I recently ran a stall at The MacLennan Gathering in Inverness, around a quarter of those attending had travelled from New Zealand and proudly claimed Scottish ancestry. New Zealand is place that couldn’t be further away from Scotland on the map but it’s inhabitants make up a good percentage of The Scottish Diaspora. So inspired by the […]
More often than not feuds happened between the clans because of a dispute over livestock. Cattle and sheep owned by different Clans would roam freely and would often graze together. The animals were marked by small cuts on their ears to show who owned them. Even to this day in areas like Lewis the […]
August 29th is the 85th anniversary of the last people leaving St Kilda. For most people, St Kilda is remote and mysterious, a windswept outcrop in the North Atlantic which against all odds supported human habitation for more than 2,000 years (some say this is more like 4,000 years). This lonely island sits in the outermost […]
Intrinsically linked like bread and butter, whisky and the Clans are about as all things Scot as you’re going to get. Here are our top five links between the water of life and Scotland’s oldest families. 1. Dalmore In 1263, an ancestor of Clan Mackenzie saved King Alexander III of Scotland from being gored by […]
With a new season of Game of Thrones on TV screens avid fans will be enthralled at the twists and turns of this epic tale. However as I recently discovered while staying on Islay, the inspiration behind many of the series’ most bloody moments come from the stories of our own Scottish Clans. The Island […]
A map of Great Britain’s most popular surnames shows the dominance that clan areas still hold in Scotland, while other areas show the effects of modern-day immigration. Created by experts from three English Universities, Uncertainty of Identity uses surnames listed on the electoral roll to find the three most popular names in each electoral ward. […]
When asked to give the name of his nearest mainline rail station on a Parliamentary expenses questionnaire, former liberal MP for Orkney Jo Grimond gave his reply as Bergen, Norway. This facetious response turned out to be correct, as Bergen’s rail station is situated 340km from the Orkney constituency, compared with the Highland Main Line […]
In the western isles of Scotland two great clans were locked in a long running feud. The MacLeod’s who occupied parts of Skye and Harris and their neighbouring MacDonalds from Skye and Uist. Over centuries the two clans had a number of pitched battles as dominance of the area swung to and fro. These ‘tit […]
The small village of Arisaig lies on Scotlands West coast to the North West of the town of Fort William. The name ‘Arisaig’ means ‘safe place’. This remote part of Scotland is steeped in history and in particular the history around that most troublesome period known as the Jacobite Rebellions. When ‘Bonny Prince Charlie’ began […]
The Teampull na Trionaid a ruined church on Uist in the Western Isles has been given a grant of £200,000 in order to make it safe for visitors. The building was founded in 1200 as a college for Priests. The site also contains a graveyard called Teampull Clann a’Phiocair (Church of the MacVicars) where this clan are […]
