The mists of Loch Mac-an-Righe

The MacNie story begins with a small loch in the former county of Perthshire.  On modern maps you will find it as Loch Macanrie.  But older documents name it in Gaelic as Loch Mac-an-Righe, translated into English as the Lake of the Sons of the King.  Now the only reason this small body of water is important in our story is that this name echoed something I had been told a few years ago.

I had asked the Clan Gregor for some account of the relationship between the MacNies and the MacGregors. I was informed only that the official heraldic authority for Scotland, Lord Lyon, had written that “MacAra, Macaree, MacNee and King are all forms of Mac-an-righ or King’s son – and as such are included as septs of Clan Gregor.

An entry in the Ordnance Survey name books of 1859-62 provides this description: Loch Macanrie 130-6 Trace 3, a small sheet of water, near the Lake of Monteith, on the estate of the Duke of Montrose, the Gaelic name of this, Loch Mac-an-righe, (the Kings Sons Loch) is rendered to its present spelling by the Revd. [Reverend] Mr Stewart.  OS1/25/69/54 

I am not persuaded that our family were ever kings, or sons of anything of that sort, but nevertheless from this tale I hereby proclaim a family creation myth:  the family originated in the mists of Loch Mac-an-Righe, in the village of Port, on the north shore of the Lake of Menteith.  It is here that Duncan MacNie and his wife, Margaret McLauchlan, lived two hundred years ago.  And it is here that our MacNie story begins.