One or two other introductory points remain to be noted and borne in
mind throughout.

We must beware of thinking that all the land in an earldom such as Cat
was the absolute property of the chief, as in the nineteenth century,
or the latter half of it, was practically true in the modern county
of Sutherland. The fact was very much otherwise. The Maormor and
afterwards the earl doubtless had demesne lands, but he was in early
times, _ex officio_, mainly a superior and receiver of dues for his
king;[15] and this possibly shows why very early Scottish earldoms, as
for instance that of Sutherland, in the absence of male heirs, often
descended to females, unless the grant or custom excluded them. It
was quite different with later feudal baronies or tenancies, where
military service, which only males could render, was due, and which
with rare exceptions it was, after about 1130, the policy of the
Scottish kings to create; and in the case of baronies or lordships the
land itself was often described and given to the grantee and his heirs
by metes and bounds, in return for specified military service, and his
heirs male were exhausted before any female could inherit.

In Ness and in the rest of Cat there were many Norse and native
holders of land within the earldom, and much tribal ownership. Duncan
of Duncansby or Dungall of Dungallsby, as he is variously called,
allowed part at least of his dominions to pass by marriage to the
Norse jarls; but both Moddan and Earl Ottar, whose heir was Earl
Erlend Haraldson, who left no heir, owned land extensively in Ness and
elsewhere, while Moddan "in Dale" had daughters also owning land, one
of whom, Frakark, widow of Liot Nidingr, had many homesteads in upper
Kildonan in Sudrland and elsewhere, and possibly it is her sister
Helga's name that lingers in a place-name lower down that strath near