Meic Somairle
| House of Somerled | |
|---|---|
| Parent house | House of Ivar |
| Titles | |
| Founder | Somerled |
Clann Somhairle, sometimes anglicised as Clan Sorley, /ˌklæn ˈsɔːrli/ refers to those Scottish and Irish dynasties descending from the famous Norse-Gaelic leader Somerled, King of Mann and the Isles. Primarily they are the Clan Donald, formerly known as the Lord of the Isles, and the mainland Clan MacDougall, and all their numerous branches. Clan Macruari are their lost sept.
The origin of Somerled, from whom the clan derives, is obscure. Only the name of his father is directly attested in early records. He was later portrayed as having Gaelic ancestry, with late pedigrees from the 14th and 15th century tracing him from legendary Colla Uais and hence from Conn of the Hundred Battles, and some versions apparently including the legendary founder of the Scottish state of Dál Riata, Fergus Mór. Historians have distrusted this derivation, though in the 1960s, David Sellar defended a Gaelic derivation. More recently, historian Alex Woolf has pointed out the conflicting information found in the different versions of the pedigree, and drawn attention to their faulty chronology. Instead he argues that these pedigrees may derive from an original claim to the descent of Somerled from the Crovan dynasty and the Uí Ímair, subsequently obscured by alterations made to link them to the Scottish and Irish foundation legends. In any case, the Clann Somhairle based their claim to the Isles on their descent from Somerled's wife, Ragnhildr, the daughter of king Amlaíb Derg, and Woolf accepts that the male-line Crovan descent claim underlying the pedigrees may have arisen as a replacement for this female-line derivation from the family. Sir Iain Moncreiffe attempted to reconstruct a male line descent from Somerled back to Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, King of the Isles, but this has received little attention.
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