274 



CLAM 



CLAN 



clairvoyance of the professional entertainer is 

 easily effected with the assistance of a code of 

 signals and a good memory ; generally the subject 

 is blindfolded on the stage, while a confederate 

 passing among the audience holds up the objects 

 offered to him, and requires them to be named. 



Clam is the common name for bivalves of the 

 genus Chama (q.v.) and some other allied genera. 

 The common clam, or soft clam of northern waters, 

 is the Mya arenaria, or Chama arenaria ; it is 

 found especially in gravelly mud, sand, and other 

 soft bottoms, especially between high and low 

 water mark. They are largely used for bait, and 

 in New England are a rmich relished article of food. 

 Some kinds of clams rival oysters in popularity in 

 New York. The hard clam, or Quahaug, is the 

 Venus mercenaria. The Giant Clam, the Tridacna 

 Gigas, found in East Indian waters, in lagoons, 

 and on coral islands, is of enormous size, the 

 animal ( which is edible ) without the shell weigh- 

 ing 20 lb., while with the shell it may weigh 

 500 lb. The shells are used as ornaments for 

 grottoes and fountains, and as benitiers in Catholic 

 churches. The BEAR'S PAW CLAM is the Hippo- 

 pits maculatus, a bivalve mollusc of the Indian 

 Ocean, of the family Tridacnidse. The shell is 

 one of the most beautiful of bivalves, alike in 

 form, texture, and colour. It is a favourite shell 

 for ornamental purposes. The margins of the 

 valves are locked together by closely fitting teeth. 

 It is 6 by 10 inches in length, broad in proportion, 

 and transversed by ribs which are roughened 

 by scale-like inequalities. The general colour is 

 white, but there are beautiful spots of purplish-red. 



Clan ( Gael, clann, Manx cloan, meaning ' chil- 

 dren,' i.e. descendants of a common ancestor). This 

 word became incorporated with the English lan- 

 guage at least as early as the 17th century, to 

 mean a body of men confederated together by 

 common ancestry or any other tie, and in this 

 sense it is used both by Milton and Dryden. It 

 came to be applied almost exclusively to the 

 several communities of the Scottish Highlanders, 

 as divided from each other topographically and by 

 distinctive surnames. The word has sometimes 

 been applied to those great Irish septs which at one 

 time were a sort of separate states ; but these, with 

 their characteristic forms of internal government, 

 were completely broken down by the power of the 

 English predominance, before the word came into 

 familiar use in the English language. In Scotland 

 it was used in the 16th century to designate the 

 freebooters of the Border as well as the Celtic tribes 

 of the Highlands ; and there were two character- 

 istics common to both their predatory habits, and 

 their distribution into communities. The assump- 

 tion of a common surname was general, but by no 

 means universal. Men of the most various origin 

 were in the habit of enlisting under chiefs as men 

 now enlist in a regiment. Very often they took 

 the chief's name, but very often they did not. It 

 was essentially a military organisation for defensive 

 and predatory purposes ; and the adoption of a 

 common name became a mere survival which kept 

 up the idea and theory of patriarchal times long 

 after the old tribal system had in all its essentials 

 disappeared. In the Act of the Scottish parliament 

 of 1587, for instance, which requires landlords to 

 find security for the conduct of their tenants, it is 

 provided that those ' who have their lands lying in 

 far highlands or borders, they making residence 

 themselves in the inlands, and their tenants and 

 inhabitants of their lands being of clans, or 

 dependars on chieftains or the captains of the clans, 

 whom the landlords are noways able to command, 

 but only get their mails ( or rents ) of them, and no 

 other service or obedience, shall noways be subject 



to this act but in manner following.' Then follow 

 provisions for enforcing the law directly on the 

 chieftains or captains of those clans residing in 

 territories where the owner of the soil generally 

 the merely nominal owner, in terms of some useless 

 charter had no control. It was always the policy 

 of the old law of Scotland to require all the High- 

 land clans to have some respectable representative 

 a man of rank and substance, if possible who 

 should be security at court for their good conduct. 

 Clans that could find no security were called 

 ' broken clans,' and their members were outlaws, 

 who might be hunted down like wild beasts. The 

 Macgregors were a celebrated broken clan, whom 

 the law pursued for centuries with savage ingenuity. 

 Among other inflictions their name was proscribed, 

 and such members of the clan as endeavoured to 

 live by peaceful industry in the Lowlands adopted 

 derivations from it ; hence we have the names of 

 Gregor, Gregory, and Gregorson or Grierson. 



The clans are never treated in the old Scots acts 

 with any respect, or otherwise than as nests of thieves 

 and cut-throats. The following passage in the Act 

 of 1581 (chap. 112), which virtually authorises any 

 Lowlander, injured by any member of a clan, to 

 take vengeance against all or any of his clansmen, 

 contains a picturesque and striking account by men 

 who knew and had suffered from the system of the 

 Highland clans in the 16th century. 'The saids 

 clans of thieves for the most part are companies of 

 wicked men, coupled in wickedness by occasion of 

 their surnames or near dwellings together, or 

 through keeping society in theft or receipt of theft, 

 not subjected to the ordinar course of justice, nor 

 to ony ane landlord that will make them answer- 

 able to the laws, but commonly dwelling on sundry 

 men's lands against the good-will of their landlords, 

 wherethrough true men oppressed by them can 

 have no remeid at the hands of their masters, but 

 for their defence are oftentimes constrained to seek 

 redress of their skaiths of the hail clan, or such of 

 them as they happen to apprehend. Likewise the 

 hail clan commonly bears feud for the hurt received 

 by any member thereof, whether by execution of 

 laws, or order of justice, or otherwise.' The High- 

 land clans are often spoken of as a feudal institu- 

 tion, and it is undoubtedly true that ' broken men ' 

 were settled upon lands in possession of the chiefs 

 on conditions of military service, just as under the 

 more perfected system of Norman feudalism. The 

 men receiving admission into 'rooms,' or small 

 barns, were in the habit of binding themselves to 

 such service by what was called ' Bonds of Man- 

 rent,' under which they engaged to follow their 

 chief in all his feuds and quarrels. But, on the 

 other hand, chiefship might become, and did often 

 become, dissociated from the legal ownership of 

 land, and in such cases the people of the clan were 

 apt to follow their chief, against the will of their 

 landlords. This was the survival of a far more 

 remote system which constituted the great danger 

 and great corruption of the clans. It dissociated 

 the military power of chiefship from the responsi- 

 bilities of property, and from subordination to 

 settled law. This was the evil struck at and 

 denounced by the parliament of Scotland in 

 repeated statutes. In general the great land- 

 owners were also great chiefs, and the two powers 

 then worked in harmony, and on the whole in the 

 interests of civilisation under very rude conditions 

 of society. But the severance arose not unfre- 

 quently from the more definite laws and rules 

 applicable to the legal descent of landed property. 

 Thus it came about, as the acts above quoted 

 explain, that the head of a clan and the owner, 

 according to feudal law, of the estates occupied by 

 it, were two different persons. Clans did not 

 acknowledge the purely feudal hereditary principle. 



