Facts and traditions collected for a family record

THE BfCONNELLS IN CAERICK.
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rather than from Antrim. Carrick shore is but twenty-eight miles
distant from Cantyre, and crossing over in open boats an easy matter,
each being distinctly visible from the other.
If M'Connells came over and settled in Carrick, they may, however,
have come from both Cantyre and Antrim, in both of which places they
were the same clan. The war of extermination which was carried on so
successfully by the house of Argyle, for more than half a century, against
the Clan Ian Vor, sufficiently accounts for the impoverished condition
into which we find this once-powerful clan reduced at this period ; and
naturally leads to the conclusion, that any who escaped and settled in
Carrick could have but little means of acquiring landed property there.
The records of landed property, or " Retours," prove that they had none.
There are, fortunately, some circumstances which can be brought
forward to shew the connexion which the Macdonakls or MacConnells
of Cantyre had with Ayrshire previously to the seventeenth century ;
and which prove that any fugitives coming over to Ayrshire could not
have been among total strangers, but that they would have found
some friends to have received them and have given them a helping
hand in their newly-adopted land.
I. As early as the thirteenth century, Angus Oig of Isla was a staunch
and faithful ally of Robert Bruce, A.D. 1286. (Tytler's "Scotland,"
L, p. 65, and Gregory, p. 26.) All the lands of Cantyre, Isla, and other
districts, were bestowed upon him ; and before King Robert's death, the
house of Isla was already the most powerful in Argyle and the Isles.
Angus Oig and his munificent patron died about the same time ; but
John of Isla, the son and heir of the former, was far from exhibiting
the same devoted loyalty to the house of Bruce which had characterised
his father. When the star of Edward Balliol was in the ascendant, John
of the Isles was induced to join his party.