Clan MacDonnell of Glengarry

Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, in Gaelic Clann Dòmhnaill Ghlinne Garaidh, is a branch of Clan Donald rather than a separate clan, and the spelling with a final -ell or -ll marks the branch off from the MacDonalds proper. The line descends from Ranald, son of John, Lord of the Isles, by Amie MacRuari; Ranald’s son Donald was 2nd of Glengarry. The name comes from the River Garry, which runs through Loch Garry to the Great Glen, and the lands lay in Lochaber and Wester Ross. James V granted Strome Castle in 1539, but a long feud with Clan Mackenzie over the Wester Ross ground ended with Strome besieged and blown up with gunpowder in 1602, after which Invergarry Castle became the principal seat.

The Glengarry men were out in every Jacobite attempt: Killiecrankie in 1689 under Viscount Dundee, and Sheriffmuir in 1715 under Alasdair Dubh, the 11th chief. In 1745 the 12th chief stayed at home while his son Aeneas raised the regiment; after Aeneas was killed, Donald MacDonnell of Lochgarry led roughly 530 men at Culloden in April 1746, the largest single regiment in the Jacobite army. Charles Edward Stuart sheltered at Invergarry, and government troops burned it. The clan’s end as a landed body was the work of its own chief. Alasdair Ranaldson MacDonell, 15th of Glengarry (1773–1828), sat for Raeburn in 1812 in full Highland dress and founded the Society of True Highlanders in June 1815, having decided the Celtic Society of Edinburgh admitted too many Lowlanders. He also felled his timber for sale, leased the cleared ground to sheep farmers, and drove his tenants off by eviction and rising rent. When the Glengarry Fencibles were disbanded in 1802 he failed to honour his promise of land to the men, and their chaplain Father Alexander Macdonell led them to British North America instead, where Glengarry County in Ontario is named for them. Scott used his manner for Fergus Mac-Ivor in Waverley. He died at Corran on Loch Linnhe on 17 January 1828; his son sold the estates in 1840.

The MacDonnell tartan

A search of the Scottish Register of Tartans for MacDonell returns ten records, divided between two branches. Four are numbered setts named MacDonell of Glengarry, with a MacDonell of Glengarry Dress alongside them; the other five belong to MacDonell of Keppoch, and one of those is logged not as a design but as an artefact.

Only one of the ten carries a named source. MacDonell of Glengarry #3 is recorded as a pattern of Wilsons of Bannockburn, the Stirlingshire firm whose pattern books supplied the tartan trade from the late eighteenth century. Its notes connect it to the MacDonald of Clanranald plate in the Vestiarium Scoticum and to a version recorded by Smith. The other Glengarry entries are registered without designer or date.

A note on honesty: the trail here is short and points in an awkward direction. The best-sourced Glengarry sett is a Wilsons weaving-trade pattern from the decades after the 1745 rising, and its notes lean on the Vestiarium Scoticum, published in 1842 by the brothers who called themselves John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart. That book was denounced as a forgery almost at once. Scott disputed it in 1829, nobody but the brothers ever saw the manuscript they claimed to copy, and in 1895 the chemist Stevenson Macadam found their 1721 transcript had been chemically treated to age the writing. Ancient and Weathered are not further tartans either; they are the same threadcount dyed lighter or muted, and the Register holds no separate entry for them. One irony is worth stating plainly: the chief who did most to publicise Highland dress under this name, and who gave the Glengarry bonnet its name, was the chief who cleared his own people off the glen.

Clan facts

References

1. MacDonell tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. The Chief of Glengarry — The High Council of Clan Donald
3. Clan MacDonell of Glengarry