Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (May 2007)

This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

The Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis, written by members of the Iona Club of Edinburgh in the 19th century, claims to list the Genealogies of Scottish Highland Clans largely from the contents of the most ancient Genealogical Manuscript known to exist and written in the year 1450, plus other more recent genealogies.

The Iona Club was founded in 1833 by Mr. Donald Gregory and Dr. William Forbes Skene to "investigate and illustrate the History, Antiquities and early literature of the Highlands" but is now defunct.

MS 1450 was discovered accidentally in the Advocate's Library, and consists of eight parchment leaves, the last of which is covered with genealogies, written in the old Irish character, but so much faded by time as to be read with great difficulty, and in many instances to be altogether illegible.

The author of the MS appears to have been a person of the name of Maclachan, as the genealogy of Clanlachlan is given with much greater minuteness than that of the other Clans, and it is possible that the MS once formed part of the well-known Kilbride Collection, which was so long preserved by the family of M'Lachlan of Kilbride.

Although a greater part of the MS was deciphered, a considerable portion was so much obliterated by age and exposure as to be in a great degree illegible.

It is not known whether the document has been preserved, but when the Iona Club was dissolved Dr. Skene deposited Mr. Gregory's Collections with the Library of the Antiquarian Society which may later have been handed over to Clan Gregor.

It is now believed that some of the information is suspect, and was included to include all Scottish Highland Clans, whether their pedigrees were confirmed or not, to justify a belief that all Scottish Highland Clans came from the same source.