scottish history Archives - The History of Clan MacLaren

During the course of MacLaren history there were a number of violent incidents perpetrated by the Clan Gregor.

The MacGregors were not indigenous to Balquhidder. Driven out from their original holdings in the west by the Campbells, the MacGregors first made their appearance in Balquhidder in the 16^th century. The Black Book of Taymouth records the massacre of 27 members of “the Clanlaurent” by Duncan Ladosach Macgregor in 1542.

This was followed by the slaughter of 18 MacLaren households by the MacGregors in 1558. Men, women and children were killed and their homes taken by MacGregors.¹ The MacLaurin memorial stone in Balquhidder kirkyard reads, in part, “…the chief of whom, in the decrepitude of old age, together with his aged and infirm adherents, their wives and children, the widows of their departed kindred — all were destroyed in the silent midnight hours by fire and sword,”. ² Clearly most, if not all, of these people were likely asleep at the time of the raid which makes it all the more horrific.

The incident was referred to in a Court record of 1604, which saw the acquittal of Johnne McCoull Cheire (a MacGregor of the Dougal Ciar branch) of having “airt and pairt of the crewall Murthour and Burning of auchtene houfhalderis of the Clanlawren, thair wyves and bairnis; committit fourtie fax yeir fyne or thairby.” [art and part of the cruel murder and burning of Achtene householders of the Clan Lawren, their wives and bairns; committed fourty six year since or thereby]. Considering that the massacre did not come before the courts until some 46 years later, it would not be terribly surprising to see an acquittal.³ Such a span of time between the crime and the investigation does pose the question as to how many people would still be living who had first-hand knowledge of the event, were witnesses to it or actually committed the killings.

At any rate, in 1604 a number of MacGregors were accused and many found guilty and hanged for multiple killings at Glenfruin (Glenfrune in the court records). In the summer of 1603, the Laird and 400 of his clan “enterit [entered] in the Lennox” where he slaughtered 60 men, women and children, “He fpared nane” [He spared none]. Given the other trial records in that same volume, as well as the MacGregors’ reputation and history of violent behaviour, this type of aggressive action toward the MacLarens was not out of character.⁴

There has been some recent speculation as to the number of MacLarens killed in the 1558 massacre, with the suggestion that an earlier informal estimate of 100 individuals is unrealistic. The average household in Britain at that time was considered to be 4.75 persons. Multiplying 4.75 by 18 gives you 85.5 persons killed. Considering that typical highland families would have had more than three children, 100 is not an unreasonable nor unrealistic number. ⁵

1
MacLaren, Margaret, History of Clan Labhran, McQuiddy:Tennesse, 1960, p. 48
2
Keltie, John S., A History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans and Highland …, Volume 2, p. 280, 1881, A. Fullerton Edinburgh
3
Keltie, John S., A History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans and Highland …, Volume 2, p. 280, 1881, A. Fullerton Edinburgh
4
See Pitcairn Criminal Trials, p. 440, vol 2, Scottish parliamentary records RPS, 1617/5/40, http://www.rps.ac.uk/trans/1617/5/40 for the King’s eventual punishment for MacGregor transgressions.
5
Moore, John S. “Demographic Dimensions of the Mid-Tudor Crisis.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 41, no. 4 (2010): 1039–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40997601.

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. ¹. 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.” ²

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. ³ 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. ⁴. The MacDonalds, who are direct descendants of Somerled, display that historical relationship by the use of the galley on their Coat of Arms. ⁵

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. ⁶ 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. ⁷. To the Picts, the mermaid represented the Mother Spirit but they also have a variety of other attributes such as Eloquence and Strength. ⁸ 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. ⁹ 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.” ¹⁰

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 A berdeenshire 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

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