MacColl Tartan

Clan MacColl

MacColl is Gaelic MacColla, son of Coll. The descent is traditional rather than documented, and the traditions disagree with each other. A published history of Clan Stewart of Appin derives the MacColls from Black Solomon, son of Coll, son of the Lord of the Isles, without specifying which Lord; a tradition collected from Donald MacColl, foxhunter of Glencreran, by Alexander Carmichael in August 1883 traces them instead to the MacDonalds of Skye. Accounts that take the line back to a fourth-century Irish king are legendary genealogy, not record. We should be straightforward about the rest: we could find no MacColl record earlier than the modern period, and the thirteenth-century dates circulated elsewhere have nothing behind them that we could verify. The oft-repeated battle with the MacPhersons in 1602 is likewise uncited wherever it appears.

What is documented is Appin. The MacColls were one of the follower families of the Stewarts of Appin, described as having lived in Lorn before the Stewarts gained the lordship — so a pre-existing kindred that became Appin adherents, not Stewart cadets. They mustered with the Appin Regiment in the rising of 1745, and the regiment went into Culloden about three hundred strong and came out with ninety-two killed and sixty-five wounded. The MacColl share of those casualties is reported as roughly a fifth, though the figures in circulation conflict and we could not verify the breakdown. MacColl lands were on Lochfyneside in Argyll and around Appin, Lismore, Glencoe and Glencreran. Evan MacColl (1808–1898), the Loch Fyne bard, was born at the Clachan of Kenmore on Lochfyneside, published Clàrsach nam Beann in 1838, emigrated to Canada in 1850 and became a charter member of the Royal Society of Canada in 1882. The Clan MacColl Society, Comunn Chloinn Cholla, was formed in 1931 out of a history and genealogy committee founded by Hugh Geoffrey MacColl; its surviving records run to 1974. MacColl has no chief recognised by the Lord Lyon, and no Commander has been appointed.

The MacColl tartan

Five MacColl entries are registered — MacColl, MacColl #2, MacColl #3, MacColl Ancient and MacColl Hunting — but they resolve into two setts. The first and smallest is a red, blue and green pattern carrying a design date of 1819, which is the year of the Wilsons of Bannockburn key pattern book. The trade record is blunter still: the pattern was produced by Wilsons in 1797 under the name Bruce. In other words the MacColl name was attached later to an existing Wilsons trade pattern, which was perfectly ordinary practice in the nineteenth-century tartan trade. MacColl #3 is the same architecture at double scale with the colours reassigned, which makes it a colourway rather than a new tartan.

The second sett is the large red-ground design with wide blue and green blocks, dated 1950 and traced to an unmarked sample in the MacGregor-Hastie collection. MacColl Hunting and MacColl Ancient are that same architecture with different colours and proportions. No designer is recorded for any MacColl sett, and none comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum.

A note on honesty: five register entries are not five tartans. Ancient, Modern, Weathered, Muted and Hunting MacColl are colourways, and no MacColl sett predates the commercial era — the older of the two began life as a Wilsons pattern under somebody else’s name. Because MacColl has no chief it has no undifferenced arms, so no motto and no plant badge are recorded for the name: the motto Per mare per terras, which several sites print, belongs to Clan Donald, and the heather sometimes given as the MacColl badge is Clan Donald’s too, offered on the strength of the traditional descent. Nothing records what MacColls actually wore before the nineteenth century; as an Appin follower family they are commonly offered the Stewart of Appin sett as well, and that is a reasonable choice rather than a documented one. Alasdair Mac Colla, “Colkitto”, was a MacDonald of Colonsay and is not this family’s to claim.

Clan facts

References

1. MacColl tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Clan Stewart of Appin — adherents and the Appin Regiment at Culloden
3. MacColl, Evan — Dictionary of Canadian Biography
4. MacColl papers, GB3218/L/D73 — Highland Archive Centre