An interesting aspect of being involved in Clan Fraser
Society of Canada has been the mutually beneficial exchange of ideas and
information with officials of other clan societies. One of the most
intriguing enquiries came from a contact in South Africa.
"We
have a branch of the MacLeod family who went to France in the early
fifteenth century to join the Royal Scottish Bodyguard (Gardes de la
Manche) of the King of France and later the military of the Princes of
Lorraine. Documents, which they took with them to France, confirm their
status and as a result some of them became prominent in the French
nobility. Their name became altered from MacLeod to Maclot, Macklot and de
Macklot.
"Information in their early documents tends to make us
believe that the French branch descends from one of the six illegitimate
sons of Malcolm MacLeod and the wife of Fraser of Glenelg. According to
the Bannatyne MS, Malcolm MacLeod 3rd of Harris &
Dunvegan [c1296-1370] had six sons by the young and beautiful wife of
Fraser of Glenelg, who became the ancestors of Clan Callum."
Several MacLeod histories mention that Malcolm, who in
1320 succeeded his father Norman, had remarkable strength and was much
admired by the fair sex. Notwithstanding the lack of interest in recording
the names of Fraser wives, or their daughters who married into other
families, it is not surprising that there is no reference in books on
Fraser history about ‘the wife of Fraser of Glenelg who was so enamoured
of the MacLeod Chief that she absconded from her husband to live with him
and bore him six sons, who settled in Argyle, their mother’s country’.
The rage of the Frasers knew no bounds. They over-ran
Glenelg; they crossed over to Skye and defeated the MacLeods in battle at
Drynoch. A swift galley was sent across the Minch to the island of Pabbay
where the brawny Chief was staying at the time. He returned to Skye, and
arrived to find himself in the middle of a furious melée in a wood above
Broadfoot. Here the invaders were worsted. Verily, in his case, as the
Roman poet, Horace, has it:
‘Mulier est hominis confusio’ — women are the confusion
of men!
