Earls of Cromartie > [NSLBLANK]

ORIGIN OF THE CABERFAE.
applied to such a document, it must be rejected as unreliable ; and indeed
Mr. Skene himself regards the earlier portions of it as apocryphal. " We
may conclude," he says, " that previous to the eleventh century the MS. of
1450, and the Irish genealogies of the Highland Clans, are of no authority
whatever." 1 That arbitrary line excludes Colin of the Aird as the Mackenzie
ancestor.
Mr. Skene's opinion on a question of Highland genealogy is of high
authority, and we desire to treat his theory with due respect. But we
think that he dismisses the record of Icolmkill and the charter of King
Alexander on insufficient grounds, and sets up as against them an anonymous
Gaelic manuscript, a great part of which he proves to be fabulous.
Armorial bearings often assist in questions as to the origin of families,
from the similarity of one coat to another ; but in the case of the
Mackenzies, the armorial bearings do not throw any light on the question of
origin. The stag's head, which has been carried by the Mackenzies as early
as can be traced, was no part of the Geraldine cognisance, nor of that of the
Earls of Eoss, of whom Colin of the Aird is said to be the progenitor. Lord
Cromartie, in his History of the Mackenzies, thus accounts for the adoption
of the stag's head : —
About the time of the granting of the charter of King Alexander, at
Kincardine-on-the-Dee, the King was hunting in the forest of Mar. A
hart pursued his Majesty, and would probably have injured him, if Colin
Fitzgerald had not killed the animal with an arrow. For which cause the
King granted to Colin a deer or hart's head puissant, bleeding from a wound
in the forehead, for his coat armour, supported by two greyhounds ; the
head in a field azure : which all descending from him have ever since carried. 2
In the second edition of his History, Lord Cromartie adds that the deer's head
1 The Highlanders of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 40. "- History, printed 1829, p. 3.
c