MacPhail Tartan

Clan MacPhail

The MacPhails of Strathnairn were a named constituent family of the Clan Chattan confederation rather than a sept absorbed into another name: the bonds of the confederation list them as a party in their own right, under heads designated of Kinchyle and of Inverarnie. Gillemore M’Phale sat on the inquest into the succession of Donald, Thane of Cawdor, to Dunmaglass in 1414, and Donald MacPhail witnessed an agreement between Mackintosh and Rose of Kilravock in 1490. Angus Macphail of Kinchyle was a party to the Clan Chattan bond at Termet on 4 April 1609.

The family leased Tullich and Elrig in the 1540s — sources give 1546 and 1547 — and Inverarnie from Rose of Kilravock in 1631, holding it until 1773. The traditional descent from Paul Cattanach of Lochaber, and a move east after the marriage of Eva of Clan Chattan to Angus, 6th of Mackintosh, about 1291, are tradition rather than record. MacPhails elsewhere in Scotland attached themselves to Cameron, Mackay and Argyll interests, which is why the name is also listed as a sept of those clans. The clan is armigerous: the last chief, Paul MacPhail, died in Australia without an heir in the first years of the twentieth century, sources giving 1904 and 1906. In September 2022 the Clan Phail Society announced that it would convene a Family Convention to choose a Commander, on the Lord Lyon’s advice; whether that convention has met is not recorded.

The MacPhail tartan

Four MacPhail threadcounts are recorded, and they are genuinely different designs rather than shades of one. They are a MacPhail sett taken from a cloth sample in the MacGregor-Hastie collection and dated to roughly 1930 to 1950; a MacPhail with blue bands, also sold as MacPhail Red, from the Dalgety collection; and two Hunting patterns, the second of them associated with the Clans Originaux of 1880.

The documentation is less tidy than retail listings suggest. The dating of the Hunting setts conflicts between sources, one placing the first at 1880 and another between 1930 and 1950, and the record of the second Hunting pattern simultaneously credits it to an 1880 collection and describes it as a modern interpretation woven by Johnstons of Elgin. Those two statements cannot both be correct, and the origin should be treated as unresolved.

A note on honesty: MacPhail Ancient and similar names are colourways of the setts above, not additional tartans. No MacPhail pattern comes from Wilsons of Bannockburn or the Vestiarium Scoticum, and none predates the commercial era; the earliest surviving cloth is late nineteenth century at the very earliest, and probably twentieth.

Clan facts

References

1. MacPhail tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. History — Clan MacPhail
3. MacPhail Tartan — Clan MacPhail
4. Clan MacPhail — The Clan Chattan Association