It seems that, back in the day, there was a bit of a ruckus about whether or not it was all right for some Cameron folk to just up and move onto someone else's land to live.
The Davidsons didn't think that was a neighborly thing for them to have done and wanted them to move themselves back on home.
Well, the Camerons liked it where they were and didn't want to go back home.
So the Davidsons, who were part of the Chattan Clan group, got together with some MacPhersons and some MacIntoshs to encourage them to hasten on their way but those Camerons weren't hastening anywhere in any great big hurry.
A squabble came up over which family, the Davidsons or the MacPhersons, would get the lead spot in the coming fray. The head Chattan Chief, a MacIntosh, had to decide and chose the Davidsons; the MacPhersons got their knickers in a knot and walked clean out of the fight, which took a good many Davidson lives on that day.
That evening, the MacIntosh Chattan Chief sent his bard to the MacPhersons, singing a very sad and mournful song about people who just turned their backs while their friends and families were getting slaughtered, including the Chief of the Davidsons and seven of his sons.
That song upset the MacPhersons so much that they up and, that very night, hied themselves to the Cameron camp and did some slaughtering of their own; it didn't bring back the dead but at least got them out of hot water with the Chattan, so it was all good.
Well, not so much for the dead guys, but at least they had been avenged.
Now the Davidson Chief's family was left with only a daughter who couldn't become Chief, and a little son who was too young - so the Davidsons had no leader (until that boy grew up) and hardly any warrior men left.
Skip ahead about a decade, which is where it gets interesting for me since I was looking up my Grandmother's MacGowan branch when I found this story.
The fighting between Chattan and Cameron just kept on keeping on until finally the King stepped in and said that's just about enough of THAT. I reckon he didn't much appreciate the fact that some of his best warriors were picking each other off right and left when he might want to call them to fight HIS fights.
So he tells them to each pick 30 champions to meet and fight it out once and for all in a trial by combat, right?
And of course they agree and it's all fine and dandy.
Except that one of the Chattan men got so sick that he couldn't fight.
Well now.
The Camerons flat refused to pick one of their men to sit it out, and the Chattan contingent flat refused to fight short-handed so there they sat.
Finally somebody hollered out to the spectators wanting to know if there was one among them who would fill the empty Chattan place.
One guy jumped over the retaining wall and said he'd do it if he could basically become one of the Chattan group if he survived, and they said sure okay.
Now this guy was a big brawny man, strong as all get-out seeing as he was a smith and fit as a fiddle.
They do say that he was among the first to draw Cameron blood on that day, and he WAS among the survivors of the Chattan who watched the lonely survivor of the Camerons run away to swim across the Tay to safety (or maybe to hide his face).
And from that day to this there have been MacGowans among the Chattan.
You see, the name MacGowan comes from Mac s'Ghobhann, just spelled more the way it sounds ... and ghobhann means 'smith' ... so the courage and audacity and confidence of that one man has carried his family on for all of this time.
I have no idea whether or not my grandmother's MacGowan family stems from that line or not, and it doesn't matter.
The story makes for a fine telling, and MAYBE there's a connection.
A famous writer told a version of this story long ago, namely one Sir Walter Scott.
More recently, another writer has shared the above story in the long version that has all the background and stuff, one Matthew Dawson who affiliates with the Davidsons in the States. He presents his story clearly, relatively concisely, and it's a good one that makes sense.
Just to put a clincher on this whole thing, it was while I was looking up another branch of the family, Day by name (on my grandfather's side), that the Davidson Clan (Clan Dhai) connection came up, and the MacPhersons, and the MacGowan name by association, which I recognized and thought hey that's kind of cool. So I looked it up.
And I take it back about that being the clincher. That's not the clincher.
It was in the lineage of that same grandmother that I found a clan connection with Cameron.
500 years it took for that peace to be made?
No, that's not the clincher, either.
The clincher is ... drum roll please ... before my sister poked me into looking back into our family tree, I started writing the books of They Are My Song and spent literally days on end looking up stuff about the Scottish Wildcat, totally fascinated by it and wanting to include it in my stories.
As part of that research of course there was reference to the cat that tops the Chattan arms in most if not all of its branches. Didn't think much of it, except for liking the heck out of it, as that part of Scotland wasn't part of my books, at least it wasn't yet then. But I did give Mamm a cat named Catan, a mighty big cat, who is tamed only by Mamm's magic.
To have become so fascinated by the Scottish Wildcat, and to have nodded and smiled at reading: Touch not the cat bot a glove ... I found and loved the cat long before I realized that there might be a remote possibility of a connection, let alone a double connection, however far removed.
THAT, my friend, is (for me) the clincher.
*laughing*
I spend about half of my time in the Albann of 487/8 AD, writing my books - so I find myself wondering: all this stuff, this story I found, which took place in 1396 ... is it in my past, or in my future?
Yeah, I'm strange that way.
Wait until you see my wonderment about the Yew Tree. I think I'd better post that one in my Mystic blog ...
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