Gordon

The accompanying text in 'The Clans of the Scottish Highlands' by James Logan begins as follows: "NA GORDONICH, THE GORDONS Various origins have been assigned to this clan, one of the most distinguished in Scottish annals. In Normandy is found a manor called Gourdon, whence the first settlers are said to have arrived and bought the name into Scotland, but Chalmers, the erudite author of 'Caledonia', settles the point with the brevity and confidence which characterize his dicta on 'English Colonization'. 'The progenitor of the Gordons came from England,' he says, 'soon after the commencement of the twelfth century, and obtained the lands of Gordon in Berwickshire, where he settled with his followers.' The authority of this writer in settling family origins, is a discovery of the first charter in which he finds the name mentioned ! This is a plausible derivation compared with the heraldic, which makes the common ancestor a valorous Norman knight, who gored down a hideous boar, and thence derived, by royal command, both the name and the boars' heads as the armorial insignia of himself and his successors ! Certainly, if the fact were satisfactorily established, that strangers were the founders of so great a number of the highest families in Scotland, the sovereigns of that country had a very contemptible opinion of their native subjects, who must have been a despicable race to be less worthy of royal favour than Saxons, Normans, Danes or Norwegians.