MacLaine of Lochbuie Tartan

Clan MacLaine of Lochbuie

MacLaine of Lochbuie is a clan separate from Maclean of Duart, though the two share an ancestor and Lochbuie is technically a cadet of Duart. Tradition has Hector Reaganach, brother of Lachlan Lùbanach of Duart, receiving lands in Mull from the Lord of the Isles around 1345 to 1350; the original charters are lost and no primary record of that grant survives. The documented line begins later. John Og, 5th of Lochbuie, swore fealty to the Crown and had his charters confirmed in the 1490s, and on 29 June 1542 James V erected the lands of Moy into the free barony of Lochbuie for Murdoch, 6th of Lochbuie, who is named three years later among the last members of the Council of the Isles.

The Lochbuie lands were forfeited in 1645 for supporting Montrose and restored in 1661. The clan was at Knockbreck and Killiecrankie in 1689 but did not rise in 1745, having been persuaded against it by Forbes of Culloden. The estate was lost to foreclosure and sold in the early 1920s, sources giving 1920 and March 1922. The chiefship has not been dormant, and the Lord Lyon and the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs recognise Lochbuie as an independent branch clan. The present chief is Lorne Gillean Iain Maclaine of Lochbuie, 26th of Lochbuie.

The MacLaine of Lochbuie tartan

Three Lochbuie threadcounts are recorded. The best known is a red sett with green and blue, taken from a specimen in the Cockburn Collection in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and usually dated to about 1810, although recent work on that collection places it between 1816 and 1825. A blue sett with red and yellow lines is recorded separately, and a Hunting version in dark tones differs from it by the addition of a black stripe.

The Lochbuie name attached to the red sett later than the cloth itself: the specimen in the Cockburn Collection is labelled Sinclair, and it was first published under the Lochbuie name by Grant in 1886. The Hunting pattern is first known from the Johnston and Whyte publication of 1906, which introduced a great many new hunting and dress forms to clans that had not previously had them.

A note on honesty: Modern, Ancient and Muted Lochbuie are colourways rather than separate tartans, and the Duart and Lochbuie tartans are not interchangeable. No Lochbuie sett comes from Wilsons of Bannockburn or the Vestiarium Scoticum, and none predates the commercial era; the earliest cloth is of the 1810s or 1820s, and its attribution to the clan is later still.

Clan facts

References

1. MacLaine of Lochbuie tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Lochbuie Clan Chiefs — Maclaine of Lochbuie
3. The Question of Lochbuie’s Cadetcy — Maclean History Project
4. The Cockburn Collection — P. E. MacDonald (2023)