Gunn

Gunni came to Caithness at the end of the twelfth century when his wife, Ragnhild, inherited estates there from her brother, Harald, Jarl of Orkney. His wife was descended from St Ragnvald, founder of the great cathedral of St Magnus at Kirkwall. Gunni, whose name itself meant ‘war’, was descended from Viking adventurers. His grandfather, Sweyn, had been killed in 1171 on a raid in Dublin. The first chief of Clan Gunn to appear definitively in records was George Gunn, who was crouner, or coroner, of Caithness in the fifteenth century. The proper Celtic patronymic of the Gunn chiefs was ‘MacSheumais Chataich’, but George Gunn was more widely known as ‘Am Braisdeach Mor’, the ‘great brooch-wearer’, so called for the insignia worn by him as coroner. He is said to have held court in his castle at Clyth in such splendour as to rival any Highland chief. The Gunns’ traditional enemies were the Keiths who, from their castle at Ackergill, challenged the Gunn chiefs both for the political hegemony of the region and for the land itself. As with most feuds which were truly fought for wealth and power, a convenient personal insult was provided to justify the constant bloodshed as an affair of honour. It was claimed that Dugald Keith coveted Helen, daughter of Gunn of Braemor. The girl stoutly resisted Keith’s advances but he, on learnng that the object of his desire was to be married to another man, promptly surrounded her father’s house, slew many of the inhabitants and carried the hapless girl to Ackergill. She threw herself from the Castle Tower rather than submit to her kidnapper. The Gunns repeatedly raided Keith territory but they suffered defeat in 1438 at the Battle of Tannach Moor and again in 1464 at Dirlot in Strathmore. Having suffered considerable loss of life, both families agreed to meet to settle their differences in what was probably intended to be a battle of champions. Each side were to bring twelve horse, but when the Keiths arrived they had two warriors on each horse and, as they outnumbered the Gunns, a slaughter ensued. The chief and four of his sons were killed and the great coroner’s brooch stolen. The chief’s remaining son, James, from whom the Gaelic patronymic probably derives, avenged his family in due course by killing Keith of Ackergill and his son at Drummoy. The Gunns were now fighting for their very existence. The Earls of Caithness and Sutherland entered into a pact to destroy Clan Gunn, probably sealed at Girnigoe Castle around 1586. There were a number of indecisive encounters and heavy casualties were inflicted on both sides. The Gunns strengthened their connection with the Mackays when Gunn of Killearnan married Mary, sister of Lord Reay, the Mackay chief, and the next Gunn chief thereafter i married Lord Reay’s daughter. The son of this marriage, the sixth chief, was generally known as Donald Crottach, ‘the hunchback’. It was in his time that the house at Killearnan was destroyed, apparently due to an accident with gunpowder. The lands of Killearnan themselves were lost through debt. About the same time the fortunes of one of the branches of the clan reached their pinnacle, although not on its native soil. The Gunns of Braemore were the descendants of Robert, a younger son of ‘Am Braisdeach Mor’, and were generally known as the Robson Gunns. Although he was a Catholic, Sir William Gunn, brother of the Robson chieftain, took service in the army of the Protestant king of Sweden and rose to command a battalion. He later fought for Charles I, who conferred a knighthood on him in 1639. He returned to the Continent, entering the service of the Holy Roman Empire, and married a German baroness. He became an imperial general and was created a baron of the Holy Roman Empire in 1649. Debt also overcame the Gunns of Braemore, who were forced to sell their estates at the end of the eighteenth century. The Gunns of Killearnan obtained a new estate at Badenloch, where they sought to revive the splendour of their ancestors with pipers and all the other panoply of Highland chiefship. The Gunns did not rally to the standard of the exiled Stuarts, and in the Jacobite rising of 1745 they fought on the government side. The eighth chief served as a regular Highland officer and was killed in action in India. The chiefship passed to a cousin in whose line it remained until the nineteenth century, when the tenth Macsheumais Chataich died without an heir. The clan is presently led by a commander, Iain Gunn of Banniskirk, a descendant of a seventeenth-century Caithness laird, who has been appointed under a commission from the Lord Lyon, King of Arms. Petitions have been presented recently to the Lord Lyon seeking to establish representation to the bloodline chiefs, and it is to be hoped that a successful claimant will be found.