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Subject: [Scotch-Irish] Lowland Clans
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 01:52:25 EST

The last I heard the Lord Lyon King of Arms was the register of Scottish
Clans and not Edward Andrews.

Edward's problem is that he transmits as a historian but receives as a
Presbyterian minister. His receiving instruments aren't tuned in to an
informed spectrum of other stations.

These lowland Scots removed to Ulster. The historic family associations
remained and the family members honored and acknowledged persons of the same
family name even if not of the immediate family group. They were not clans
in Ireland, but there were clannish families whose ties lasted though the
Ulster experience and on to North America.

So the lowland clans had a different social structure than highland clans.
That well may be a factual distinction, but it is not an exclusive or the
sole discriminating matter in determining if an organization can be
considered a clan. In my opinion, Highland and Lowland clans were
brotherhoods of bandits and thieves. I think that can be proven beyond a
doubt.

What is important is how these groups were perceived by their peers. Prior
to the unification of Parliaments the Scottish Parliament recognized lowland
clans. In Vol. II of Hanna's THE SCOTCH-IRISH pp. 438 and 439 there are
listings of Border and Lowland Clans for 1547, 1587, 1590, and 1597.

I have a Canadian friend Archie Jardine who whould be terribly upset to hear
that the Jardines were not a clan. He is a native born Scot and he has
always considered himself a clansman. He is the only man I personally know
who can sing the most lovely songs that one can hear in Gaelic although he
requires numerous primings of Glenfidich to stimulate his voice box.

In Berwick one finds - Hume, Renton, Lumsden, Affleck, Sleich, Lyle, Craw,
Swinton, Sinclair, Cockburn, Ellam, Redpath, Ker, Ramsay, Edgar, Brown,
Crosby, Bromfield, Haitlie, Dickson, Duns, Pringle, Baille, Trotter, and
Purves.

In Annandale (Dumfriesshire, principally) -- Johnstone, Jardine, Carruthers,
French, Hewitt, Dunwoodie, Maxwell, Murray, Irving, Stewart, Carlyle, Purdon,
Glendenning, Glencors, Graham, Wauchope and Lindsay.

There are similar lists for Roxburgh and Selkirk, Peebles, and Dumfries.

If these families are recognized as clans in the 16th century by their
contemporaries a later sociological distinction as to the family organization
doesn't mitigate the fact that they were called clans by their peers.

jcmaclay

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