ioo HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



Atholl, with their children, were released, and the pre- 

 parations at Court for an expedition, apparently to the 

 Hebrides, were stopped. The Sleat seanachie notices this 

 report, which was current in the country, and stigmatises 

 it as a falsehood. The probabilities are that the temper 

 of Angus, at all times uncertain, became ungovernable in 

 later years, and from this circumstance arose the story of 

 his madness. 



It is impossible to give a chronological sequence of 

 events in connexion with the career of Angus Og. The 

 facts are so obscure that Highland historians have been 

 obliged to resort to conjecture. The raid of Atholl may 

 or may not have taken place after the battle of the Bloody 

 Bay, but it appears likely that it succeeded that event 

 which seems to have occurred somewhere about 1481.* 

 It is probable, too, that the murder of Angus took place 

 not later than 1485. It is fairly certain that he was 

 dead before 1491, for in that year, Alexander of Lochalsh, 

 son and successor of Celestine, an illegitimate son of 

 Alexander Lord of the Isles, assumed, apparently with 

 the consent of his uncle John, the title of Earl of Ross 

 and Lord of the Isles : a claim which would hardly 

 have been made, or, if made, sustained by the Hebrideans 

 had Angus Og been alive. The insurrection of Alexander 

 was short-lived. Assisted by the Clan Chattan, he took 

 the Castle of Inverness, plundered the lands of Sir 

 Alexander Urquhart, Sheriff of Cromarty, and returning 

 to the west with a division of his army, ravaged the 

 lands of Kenneth Mackenzie of Kintail, with whom 

 Alexander had a private feud. Alexander, who was 

 assisted by the Clan Ranald and the Camerons, was 

 totally routed by the Mackenzies at the battle of 

 Blar-na-Pairc, and he himself was taken prisoner. This 

 reverse temporarily put an end to his aspirations, and 

 may have contributed to the final forfeiture of John of the 



t Scottish historians imply that the raid took place immediately after the 

 subjugation of Inverness-shire, but the Sleat seanachie states that it occurred 

 after Bloody Bay. 



