforth in 1719, when a body of 400 Spaniards attempted to make a landing in the Stuart interest. When that nobleman, for his share in the troubles of 1715 and 1719, was obliged to retire to the Continent, and his lands were forfeited, so strong was the attachment of the Macraes and Maclennans to him, that, during the time the forfeiture lasted it baffled all the efforts of government and its commissioner, Ross of Fearne, to penetrate into his territory, or to collect any rents in Kintail. On one occasion Ross and his son with a party of men set off to collect the rents, and fearing some on the way, he sent his son forward, on his own horse, when a shot from a rifle laid him dead. The father and his party immediately abandoned their intentions and returned home in haste. Seaforth’s tenants were aided in their resistance by the advice of Donald Murchison of Auchtertyre, who regularly collected the rents, and found means to remit them to Seaforth, then in France.

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