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Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

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First published 2005 (SND, online supplement).
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CLAN, n. [Gael. clann children, descendents.] A social and political unit, esp. in the Highlands (s.v.hieland) or Borders (s.v. border), bearing a common name (from a supposed joint ancestor) and united under a chief. Also used more generally of a group or family. Also fig. Also attrib.Sc. 1724 Gen. Wade Hist. Papers Jacobite Period Vol. I 133:
On sudden Alarms, or when any Chieftan is in Distress, they give Notice to their Clans or those in Alliance with them, by sending a Man with what they call the Fiery Cross, which is a Stick in the form of a Cross, burnt at the End, who send it forward to the next Tribe or Clan. They carry with it a written Paper directing them where to Assemble.Sc. 1766 Alexander Nicol Poems on Several Subjects 155:
My father was an honest man,
Descended of a noble clanSc. 1796 Michael Bruce Poems on Several Occasions 34:
The chieftain of the good Clan Ross,
A firm and warlike band:
Five hundred warriors drew the sword
Beneath his high command.Sc. 1820 W. Scott Abbot (1831) xxxiv:
A broken clan was one who had no chief able to find security for their good behaviour — a clan of outlaws.Sc. 1831 J. Logan Sc. Gael. Vol. I (1876) 304:
Border clans, and others now reckoned Lowland, had also their slogans.Slk. 1835 J. Hogg Wars Montrose Vol. III 137:
A wild bloody clan...that they ca’ Beattie’s, wha it is thought will soon be extirpit...hae risen in rebellion against their lord.Sc. 1887 R. L. Stevenson Merry Men ii:
Fish — the hale clan o' them — cauld-wamed, blind-ee’d uncanny ferlies.Sc. 1899 T. Hunter Guide to Per. 272:
Ladies’ Tweeds, Skirtings, Clan Tartans for Kilts, Costumes, etc.Arg. 1914 Neil Munro New Road ii:
The clan must stick together and go out upon the old road when Himself required.w.Sc. 1929 A. A. MacGregor Summer Days 65:
Through the influence of...Clan Ranald he was demitted on bail.Sc. 1946 George F. Black The Surnames of Scotland (1996) vii:
As the work is historical and scientific in the treatment of its subject the folklore and fairy tales of family and clan origins are left to be dealt with by other writers...Abd. 1952 Huntly Express 25 April :
A nomad of the White clan landed in Huntly with a convoy of six floats, each drawn by a pony and loaded with dishes, pots and pans, and the usual tink merchandise.Sc. 1977 W. S. Graham Collected Poems (1979) 262:
...can you hear me
Among your Dunsmuir Clan?Sc. 1990 Sunday Times 20 Feb :
[He] ... took exception to the successful move by Lady Saltoun of Abernethy, chief of Clan Fraser, to secure an amendment to the Embryology Bill which would prevent a child born through artificial insemination by a donor from inheriting a chiefship.Sc. 1998 W. N. Herbert The Laurelude 137:
the systematic butchery of Highlanders in
the wake of Culloden, and the huddled clans
shuffling aboard ships during the ClearancesSc. 2004 Scotsman 27 Nov 19:
...the clans — with their individual characteristics, traditions and legends — have survived the Jacobite rebellion, the Act of Union, two world wars, membership of the European Union, the breakdown of the nuclear family and the increasing homogeneity of a global society.

Add Comb.: clan system, The organisation of local or family groups into clans. Also fig.Sc. 1887 Athenaeum 12 Mar 345:
To the clan system..and to ‘Celtic feudalism’, the Duke [of Argyll] ascribes all the evils of the Highlands.Sc. 1981 R. W. Munro in Loraine Maclean The Middle Ages in the Highlands 117:
...it is not so easy to determine the date when people began talking about the 'clan system', and it is worth beginning with a reminder that there are those who do not believe such a thing ever existed.Sc. 1985 Times 10 Aug :
It was in 1746 after shameful Culloden when, in an attempt to break the clan system, the English banned the wearing of tartan, the bearing of arms and, because they were considered weapons, bagpipes.Sc. 1994 Independent 15 May 12:
After the 1745 rebellion, however, the ancient clan system which had strengthened and identified the Highlands was destroyed by the English government, and with it the power of the chiefs. Their estates were forfeit to the Crown and then passed on to the Great Improvers: imported landlords, such as the second Duke of Sutherland, who considered that in order to make the land economically viable it was necessary to clear the remaining people off inland areas to make way for grand-scale sheep farms.Sc. 2003 Scotsman 25 Feb 9:
Wishawgate again opened the lid on the bizarre clan system which is behind Scottish Labour — giving a snapshot which Scots voters may find deeply unappealing when asked whom should represent their country.Sc. 2004 Press and Journal 17 Aug 2:
Historically, tacksmen were captains in the clan system, but by the 1800s, commercial reality and a downturn in clan feuding had seen tacksmen turn into wealthy tenant farmers who would lease large tracts of land from the estate owner, usually a clan chief. 2004 Herald 14 Oct 16:
We should explain the clan system, its fraternity and its brutality. What about the cattle-raiding tales of the Buchanans, Lennoxs, MacGregors, Macfarlanes and Colquhouns who laid claim to these shores before the jet-skiers brought new terror?Sc. 2004 Scotsman 27 Nov 19:
The origins of the clan system may be lost in the mists of the political turmoil and social opportunism of medieval Scotland. They may have been fictionalised in the 19th century and exploited in the 20th.Sc. 2005 Herald 24 Apr 25:
Another key factor in the differences between the two experiences was that, for Lowland tenants and their landowners, by the mid-18th century the land transaction was a purely economic one, lacking, as Devine says, the Gaelic idea of duathchas, an almost untranslatable concept which revolves around the obligations of the landowner to his tenants, and the tenants' own duties of providing military service, through the clan system, in return for land.

Add Deriv.: clanship, Loyalty to one's clan; family loyalty; kinship.Bnff. 1749 V. Gaffney Lordship Strathavon (1960) 146:
Your petitioner does not presume to address you as a touchasser nor to assume the boldness to found the least expectation on the score of name or clanship.Sc. 1772 Thomas Pennant A Tour in Scotland :
The habitations of the highlanders, not singly, but in groupes, as if they loved society or clanship.Sc. 1814 John Galt The New British Theatre Vol. I 48:
Oh, Sir. Clanship's out o fashion, or ye
would na see a M'Donald, keeping the ill doers o' Lonon,
in gude order.Sc. 1830 Mary W. Shelley The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck 197:
a strange and savage race, ... dwell on the barren heights, along the impassable defiles, beside their vast stormy lakes; but the Lowlander looks askance on the Highland clanship. List ye, gentlemen; all bears a different aspect here from the gentle southern kingdoms; but they are men, proud, valiant, warlike men, as such they claim our respect.Sc. 1872 John Stuart Blackie Lays of the Highlands and Islands 33:
...when Celtic songs
Were mighty in the land, and stirred the soul
Of generous clanship in the men who strode
Their native hills with pride...Sc. 1883 Harper's New Monthly Magazine 68 60:
...I fancy that the traditions of clanship are responsible for his willing dependence on any superior power...and a touch of communism as regards food and drink. Perhaps this last is only an outcome of the old-fashioned Highland hospitality...Sc. 1961 Duane Meyer The Highland Scots of North Carolina, 1732-1776 (1987) 20:
Left without chief, or protector, clanship broken up, homes destroyed and kindred murdered, dispirited, outlawed, insulted and without hope of palliation or redress...Sc. 1996 Herald 14 Feb 3:
He also says the death of clanship would have happened without the attempted massacres by fire in Jacobite areas and the passing of the laws banning tartan, bagpipes, and the authority of the chiefs.
"Clanship was basically a particularly strong social arrangement that joined people in a form of common defence," he said, "and it was melded by common beliefs. Thus, it stands to reason that, the more ordered society became, the more likely it was that the clans would end."Sc. 1997 John Ashton Cannon The Oxford Companion to British History 215:
Especially in the province of Moray, there were also feudal groups which adopted clanship. Such were the Frasers, Chisholms, Grants, and Rosses, as also the Inneses, Gordons, Stewarts, Sinclairs, and the Clan Menzies.Sc. 2003 Herald 14 Sept 28:
MacDonalds are the greatest because they are the apotheosis of clanship as it is traditionally understood. This does not mean they are more "Scottish" than any other clan — far from it — rather, it indicates that they encapsulate best the power, drama and distinctive colour we associate with the mediaeval clans.

Add Comb.: clansman, A man belonging to a clan, a member of a clan. Also attrib. Also clanswoman. Sc. 1814 C. I. Johnstone Saxon and Gael Vol. IV iii:
Think yourself, dear Morag, how my own heart warms to hear them singing the eeram of their clan; that fine deep Gaelic which none but a clansman can feel.Sc. 1884 C. Rogers Social Life Vol. I 281:
Each clansman became bound by an oath not to receive tascal money.Hdg. 1889 J. Lumsden Lays Linton 110:
At Prestonpans his Hielant dirk
Nae clansman plied mair stuffy.Sc. 1941 Neil M. Gunn The Silver Darlings 107:
Kirsty's father had been a leaseholder or tacksman, not on a very large scale, it is true, but yet in the material realm on a more secure and affluent basis than was the ordinary clansman or cottar who had made up the bulk of the population.Sc. 1970 J. McPhee Crofter & Laird 6:
The clansmen had shifted their concentration from war to agriculture, and life was agreeable enough, albeit primitive, in the small villages, with patches of ground under each man's tillage, cattle on the common grazing, and milk, vegetables, cheese, and meat on the table. ... The clansmen became tenants, and the chiefs, in the course of things, sold them out.Sc. 1988 Forbes Macgregor in Joy Hendry Chapman 53 21:
That was the phrase used by Alastair Macgregor in 1923 when he, unsolicited, championed William Soutar against the deliberate suppression of his poems in the Edinburgh section of a Scottish University anthology. My clansman was a good poet both in Gaelic and English.m.Sc. 1991 William Neill in Tom Hubbard The New Makars 49:
an hears thir clansmen lauch an skraich
doun in the forest's mirk.Sc. 1992 Independent 3 Feb 15:
At the Clan Donald Centre, on Skye, Rob Macdonald Parker, the director, says some believe a true clansman should project a hatred of the Campbells. ''Some Macdonalds would not be happy being in the same room as Campbells,'' he says.Sc. 1992 Stornoway Gazette 18 Apr 5:
The clansman tenants were finally deprived of their rights to the land, which had never been legally stated or recognised.Sc. 1995 Independent 18 May 27:
Here the emotions are strongly contrasted, but immediately afterwards Caton-Jones makes the counterpoint more melancholy by editing together a clanswoman's sung lament with a dying man's stumblings in the wood, as he tries to hide clan money that has been entrusted to him.Sc. 1997 Scotsman 13 Nov 20:
Her sewn work for the Forrester banners which on occasions are displayed in the church earned the gratitude of Clan Forrester who made her an honorary clanswoman.Sc. 2003 Daily Record 7 Oct 37:
"The whole family were closely involved with the St Andrew's Society in Australia and I was presented as a junior clansman at one of their big functions."Sc. 2004 Press and Journal 23 Aug 3:
And it fell to one of Lochiel's grandsons, 13-year-old Robbie Cameron to unfurl the clan standard in his honour — instead of the traditional Saltire — to signal the start of the day's action and activities.
Local clansman and piper, Astie Cameron, then played The March of the Cameron Men.