History of the clan Mackenzie

20 HISTORY OF THE MACKENZIES.
" 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 greater
than the fragments of the Icolmkill 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 Rosses."
Another able and unbiassed modern writer is of the same
opinion, and says : — " This chivalrous and romantic origin
of the Clan Mackenzie, though vouched for by certain
charters and local histories, is now believed to be fabulous.
It seems to have been first advanced in the seventeenth
century, when there was an absurd desire and ambition in
Scotland to fabricate or magnify all ancient and lordly
pedigrees. Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate, and
Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat, the first Earl of Cromarty,
were ready to swear to the descent of the Scots nation from
Gathelus, son of Cecrops, King of Athens, and Scota his
wife, daughter of Pharoah, King of Egypt ; and, of course,
they were no less eager to claim a lofty and illustrious line-
age for their own clan. But authentic history is silent as to
the two wandering Irish knights, and the reported charters
(the elder one being palpably erroneous) can nowhere be
found. For two centuries after the reigns of the Alexanders
the district of Kintail formed part of the lordship of the
Isles, and was held by the Earls of Ross. The Mackenzies,
however, can be early traced to their wild mountainous and
picturesque country — Ceann-da-Sliail — the Head of the Two
Seas."*
The descendants of Gilleon na h' Airde have already
been fully identified as the ancestors of the old Earls of
Ross, and it therefore follows that the Mackenzies, whose
* The late Robert Carruthers, LL.D., of the Inverness Courier, in an original
unpublished MS. sketch of the Mackenzies, which he kindly presented to us,
and which is now in our possession.