This book brings together the major writings of David Sellar (1941–2019) on the genealogies (pedigrees) claimed by some of the major clans of medieval Highland and Island Scotland, especially the descendants of their twelfth-century king Somerled. The claimed pedigrees in the medieval Gaelic 1467 manuscript and the Irish genealogies are critically analyzed in relation to each other, and their historical authenticity tested against other evidence, including the Gaelic or Norse quality of their recorded names. Contemporary literary material is considered alongside later recorded traditions descending from the seanchaidh, whose work was to hand down to posterity the valorous actions, conquests, battles, skirmishes, marriages and relations of the chiefly ancestors by relating and singing them at births, baptisms, marriages, inaugurations, feasts and funerals. The family pedigrees offer crucial insights into the nature of medieval society, supporting and sometimes explaining a family’s socio-political position. As an exercise in propaganda, a pedigree was susceptible to fabrication and not to be trusted uncritically.

David Sellar’s meticulous analysis reveals the social and political realities of medieval Celtic Scotland, making use of heraldic evidence as well as his legal expertise, in a fluent and reader-friendly style.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction (Hector L. MacQueen)
• Part 1 Introduction to Methods
  • 1 The Keppoch Affidavit
  • 2 Highland Family Origins – Pedigree Making and Pedigree Faking
• Part 2 The Western Isles and the Hebridean Sea-Kings
  • 3 The Origins and Ancestry of Somerled
  • 4 MacDonald, MacRuari and MacDougall Pedigrees in MS 1467
  • 5 Hebridean Sea-Kings: The Successors of Somerled, 1164–1316
  • 6 The Ancestry of the MacLeods Reconsidered
  • 7 History of the Clan MacNeacail (MacNicol)
  • 8 The Significance of Names: Scandinavian Personal Names in the Northern and Western Isles
• Part 3 Cowal, Knapdale and the Dunsleve Kindred
  • 9 Family Origins in Cowal and Knapdale
  • 10 Clans, Castles and DNA: Macneils, MacNeills and the Families of Cowal, Knapdale and Glassary
• Part 4 The Lennox and the Campbells
  • 11 The Earliest Campbells – Norman, Briton or Gael?
  • 12 The Lairds of Ardincaple and Darleith: MacArthurs and MacAulays
  • 13 Spens of Lathallan – The Campbell Connection
• Part 5 Picts, Sueno’s Stone, W.F. Skene and Castle Tioram
  • 14 Warlords, Holy Men and Matrilineal Succession
  • 15 Sueno’s Stone and Its Interpreters
  • 16 William Forbes Skene (1809–92): Historian of Celtic Scotland
  • 17 A Castle and Its Landscape: The Case of Castle Tioram
• Index
• Plates Section