Society of Scotland in The High Middle Ages - Kinship Groups

Kinship Groups

Behind the offices of toísech and mormaer were kinship groups. Sometimes these offices were formalized, but mostly they are informal. The head of the kinship group was called capitalis in Latin and cenn in medieval Gaelic. In the Mormaerdom of Fife, the primary kinship group was known then as Clann MacDuib ("Children of MacDuff"). The head of the group seems to have borne the right to use the title MacDuib, which is why some of the heads of the Fife kin-group are known only by that name. Similarly, the Lords of the Isles could and would call themselves simply MacDomhnaill. In Fife, the Mormaer was usually the head of Clann MacDuib, but not always. After the introduction of primogeniture, many mormaers succeed as minors; invariably though in this scenario, the leadership of the kin-group did not fall to a minor, but to another senior figure. Other kin-groups which are famous from medieval Scotland are Cennedig (from Carrick) and Morggain (from Buchan).