Note 4 — VOLUME VI SLICE IV Cincinnatus to Cleruchy (continued 5)

This office is of considerable importance in connexion with early Scottish history. In the Irish annals the ríg, or chief of a great tribe (mor tuath), such as of Ross, Moray, Marr, Buchan, &c., is called a mor maer, or great maer. Sometimes the same person is called king also in these annals. Thus Findlaec, or Finlay, son of Ruadhri, the father of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is called king of Moray in the Annals of Ulster, and mor maer in the Annals of Tighernach. The term is never found in Scottish charters, but it occurs in the Book of the Abbey of Deir in Buchan, now in the library of the university of Cambridge. The Scotic kings and their successors obviously regarded the chiefs of the great tribes in question merely as their maers, while their tribesmen only knew them as kings. From these “mor-maerships,” which corresponded with the ancient mor tuatha, came most, if not all, the ancient Scottish earldoms.