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Collins Scottish Clan & Family Encyclopedia
by George Way of Plean & Romilly Square
Collins Scottish Clan & Family Encyclopedia (Glawcow, Scotland, HarperCollins Publishers, 1994).
ISBN 0-00-470547-5
Macfie, page 421
IIn modern Gaelic this name is written as ‘Maca’phi’. It is usually rendered in English, Macfie or Macphee or Macafie. The name appears to be derived from ‘MacDhuibhshith,’ meaning ‘son of the dark fairy.’ The origin of this name has been lost in the mists of time. In many countries the remnants of the original bearers of the name have been conferred with mystic powers. Tradition asserts that the Macfies are descended from a seal-woman who had been prevented from returning to the sea. In 1164 Duibhshith was known to have been ‘ferleighinn,’ or ‘reader,’ at Iona when Malcolm IV was king. The Macphees of Colonsay were the hereditary keepers of the records of Man and the Isles. There is little or no trace of these records, which may have been kept at Tynwald, still the seat of the Manx Parliament. One charter which does exist is evidence of the fact that the Lords of the Isles did conduct their business in the ancient Celtic tongue as well as in clerical Latin. There is a tradition that one of the chiefs of Colonsay fought and overcame Sir Gile de Argentine at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. He would probably have come to the battle with the Lord of the Isles. The Macphees continued to be loyal to the Macdonalds even after the Hebrides were ceded to Scotland in 1494 by the king of Denmark on the marriage of his daughter, Princess Margaret, to James III. This established the legal claim of the Scots Crown to control of the island kingdoms, a policy which was to be ruthlessly enforced by James IV. In 1615 Malcolm Macphee of Colonsay joined Sir James Macdonald, chief of the Macdonalds, in the southern islands in his rebellion against the Earl of Argyll. Macphee and eighteen other leading conspirators were betrayed to the Campbells and were forced to sign the Statutes of Iona, abandoning the ancient Lordship of the Isles. (Colonsay was later murdered in 1623 while ignominiously hiding under piles of seaweed.) The Macphees were dispossessed, and some followed the Macdonalds, but most others went to the mainland where they found shelter in Lochaber. Many Macphees are believed to have followed Cameron of Lochiel at the ill-fated Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the middle of the nineteenth century Ewan Macphee became famous as the last Scottish outlaw, when he settled with his family on Eilean Mhic Phee in Loch Quoich. He recognised no law and was an inveterate sheep stealer. Macfie of Dreghorn matriculated arms in the Lyon register in 1864. He was a member of a powerful merchant family with considerable interests in the sugar-refining industry. The company was eventually to be taken over by the present sugar giants, Tate & Lyle. Sadly, many of the clan were so destitute that they could make no permanent home, and today the name is most closely associated with the wandering tin-smiths known as ‘tinkers’. There is now an active Macfie Society world-wide and the Lord Lyon has recognised this by granting a commission for the appointment of a clan commander.
MacDuff, page 419
Clan Duff claims to be of the original Royal Scoto–Pictish line, of which Queen Gruoch, wife of Macbeth, was the senior representative. After the death of the king, her second husband, her son Lulach was murdered in 1058. Malcolm III seized the Crown and his son, Aedh, married Queen Gruoch’s only living granddaughter. He was created Earl of Fife and hereditary abbot of Abernethy. Fife, symbolically representing the ancient royal line of his wife, became the undisputed second man of the kingdom. He bore on his shield the red lion rampant and was accorded three distinct privileges: to lead the vanguard of the Scottish army; to enthrone the king of Scots at his coronation; and the right of sanctuary for all his kinsmen, even for the crime of murder, if they reached the cross near Abernethy, after which a small fine would be levied instead of more severe penalties. Gille-michael MacDuf was one of the witnesses to the great charter of David I to the Abbey of Dunfermline. At the coronation of Robert the Bruce in 1306 Duncan Macduff, Earl of Fife, was a minor held by Edward I of England as his ward, and so his sister, Isabel, Countess of Buchan, placed the golden circlet upon the king’s head. For this heinous crime, she was imprisoned in a cage suspended from the walls of Berwick Castle when she later fell into the hands of King Edward’s army. Duncan married Mary Monthermer, niece to Edward I, and he threw in his lot with his uncle against the Bruce. He was captured and held in Kil-drummy Castle in Aberdeenshire where he died in 1336. The earldom passed into the hands of Robert Stewart, later Duke of Albany and Regent of Scotland. The family had lost their great rank but they continued to prosper, and in 1404 David Duff received a charter from Robert III to the lands of Muldavit in Banffshire. John Duff sold Muldavit in 1626, but his half-brother, Adam, was a man of ability who acquired considerable wealth and laid the foundation for the ultimate prosperity of the family. His son, Alexander, improved the family’s estates in Banffshire, which he further extended by marriage to Helen, the daughter of Archibald Grant of Ballentomb. A Fife title returned to the family when William Duff, MP for the county of Banff, was created Earl Fife and Viscount Macduff in 1759. He commissioned the building of the splendid Duff House in 1740 which cost over £70,000 to complete, a staggering sum for the time. Sadly, he quarrelled with the architect, and when some structural defects became apparent he abandoned the house and never lived in it again. The house has recently been fully restored and is now open to the public. James, the fourth Earl Fife, fought with distinction during the Peninsular War of 1808–14, being granted the rank of major general. He was wounded at the Battle of Talavera and was made a Knight of the Order of St Ferdinand of Spain. His country honoured his services when he was appointed to the Order of the Thistle. The ancient lineage of the Macduffs received another infusion of the blood royal when Alexander, the sixth Earl Fife, married HRH Princess Louise, the Princess Royal, eldest daughter of the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. He was advanced to the highest rank of the peerage as Duke of Fife in July 1889. By a special reservation in the patent creating the dukedom, the title was to pass, in default of a male heir, to the duke’s eldest daughter, Princess Alexandra, and if she produced no male heirs, to her sister Princess Maude. In 1923, Princess Maude married Lord Carnegie, who was later to succeed to his father’s title as Earl of Southesk and chief of the Carnegies. The Countess of Southesk in due course did inherit the dukedom, which passed on her death to her son, James Carnegie, third Duke of Fife. This created the remarkable situation that the heir to the earldom of Southesk and the chiefship of Clan Carnegie also bore the ancient title of Macduff and outranked his own father by two steps in the peerage. The duke has since succeeded to his father’s earldom and chiefship.
