RETREAT FROM KINTYRE TO THE GLENS: THE EVIDENCE OF FAMILY NAMES Alasdair Roberts

The picture of Sorley Boy MacDonnell lighting beacons on the Antrim shore to call up reinforcements from Argyll encourages Glens people to see the relationship between Scotland and the north-east corner of Ireland as one of invasion and eventual occupation. According to this version, the contact begun by ‘gallowglass’ mercenaries from the Isles in the fifteenth century¹ was legitimised by the marriage of Eoin Mor MacDonnell to Marjorie Byset, and settlement followed². Families in the Glens which bear Highland Scots names (the majority) are liable to assume that their forebears crossed in triumph in the generation between that marriage and 1603, when Sir Randall MacDonnell, later to be first Earl of Antrim, was confirmed in his right to more than three hundred thousand Irish acres.

The reality is more complicated. Some of the most ‘obvious’ Scottish families like MacCormick and MacAuley were settled in Ireland long before Clan Donald South came into its inheritance, while the arrival of MacNeills, MacKays and MacAllisters took place over a fairly extended period in the sixteenth century. On the other hand many Glens families crossed to Ireland at a time—in the seventeenth century—when what had once been the Lordship of the Isles finally yielded to a combination of royal and Campbell power, after the MacDonalds had been weakened by a bitter struggle with the MacLeans over the Rinns of Islay. Retreat from Kintyre is the theme here.

Even in the earlier period a distinction has to be made between ‘the Glynns’, facing Scotland, and ‘the Route’, which extended west to the Bann:

“Although the Glens were a convenient military fastness the area was not a particular object of Sorley Boy’s campaigning. At that time the Glens belonged to the senior line of Dunyveg (Islay) and Sorley was much more interested in gaining the more valuable lands of the Route. This was what he brought the Highlanders over for… The Glens were not a juicy conquest for those whose living ultimately depended on agriculture, but a place of refuge separated from Kintyre by the sea, from the rest of Ireland by mountain and bog, and protected from within by steep rocky slopes and dense woods.”³

Sorley Boy’s military fastness was to become a place of refuge in the seventeenth century. The Glens were very sparsely populated at this time, especially in contrast to south-west Argyll where pressure on the available land translated itself into politics and military struggle. Having effectively lost their control of Kintyre in 1599 the Islay MacDonalds failed in an attempt to win it back eight years’ later. In 1609 the Earl of Argyll was confirmed in his ownership of Kintyre by the Scottish Privy Council, which specified that no land should be held by anyone with the name MacDonald. But this was not one of those areas where most people took the chief man’s name: no fewer than fifty-three surnames were listed under the ban. They included all the old MacDonald tenants like MacAllister, MacKay, Macoshenag, MacEachan and MacEachran.⁴ In particular they included MacNeill, which helps to explain the enterprise which began fifteen years’ later at the friary of Bonamargy.⁵

On 21 July 1624 three Franciscan missionaries, Patrick Hegarty, Cornelius Ward and Paul O’Neill, crossed from Antrim to Kintyre by way of the island of Sanda. They were welcomed to Carskey on the south coast by the laird, Hector McNeill, who was already a Catholic. Ward and O’Neill carried on to the Hebrides almost at once, fleeing from the attentions of a local minister, while the third member of the party remained to face a harder challenge close to Ireland:

“During the eight weeks which Hegarty spent in Kintyre he converted 206 and baptised twelve adults and two babies. His days were spent hiding in caves, and by night he preached, baptised and administered other sacraments. He used to say Mass twice daily before the sun rose, and at places ten miles apart; from Kintyre Hegarty went to Arran, where no priest had set foot since the Reformation; he remained there eight days, living in a cave on butter and cheese and water.”⁶

There is a cave on Jura with several dozen crosses scraped on the wall which have recently been suggested as evidence of the Franciscan presence in Argyll.⁷ During that first season Hegarty claimed 102 converts on Jura, 119 on Islay and 133 on Colonsay. Lists of new Catholics, sent to the Congregation for Propagation of the Faith in Rome, exist for all these places, and a wider study of Islay, Jura and Colonsay might interest some Antrim enquirer with leanings towards family history.

Here the focus is on Kintyre, partly because of the events which took place there in the 1640s and partly for the comparison which can be made with an eighteenth century list of names in Southend. Father Hegarty returned to Kintyre the following year and visited twenty- one villages, converting and baptising a further 484 people. Unfortunately no record of this second harvest has survived. Only a minority of those received into the Church by Hegarty appear on the list, representing a limited area. We know that he landed at Carskey and lived in caves, presumably coastal, as distinct from the twenty-one villages of the following summer. This suggests that the first mission, which included a quick traverse from Arran to Gigha, was mainly restricted to Southend. The name of Hector MacNeill of Carskey does not appear among the converts, of course, nor does that of his Macoshenag neighbour at Lephenstrath. Perhaps more than one leading MacDonald supporter was already a Catholic: Ward and O’Neill encountered two Catholic widows within days of landing in Kintyre.

Of the converts marked ‘nobilis’ (meaning tacksman) the most important seems to have been Terence MacAllister who appears as ‘Terentius Alexandri, magnus nobilis’. This immediately casts a doubt over Southend as Hegarty’s mission field, for the Macallisters of Loup on West Loch Tarbert, far to the north, were certainly involved in the Irish affairs of the MacDonnells. The dilemma may be solved by suggesting that although some of the leading figures between Carskey and Loup were contacted during that first summer, the bulk of the work was confined to south Kintyre.

Only one place is named in the 1624 list. The entry is untypically full: “Nellanus Cneill, nobilis, dominus de Killdaca (Kildalloig, east of Campbeltown?) cum uxore Domina Margaret Dubhuy et quatuor liberis”. Almost half of Hegarty’s listed converts were women: it has been noted for England that the lady of the manor was often keener than her lord to regulate the household through Catholic practice on feasting and fasting.⁸  The capital letter may therefore be significant in the case of ‘Domina’ Margaret Duffy in relation to her husband Neil MacNeill and their four children. There are three more ‘Cneills’ or MacNeills of noble rank on the list, as well as five MacDonalds, recorded ‘Domhnail’, three Mackays (‘Kay’) and a ‘Crofart’. Crawford is such an unexpected name in this Highland company that it is tempting to accept him as the man referred to in an early episode:

“On the following day such a great crowd came to the missionaries that it was not possible to hear the confessions of all; they administered the sacraments of penance and eucharist to forty; among those converted on this occasion was one of the gentry who was prominent among the heretics; when he was gravely ill, Ward and O’Neill succeeded in winning him over to the true faith, and on his recovery he confounded the heretics every time he got the chance; a certain minister who was a friend of the man in question was enraged when he heard of the conversion, and that the missionaries had said mass in the man’s house; accordingly he planned to attack Ward and O’Neill, but Coll Ciotach MacDonald came to the aid of the missionaries and saved them.’⁹

Coll is the father of Alasdair MacColla, right hand man to Montrose in his Scottish campaigns of 1644-45. As an old man of seventy-seven, at the culmination of that savage period of civil war, ‘Colkitto’ (the name is often applied mistakenly to his son) surrendered Dunyveg and was promptly hanged ‘from the mast of his own galley placed across a ravine’.¹⁰

The register of Kintyre converts is offered here in alphabetical order on the basis of the commonest spelling used by the Franciscan (whose key quality was, of course, his knowledge of ‘Irish’) followed by a likely modern Gaelic form,¹¹ its anglicised Scottish version and, where appropriate, an Antrim form. The first on the list is one of the few names recorded in Latin.

Alexandri	MacAlasdair	MacAllister, McAlister
Brachea	Bracken	Brackenridge
Brethnaith	Mac a Bhreatnaich	Galbraith, McBratney
Brehuin	Mac a Bruithaunn	MacBrayne, McBrien
Bridan	MacGilleBride	McBride
Chaherty	MacEachmharcaigh	MacCafferty
Chaldruidh	MacGhilleRuaidh	Macllroy
Chaod	MacAoidh	MacKay
Chatan	MacGilleChatain	Hattan, Mcllhatton
Cheorda	Cheaird	Caird
Cheoin	MacEoin	McEwan, McKeown
Cheonin	MacFhionghain	MacKinnon, McKinven
Chomta	MacCionaodha	MacKinney, McKenna
Chartain	MacArtain	McCartan
Cheochadh	MacEochaidh	McCaughey
Chiosaig	Maclosaig	Maclsaac
Claberty	MacFhlaithbheartaich	MacLaverty, McLarty
Columbae	MacCaluim	MacCallum, McCollum
Cneill	MacNiall	MacNeil, McNeill
Coinalton	MacElconlaigh	Conley, Connolly
Crofart		Crawford
Cubhaidhe	MacCuaig	MacCaig, McCoag
Dauidis	MacDaibhidhe	Davidson
Domhnaill	MacDomhnaill	MacDonald, McDonnell
Doroch	Darach	Darroch, Darragh
Dubhuill	MacDughail	MacDougall, McDowell

Dubhuy	Dubhshith	Duffy
Floiberty	Flathartaigh	Flaherty
Gabin	MacGiobhain	McGibbon
Gillambuidhe	MacGhilleBhuidhe	MacKelvie, McElwee
Gillamoir	GilleMhoire	Gilmore
Gioll	MacGoil	MacGill, Magill
Gilloria	MacGilleRuaidh	Macllroy
Kay	MacAoidh	MacKay, Magee
Keanbuy	MacIanBuidhe	Maclan
Kenleorgeiod	Duibhlearga	Delargy
Kyaragan	MacKiergan	MacKerral, Kerrigan
Kyrrea	MacRigh	McCree
Laboir	Labhrada	Lavery
Lagaire	MacLaoghaire	MacLeary
Leoga	MacLennan	Logan
Lyndagain	Oloynachan	Lang
Martuin	Martain	Martin
Michaelis	MacGhileMhicheil	Carmichael
Muireadh	MacMhuireachd	MacVurich, McMurchy
Murioad	Muireaidhach	Murray, Murphy
Mullomuy	MacGilleMoluaig	Milloy
Muylin	MacMhaolain	MacMillan, McMullen
Philippi	MacFhilip	MacKillop
Ragnaldi	MacRaghnaill	MacRonald
Regius	Mac an Righ	MacHenry, McKendry
Reocharma	MacEacharna	MacEachem, Cochrane
Rocair
Sabuous	MacTamhais	MacTavish
Saoir	Mac an t-Saoir	MacIntyre
Zemhalton		Hamilton

These, then, are some of the commonest names in south Kintyre in the early seventeenth century. Rocair and other archaic forms can be used as evidence that the Franciscans ministered to humble families as well as noble ones: “Our more unusual or obscure names may….. sometimes indicate families who were in the lower strata of society”.¹²

To return to the events which drove so many MacDonald supporters from Kintyre to Antrim, the Irish Rebellion of 1642 set gruesome standards of bloodletting when the Gaelic population rose against the incomers (Lowland Scots, for the most part) who had gained by the Plantation of Ulster. A plantation of Kintyre was also beginning to be established, with half the Earl of Argyll’s tenants round Lochhead, soon to be Campbeltown, recently settled in the area. The power struggle was still finely balanced however when Alasdair MacColla MacDonnell landed on the Scottish coast north of Mull in the summer of 1644.¹³ It swung in favour of Clan Donald South at the start of the following year when a Campbell army was badly beaten at Inverlochy. Two years followed when Campbells were hunted down in their own heartland of Argyll, and, long after Montrose’s defeat at Philiphaugh, Alasdair continued to hold Kintyre for the old inhabitants. But the greater Civil War finally went against Charles I and a Covenanting army under General Alexander Leslie was able to enter Kintyre by way of Tarbert. The main MacDonnell force quickly withdrew to Antrim leaving behind them a garrison, soon beleaguered, on the peninsula’s southern tip at Dunaverty.

The numbers of fighting men who died (without their weapons) before the walls of the castle they had just yielded up — lacking water—have been variously put at 300 and 500. John McDougall of Dunollie was spared, along with another McDougall from Kilmun who had the presence of mind to shout in five languages: ‘Is there anyone here at all who will save a good scholar?’¹⁴ A list of 90 names — which does not cover the many MacDonalds and their kin who died at Dunaverty includes a majority recorded as MacEwan ‘alias MacDougall’. Other names common to this list and to that of Patrick Hegarty are “M’alister, M’onlea, M’illchonnell, M’murardich, M’Murrich,M’Callum, M’Keoick (if Mclsaac), M’lntyre, M’Martine, vc noill, and M’Gibboun’.¹⁵

Non-combatants suffered too. Sir James Turner (serving in Leslie’s army) tells us that while the castle was under siege a further hundred local men….”countrey fellows whom we had smoaked out of a cave as they doe foxes”,¹⁶ were sent to serve in the French army under Campbell leadership. Fifteen years passed before this body of pressed men was disbanded. Those who lived through them returned, if they did return (rather than heading for Antrim), to find very different patterns of landholding. The plantation of 1650 was made easy for the victors by an outbreak of bubonic plague three years before, brought into Kintyre by Leslie’s army:

‘An old tradition states that after the epidemic only three chimneys were left smoking in what is now Southend parish In a rental of 1651, that is immediately after the epidemic, we find that out of 55 holdings recorded in the rental for the old parishes of Kilcolmkill and Kilblaan, 29 were entered as wholly waste and 13 as partially waste. This could only have happened if the previous occupiers had been killed in battle, transported to a foreign land, died of disease, or had been deprived of their seed corn……… No doubt all these factors were at work in Kintyre in the years 1644 to 1650.”¹⁷

It would be wrong to suggest that the whole population was wiped out or displaced, however. McKerral’s analysis of the rent roll for 1678 shows 41 families of ‘old Kintyre stock’ persisting in what was then the most southerly parish of Kilcolmkill, with this forming the highest proportion of natives among the nine parishes of Kintyre. But Lowlanders did settle Southend in considerable numbers. To establish that a retreat from Kintyre to the Glens occurred it must be established that a substantial proportion of the families on Hegarty’s list disappeared from Southend. The ’Compt Book’ of MacNeill of Carskey for the forty years after 1703 sheds light on this. Its modern editor comments:

“I am inclined to conclude that poor MacNeill and the family must have lived a peculiarly friendless life, with few neighbours whose society he felt free to enjoy in simple good faith. I feel sure that he and his forebears could never willingly have consented to that reduction of the Carskey Lands which took place between 1505 and 1701, from twelve to sixteen merklands to as few as four. To one who knows the topography of the district, the Rent Roll of 1751 reveals a very queer distribution of the lands it comprises. Natural boundaries and contiguity of lands are disregarded; Carskey is simply cut to pieces, and the lands of Macdonald of Sanda appear to have been dealt with in the same way.”¹⁸

The names which feature in the Compt Book must offer a fairly comprehensive account of who lived in Southend in the early eighteenth century, since they include not merely MacNeill’s tenants but also the people he did business with over a period of forty years. The retreat from Kintyre is demonstrated by the fact that less than a third of the families on Hegarty’s list retained a foothold in the area. In cases like MacDonald, MacNeill, MacAllister and MacMullen, they were presumably too numerous to displace altogether. The full list of Kintyre survivors reads: McAlister, McCallum, McClarty, McDonald, McDugald, McGibbon, Mcllchonaly, Mclnkaird, McKay, McKellup, McKessaig, McLeonan, McMullen, McMurchy, McNeill and possibly Hendry. They were replaced by new tenants from Ayrshire, and also from Highland Argyllshire, with the names Burdie (Brodie), Campbell, Fleming, Hyman, McConachie, Mcffaill, Mcffarlan, McGinnes, McKearmoid (McDermid), McMath, McNachlain, McQuarrie, McQualiskie, McSporran, McViccar, Shaw, Watsone and Wyly.

A third group of names from the Compt Book consist of families native to Kintyre which did not appear in the 1624 list. This confirms that the list is only partial, suggesting, for example, that Hegarty did not get down to the Mull of Kintyre in his first summer. McCamros, McComra, McGomirie, Mcllheany, Mcllheary, McOrdrain, McShenoig and Omey. The first of these, McCambridge (from MacAmbrois, ‘son of Ambrose’), can be used to link a family now extinct in Kintyre to a very specific area of the Glens. Brian Turner met a custodian of oral tradition at Cregagh, Cushendun:

“Standing in Glendun graveyard one day in 1971 an old lady of the O Haras of that district pointed out to me the very field which she believed to be the McCambridges’ first home in Antrim, pronouncing their name in Gaelic as she did so ….. Flora MacCamrois is traditionally stated to have rescued Ronald, the infant son of Archibald MacDonald of Macharioch from the massacre of Dunaverty in 1647. She is said to have married a McCaig, to whom the MacDonalds later gave a farm.”¹⁹

There is a stone in Layd churchyard which links the first McCambridge with Carnasheerin, north of Cushendall. A 1793 map has ‘Ballimontgomery’ beside Borgadill on the south-west coast where Scotland comes closest to Ireland, and Angus Martin stresses that Montgomery is a local name, but since the Compt Book shows a McCamros farming the latter townland sixty years’ previously at ‘Ballimacomra’, it looks as if McComra and McGomirie are variants of McCambridge, with Montgomery an anglicised version of it. The name McGombry which appears in the Antrim Hearth Roll of 1669 for the parish of Ardclinis is thus unlikely to be the well known Ulster Scots surname which goes back to the Normans.

Another name among the third group of Carskey entries which is relevant to settlement in the Glens is MacShenog. In Glenravel the name Mac an tSionnacch became Shannon among Protestants but was anglicised to Fox by Catholics. They were not all driven from Kintyre, since a Donald MacShenoig was the ferryman who linked Southend with Cushendun in the early eighteenth century. This reduced yet still symbolic role contrasts with the former ceremonial duties of his family:

“The Macoshenogs were Harpers to the Clan Donald in Kintyre and in 1505 were represented by Murdoch, or Muriach, who held rent-free for his service as Harper a 4 merkland comprising Brunerican, Amod, Drumnariach, Dalsmirran and Lagnadamh. Descendants were later tenants of the estate of Lephenstrath, which they retained down to the year 1819. They changed the family name to Shannon”.²⁰

The name Murray is well known in the Glens. It is natural to assume that the variants which appear in Hegarty’s list as Murcad, Muireadh, Muread, Mureadha, Muriadh, Muriadha and Murioad include the family which became Murray. There are further Colonsay variants in Muriodha, Muruod and Muriod, a Daniel Mhac Mhuireadhuigh of Colonsay witnessed a 1629 letter of Coll Ciotach MacDonald. One origin of the name Murray is given by Bell as Muireadhach, or ‘mariner’. But McKerral simply equates the family of MacVurich (MacMhuirich) who were hereditary bards to Clan Donald with MacMurchy (MacMhurchaidh). Derick Thomson admits to uncertainty:

“Confusion is apt to arise between the surnames derived from Muireadhach and those derived from Murchadh, especially when these were noted by scribes who used English, or when Anglicised forms came to be widely adopted. It is probably impossible now to disentangle completely these forms as they occur in the records. (As regards MacVurich and MacMurchie in sixteenth century) on the whole I am inclined to the belief that these forms are merely variants, but the point cannot be regarded as settled yet.”²¹

The listing of both M’murardich and M’Munich among those who died at Dunaverty is important evidence, and Martin independently suggests that there may have been more than one family in Kintyre. He considers the possibility that Murphy (though not Murray) was interchangeable with McMurchy before concluding, “The subject is altogether too heavy with linguistic and genealogical ambiguity to carry further.”²² It can be carried a little further here. Murray and Murphy are both such well known names in Scotland and Ireland that they seem to have been missed as characteristic Glens names from a different source. Since the variants are so common on Hegarty’s list it is reasonable to assume that former Kintyre families are represented in the Antrim Hearth Roll of 1669: as Murchy of Ballivealy, Ramoan, and McMurchy of Turlagh in Culfeightrin, but also by Jer Boy McMurry {Jer is a mystery, Buidhe means ‘fair’) of ‘Denard’ in Culfeightrin. The last of these townlands must surely be Dunurgan, which lies west of Knocknacarry in Glendun and is still — as striking evidence of continuity — in the hands of Murrays. The relationship of this family to Donald MacShenoig the Kintyre ferryman is less clear, but they seem to have had a common ancestor in Muriach — the Mariner.

After the complexities surrounding McCambridge/MacComra and MacMurchy/ Murray most of the others on the Hegarty list are straightforward, at least to anyone from the Glens of Antrim. Readers will no doubt be able to attach names to townlands from their own knowledge of family history, but since MacNeill of Carskey has featured a good deal in this account it is perhaps appropriate to dwell on one. The MacNeills of Lossit were late arrivals in Kintyre and flourished there, in contrast to those of Carskey, by marrying a MacKay and founding the MacNeills of Ugadale. But Turner is a little bland here (with his ‘potential for expansion’) in light of all the circumstances:

“The fact that the MacNeill families managed to hold on to and increase their landholding under the Campbells in the seventeenth century makes their presence in Antrim particularly illustrative of the potential for expansion of a Kintyre family. In the 1669 Roll for the four north-eastern counties of Ireland MacNeill is associated exclusively with county Antrim. And although MacNeill is well represented in twentieth century Scotland, there are more in the comparatively small area of the Glens than there are in the whole area of Kintyre and all the islands from Mull to Arran.”²⁴

Other names have their points of interest. The absence from the 1624 list of both MacAuley and MacCormick strengthens Turner’s claim that these families came much earlier to Antrim. MacCaughan and MacGauchan — as distinct from McCahan and O Cahan — have already been discussed in The Glynns.²⁵ MacKay and Magee are two different names in Antrim, which may be explained by the two forms Choad and Kay, MacKay coming perhaps from the less obvious source. McKillop is identified from its distribution as appearing later in Antrim than MacKay, MacNeill and MacAllister. These spread into the Route, whereas Turner sees McKillop “characteristically as a name of the Glens”.²⁶ He manages to establish (citing ‘Allister McMillian’) that McMullen is a seventeenth century arrival from Kintyre rather than an offshoot of the MacMillans of Ayr and Galloway. He also makes a distinction between the Magills of Glenarm and various forms of MacGiolla which have been found near Ballycastle.

This suggests a narrower focus than the Nine Glens taken as a whole, and it does seem likely that the main Kintyre-Antrim connection was between Southend and the inner Glens, from Garron Point to Fair Head, with refugees landing at Cushendun and Red Bay. Tradition says that Alasdair MacColla’s two infants were brought to the safety of Glenariff after Dunaverty (hence the MacDonnells living between Red Bay and Cushendun) and that three MacAllisters were hanged at Campbeltown by Gillespie Gruamach, Earl of Argyll, for completing the rescue which Flora McCambridge had begun. If ‘refugees’ seems too strong a word for what Angus Martin, social historian, prefers to emphasise as kinship ties and “boat parties from the Antrim coast”,²⁷ then consider Turner:

“Stories and traditions which survive indicate that during the 1640s the people of Kintyre could well have been in the grip of a communal hysteria of the type which modern psychiatrists have shown to result in a blind desire to leave the place of misery and find safety elsewhere.”²⁸ And as Martin himself points out, key names such as McAlister, McKay and McNeill are between twice and four times as common in Antrim today as they are in Kintyre.

This has been an attempt to follow the example set by people like Angus Martin and make connections between Scotland and Ireland. Modern Scottish historians are familiar with the Irish immigration of the nineteenth century and will readily acknowledge a seventeenth century background in the Plantation of Ulster. They are probably less aware of the Gaelic Scots culture of the Glens and its links with south-west Argyll. The story of the Irish in Scotland has been one of struggle in urban and industrial settings, with immigrants often finding themselves (and feeling themselves) treated as aliens. The Glens of Antrim and Kintyre have a special relationship, however: they are different, and the families which made the short crossing last century — for the fishing or the harvest or simply to find work — were, in an important sense, coming home.

REFERENCES

1. Hayes-McCoy, G.A., Scots Mercenary Forces in Ireland (1565-1603), 1937.

2. Hill, G., The MacDonnells of Antrim, 1873.

3. Turner, B.S., Distributional aspects of family name study illustrated in the glens of Antrim. Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University, Belfast, 1974, 138. Brian Turner’s authoritative work (not yet published) is the source of much of the argument pursued in this paper.

4. McKerral, A., Kintyre in the Seventeenth Century (1948), 27.

5. Roberts, A., ‘Bonamargy and the Scottish Mission’, The Glynns, 16 (1988).

6. Giblin, C., Franciscan Mission to Scotland (1964), 33.

7. Mercer, J., ‘The investigation of the King’s Cave, Isle of Jura, Argyll’ Glasgow

Archaeological Journal, 5, (1978).

8 Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community 1570-1850, (1975), 112.

9. Giblin, 51.

10. Turner, 118.

11. Bell, R., The Book of Ulster Surnames. Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1988, is the source of most of the suggested modern names, supported by Martin, A., Kintyre: The Hidden Pat. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1984, and the works by Brian Turner and Andrew McKerral already listed. Personal communications have also been received from Angus Martin, John Lome Campbell, Iain Maclllechiar, Colm O Boyle and David Stevenson. Discussion of some doubtful interpre­tations appears later.

12. Turner, 220.

13. Stevenson, D., Alasdair MacColla and the Highland Problem in the 17th Century. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1980, and Roberts, A., “The ‘Irishes’ in Scotland, 1644-1647”, The Glynns, 14,1986.

14. Quoted in Stevenson, 237.

15. Scottish History Society Papers, II, 1916, 88.

16. Quoted in Stevenson, 237.

17. McKerral, 78.

18. Mackay, F.F., MacNeill of Carskey: his Estate Journal, 1703-1743, 1955, 13.

19. Turner, 105.

20. McKerral, 11.

21. D. S. Thomson, “The MacMhuirich bardic family’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, xliii, 1966, 276-304.

22. Martin, 8.

23. Turner, 132.

24. Turner, B.S., ‘An observation on name changing in the Scottish Highlands’, The Glynns, 16, 1988.

25. Turner (1974), 176.

26. Martin, 96.

27. Turner, 118.