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characteristics. We have seen that they were the
home of the Gallgael, never purely Scandinavian.
From the first some of the Norse who settled there
took Gaelic surnames, adopted Celtic Christianity,
imitated Irish poetry and art, intermarried with natives.
The name a person bore was no complete test of his
race, and the ultimate prevalence of Gaelic as the
spoken language, brought about by the political union
with Scotland, has little relation to the ethnography
of the Hebrides and Highlands. Prof. A. Bugge has
discussed (in his notes to Duald MacFirbis on the
Fomorians and the Norsemen) the pedigree of the
Macleods, of which a variant is given in Skene’s Celtic
Scotland ; and supposes that the two divisions of
the clan, Siol Tarquil and Siol Tormod, or family
of Thorkell and Thormôd – two chieftains of Skye
about 1230 – were descended from Ljót (Leod) of
the twelfth century, mentioned in Orkneyinga-saga,
although the usual tradition deduces them from Ljót,
son of Olaf the Black (died 1237). In any case the
pedigree comes from the Norse. The macLeans and
the Morrisons, hereditary sheriffs of Lewis, deduce
from Gillemuire, whose Gaelic name disguises the
fact that he was son of Helga the Fair, daughter of
Harald, son of "Old Ivar, king of Lochlann." The
macCorquhadales of Argyll derive from Thorketill.
The macDonalds of the Isles are from Sumarlidi and
his Norse wife ; Clan Alastair is from the same source.
The Nicolsons of Skye come from Olaf, son of
"Turcinn" of Dublin. The names of macDougal
(Dubhgall, "Dane"), Lament (Lagman), macLachlan
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