Galbraith History

After the British (Welsh-speaking) kingdoms of southern Scotland had been extinguished in the Dark Ages, some record of the Men of the North was preserved in Wales. It may be assumed that British society was not entirely destroyed in Scotland, particularly in Strathclyde which lay furthest from the Northumbrian English. Its capital had been Dumbarton, the precipitous rock called in Gaelic the Fortress of the Britons. In nearby Loch Lomond lies the island called lnchgalbraith Gaelic for the Island of the British Foreigner. Strathclyde was united with the kingdom of Scotland in 1124, and it is at the end of this century that the first Galbraith Chief appears, in circumstances that suggest he was the social equal of the Gaelic royal house of the Lennox. His name was Gilchrist Bretnach and he married a daughter of Aiwyn Og, son of Muireadhach, 1st Earl of Lennox in the new order. Their son Gillespic was father of a 3rd Chief of Galbraith who bore the suggestive name of Arthur. The family stronghold stood upon lnchgalbraith. Arthur' s son, Sir William, moved into the centre of the national stage when he became one of the co-regents of Scotland.
Sir William died shortly before the outbreak of the Scottish wars of independence, but his son Sir Arthur supported Robert Bruce and outlived the victory of Bannockburn. Thereafter the fortunes of the Galbraiths varied with those of the house of Lennox. James the 9th Chief was the first of Culcreuch in Strathendrick, a cadet branch until then. It was in his time that James I returned from his 18-year captivity in England and decimated his own Stewart relatives. Chief among these were the ducal family of Albany and their Lennox kinsmen. James of Gilcreuch is said to have helped them to sack Dumbarton in 1425, and to have fled west to Kintyre and Gigha with 600 Galbraiths and their families to escape the King' s wrath. After James III had been murdered in 1488, Thomas the 12th Chief took up arms with Lennox against the regicides. But these possessed the person of the young King, and after the defeat of Talla Moss Thomas was hanged in 1489. His brother escaped from the field and received the estates in the general remission which followed. Andrew the 14th Chief once again joined Lennox in 1526, when he attempted to rescue the young King James V from the Douglases. Lennox was captured and killed, but the King remained grateful. The last office in the long association between the houses of Galbraith and Lennox was performed by James the 1 6th Chief, who administered the Lennox on behalf of Esme, its absentee first Duke.
Robert the 17th Chief proved to be an unscrupulous rogue who brought nemesis upon his house. In 1592 he was given a commission to pursue the Clan Gregor, and he misused his powers to persecute the Chief of Mac Aulay, who had married his widowed mother against his wishes. His subsequent misdeeds led finally to his being denounced as a rebel. In 1622 he fled from an order for his arrest, and died in Ireland sometime before 1642. His heir inherited nothing and his grandson James the 19th Chief is the last traceable member of his line.
A generation after the sack of Dumbarton in 1425, Giolla Criost, a member of the family of hereditary Galbraith harpers in the island of Gigha, was composing the poems that survive in the Book of the Dean of Lismore. This ancient tradition is represented today by the Gaelic singer Carol Galbraith wife of the poet Ruaraidh Mac Thomais.