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When
considering the population that makes up “The Other 70%” (the 70% of Scots
not affiliated with the highland clans) you need to first delineate the
“boundaries” of the Highlands. For the purposes of these articles the
Highlands will be considered to be from the northernmost tip of Scotland at
the Pentland Firth (just under the islands of Orkney and Shetland whose
population is mostly of Nordic, rather than Scottish, heritage), south and
including the western Grampian area (west of Nairn on the Moray Firth in the
north, my apologies to the Gordons whose clan center is east of this line in
Huntly) and slightly west of the River Spey as it winds diagonally
southwesterly. The “line” of the Highlands continues south and west just
below Ben Nevis and Fort William at the southern tip of the Great Glen and
just above Oban, which is very close to Glencoe, on the Firth of Lorne in
the Strathclyde region and from there off the west coast and back northward
up the coast, including the Isles of Skye, Rum, and Eigg, to the west of the
Western Isles and back to the Pentland Firth. Though this is the “line” of
the Highlands many of the clans, such as Clan Hay, whose main seat is on the
furthermost northeastern area of Scotland near Turriff in the eastern
Grampian area and who had other castles and homes near the city of Perth
in the Central area of Scotland and in the Border area below Edinburgh, and
the Gordons as mentioned above, actually lived outside the currently
designated Highlands area. I shall leave the stories of these clans to
their historians. |
