60 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



genuine, accurate. But this charter, on the face of it, is 

 either spurious, or the date is wrong ; and in either case is 

 valueless, as proof of the antiquity of the Macleods. It 

 purports to be a document conveying certain lands from 

 " Donald King of the Isles " to John Bisset of the Aird, 

 and signed at Donald's " Castle of Dingwall." In the 

 year 1245, there was no such person as Donald King of 

 the Isles who had a castle at Dingwall, for this description 

 cannot apply to the grandson of Somerled. If Donald of 

 Harlaw is meant, then the charter is pre-dated more than 

 a century and a half. All the evidence points to the con- 

 clusion that the progenitor of the Macleods lived about 

 the middle of the thirteenth century ; a view which was 

 held by Macfarlane, the genealogist.* 



It would be rash to assume that the Macleods are the 

 oldest clan indigenous to Lewis. On the contrary, John 

 Morison of Bragar states that the three oldest families 

 were the Morisons, the Macaulays, and the Macnicols or 

 Nicolsons. To the Morisons he gives a Norse descent 

 their founder Mores (Maurice), according to him, being the 

 son of Kennan, natural son of a king of Norway. The 

 Macaulays, he says, were descended from an Irishman, 

 Iskair (Issachar or Zachary)t Macaulay. The Macnicols, 

 he affirms, were slaughtered by Torquil, son of Leod, after 

 he had violently espoused the only daughter of their chief; 

 and by these means he came into possession of the whole of 

 Lewis, with the Earl of Ross as his Superior. That Torquil 

 did not inherit the whole of the island appears to be 

 probable, for according to another tradition, his grandson, 

 also named Torquil, acquired sole possession by running 

 down in the Minch the birling of the chief of the 

 Macnaughtons, who was drowned, and whose lands in 

 Lewis Torquil thereupon seized. This tradition states 

 that the Macnaughtons were in Lewis three centuries 



* Contemporary with Shaw, fourth of his name, who died in 1265, were 

 Gillean and Leod, progenitors of the Macleans and Macleods (Scott. Hist. 

 Soc., Vol. XXXIII., p. 164). 



t The name Zachary is rendered in Gaelic as " Issachari." ' Irskar' is 

 Icelandic for "Irish." 





