CLAN-HUNTER-L Archives

From: "John A Hansen" <>
Subject: [Clan HUNTER] FW: Court of the Lord Lyon
Date: Sun, 3 Feb 2002 15:03:25 -0800

Dear All:

There have been many questions on which
Clans are here on the message boards
and mailing lists.

Those questions are very much on point.

I would like to see more discussion on
each of these message boards and mailing
lists about the aspects of Clans and Septs.
We just need to make sure it stays friendly
and doesn't go political on us
( which in this case would be easy to do :-)
Certain Clans had some privileges as to their
rights under the reign of each King of Scotland.

There are some really outstanding web sites
on these questions since this is so important
in the social and political structure of
Britain as a whole and Scotland in
particular.

However, to make my position clear on all this.

The Clans listing as shown will stand.

There is lots of history posted in many sites that
claim all sides of the question of which is a proper
Clan or not and which are septs of their Clan etc.

The Scottish Clan DNA project was formed to also
assist in determing which families were part of
which Clan or Sept bloodlines. Remember that there
could actually be several unrelated families
in a particular Clan and each have their
own descendants. There is still discussion among
the Clan Robertson,Clan Duncan and Clan Donnachaidh.
The Clan MacDonald branches etc etc all have these
discussions.

However, there was also a great
deal of intermarriages in the Clan and thence
between Clans. So it really gets interesting
to sort out our genealogy lines. Was King Edward
the third, the one descendant of William Wallace?
Maybe some day we'll know the answer to that.

When Rootsweb staff and I were setting up the message
boards and mailing lists, we finally settled on using
the Great Hall of Clans from
http://www.tartans.com/hall.html
as the deciding line.
I had been using Robert Bains book :
Clans and Tartans of Scotland Revised edition 1971.
but we finally agreed on the Great Hall of Clans.
The Heraldry Society of Scotland has a reference
on their web site to both the Great Hall of Clans and to
Electric Scotland.

Also please remember that often there
are many members of the "Family" that do not subscribe
to the various relationships ( septs ) to a specific Clan
versus being a Clan in their own right.
( Clan Anderson comes to mind). I am not
going to get into technical discussions and debate with regard
to this separation or claim of the relationship or when is a
Family ( Lowlands) a Clan or not. Technically
the Clans were only strictly a Highlands Family with
certain characteristics. The Lord Lyon court was given this
responsibilities nearly 300 years ago of deciding whether or
not each Clan is really a Clan. But they have also declared
the a Chief is a Chief regardless of whether it is a Clan
or a Lowlands Family. They are now deciding some other
cases, now pending before the Lord Lyon court of
a related family ( sometimes called a sept) but with
their own arms. The original Chief had died with no
descendants but now the family members want to be reactivated
again as a Clan based on an original coat of arms being
validated etc.

There is the even bigger question:
Is there even a Clan today using standards of
300 years ago? The answer is yes, if you define the
Clan or family as being one with matriculated
Arms, etc. The historic Clan system
really disappeared in the late 1700's after Culloden. The
powerful families took over and the Clans as they previously
existed became nonexistent. So the Clans as we know
them today is really a social structure and not
the legal and admin structure as it was originally.

However, Remember this message board and mailing list is
mainly for other purposes as well. We are not trying to
decide when a Clan is a Clan etc. So the fact that
a particular Clan has a message board is here
is merely a way to let members of that Scottish Family
have a separate board and mailing list to
keep their own unique Family together and the
culture and history alive.

I was frankly more interested in setting up a Scottish
board that allowed even the Septs etc to each have a
message board and mailing list but that got to be too
much overlap with the surname boards.The surname
message boards and mailing lists ( the large ones)
tend to eliminate much of the items as being "off topic"
that I think are of key interest Certainly
these big boards bury the Scottish history so deep that
it's not significant in the threads on those boards
and mailing lists. Those messages are very hard to find
buried in the rest of the tracing of the
surname genealogy from the rest of the world.

So we won't get hung up in the somewhat legal and technical
question of whether this is a proper place for the
XXXX Clan or Family to post :-)

Some sites to look at if you are interested in
further investigation of this ancestry and
heraldry questions .


A: The General study of Titles and Arms is at:

http://www.heraldica.org/here.htm#topics

B: British Titles and Heraldry is at:
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/

There is something like 250 + pages of
information on this site. The precise order
of where you stand in the succession to the
throne is even defined here. There are in
fact, some members that are present on these
lists with titles. So for them, this is key
information and important for them.

C: The Home page for Scottish Heraldry is at:

http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/Homepage.htm

There is hundreds of pages off this site
including the link to the Great Hall of Clans
and Electric Scotland.


D: The current Lord Lyon is Robin Blair.

Here is the main home page:
http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/Lyoncourt.htm

And this one gives more background.

http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/lordlyon.htm

Some Case Law documents and examples of various
Clan disputes:
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/lyondocs.htm#Court

So it becomes an interesting time in the river of
history in Scotland. Now with it's own parliament
again after all these years, we will see what
impact this will have on scottish Clans and Family
and the strong sense of identification that all
Scots have with their bens and glens.

Please feel free to post to other sites
that would be of interest.

Best Regards
John A Hansen
Clan Board and List Admin

BTW: While this is being sent first to the
mailing list, I will also post to the
message boards, so it will be visible there
for new subscribers as well. Unfortunately,
due to the Gateway it will show up here again.
JAH

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• [Clan HUNTER] FW: Court of the Lord Lyon by "John A Hansen" <>