Clan Davidson

Clan Davidson, in Gaelic Clann Dhaibhidh and also recorded as Clann Dhai, takes its name from a David, though which David is unsettled. One account makes the founder a son of Gilliecattan Mòr, an early chief of Clan Chattan; a second David Dow, younger son of Muriach, parson of Kingussie; a third David Dubh of the Comyns. The accounts agree on the place and the arrangement. The Davidsons were of Badenoch, in the upper Spey between the Cairngorms and the Monadhliath, and in the fourteenth century came under the protection of Clan Chattan as Comyn power in the district collapsed. The chiefly family afterwards moved north, settling at Davidston in the Black Isle in the fifteenth century, and in 1763 bought Tulloch Castle near Dingwall, which became the chiefs’ seat.

The clan’s best-known battle is also its least documented. At Invernahavon, where the Truim meets the Spey, a Cameron force of some four hundred men returning from a raid on Badenoch was intercepted by Clan Chattan under Lachlan Mackintosh, eighth chief, with Macphersons and Davidsons in company. Both claimed the right wing; Mackintosh gave it to the Davidsons; the Macphersons withdrew; the Camerons broke the Davidsons; and the Macphersons, stung at being called cowards, came back in and turned the day. The date is given as 1386 in most clan books and as 1370 in the Mackintosh manuscript from which the story descends, and that manuscript is late. Lachlan Shaw in 1827 names the Cameron commander as Charles Macgilony; Alexander Mackintosh-Shaw in 1880 and local tradition have the Cameron chief leading in person. No casualty figures survive. The chiefship was interrupted too: Duncan VI of Tulloch died in 1917 and it lay dormant for close on eighty years, until Duncan Hector Davidson was recognised by the Court of the Lord Lyon as 1st of Davidston in June 1996. He died in February 1998, and Alister Guthrie Davidson, 2nd of Davidston, died in Auckland on 26 December 2014.

The Davidson tartan

The Scottish Register of Tartans returns seven entries under the name and puts a designer to only two. The plain Davidson sett is recorded with designer unknown and no date. Davidson of Tulloch, Davidson of Tulloch #2 and Davidson of Tulloch Dress carry no designer and no date either. Davidson, Double is credited to Wilsons of Bannockburn, the Stirlingshire firm whose pattern books supplied most of the tartan trade, and Davidson, Half is again unknown. The other named entry is a personal wedding tartan recorded for Donald Fraser.

One negative finding is worth recording. Unlike Chisholm, Mackay and many other names, no Davidson sett in the Register is attributed to the Sobieski Stewarts, so the clan is free of the Vestiarium Scoticum, the 1842 book of clan setts passed off as a fifteenth-century manuscript and now accepted as a forgery. A small mercy, not a claim to antiquity.

A note on honesty: the most candid account of the Davidson tartan comes from the Clan Davidson Society of North America, which states on its own tartan page that virtually all setts in use today were invented after about 1830 by Scottish weavers meeting the Victorian appetite for Highland dress, and that there is no official Clan Davidson Society tartan. The Register bears that out. It names no designer and no date for the principal Davidson sett or the three Tulloch setts, and the one named historical source is a commercial weaving business. Davidson Ancient and Davidson Modern are not two tartans: the Register defines a tartan by its threadcount, which it calls the DNA of a tartan, and holds no record under either name. They are one threadcount in older-looking or standard dye shades. Nothing here goes back to Badenoch or Invernahavon.

Clan facts

References

1. Davidson tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Clan Davidson — Clan Chattan Association
3. Our Tartan — Clan Davidson Society of North America