Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 31 on 16/02/2007.

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With a strong hand (Clan MacKay)

James Irvine Robertson reveals the history of the once powerful Clan MacKay

You were a Clan Chief who owed money. So what? The traditional way to deal with a dun was to welcome him, show him a gibbet, and say that the strawstuffed effigy swinging there was the last debt collector who had the temerity to ask for payment.

If that did not make him run away, then your clansmen would forcibly expel him and his escort from your territory.

But this admirable system went awry once the clansmen lost their weapons, and the Chief his influence over them. The MacKays once owned the north west corner of Scotland.

Now no longer. A foolish Chief, gambling, and owing money to the richest man in the Britain cost Clan MacKay its land – all of it.

But go there, to the north west of Scotland, and look in the local phone book, and you still will see columns of MacKays.

More so, perhaps, than anywhere else in the Highlands.

The descendants of the original aboriginal population still inhabit what has been their country since the dawn of history.

In Gaelic, MacKay does not mean ‘Son of Kay,’ but ‘Son of Aodh,’ a word that stops any English speaker in their tracks. It was frequently anglicised as Hugh, but, in the surname, the word is Son of Aodh, the Gaelic genitive. So it becomes ‘Mc Ooie’ as in Huey, Dewy and Louie. But the name is generally pronounced to rhyme with ‘McFly’ More significantly, it shows the family as claimants to the 12th century throne of Scotland through descent from the eldest son of Malcolm Canmore, who was disbarred from the throne for being a .....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish Clans

Page number : 56