MacLennan

Clan Crest: A demi-piper all Proper, garbed in the proper tartan of the Clan MacLennan

Clan Motto: Dum Spiro Spero (While I breathe I hope)

Clan Badge: Furze

Clan Chief: Ruairidh MacLennan of MacLennan

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MacLennan Clan History

The Logan surname has been traced back to two distinct families, one in the Highlands and one in the Lowlands. The 'Logans of the North' became 'Siol Ghilli'nnein,' which became MacClennan after being translated into Gaelic and back again.

These Northern Logans are thought to be descended from the Logans of Druimdeurfait in Easter Ross. Gilligorm, their chief, was killed in battle with the Frasers at Kessock. When the Frasers dragged his widow away, she was pregnant. When her son was born, his back was broken to prevent him from growing into a warrior.

Crotair Mac Gilligorm was his name.

He became a monk in the Celtic church, where taking a wife was permitted. He established the Kilmuir Church on Skye and the Kilchrinin Church in Glenelg. According to legend, his son was named Gille Fhinnein, and the MacClennan line continued from there.

For certain, the MacClennans grew in numbers in Kintail, Ross-shire. Donald MacClennan was a well-known warrior who played an important role in the great feud between his Kintail and Glengarry in the early 1600s.

Donald, his brother Roderick, and many other MacClennans died heroically defending the MacKenzies of Seaforth's Standard during the Battle of Auldearn in 1645, as part of the Montrose wars.

Gilligorm's wooden effigy survived until the Jacobite uprising of 1715.

The Logans lived in Restalrig, near Edinburgh, in the south. Sir Walter and Sir Robert Logan were the most famous Logans from the south. They accompanied Good Sir James Douglas on his mission to bury King Robert the Bruce's heart in the Holy Lands in 1329. They were all killed in Spain before they could complete their mission.

In 1400, Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig married Bruce's great-granddaughter and became Admiral of Scotland. The Restalrig Logans were eventually outlawed and disbanded, but Logans have done well in Lothian.

Ruairidh Donald George MacLennan, the current Chief, became the world's youngest Clan Chief in 1989, at the age of 12, after his father, Chief Ronald, died of leukaemia.

MacLennan Places & People

People of Clan MacLennan

McLennan, John Ferguson (1827–1881)

Inverness-born Scottish ethnologist. He attended King's College in Aberdeen, where he graduated with honors in 1849, before moving on to Cambridge, where he stayed until 1855. He was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1857 and appointed parliamentary draughtsman for Scotland in 1871.

In 1865, he published Primitive Marriage, in which he developed an understandable picture of the evolution of the marriage relation and systems of kinship based on natural laws by arguing from the prevalence of the symbolical form of capture in primitive race marriage ceremonies. In 1866, he published in the Fortnightly Review an essay on Kinship in Ancient Greece, in which he proposed to test the theory of the history of kinship set forth in Primitive Marriage using early Greeli facts; and three years later, a series of essays on Totemism appeared in the same periodical for 1869-1870, marking the second great step in his systematic study of early society.

In 1876, Studies in Ancient History published a reprint of Primitive Marriage, along with Kinship in Ancient Greece and some other previously unpublished essays. The new essays in this volume were mostly critical, but one of them, perhaps his best guessing ability, is on display. The Divisions of the Irish Family is an elaborate discussion of a problem that has long puzzled both Celtic scholars and jurists; and in another, On the Classificatory System of Relationship, he proposed a new explanation of a series of facts that he thought might shed light on the early history of society, while also putting the theories he had set forth in Primitive Marriage to the test. The last work he was able to publish was A Paper on The Levirate and Polyandry, which continued the line of his previous investigations. On June 14, 1881, he died of consumption in Hayes Common, Kent.

In addition to the works already mentioned, McLennan wrote a biography of Thomas Drummond. His widow and Arthur Platt edited the vast kinship materials he had accumulated under the title Studies in Ancient History: Second Series.

Robert Maclennan is a Scottish writer.

Robert Adam Ross "Bob" Maclennan, Baron Maclennan of Rogart PC (born 1936) is a life peer in the Scottish Liberal Democrats. He was the final leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), serving during the merger negotiations with the Liberal Party in 1988. He then became co-interim leader of the new Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), which later became the Liberal Democrats.

Maclennan attended Glasgow Academy, Balliol College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Columbia University in New York City for his education. He was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Caithness and Sutherland from 1966 to 1997, and then for Caithness, Sutherland, and Easter Ross after boundary changes from 1997 to 2001.

He was elected as a member of the Labour Party and served as a junior minister in the Labour government of 1974-1979 before defecting to become a founder member of the SDP in 1981. In the 1983 general election, he was one of the few SDP MPs who retained their seats. Following his tenure as SDP Leader in 1988, he became a front-bencher for the Liberal Democrats, eventually becoming their president from 1994 to 1998. He is now the party's European spokesman in the House of Lords.

MacLennan Tartans

Logan / MacLennan Ancient

Logan / MacLennan Modern

MacLennan Crest & Coats of Arms

Clan MacLennan Crest

Crest Description: A demi-piper all Proper, dressed in the Clan MacLennan tartan.

Coats of Arms of MacLennan

A word about Coats of Arms:

A coat of arms is granted to an individual under Scottish heraldic law (with the exception of civic or corporate arms). A 'family coat of arms' does not exist. With the exceptions noted above, the arms depicted below are personal arms. Only the person who has been granted these weapons has the right to use them.

MacLENNAN (MacLennan)

Or, a heart, Gules, between two passion nails, Sable, conjoined in base; on an Azure chief, a cabossed stag's head, between two antique crowns, all of the first.