Wherever authentic records of tartans are preserved this design appears, generally as Mac Intyre and Glenorchy, though occasionally as Glenorchy alone. It seems to have partaken of the nature of a district tartan, for the locality whence the title is taken was only partly occupied by the Mac Intyres, who appear never to have attained the strength of a clan. No Mac Intyre arms are matriculated in the Lyon Register. They are found, however, in Burke’s General Armoury, and the individual contributing them evidently regarded his family as a sept of the Mac Donalds. The pattern in the illustration occurs in the collection of the Highland Society of London (1822), and in reproductions made in Edinburgh about 1820 from examples of ancient designs procured in the Highlands near that time. In a collection formed in 1790 there is a scheme differing very slightly from the present illustration. Of the antiquity of the name Mac Intyre in Lorn evidence is furnished by the traditions of a family who “possessed the farm of Glenoe, in Nether Lorn, from about the year 1300 down to 1810. They were originally foresters of Stewart, Lord Lorn, and were continued in their possession and employment after the succession of the Glenorchy and Breadalbane families to this estate, by a marriage with a co-heiress of the last Lord Lorn of the Stewart family in the year 1435” (Stewart’s Highlanders, third edition, Vol. I. p. 82). General Stewart, writing in 1822, observes: “In like manner the Athole, Glenorchy, and other colours of different districts were easily distinguishable.” Doubtless this statement refers to the example here given, because it is shown in all collections of importance gathered at that date, when what is now commonly known as the Mac Intyre appears to have been non-existent.
XIX. MACINTYRE AND GLENORCHY
MAC LACHLAN.
The accompanying tartan is one of two ancient designs bearing the same name. It figures in all the collections formed in the early years of the century, and an excellent example (the precise date of which, however, is unknown) has been procured from Messrs Romanes & Paterson. The other design, to be found in a collection made in 1790, is shown in an ancient piece of hard tartan with a simple check in red and green about five-eighths of an inch square in the Editor’s possession. In the Vestiarium Scoticum the Mac Lachlan is depicted as a brilliant combination of yellow and black, being the sett in use by the present Mac Lachlan of Mac Lachlan. The clan generally use a red and dark blue design, which cannot be traced further back than 1850 to the Smiths’ and Smibert’s works. The existence of the tartan illustrated appears to have been generally overlooked by the clan, a fact greatly to be regretted, as it is one of the finest of the old clan setts. That the illustration represents an early and authentic clan pattern of the Mac Lachlan cannot be doubted, for it is the only example occurring under that name in the collections of the Highland Society, the Campbells of Craignish, The Mackintosh of Mackintosh, and many others. Several members of a minor sept of the Mac Lachlans, followers of the Stewarts of Appin, were slain in the campaign of 1745-46 while fighting in the Appin Regiment. (See note under Stewart of Appin.)
XX. MAC LACHLAN