Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 3

THE CELTIC MAGAZINE. 47
crossed the Irish. Channel, and, jorobahly, several years before he was born.
"We have no doubt that the Mackenzies were in Kintail before 1463,
although this appears to be the first authentic record of them in the
district ; but we are quite satisfied that they were there only as an im-
portant branch of the native and Gaelic Earls of Eoss, closely related to
them, and rapidly increasing in numbers, power, and influence. Even
Dr George Mackenzie, who strongly maintains the Fitzgerald origin of the
Clan, informs us that the Earl of Eoss, in 1296, " sent a messenger to the
Kintail men to send their young chieftain to him as being his 7iearest
kinsman hy his marriage with his aunt." Before, however, beginning the
general history of the Clan, we shall, in further support of the view here
adopted, and we venture to assert now pretty well established, place
Skene's conclusions before the reader.
In his " Highlands of Scotland " (pp. 223-5) he says :— " The Mac-
kenzies have long boasted of their descent from the great Norman family
of Fitzgerald in Ireland, and in support of this origin they produce a
fragment of the records of Icolmkill, and a charter by Alexander III. to
Colin Fitzgerald, the supposed progenitor of the family, of the lands of
Kintail, At first sight these documents might ai32:)ear conclusive, but,
independently of the somewhat suspicious circumstance, that while these
papers have been most freely and generally quoted, no one has ever yet seen
the originals, the fragment of the Icolmkill record merely says that among
the actors in the battle of Largs, fought in 1262, was ' Peregrinus et
Hibernus nobilis ex familia geraldinorum qui proximo anno ab Hibernia
pulsus apud regembenigne acceptus hinc usque in curta permansit et inprae-
facto proelio strenue pugnavit,' giving not a hint of his having settled in
the Highlands, or of his having become the progenitor of any Scottish
family whatever ; while as to the supposed charter of Alexander III., it
is equally inconclusive, as it merely grants the lands of Kintail to ' Colino
Hiberno,' the word ' Hibernus ' having at the time come into general use
as denoting the Highlanders, in the same manner as the word 'Erse'
is now frequently used to express their language : but inconclusive as it
is, this charter cannot be admitted at all, as it bears the most palpable
marks of having been a forgery of a later time, and one by no means happy
in its execution,
" How such a tradition of the origin of the Mackenzies ever could
have arisen it is difficult to say ; but the fact of their native origin and
Gaelic descent is completely set at rest by the Manuscript of 1450, which
has already so often been the means of detecting the falsehood of the foreign
origins of other Clans. In that MS., the antiquity of which is perhaps as
great, and its authenticity certainly much gTcater than the fragments of
the Ic'olmkiU records, the Mackenzies are brought from a certain Gilleon
Og, or Colin the younger, a son of ' Gilleon na h' Airde,' the ancestor of
the Eosses."
The descendants of Gilleon na h' Airde have already been fully
identified as the ancestors of the old Earls of Eoss, and it therefore
follows that the Mackenzies, whose descent from the same ancestor is
also, we submit, incontestably established, must always have formed an
integral part of the ancient and powerful native Gaelic tribe of Eoss. All