This Story was handed down to me but I have no clue if my McCauley are in it or not. Can’t go back that far. Is there anyway to find out?????
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/McCauley-910
The Isle of Lewis, on the west coast of Scotland is said to be the place where the Clan Morrison originated. The first inhabitant was said to be Mores, son of Kennanus, whom the Irish historians call Makurich, son of one of the kings of Norway.
Ghille Mhuire, or 'Servant of the Virgin Mary', was, according to tradition, washed ashore, having survived a shipwreck by clinging to a piece of driftwood; this is commemorated in the clan's plant badge. He is said to be a natural son of King Olav, and therefore half-brother of Leod, progenitor of the MacLeods. Ghille Mhuire married the heiress of the Gows, or Clan Igaa, who held Pabbay in the Sound of Harris.
Nathaniel Holmes Morison wrote on March 11th, 1880, "If the name Morrison is derived from the Gaelic Mhor, or Mor, as I think it is, it must have been formed from that word after the persons bearing the name of Moor, etc., had ceased to be Gauls, and became either Norsemen or Saxons, and used one of those languages. The Gaelic for "son" is Mac, while 'son' at the end of the name is both Norse & Saxon." The fact that the Morrs and not the Morrises, have the same crest as the Morrisons, plainly points in that direction for the ancestry of the name...the Saxon language was well established in England and in the lowlands of Scotland in the 9th century.
There are two tartans for the Morrison clan, a red clan tartan, and a green hunting tartan. The crest is: "two arms, dexter & sinister in fesse, coupled, holding a two-handed sword, in pale." The Motto: 'Marte et Mari faventibus', meaning "War & the Sea-favoring".(p17 #1) Their battle-cry was 'Teaghlach Phabbay'. In the 1930's a Bible wrapped in a 300-year-old piece of tartan was found in the Black House on Lewis. The Bible and Tartan belonged to a seventeenth-century Morrison and the Lord Lyon Court decided that it was the nearest authentic Morrison on which to base the new tartan, which is red with a small narrow stripe of black, brown, green, and white. As a member of the Clan Morrison Society a Morrison is entitled to wear either tartan.
"Dun Eystein" created a natural stronghold at the northern end of the Isle of Lewis, or Ness of Lewis, in town of Cnoc Aird. The clan from time immemorial have inhabited this extreme northern point of the Island, to which the Morrisons retired when at war. It is a flat, cliff-like island, oval in shape, 75 yards long and 50 yards broad, separated from the mainland by a narrow perpendicular ravine, through which the sea flows at high water. The ravine is 30-40 feet broad and wide. The remains of a strong wall follow the edge of the cliff on the land-ward side of the island, and through the wall are said to have been squints or loop-holes for observation and defense. Towards the NE corner is a "dun", or castle. The Morrisons were not a numerous clan and tried to live at peace with their more aggressive neighbors, the Macaulays and the Macleods.
The McCauleys killed Donald Ban, brother of John Morrison, who held the position of "breitheamh" or judge of the whole Isle of Lewis, a position held by the Morrisons for many generations. When the Morrisons retaliated, the Macaulays appealed to their allies, the Macleods, whereupon a strong force of Macaulays and Macleods invaded the Morrison lands. The feud was carried on by the next chief, Uisdean, or Hucheon,who invaded north Harris only to be heavily defeated once more.
Hucheon, on his death bed in 1566, confessed to being the natural father of Torquil, until then accepted as the lawful son of Roderick Macleod of Lewis and his wife, Janet Mackenzie. Macleod disinherited Torquil, set aside Janet as an adulteress, and took a third wife. She bore two sons, Torquil Dubh and Tormod. The older Torquil, now half-brother to the Morrison chiefs, allied himself to the Mackenzies of Kintail who, through him, claimed the island of Lewis. In the bloody war that followed, the Morrisons sided with the Mackenzies against the Macleods, and both Hucheon's successor, Ian Dubh, and his son, Malcolm Mor, were killed. The Morrisons were driven from their lands and their power as a fighting force was broken forever
Billie
