{"id":29325,"date":"2024-12-24T22:33:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-24T14:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/?page_id=29325"},"modified":"2024-12-24T22:52:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T14:52:29","slug":"macgregor","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/macgregor\/","title":{"rendered":"MacGregor"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MacGregor (Excerpts from Chapter 15) <\/h1>\n

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The book reveals the discovery that the Murrays changed their name because of a famous historical prohibition in Scotland. The Murray ancestry was recently verified as really descended from a key lineage of \u2018the MacGregors\u2019 (traditionally a most resilient and pivotal Scottish Highland clan).<\/p>\n

Excerpt #1: Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

Glen Orchy’s proud mountains, Kilchurn and her towers,<\/em>
Glenstrae and Glenlyon no longer are ours;<\/em>
\u2026We’re landless, landless, landless, Gregorach!<\/em>
But doom’d and devoted by vassal and lord.<\/em>
MacGregor has still both his heart and his sword!<\/em>
Then courage, courage, courage, Gregorach!<\/em>
While there’s leaves in the forest, and foam on the river,<\/em>
MacGregor, despite them, shall flourish for ever!<\/em>
– An excerpt from the famous 1816 poem \u2018MacGregor\u2019s Gathering\u2019 by Sir Walter Scott (born the same week in August 1771 as KM Sr)<\/p>\n

MacDonald is the heather, MacGregor is the rock<\/em> \u2013 traditional Highland saying.<\/p>\n

Excerpt #2 The historical prohibition against Clan Gregor in the Scottish highlands<\/strong><\/p>\n

Following an earlier order made against Clan Gregor by King James VI in 1589, related Proscriptive Acts were first enacted in 1603 following the \u2018pretext\u2019 of the Battle of Glen Fruin. This preceded the devious execution in 1604 of the then Clan chief Alisdair MacGregor and eleven senior clansmen in Edinburgh by the King after the Campbells had enticed them there for a meeting with false assurances of protection. Also, according to the MacGregors, \u2018Glen Fruin\u2019 was the February 1603 battle where, despite being heavily outnumbered, they foiled an \u2018ambush\u2019 by the Colquhoun clan acting on behalf of the Campbells. With these Acts also extinguishing all previous land claims by the MacGregors against the Campbells, they represented a culmination of a process by which the Campbells (and Stuarts) had progressively \u2018dispossessed\u2019 the MacGregors of their traditional lands over centuries following Robert the Bruce\u2019s decision to reward the Campbells for their participation in the Bannockburn victory of the English (in which the MacGregors had also fought for Bruce and Scotland) with the Barony of Loch Awe \u2013 which included significant Macgregor lands. Following the Proscription, any MacGregors who failed to give up their Clan Gregor name and allegiance were typically hunted down and the men then executed \u2013 with the women also regularly branded and exiled or enslaved (or worse). The term \u2018hidden MacGregors\u2019 refers to Clan Gregor descendants who had retained their post-1603 aliases or had just forgotten their heritage after the Proscription was finally ended for good by royal decree in 1774.<\/p>\n

Excerpt #3 the Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book by Sir James MacGregor (verified Kennedy Murray ancestor)<\/strong><\/p>\n

From a Clan Gregor perspective, the greater significance of the Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book lies in how, in the later sections of this, it includes two related items of \u2018MacGregor genealogy\u2019 from the \u2018present day\u2019 of c1512 back to (and perhaps beyond) \u2018Kenneth MacAlpin\u2019. The first item from page 136 of the 1887 edition addresses the perspective of a MacGregor cousin to James and Duncan who died in 1526): \u201cremember well thy back-bone line, Down from Alpin heir of Dougal, Twenty and one besides yourself\u201d. This item goes on to mention that \u2018of thy race which wastes not froth, six generations wore the king\u2026\u2019 (possibly with reference to the royal legacy of kings coming after Kenneth MacAlpin). With the additional context outlined below, there indeed does seem a credible basis for the view that the Clan Gregor may have been directly linked back to Kenneth MacAlpin first King of Scotland in 843 CE (or at least from the related \u2018house of Alpin\u2019 royal dynasty\u2019 that survived until 1034 and included a King Girig or Gregor). And so, a possible further claim that the first King of Scotland Kenneth MacAlpin was the 30 X (or so) great-grandfather of Kennedy Murray Sr (and of his Australian descendants as well as others in Clan Gregor) likewise has some credible basis.<\/p>\n

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L. The Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book – 1862 edn. (with Skene intro) and R. a recent reprint.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

\u2018Macgregor country\u2019 as also a cultural as well as geographical heartland (still) of both \u2018traditional Pictland\u2019 (Albann, etc) and \u2018modern Scotland\u2019?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The basic \u2018authenticity\u2019 of the Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book as a retrospective written translation of a largely oral tradition has generally been confirmed by Scottish cultural historians and not just representatives of Clan Gregor. But what about its role in helping to explain how and why the Clan Gregor motto is \u2018royal is our blood\u2019 (\u2018S Rioghal Mo Dhream)? Even within Clan Gregor there are two (i.e. \u2018traditional\u2019 and \u2018modern\u2019) perspectives on the genealogy of the MacGregor \u2018ancestral family tree\u2019. This is as well as the retrospective \u2018truism\u2019 of how, as Peter Lawrie has written in his article \u2018the early history of Clan Gregor\u2019, \u201chighland clanship came out of a fusion of Celtic tribalism and Norman feudalism during the 12 and 13th Centuries\u201d [At this time fixed \u2018surnames\u2019 (including the formalising of patronymic names \u2013 usually by affixes like the use of \u2018Mac\u2019 or \u2018son of\u2019 in Scotland) were instituted around Europe as part of edicts linked to motives of administration and taxation].<\/p>\n

But the two perspectives can and perhaps should be seen or taken as \u2018complementary\u2019. In this view there may be some particular discrepancies in the names mentioned in the Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book genealogy by an associate of the Dean. But the link back to the royal house of Alpin over \u201922 generations\u2019 might well be generally true whatever some possible \u2018quibbling\u2019 about the details \u2013 or whether one might focus on Kenneth MacAlpin\u2019s generally agreed-upon \u2018royal lineage\u2019 rather through the lens of his father\u2019s Dal Riada (Scottish Gaelic) family or his mother\u2019s Pictland (Pictish Celtic) family.<\/p>\n

The term \u2018Celtic tribalism\u2019 incorporates some quite different as well as similar Pictish and Scottish Gaelic (i.e. earlier Pictland and Dalriada) contexts and meanings. This distinction also applies when such a term is used to refer to earlier \u2018Clan members\u2019 before Clan Gregor adopted both a \u2018Norman feudal\u2019 system and a \u2018Gaelic Scottish\u2019 Chief for the first time in the mid-14th Century. This is perhaps as much because (rather than despite how) the various sections of \u2018MacGregor Country\u2019 also reflected the growing merger and related \u2018inter-marrying\u2019 of Picts and Gaels in similar fashion to the example of Kenneth MacAlpin\u2019s parents (i.e. the reported union between MacAlpin\u2019s Dalriada Gaelic father and Pictish mother). As reinforced by the evidence of the Dean of Lismore\u2019s Book (i.e. that the traditions of Scottish Gaelic were distinct from, not merely derivative of, those of Irish Gaelic), some have argued (with a credible basis for doing so) that the Dalriada \u2018Cruithne\u2019 of Ulster as well as the Western Scottish highlands were perhaps together originally an off-shoot of the earlier Picts and not the original Irish \u2018Celts\u2019 of the greater Ireland. If so, then this was a Pictish off-shoot which soon adopted the Gaelic language and also writing, and then brought it \u2018back\u2019 to Pictland where it became dominant after later also being adopted by the Picts in the emerging Scotland.<\/p>\n

The modern or \u2018Norman feudal\u2019 tendency to focus more or mostly on the lineage or succession of Clan leadership (in some aspects similar to the Gaelic \u2018Tanist principle\u2019) may well apply reasonably well to other and especially \u2018lowland\u2019 Scottish clans. But this perhaps needs to be complemented also by a more traditional focus when it comes to recognizing how (as reasonably self-evident from the two linked maps below) the Clan Gregor emerged at least as much (if not more) out of Pictish as \u2018Scottish Gaelic\u2019 Celtic tribalism. This is especially so in light of the compelling admission by Forbes MacGregor in his 1977 book Clan Gregor that “the astounding thing is that the main body of MacGregors is of Pict ancestry but not the old line of Chiefs\u201d. The leadership lines of Clan Gregor from the mid-14th Century onwards (as distinct from the tribal leadership of earlier centuries) generally involved male heads of families within the Clan located or particularly associated more with the Clan lands in Argyllshire (part of the former Dalriada) to the West (i.e. the \u2018Lock Awe\u2019 areas of Glen Strae and Glen Orchy). In contrast many other \u2018Clan members\u2019 were perhaps as much (if not more) derived from Pictish tribal origins. This was likely to be especially so in the Eastern sections of \u2018MacGregor Country\u2019 towards Perthshire like Glen Dochart and Glen Lyon and Balquidder (the resting place of course of the most famous MacGregor \u2018outlaw\u2019 – Rob Roy).<\/p>\n

It is generally recognized that \u2018the first Chief of Clan Gregor\u2019 c\u20191350\u2019 (Gregor of the Golden Bridles) was located in the \u2018Glenorchy\u2019 branch of the family. But there are some interesting, related bits of relevant information about this. One is that this was evidently after (not before) the traditional tribal lands of this family had been directly threatened (and some effectively lost) by the earlier awarding of the Barony of Loch Awe to the Campbells by Robert the Bruce. Usually under the Norman Feudal scheme (of King David and others) Clan Chiefs tended to become the nominal landowners of traditional tribal lands – as well as becoming part of the new \u2018nobility\u2019 of Scotland part of the same network as the \u2018Norman Lords\u2019 [\u2018Frenchified Vikings\u2019 who were effectively invited \u2018back\u2019 to Scotland around the same time as the Norman military conquest of England in 1066]. But in this case the prior loss of Clan Gregor land to the Campbells was later extended East to even include Glen Lyon before the time of Sir James MacGregor.<\/p>\n

The linking of emerging Clan Chieftains with the apparent adaptation of the more hierarchical Gaelic \u2018Tanist\u2019 system of traditional tribalism and leadership succession compared with the more \u2018egalitarian tribalism\u2019 of the Picts \u2013 and their rather \u2018matrilineal\u2019 and related or resulting \u2018extended family\u2019 frameworks of leadership succession (as well as their more collective approach to tribal land ownership). It seems some believe that this \u2018convergent perspective\u2019 helped inform a related decision about this time to nominate Clan Gregor instead of the MacGregor Clan (i.e. give up the \u2018Mac\u2019 in the name of the clan to include other extended members of the tribe or clan). It might also help explain the apparent diversity of \u2018MacGregor lines\u2019 in the Clan Gregor DNA Project.<\/p>\n

In any case, a more traditional perspective was typified by the 19th Century accounts by William Skene and Sir Walter Scott in particular. They both projected a prominent role of Clan Gregor within the traditional history of the Scottish Highlands linked to Celtic tribes \u2013 generally recognising the \u2018royal is our blood\u2019 claims of the MacGregors back to earlier Celtic royalty (i.e. from Pictish and\/or Scottish Gaelic \u2018royalty). In his 1880 volume \u2018Celtic Scotland: A history of ancient Alban\u2019 Skene supported a general contention that an original centre of \u2018MacGregor country\u2019 was Glen Dochart. This was not just because this was central between Eastern and Western families or branches. It was rather because the links back to royalty were believed to have connected with emergent local clans linked to the known hereditary Pictish Abbots of Glen Dochart. Sir Walter Scott was even more influential in remembering Clan Gregor role in Scottish highland traditions.<\/p>\n

In the article cited above, Peter Lawrie supports a contention that directly associated with \u2018the family of the Abbot of Glen Dochart\u2019 was a \u2018Clann Alpein\u2019 as well as \u2018Clann an Aba\u2019. In other words, this is a notion that in the 14th Century Clan Gregor emerged from the earlier Clan Alpin centred around Glen Dochart like closely related clans like the MacNabs (son of \u2018the Abbot\u2019), MacKinnons (son of Finghin), MacAlpins and Grants, etc. Finghin was the Pictish Abbot of Glen Dochart (an abbey founded centuries earlier by the Celtic Christian missionary Fillan). In 966 CE he had apparently sought and obtained Papal (Rome) authority for Pictish monks to marry and produce their own local tribes or clans. According to tradition, this is how the hereditary abbots of Glen Dochart (believed by some to have been also descended from or otherwise related to Kenneth MacAlpin or others from his \u2018royal house of Alpin\u2019) also gave rise to related tribal families in the area from which Clan Gregor emerged as perhaps the \u2018central\u2019 or most pivotal clan. This connection would also help explain the \u2018Soi Alpin\u2019 tradition of the seven highland clans claiming descent from \u2018Clan Alpin\u2019: Grant, MacAulay, Macfie, Mackinnon, Macnab, and Macquarie as well as \u2018Gregor\u2019.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, we should point out that the c800 map below of Pictland fails to mention how both the Gaels and Picts were both under severe pressure at this time from the Vikings to the North and East as well as West \u2013 as well as by the Strathclyde \u2018Britons\u2019 and the Northumbria \u2018Anglo-Saxon\u2019 forces. It is clear that this was the main reason why the Gaels and Picts generally agreed over time to work together against a common \u2018foreign enemy\u2019. This was perhaps the pivotal basis on which they later merged (or rather why the Picts were \u2018assimilated\u2019 as Scottish Gaelic took over as the dominant language). This was also perhaps the related reason why even much earlier the Picts apparently agreed to allow a son of a Dalriada Gaelic King to also become a \u2018Pictish King\u2019. And that may be the related reason why a similar merger or agreement perhaps took place within the emerging \u2018Clan Gregor\u2019 between some families to the West that it seems were predominantly \u2018Gaelic\u2019 and others to the East that were likewise predominantly \u2018Pictish\u2019.<\/p>\n

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L. Map of Pictland c800 CE. R. \u2018MacGregor country\u2019: The cultural as well as geographical \u2018heartland\u2019 (still) of modern Scotland as well as ancient \u2018Pictland\u2019?<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

The future Scotland is believed to have become a Pictish Celtic homeland centuries before the Romans under Julius Ceaser invaded around 55 BCE. This was also well before the Romans were sufficiently repelled by the hardy, resilient and fearful \u2018Caledoni\u2019 or \u2018Pictii\u2019 warrior tribes (as Agricola and others called them until the Romans departed from Britain in 410 CE) that they had built first Hadrian\u2019s Wall to the South and the later Antonine Wall between the Firths of Forth and Clyde to simultaneous keep out or in the tribes to the North of this. In other words, the Southern highland Picts especially had occupied the heartland of the future Scotland for at least 1000 years before the royal crowning of Kenneth MacAlpin in that general area in 843 CE. This was arguably so as part of one of the last great surviving \u2018warrior societies\u2019 of Europe. And now (with new linguistic and DNA evidence and a better understanding of this) we can recognise that Pictish Celtic influence was more than just another linguistic and cultural \u2018layer\u2019 on the genetic foundations of the mainly original peoples that still survives today in modern Scotland.<\/p>\n

The traditional highland saying \u2018MacDonald is the heather, MacGregor the rock\u2019 (i.e. the earlier Celtic tribe and later clan in \u2018MacGregor country\u2019) epitomises a larger recognition that the Scottish highlander influence has generally been pivotal to all this. This is notwithstanding the apparent \u2018Mi run mor nan Gall\u2018 tendencies of some \u2018lowlanders\u2019 in 17th and 18th Century Scotland to \u2018look down on highlanders\u2019. This is of course similar to how some city-born Australians have long \u2018looked down\u2019 on and likewise \u2018under-estimated\u2019 those from rural or provincial areas. No wonder then that even before \u2018Culloden\u2019 (as well as more so afterwards) \u2018highlander\u2019 soldiers and regiments were becoming recognised as a backbone of modern British armies – as Harry Murray was clearly aware.<\/p>\n

In his well-known works of \u2018historical fiction and romance\u2019 such as his famous novel Waverly, Sir Walter Scott brought alive the \u2018historical past\u2019 of the Scottish Highlands, its culture, and its \u2018fate\u2019. And with the related \u2018Waverly novels\u2019 such as Rob Roy and extended poems such as The Lady of the Lake (as well as other memorable shorter poems like \u2018MacGregor\u2019s Gathering\u2019), Sir Walter Scott (born the same week in 1771 as KM Sr) regularly revisited the MacGregor (and related \u2018Clan Alpine\u2019) legacy which so inspired him. A recent Hollywood movie with Liam Neeson in it has helped reinforce that Scott today is still linked with the \u2018legend of Rob Roy MacGregor\u2019. For some (especially for Scottish lowlanders and the English), this was a romantic legend of how the historical Rob Roy became an \u2018outlaw\u2019 associated with cattle \u2018theft\u2019. However, for others he was a \u2018highlander cattleman\u2019 who became \u2018the Scottish Robin Hood\u2019. This was whilst he claimed to be fighting for justice against the Duke of Montrose – who (he believed) robbed him and his family of their lands and future. Rob Roy\u2019s story thus epitomises that of the wider Clan Gregor over a number of centuries (i.e. the MacGregors having to resort to their pastoralist skills to survive after the unfair loss of traditional lands).<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s version also focused on the historical Rob Roy\u2019s heroic involvement in the \u2018second Jacobite rising\u2019 against the English crown in 1715. This was some years after Rob Roy was forced to become a \u2018hidden MacGregor\u2019 (1683) because of the restoration of the temporarily lifted prohibition against Clan Gregor. In any case, the main resonance of \u2018Rob Roy\u2019 with a Scottish (and indeed, international) audience is similar to that of Ned Kelly in Australia. Despite the efforts of some to downplay this (or to call either a \u2018common criminal\u2019), both are associated with the battle against the perpetual injustices and betrayals of an entrenched unfair system. Since the late 19th Century, this is why Australians have typically used the expression \u201cto be as game as Ned Kelly\u201d to refer to someone being brave against overwhelming odds.<\/p>\n

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MacGregor (Excerpts from Chapter 15) The book reveals the discovery that the Murrays changed their name because of a famous historical prohibition in Scotland. The Murray ancestry was recently verified as really descended from a key lineage of \u2018the MacGregors\u2019 (traditionally a most resilient and pivotal Scottish Highland clan). Excerpt #1: Introduction Glen Orchy’s proud […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-29325","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29325"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29343,"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/29325\/revisions\/29343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cameronkrichards.net\/kennedymurrays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}