Note 304 — Chapter IX · The State.

On such occasions, by Welsh law, if an Alltud joined in the combat to make up the necessary number of combatants, and escaped with life, he ranked as a full-born member of the kindred for whom he had entered the lists. In the battle on the North Inch of Perth thirty men appeared on each side, armed with bows, axes, swords, and daggers, but without defensive armour. The number resembles the triple oath of “three Thanes and twenty-seven leil men,” by which the lord of the prison from which a thief escaped was bound to clear himself; the equipment was probably that required in the old “Scottish service.” It is generally supposed that the contest was for the chieftainship of the Clan Chattan, but it seems very doubtful that this was the case. The oldest account of the battle, which took place on 28th September 1396, is contained in a memorandum in the Reg. Morav. p. 382, which says that thirty of the Clan Hay fought thirty of the Clan Qwhwle “quia firma pax non poterat intra duas parentelas.” Four years previously, in the second year of Robert III., the latter clan had figured as the Clan Qwhevil under Slurach and his brothers, in the raid upon Angus, celebrated by Wynton, bk. ix., c. 14. Act. Parl. Scot., v. 1, p. 217. They were the victors, and the Clan Hay disappears for ever; but the Clan Chewill figures in a Roll of Clans of the sixteenth century as a distinct family from the Clan Chattan and Macphersons. Col. de Reb. Alb., p. 39.