Genealogical account of the Highland families of Shaw

30 GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNT OF THE SHAWS.
in Strathnairn. Both these sons were children at their
father's death in 1411.
Alexandeb, or Alasdair Ciar. — Tradition relates
that the Coniyns, who had at one time been all powerful
in Badenoch, but whose power had been broken in the
thirteenth century, took advantage of the death of
Shaw Mor to harass his successors, and to endeavour -to
eject them from Kothimurcus. They were no doubt suffi-
ciently numerous in the neighbourhood, and sufficiently
antagonistic to the Clan Chattan who had supplanted
them, to give the new occupiers of Rothimurcus some
trouble, and many were the surprises and skirmishes
which ensued. Their efforts were favoured for a time
by the death of James at Harlaw and the youth of his
sons, and for some years they appear to have got the
upper hand of the Mackintoshes, and to have taken
possession of Rothimurcus. In these years, according
to some, they built the fort which still stands, though
in ruins, in Loch-an-Eilan, as a means of securing their
possession. The Rev. Lachlan Shaw places these events
some eighty years earlier, making Shaw Mor the infant
dispossessed, and killing his father in an encounter
with the dispossessors. In this, however, as we have
already seen, he is manifestly wrong. The circum-
stances all tend to show that, as is often the case,
tradition has erred as to date, and has attributed the
doings of Alasdair Ciar to his grandfather.
Alasdair Ciar, — to continue the tradition — who had