thinking no enemy despicable as he then stood." Murdoch, at Donald's
request, proceeded to Dingwall, where the Island Lord urged him
to join and promise him to support his interest. This Mackenzie
firmly refused, "partly out of hatred to his family for old feuds,
partly dissuaded by Donald's declining fortunes" at that particular
period; whereupon the Lord of the Isles made Murdoch prisoner
in an underground chamber in the Castle of Dingwall. He was not
long here, however, when he found an opportunity of making his
plight known to some of his friends, and he was soon after released
in exchange for some of Donald's immediate relatives who had been
purposely captured by Mackenzie's devoted vassals.

Here it may be appropriate to give the traditionary account of the
origin of the Macraes and how they first found their way to Kintail
and other places in the West; for their relationship with the
Mackenzies has from the earliest times been of the closest and most
loyal character. Indeed, from the aid they invariably afforded
them they have been aptly described as "Mackenzie's shirt of
mail." According to the Rev. John Macrae, minister of Dingwall,
who died in 1704, and wrote the only existing trustworthy history
and genealogy of his own clan, the Macraes came originally from
Clunes, in the Aird of Lovat, recently acquired from patriotic family
reasons by Horatio Macrae, W.S., Edinburgh, the representative
in this country of the Macraes of Inverinate, who were admittedly
the chiefs of that brave and warlike race. The Rev. John Macrae,
who was himself a member of the Inverinate family, says that the
Macraes left the Aird under the following circumstances: A dispute
had arisen in the hunting field between Macrae of Clunes and a
bastard son of Lovat, when a son of Macrae intervened to protect
his father, and killed Fraser's son in the scuffle. The victor