CLUNY CASTLE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 291, 7 November 1934, Page 2

CLUNY CASTLE.

PRESERVATION FOR PEOPLE. “We are not trying to save Cluny Castle for tlie clan, but for Scotland generally,” stated Captain W. CheyneMacpherson of Cluny Macpherson, organiser of the Historical Cluny Castle Preservation Trust, to a “Standard” reporter during a visit to Palmerston North _in the course of a tour of the Dominion for this object'. “The priceless old documents contained in the Cluny Charter Chest relate to Scotland’s history,” he added, “and I would like to point out that the appeal is a national one, so far as people of Scottish, descent are concerned, and it is an attempt to save the relics,‘not for any particular clan, but for Scots as a whole, for among them are contained such as the banner borne at the Battle of Bannockburn, the two-handed broadsword used at the Battle of the North Inch in 1396, and immortalised by Scott in liis ‘Fair Maid of Perth,’ relics of Prince Charlie, and various documents of national interest dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries.”

Of the twenty-three chiefs of Clan Mncpherson in tail male from the time of Gillichattan (in the time of Malcolm Canmore), those of the last three centuries at least have occupied the present Cluny Castle or its two predecessors ; and, when need has arisen, each of those chiefs has unhesitatingly placed his clan, his sword and all that he possessed at the service of Badenoch and of Scotland and of the cause which he considered most liely to uphold the welfare of the Scottish nation, _ said Captain Macpherson. The Clmtti, as they were originally called (Tacitus refers to the ‘Catti of Gaul’) were a very warlike tribe, who, moving across Europe, settled for some time in Germany. Here tlie.v proved so troublesome that the Germans implored the help of Tiberius Caesar and they were driven out of Germany, and eventually, in A.D. 76, landed in Scotland in the north-east corner, which was thereafter called Chatti’s—Ness (to-day Caithness) In A.D. 945 the chief of this clan—now called Clan Chattan — was Gillichattan Mnr (i.e. ‘the great’) and he married a suffer of Brudns, the king of the Piets. It was from this chief’s great-grandson, Mnriaoh or Murdoch, that the surname Macpherson first came into use.

Muriaeh was the Prior of Kingusse, and as in tlie ancient Culdee Church, instituted by St. Colomba in the sixth century, the clergy were not debarred from marriage, lie married the daughter of tlie Thane (Earl) of Cawdor, and his son Ewen Ba'an was first called “Mac Pherson.” or “the son of the Parson,” and the clan then became the Clan Macpherson. Muriaeh, “the Parson.” was directly descended from an ancient royal Celtic line, “compared with which,” writes Andrew Lang, the Scottish historian, “the Stewarts are parvenus and interlopers. Gruacli (the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare) had a son, Lulacli, a ward of her second husband, Macbeth,” and it was from this Lulach that the Macpliersons of Cluny are descended, so that Cluny Macpherson, the chief, “by right of the ancient hereditary laws of Scotland” (again quoting another Scottish writer, . Grant Francis) “would have been tlie legitimate king of the Northern Kingdom had those laws still existed.”

The clan was originally settled in Lochaber: but later on the ninth chief, Duncan, was given grants of land in Badenoch bv King Robert the Bruce for his services in helping to exterminate the Comyns, for which special mission a dagger was added to the armorial- bearings. From then on the Macpliersons have always been loyal supporters of the House of Stuart. HEAVY DEATH DUTIES.

Captain Macpherson said that when the late chief died tlie death duties were too heavy to be met and an effort was made to dispose of the Cluny Castle property by auction. It was put up in three lots, but failed to realise a bid. Iu order to prevent the property ultimately falling into the hands of a foreigner, he consulted the judicial factor, who occupies the position of a liquidator, and suggested that possibly arrangements might be made to secure the castle and 11,000 acres of the property for all time to the Scottish people. The reserve placed by the banks on this area was £23.000, • hut the judicial factor consented to an arrangement whereby if £15,000 wore raised in twelve montiis the property would be transferred to a trust to hold for the benefit of the Scots. With this object in view, Captain Macpherson set out to make an appeal to Scotsmen the world over. It may be noted that the Cluny Castle which was recently destroyed by fire in Scotland was Cluny Gordon, in Aberdeenshire, the ancestral borne of the Dukes of Gordon, and not Cluny Macpherson.