Omen in the sky

The Fergussons are famed for great achievements. The name means simply son of Fergus and was a popular Christian name among the Gaels who crossed from Ulster to Argyll. Fergus was an Irish chief who settled in Kintyre in the sixth century and brought the Stone of Scone to Scotland, which eventually became the Coronation Stone. It was Fergus who established the kingdom of Dalriada along the West Coast. Fergus itself is a personal appellation in its secondary sense, implying a hero, but primarily signifying a man, said to derive from fear and gias, or geis signifying a spear, the weapon carried by the Gais-gach, or heavy armed warrior among the Highlanders. The Gaelic name is Clan Fhearghuis.

Fergussons lay claim to being responsible for Scotland having the Saltire, the white diagonal cross on a blue background, as her flag.

Angus (Hungas) MacFergus, a Pictish king descended through his mother from the Dalriadic Fergussons, was a great warrior and in the ninth century extended his overlordship for a time from the Shetlands to the Humber. At Athelstaneford, in East Lothian, his army faced a much larger army of the Northumbrians and their allies. Some legends say Fergus had a dream and saw a white Saltire cross in a blue sky, others say his men saw it themselves in the sky. They took it as divine favour and an excellent omen and won a crushing victory.

Angus MacFergus from then on adopted the white cross and blue background as his own flag and it was eventually to become the flag of all Scotland.

Fergus, Prince of Galloway, in the 1160s was founder of the Fergussons of Craigdarroch in Dumfriesshire and on a charter dated 1215 signed himself as Duncan, son of Gilbert, son of Fergus, Prince of Galloway.

Fergus of Galloway was of the old Scots Royal line and married a daughter of Henry the First of England. His grandson, Duncan, became Earl of Carrick and therefore an ancestor of King Robert the Bruce, proof of the royal blood in the veins of the Fergussons who descended from this line.

But what of the other Fergussons in Ayrshire, Argyll, Atholl and the north-east? Their origin is uncertain but it seems probable that they started in Argyll, possibly with King Fergus, and spread in one wave to Atholl and then to Aberdeenshire and Fife, whilst another wave went south to Ayrshire, with the Galloway family perhaps descended from this line of the branch.

The evidence for this theory includes the name of the Ayrshire family, Fergussons of Kilkerran which is said to stem from St Ciaran, one of the earliest Irish missionary saints to land in Scotland.

An 18th century manuscript held by the Aberdeenshire Fergussons records the tradition of their origins in this way: the two sons of the chief of the Fergusson in Cowal became involved in an affray with a neighbouring chief and were forced to leave the area.

One went to Aberdeenshire, the other to Ayrshire. This is said to have happened upwards of 400 years ago.

Also, in Atholl, the universal tradition is that the clan Fergus and MacDermots of Glen Lyon were the two oldest clans in the district and one Perthshire historian, writing in the 19th century, noted that he had not yet met a Highland Fergusson who did not claim descent from King Fergus.

There are two further reasons for accepting the Fergusson traditions of antiquity and kinship. Their heraldry, uniform from a very early period, was a silver buckle surrounded by three boars heads for the Argyll, Ayrshire and north-eastern branches, and a blue lion rampant for the possibly distinct Galloway line.

It is clear that Fergussons all over Scotland looked to the house of Kilkerran in Ayrshire for their ultimate chief from an early date. In the sixteenth century a Fergusson of Atholl, convicted of a felony at Edinburgh, appealed to Kilkerran for protection and in 1727 two Aberdeenshire branches of the clan called on Kilkerran to mediate in a dispute between them.

Although there were already five separate Fergusson branches at the beginning of their recorded history in the 14th century the bearers of the name have always felt themselves to be related and have been recognised as such by most other Scots.

The Argyll branch settled in Cowal and Kintyre and quite possibly the remnant of the original race looked to them for leadership. The laird was known as the chief of clan Fergus of Strachur and was subject to the Earls of Argyll.

These Fergussons were renowned for their stature and strength and one story to illustrate this reputation is told of a fifteenth century clansman who fell behind with the federal dues he owed to Argyll.

As he saw a posse of Campbells approaching his house one day, obviously intent on collecting the dues by force, he turned to his sons in despair, asking them how they were to defend themselves.

The chief’s two sons, like him well over six feet and big with it, told him not to panic and to allow the Campbells to come in unhindered. The two sides met in the laird’s orchard and when the Campbells demanded the money and fingered their swords menacingly, the Fergusson brothers simply stepped to one side, wrenched two young trees bodily from the ground, and swung them at their astonished foes fled in terror on seeing such a display of strength.

When the Earl of Argyll heard of this feat he was so impressed that he pardoned the Fergussons from all taxation in return for a promise of military service from the two young strongmen. Perhaps he would have been less excited had he discovered that the brothers had taken the precaution of digging up the tree roots as their foes came up to the house.

The Fife branch of the clan based at Raith was probably descended from a junior line of the Fergussons of Atholl. Although very small in numbers it produced the first Fergusson to rise to national fame – David Fergusson, one of the great ministers of the Protestant reformation.

This man, though apparently without formal education, was ranked second only to John Knox as a preacher and eventually rose to be twice Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

The Fergussons of Atholl lived mainly along the River Tummel with minor branches to the east and southwest in Strathyre. Gradually they became subject to the Murrays of Atholl as their local landlords though this could often clash with their loyalty to their lowland cousins.

Like the Argyll family they were known for their great height and toughness and they too have a famous legend to back up this reputation. It concerns one of the chiefs of Dunfallandy whose son, Big James, was built like a giant but by temperament was a big softie. The chief, who treasured his family’s reputation for manliness above all things, gave his son a terrible time.

On one occasion, after a cattle raid in the north, Big James and his father were guiding the stolen herd along the banks of the river when their prize capture, a huge bull, broke away from the rest and plunged out of sight over the river bank. James was just quick enough to catch it by the horns and seems to have secured the beast when a great splash told his father that the bull had gone into the river.

“The soft grip of a baby!” bellowed the chief in digust. “If you had been your father’s son you would have kept hold.”

“I have,” replied the boy meekly, as he threw the bull’s horn at his fathers feet.

Generally the Atholl Fergussons were the wildest of their race – the other branches came much more quickly into contact with the Saxon concept of law and order. It was only natural therefore that the highland branch should have become royalists and then Jacobites whilst most of their southern cousins were servant Whigs and Covenanters, yet still the pull of the Fergusson name could cut across political barriers.

In 1745 to 1746 virtually the whole of the Dunfallandy clan were led by their chief and served with the Atholl men who fought so effectively under Lord George Murray at Prestonpans, Falkirk and Culloden. Dunfallandy himself, however, fell victim to Prince Charlie’s fatal decision to leave a garrison at Carlisle, on the retreat north from Derby.

The town soon fell to Cumberland and mass executions began with the Fergusson chief’s head destined for a quick end. But when he heard of the unfairness of the Jacobite trials, James Fergusson of Pitfour, an advocate and cousin of Dunfallandy, rushed south to defend the prisoners.

It soon became clear that many were being hanged for the mere fact that they wore tartan so Pitfour smuggled one of his own servants into prison and then confounded the court by producing conclusive proof that he had been at home in Aberdeen throughout the rebellion.

This so sobered the court that Fergusson of Dunfallandy and many others, who were undoubtedly guilty of high treason, escaped with short prison sentences.

Execution and persecution

The most famous of all the Highland Fergussons paradoxically was not a man of action but a philosopher and historian – Adam Fergussons, now widely regarded as the founder of the modern science of sociology. He was a son of the manse who had been raised from a poor home by one of the Fergusson university scholarships. Adam was a fine scholar from an early age who found his first employment as a chaplain to the Black Watch. He showed that he had some of the family fighting spirit by seizing a dead man’s sword in battle and leading a charge against the enemy.

These and other experiences of military and political life stood him in good stead when he came to write his history of civil society, a study of the contrast between the old feudal system into which he had been born, and the emerging industrial civilisation he had discovered in the Lowlands. This work made his reputation and he became a professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University where for 50 years he was one of the leading lights of the greatest period of Scottish letters.

Adam Smith and David Hume were personal friends and at his house in 1787 Robert Burns met the young Walter Scott. Later Fergusson’s sons and daughters became Scott’s closest friends and the novelist was often to return to the theme of the losses and the transition from the old to the new Scotland of which Fergusson has given one of the best summaries –

“We may, with good reason, congratulate our species on their having escaped from a state of barbarous disorder and violence into a state of domestic peace and regular policy.”

Robert Fergusson of Aberdeenshire, turfed out from his living as a Presbyterian minister at the Restoration in 1660, lived a life of high intrigue and danger in London and on the Continent where he earned the nickname Fergusson the Plotter. Between 1679 and 1683 he was deeply involved in schemes to exclude and assassinate the Catholic heir to the throne, later James II. Fergusson was one of the few conspirators to escape execution and fled to Holland, returning in 1685 as chaplain to the Duke of Monmouth’s ill-fated attempt to overthrow King James.

After this ended in failure, Fergusson was again one of the few to escape with their lives, much to the suspicion of his whig friends that he was a Jacobite double agent.

The only conclusion one can draw from this astonishing career which ended in abject poverty in 1714 is that Fergusson simply enjoyed plotting and was not very fussy about who he was plotting against!

His younger brother James, meanwhile, led a more consistent life as a soldier, first in the Cameronian regiment raised to oppose the Jacobite Rebellion of 1689, and later in the Continental armies, rising to the rank of General by the time of his death in 1705.

He was the first of a whole series of accomplished Fergusson soldiers who in the next 200 years came from all branches of the clan to win honours in the American, Indian, Napoleonic and world wars.