were led to victory at Bannockburn by
Earl Randolph; and Angus Og and the Islesmen formed part of the Scottish
reserves and stood side by side with the men of Carrick, under the
leadership of King Robert. During the troubles which followed King
Robert's death, the Lords of the Isles had resumed their general
attitude of opposition. It was an opposition very natural in the
circumstances, the rebellion of a powerful vassal against a weak central
government, a reaction against the forces of civilization. But it has
never been shown that it was an opposition in any way racial; the
complaint that the Lowlands of Scotland have been "rent by the Saxon
from the Gael", in the manner of a racial dispossession, belongs to "The
Lady of the Lake", not to sober history. All Scotland, indeed, has now,
in one sense, been "rent by the Saxon" from the Celt. "Let no one doubt
the civilization of these islands," wrote Dr. Johnson, in Skye, "for
Portree possesses a jail." The Highlands and islands have been the last
portions of Scotland to succumb to Anglo-Saxon influences; that the
Lowlands formed an earlier victim does not prove that their racial
complexion is different. The incident of which we have now to speak has
frequently been quoted as a crowning proof of the difference between the
Lowlanders and the "true Scots". Donald of the Isles had a quarrel with
the Regent Albany, and, in 1408, entered into an agreement with Henry
IV, to whom he owned allegiance. But this very quarrel arose about the
earldom of Ross, which was claimed by Donald (himself a grandson of
Robert II) in right of his wife, a member of the Leslie family. The
"assertor of Celtic nationality" was thus the son of one Lowland woman
and the husband of another. When he entered the Scottish mainland his
progress was first opposed, not by the Lowlanders, but by the Mackays of
Caithness, who were defeated near Dingwall, and the Frasers immediately
afterwards received what the historians of the Clan Donald term a
"well-merited chastisement".[55] Donald pursued his victorious march to
Aberdeenshire, tempted by the prospect of plundering Aberdeen. It is
interesting to note that, while the battle which has given significance
to the record of the dispute was fought for the Lowland town of Aberdeen
in a Lowland part of Aberdeenshire, the very name of the town is Celtic,
and the district in which the battlefield of Harlaw is situated abounds
to this day in Celtic place-names, and, no