Macbrayne

This largely Highland name is said to derive from the Gaelic for ‘son of the judge’. The brieve, or brehon, was a Celtic judge who was trained in the oral customary law of the Celtic polity, and this office was held in high esteem. The system is said to have broken down by its becoming hereditary, thus placing great power in the hands of men whose qualifications would necessarily be of an unequal nature and whose judgments could not be seen to be free of bias. Eugenius Macbrahin is listed as a student at the Univer-sity of St Andrews in 1525. Duncan and Archibald Mcbrain were denounced as rebels in Argyllshire in 1685. Archibald Mcbrain, who died in 1760, brought to the family the estates of Macnaghtan of that Ilk and his son, Donald, quartered the Macbrayn lions with the arms of Macnaghtan around 1773. The family continued to prosper and acquired the lands of Glenbranter in Argyll. Major John Macbrayne was mentioned in dispatches in the First World War, when he served in the cavalry and was wounded. However, the name is now best known throughout the Western Isles for the MacBrayne shipping lines, without which many of the islands would still be completely isolated. There is a saying in the west which states: ‘God made all the earth and is lord of all that it contains/Except the Island shipping lanes that belong to the MacBraynes’.