I’ve been asked about the presence of Mermaids on the Clan’s Coat of Arms.  Why mermaids?  Are they real representations of the some aspect of the clan or just a decoration that someone along the line thought looked nice.  The answer is: they are real representations of an aspect of the Clan.

First, let’s take a quick look at heraldry.  A Coat of Arms in Scotland only belongs to one individual. 1Alastair Campbell of Airds, West Highland Heraldry and The Lordship of the Isles, The Lordship of the Isles, Richard D. Oram, (ed), Vol. 68, 2014 p. 208.   In the case of the clans – any Scottish clan – the individual to whom the Coat of Arms belongs is the chief.  If the arms belong to a family name (as opposed to a clan name), then they belong to the head of that family. So although the MacLaren Coat of Arms belongs to our Chief Donald alone, it represents the rest of us as members of his clan.  Remember, the word ‘clann’ (with two n’s in the Gaelic language) is the Gaelic word for ‘children’.  Thus members of the clan can be considered to be the extended family of the chief. 

Heraldry can tell you a great deal about the individual, or in our case, Clan.  It can give you heritage information, origin information, virtues and moral values.  It can do this because each of the images that are part of a Coat of Arms are symbols representing something.  Even the way the images are laid out on the shield gives information.  As Alastair Campbell of Airds writes in his article on West Highland Heraldry: “And whatever critics may say, heraldry is intensely symbolic and allows its users to make statements which can be clearly recognisable and which can offer a valuable sidelight on history.” 2http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/westhigh.html

For example, if we look at a couple of the clans from the isles, we see a Galley of the Isles (or Black Galley) and The Galley of Lorne symbols.  These go way back to the Isle of Man during the time of Somerled who is arguably the first of the Lords of the Isles in the 1100s, and who conquered the Isle of Man. 3W.D.H. Sellar, ‘The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 45(140), 1966, p. 123  But going back even farther, we find that the galley symbol was also present on banners of Norse nobles.  So in Somerled’s case, this might well represent his connection with the Norse Lords. 4W.D.H. Sellar, ‘The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 45(140), 1966, p. 123 and Ellis Caitlin, ‘Impressions of a Twelfth-Century Maritime Rule – Somerled: Viking Warrior, Clan Chieftain or Traitor to the Scottish King’, Northern Studies, Vol. 51 (2020), p. 3.  The MacDonalds, who are direct descendants of Somerled, display that historical relationship by the use of the galley on their Coat of Arms. 5Alastair Campbell of Airds, West Highland Heraldry and The Lordship of the Isles, The Lordship of the Isles, Richard D. Oram, (ed), Vol. 68, 2014 pp. 200-253

The MacLaren Coat of Arms has several symbols, including a galley, and you’ll find a comprehensive explanation of the MacLaren Arms in Chapter 11 The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran. 6Margaret MacLaren, The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, 1960, p. 130  But the ones we’ll discuss today are the mermaids; a symbol found on the Coats of Arms of other clans and families besides MacLaren, the Murrays for example.  So how did the mermaids come to be a part of our Clan’s heraldry?

The mermaids date back to the time of the Picts who were an independent pre-Roman people in Scotland until they were united with the Scots of Dalriadia by Kenneth McAlpin in around 843 AD. 7https://www.digitscotland.com/who-were-the-picts/.  To the Picts, the mermaid represented the Mother Spirit but they also have a variety of other attributes such as Eloquence and Strength. 8Margaret MacLaren, The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, 1960, p. I  No one is really sure, beyond the Pictish belief in the Mother Goddess, what any Pict symbol represents. But scholars have suggested that the mermaid, along with the comb and mirror, is representative of a female person as well as a relationship to the sea.

The mermaid symbols on the Clan MacLaren Coat of Arms represent the origins of the clan as it relates to the early people of Scotland.  But how do we more directly equate the early Picts with Clan Labhran? 

Well, it’s a little complicated but Strathearn and therefore Balquhidder was part of Fortrenn/Fortriu, a Pictish kingdom upon which the high-kingship of the Picts was based prior to the merging of the Pictish lands with those of Dalriada in the 9th century. What is now Perthshire was part of Fortriu and so the ancestral lands of the MacLarens were originally Pictish. 9C. Thomas Cairney, Ph.D., Clans and Families of Ireland and Scotland – An Ethnography of the Gael a.d. 500-1750, Maryland: Heritage Books, (2006), p. 58 and Woolf, Alex, Dún Nechtain, Fortriu and the Georgraphy of the Picts, The Socttish Historical Review, Vol. LXXXV, 2 No. 220, (2006) pp 182-201 It could be suggested, then, that location plays a part in the presence of the mermaids.  

But so does hierarchy.  According to Margaret MacLaren when discussing the origins of the Clan and its relation to Pict mermaid symbology, “Even after the coming of Christianity she retained her symbolic importance in the minds of the people and when a Gaelic prince came over from Lorn and married their princess the mermaid survived as the tutelary emblem of the princess’s descendants, the Clan Labhran, whose Chiefs to this day, in token of their origin, bear mermaids as heraldic supporters for their Arms.” 10MacLaren, Margaret,The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, (1960) p. I

For further reading:

  • There’s a website which gives a lot of information on the Picts and seems quite comprehensive. (I can’t say how scholarly this site is.)
  • The Aberdeenshire Council page dedicated to the Pictish Symbol Stones

(For a fascinating video about Pictish symbols, have a look at this YouTube video:

  • 1
    Alastair Campbell of Airds, West Highland Heraldry and The Lordship of the Isles, The Lordship of the Isles, Richard D. Oram, (ed), Vol. 68, 2014 p. 208
  • 2
    http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/westhigh.html
  • 3
    W.D.H. Sellar, ‘The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 45(140), 1966, p. 123
  • 4
    W.D.H. Sellar, ‘The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled’, The Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 45(140), 1966, p. 123 and Ellis Caitlin, ‘Impressions of a Twelfth-Century Maritime Rule – Somerled: Viking Warrior, Clan Chieftain or Traitor to the Scottish King’, Northern Studies, Vol. 51 (2020), p. 3
  • 5
    Alastair Campbell of Airds, West Highland Heraldry and The Lordship of the Isles, The Lordship of the Isles, Richard D. Oram, (ed), Vol. 68, 2014 pp. 200-253
  • 6
    Margaret MacLaren, The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, 1960, p. 130
  • 7
    https://www.digitscotland.com/who-were-the-picts/
  • 8
    Margaret MacLaren, The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, 1960, p. I
  • 9
    C. Thomas Cairney, Ph.D., Clans and Families of Ireland and Scotland – An Ethnography of the Gael a.d. 500-1750, Maryland: Heritage Books, (2006), p. 58 and Woolf, Alex, Dún Nechtain, Fortriu and the Georgraphy of the Picts, The Socttish Historical Review, Vol. LXXXV, 2 No. 220, (2006) pp 182-201
  • 10
    MacLaren, Margaret,The MacLarens, A History of Clan Labhran, (1960) p. I