Clan MacAlister
Clan MacAlister descends from Alasdair Mòr, son of Domhnall, which makes it a branch of Clan Donald rather than an independent stem — the clan’s own position and Clan Donald’s. Alasdair Mòr witnessed a charter by his brother Aonghas Mór of Islay to Paisley Abbey in 1253; that charter and its witness list are the clan’s earliest documentary anchor. He is noticed in the Irish Annals in 1299 as a man of hospitality and excellence, and was killed the same year in conflict with Alasdair of Argyll and the MacDougalls. It is worth being precise here: 1253 dates the clan’s founder, not the surname, which comes later.
The clan was centred on Kintyre from the fifteenth century. In 1481 Charles McAllister was appointed by the king to the Stewartry of Kintyre and received a grant of forty merklands in North and South Kintyre. The MacAlisters of Loup became the chiefly line. In 1792 Charles, 12th of Loup, married the daughter and heiress of William Somerville of Kennox and took the name and arms of Somerville in addition to his own, and the seat moved to Kennox in Ayrshire; the chiefly line has since lost those lands. The clan centre today is Glenbarr Abbey in Kintyre, which is not the chief’s seat — the chief lives in England. The Loup chiefship is filled, not dormant.
The MacAlister tartan
The claim repeated across the trade that the MacAlister tartan comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum does not hold up. MacAlister is not among the seventy-five plates of that 1842 book, and the sett is attested earlier: it is recorded in the Cockburn Collection of 1810–20 and was certified by the chief in the earlier nineteenth century, both of which precede the Vestiarium. A forty-four-band version also survives from about 1850 in the manuscript of William and Andrew Smith’s Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland. Two further setts are genuinely distinct: MacAlister of Glenbarr, registered on 1 January 1989 under Scottish Register of Tartans reference 2269, and MacAlister Dress, approved by the chief in 2005 and the official tartan of the MacAlister Clan Society of North America.
A note on honesty: beyond those, what is sold as MacAlister Modern, Ancient, Weathered, Muted or Reproduction is the clan sett in different dye shades — colourways, not separate tartans. The Cockburn Collection entry is early for a clan tartan but it is still the commercial era, and no MacAlister sett is attested before the nineteenth century. Sources differ on whether the chief’s certification was in 1816 or 1845, and neither is confirmed against a primary document. A sett listed as MacAlister of Skye is flagged as doubtful even by the databases that carry it and should not be sold as a clan tartan.
Clan facts
| Chief | William St John Somerville McAlester of Loup and Kennox, Chief of the Name and Arms of MacAlister, recognised by the Lord Lyon in 1991. Note the chief’s own spelling, McAlester |
|---|---|
| Gaelic patronymic | Mac Iain Duibh, from Eoin Dubh, from whom the MacAlisters of Loup claim descent |
| Motto | Fortiter — “Boldly”. A second motto, Per mare per terras — “By sea and by land” — is also recorded |
| Plant badge | Common heath. This rests on twentieth-century reference works rather than a Lyon Court record |
| Lands | Kintyre, Argyll, from the fifteenth century; later Kennox, Ayrshire. Clan centre at Glenbarr Abbey |