" ['Celtic
Scotland,' Vol. III., p. 364.]
The final decision to which Dr Skene comes in his great work is
that the clans, properly so called, were of native origin, and that
the surnames adopted by them were partly of native and partly of
foreign descent. Among these native Highland clans he unhesitatingly
classes the Mackenzies, the clan Gillie-Andres or Rosses, and the
Mathesons, all of whom belong, he says, to the tribe of Ross. In
his first work on the Highlands and Highland Clans he draws the
general deduction, based on all our existing MS. genealogies, that
the clans were divided into several great tribes, descended from
a common ancestor, but he at the same time makes a marked distinction
between the different tribes which, by indications traceable in
each, can be identified with the earldoms or maormorships into
which the North of Scotland was originally divided. By the aid
of the old genealogies he divides the clans into five different
tribes in the following order:- (1) The descendants of Conn of the
Hundred Battles; (2) of Ferchar Fata Mac Feradaig; (3) of Cormaig
Mac Obertaig; (4) of Fergus Leith Dearg; and (5) of Krycul. In
the third of these divisions he includes the old Earls of Ross,
the Mackenzies, the Mathesons, and several other clans, and to this
classification he adheres, after the most mature consideration,
in his later and greater work, the 'History of Celtic Scotland.
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