Clan MacCallum and Malcolm

Clan MacCallum is an Argyll clan of the old province of Lorn. The name comes from the Gaelic Maol Chaluim, “devotee of Columba”. Its earliest documentary anchor is 1414, when Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochawe granted lands in Craignish and on Loch Avich to Ranald MacCallum of Corbarron, who was also made hereditary constable of Craignish Castle. The second anchor is May 1562, when Donald MacGillespie Vich O’Challum received a charter of the lands of Poltalloch from Duncan Campbell of Duntrune, making him in effect the first Laird of Poltalloch and establishing the chiefly line’s territory around Kilmartin in Mid Argyll.

The MacCallum and Malcolm relationship is often muddled, so it is worth stating plainly: the chiefly house did not become a different clan, it changed the form of its surname. In 1779 Dugald MacCallum, 9th of Poltalloch, succeeded, inherited Malcolm estates, and adopted the surname Malcolm; his successors kept it. The two names are treated as one clan. That said, the historian Ian Grimble questioned any blanket equation of the two, since Malcolm occurs independently as a surname in Dunbartonshire and Stirlingshire from the fourteenth century — so not every Malcolm is a MacCallum. The family bought Duntrune Castle, a former Campbell stronghold on Loch Crinan, in 1792, and it remains the chiefly residence. Robin Neill Lochnell Malcolm, 19th Laird of Poltalloch, died on 2 March 2024 and the succession was still being settled at the time of writing.

The MacCallum and Malcolm tartans

Setts are recorded under both names, and this matters when you order: a customer named MacCallum and a customer named Malcolm are not necessarily buying the same cloth. Under MacCallum the Register holds MacCallum and MacCallum of Berwick. Under Malcolm it holds Malcolm, Malcolm #2, Malcolm (1840) and several Dress variants.

The one firm documented provenance in the group is Malcolm (1840), which the Register attributes to Wilsons of Bannockburn — a commercial weaver’s pattern-book entry, which is the single most common true origin for tartans of that period. One of the Dress setts is explicitly a modern Lochcarron mill design of 2005.

A note on honesty: there is no recorded MacCallum or Malcolm Hunting sett, and no separate Ancient or Weathered design — those are colourways. No Malcolm or MacCallum sett is attributed to the Vestiarium Scoticum. And the tale of two branches meeting in a narrow glen and killing each other but for two men, giving rise to the nickname “the race of the sixty fools”, is clan legend rather than record.

Clan facts

References

1. MacCallum tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Malcolm tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
3. Clan Chief — Clan MacCallum-Malcolm Society of North America
4. Clan MacCallum — Electric Scotland