Iain Abrach MacIan

Lord of the Isles

by Jeffrey Kelly

Among the Highland Clan Chiefs of Scotland in the 16th century, none was more powerful the Chief of Clan Donald, Iain Abrach MacIain. The MacIain, or the "Lord of the Isles" as he was called, controlled the west coast of Scotland and the Western Islands. He was a powerful Chief to whom all the clans paid due respect.
Such is also the case with one modern day descendant of the MacIain. For twenty years, Ken Wiepert has portrayed the Lord of the Isles at West Coast Renaissance Faires. As leader of Guild Iain Abrach, he is acknowledged as the de facto head of all Scottish Renaissance re-enactment groups in California. A man of great knowledge, Wiepert has made Iain Abrach one of the most accurate Scottish re-enactment groups around today.

Jeff Kelly: Tell us a little about the persona you portray.
Iain MacIain: I play the part of the Lord of the Isles, a contemporary of Henry VIII, from 1530 to about 1585, the son of "King of the Outer Islands," of the ancient MacDonald kingdom. My character was known as Iain a'Dhubh, or "Iain the Black," because of his ferocious temper. He owned two castles on the north coast of Ireland, 200 war galleys, some coastal luggers and a few barkentines (a ship with three or more masts). He depended primarily on the war galleysa holdover from the Viking part of the familyto control the west coast of Scotland and the offshore islands.

Although powerful militarily, Iain MacIain was a Highlander, and politics was a province of the Lowlands and the courts. He supported Mary, Queen of Scots. When Mary wanted to make her husband the title, "Earl of Ross," she made MacIain Lieutenant of the Isles and Warden of the Marches, which gave him almost complete control over Scotlandnot only did he then control the off-shore islands and the West coast, but as Warden he controlled the hinterland between England and Scotland.

JK: What kind of power did MacIain wield in the Highlands?
IM: Although his actual personal guard consisted of only about 650 men, he could raise 10,000 fighting men in 72 hours and transport them anywhere with his war galleys. When troops were needed, a runner from the Lord of the Isles' castle would take off for the nearest village carrying two sticks with their ends burnt, tied in the shape of a cross, and a bloody rabbit skin hanging from the right bar. When the runner made it to the first village, he would give the cross to another man who would take off for the next village. When all the villages were alerted, the runners would light signal fires on the hills. When the fires were seen by the local clansmen, they knew they had 24 hours to report to the castle, ready for war.

JK: Was the choice of your persona based on research into your own family history?
IM: It was based on my research on a piece of tartan that belonged to my family, stories that my grandfather told me, and a list of family names from our family bible.

In 1986, I visited the Glencoe Folk Museum on the mainland of Scotland, the headquarters for Clan Donald. I talked to the lady in charge and she invited my wife Joan and I out to her house for tea. After tea I gave her the list of names of my ancestors. After reading the list, she asked me to follow her. She led me out to the edge of a flagstone patio to a beautiful rose garden surrounding a big oak tree. She said, "Now look and tell me what you see."

"I'm standing on old flagstones and that tree looks about 400 years old," I said.

"Your ancestors laid down those stones and planted that tree in 1464you're home," she replied. This was the Inverrigan House, the house of the chiefs of Glencoe.
Then a couple of years ago the curator of the Glencoe museum wrote me that they had dug up a la habre (Lochaber) axe that the MacIain had used and that it was zoomorphic, or shaped like an animal. She sent me two tracings of it which I gave to my blacksmith who made three blades based on these drawings. He kept one, I have one, and the other one was presented to modern Clan Donald a couple of years ago. Since it was a MacIain axe, that is where it belonged.

JK: How did you get started in Renaissance reenactment?
IM: I started out as an axe man in the rear rank of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Northern California. Unfortunately, the old chief got sick and some young men were left to run the Clan. When Northern Faire ran out of money and asked if the Clan could put on their show, even though they couldn't pay for the last two weekends, the young men trashed the camp and then mooned the gate on their way out.

Starting over again the next year was a little rough, but from there we grew to 184 people, not counting three groups that went out on their own: MacGregor, St. Andrews and one of the groups down south.

JK: It sounds like the whole leadership of the Scottish groups was thrust upon you.
IM: There had always been Scots at Northern Faire and, no matter what had happened the year before, I was determined that there would always be Scots.

JK: How did you rebuild the Guild?
IM: We performed with the English middle class guild for a few years. When a group of Scots came up from down south with the stage shows, St. Brigids was born. We were with them for several years before we broke away from them to do small weekend faires. We left St. Brigids 45-50 strong.

Clan Iain Abrach at that time was a conglomeration of families from various towns. We had a group come down from Davis, CA, who played with us for a while and then asked if they could become the sub-clan "MacDonald of Lochesh." We had a bunch come in from Reno who became Clan MacClure. We had a group come down from Willits and Ukiah, but it was too far for them to travel all the time, so we made a subclan out of them and they took the name, "Clan Fraser."

JK: It sounds like you created a loose confederation of groups.
IM: That is the way a good leader does it. If there is something I need for them to do, they do it because they know that I will back them. I lead by not leading.

JK: What does the clan do at faires?
IM: Based on my research on ancient Scottish ceremonies. We perform handfastings, the "First Kilting" ceremony and fealty ceremonies.
 In a "First Kilting," when a boy was five or six, he appeared before the Chief dressed in just a shift, his father or uncle was there to stand for him. He was prayed over, placed in a man's kilt, was given a dagger and a weapon placed in his hand (usually a small spear), and took his place in line with the men and was marched away with the troops.

The first time I performed the ceremony for my grandson, I saw an elderly woman standing nearby watching, with tears running down her face. After it was over, I went over and asked her if she was all right. She said she was fine, but that she remembered seeing a similar ceremony when she was a girl in Scotland.

It is the same way with the fealty ceremony and the handfastings. During the 1500s, the Highlands had remained Catholic when the rest of the world was turning Protestant. The people in the Highlands still needed a priest to marry them, but there were no priests left. So priests used to sneak over from Northern Ireland, but it might take six or seven years before an itinerant priest got around to the village.

So the Pope wrote a papal bull that gave the lords and the chiefs of the Highlands the right to perform marriages in his name, and then the priest would solemnize them religiously when he managed to come around. That way, if a couple was handfasted by the Chief, then the children were legitimate issue and not bastards. It was not unusual for a priest to marry a couple with four or five kids in attendance.

The handfasting was good for a year and a day. If the girl was not pregnant or hadn't borne a child and the couple wanted to split, then at the end of a year and a day they could dissolve the union. However, if a child had been born or was expected, the marriage held. So actually, it was the first "civil" marriage recognized by a religious authority, the Pope.

JK: How important is historical accuracy to you and your Clan?
IM: We try to be as accurate as possible but because almost nothing was written about the Highlands during the 1500s, we cannot even be certain about our costumes. The oldest images we have are from the 1600s.   

You see, when the chiefs were wealthy enough and were important enough to have their portraits painted, they usually wore English clothes because English clothing was more comfortable, or a combination of English and Scottish clothes. The best artists resided in London so the Chiefs had the portraits done when they were in England. Most Highlanders were still wearing the great kilt (a pleated garment hand-folded from a uncut length of tartan) but some are pictured wearing a modern kilt. Now, I know the great kilt is period because there are dolls and pictures at the Clan Donald center that show the great kilt the way we wear it

Re-enactment folk already knew about the great kilt; the only thing I did was shorten it. Most of the time, Scottish guilds wear their great kilt below the knee. But historically, Clan Donald wore their kilt between the knee and the hip. And it figures, because if a kilt hung below the knee, it would tangle in their legs when running. The Highlands are rocky and they were running up hill and down dale and jumping over boulders and stuff, and you can't do that if your legs are hindered.
It is the same way with the Sgian Dhubh, a small utility knife carried by the Highlanders. We wear the sgian dhubh in the right boot but it was actually carried in the right armpit. But if we carried it there, nobody would see it

Our ancestors would not have spoken with a broad Scots accent either. The Highlander's first language was Gaelic. They hated the English so if they learned to speak English it was from the French so they would have spoken English with a French accent rather than a Scottish brogue. But everybody expects you to use the brogue because you're wearing a kilt, so we do

Once at faire, two gentleman stood outside the camp for over a half an hour. I went over to talk to them and found that both were from Edinburgh and one of them was a guide from Edinburgh castle. He said that we were more accurate in our weapons, costuming, and what we were doing, than anything he had seen in Scotland.

JK: Looking back, what has the Renaissance experience meant to you?
IM: It has meant a lot of love and respectgiven and received. That has been especially important to me because I play one of my ancestors, and this is the way it must of been back then. Reeneacting has been more than a hobby for meit has been a journey of personal exploration and of learning.