Note 132 — Chapter I

“Toisich,” says Dr Macpherson, “was another title of honour which obtained among the Scots of the middle ages. Spelman imagined that this dignity was the same with that of Thane. But the Highlanders, among whose predecessors the word was once common, distinguished carefully in their language the toisich from the tanistair or the tierna. When they enumerate the different classes of their great men, agreeably to the language of former times, they make use of these three titles, in the same sentence, with a disjunctive particle between them.” “In Gaelic,” he adds, “tus, tos, and tosich signify the beginning or first part of anything, and sometimes the front of an army or battle.” Hence perhaps the name toisich, implying the post of honour which the oldest cadet always occupied as his peculiar privilege and distinction. Mr Robertson, however, thinks toshach is derived from the same root as the Latin dux. (Early Kings, i. 26.)