The Oban Times, 6 August, 1927
Sir,–The writer has observed a report on the subject of the unveiling ceremony at Clachan Duich, Kintail. What occurs to the reader is that apparently there are two points to consider in regard to this “auspicious occasion” in Kintail.
First of all it occurs to the writer that in 1909 after an exhaustive trial, the Lyon King dismissed the petition of the late Sir Colin G. MacRae, asking to be officially recognized as the Chief of the Clan MacRae, and stated, “All that need now be asked would be a new grant of such, but to enable me to make this I should require clearer proof of the existence of a Chiefship then has been produced.” No further evidence, so far as the writer knows, has been produced to show that the late Sir Colin G. MacRae was entitled to call himself Chief of the Clan MacRae. Furthermore, the Rev. John Anthony MacRae, Sir Colin G. MacRae’s son, has recorded Arms in the Lyon Register and in this grant of Arms there is no reference made to the Chiefship of the Clan MacRae.
The second point is, that it appears to the writer extraordinary that a Minister of the Church of Scotland should put himself in a ridiculous position by trying to assume a position to which apparently neither he is nor his father was entitled, according to the Court of Law which tried the case. In the ruins of the old Church of Kintail there is no certainty whatever that any member of the Inverinate family was ever interred inside these ruins.
About twenty or thirty years ago the writer believes a small piece of ground was railed off and a tablet put up on the wall of the Church intimating that the Chiefs of the Clan MacRae lie buried here. There is no certainty that these “bogus” Chiefs were interred there, any more than the antecedents of a dozen other families whose tombstones indicate that they are buried inside the ruins of this church.
Can any of your readers say for certain where Mr. Farquhar MacRae, the last of the Inverinate family, according to the history of the Clan, who resided in Kintail and died in 1789, was buried?
One would have thought “that if it was necessary to unveil a memorial to this gentleman (the late Sir Colin G. MacRae), it would have been more appropriate if it had been performed in the Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh,” where the writer understands the late Sir Colin G. MacRae and his forebears since the days of Mr. Farquhar MacRae, who died in 1789, are buried.–Yours, etc.,
Another of the Clan MacRae Society