The Highland area covers most of the mainland and inner-Hebridean parts of the former counties of Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty, all of Sutherland, Caithness and Nairnshire, and small parts of Argyll and Moray. The Highland shares borders with the council areas of Moray, Aberdeenshire, Perth and Kinross, and Argyll and Bute. The small River Applecross flows into the bay at Applecross. The name Applecross applies to all the settlements around the peninsula, including Toscaig, Culduie, Camusterrach, Milltown, Sand, 'The Street', and many others.
The highest of the mountains, which usually occur in groups, is Ben-Wyvis, elevated 3,720 feet above the level of the sea. The principal rivers are, the Ewe, the Carron, and the Broom, on the western, and the Conan, the East Carron, and the Alness, on the eastern coast; the Conan falls into the Cromarty Frith, the Carron into the Frith of Dornoch, and the others into the sea. They all abound with salmon. The salt-water lochs are, Enard, Broom, Greinord, Ewe, Gairloch, Carron, Torridon, and Loch Alsh; there are also several freshwater lakes, but the only one of any extent is Loch Maree, on the west. There are some small remains of the ancient forests, which were very extensive, consisting chiefly of birch and oak; the plantations are exceedingly numerous, and rapidly increasing. The seats are, Brahan Castle, Tulloch Castle, Mountgerald, Fowlis Castle, Balconey, Novar House, Invergordon Castle, Balnagown Castle, Tarbat House, Shandwick House, Bayfield House, Rosehaugh, Red Castle, Cromarty House, and various others.
Historically these were in different presbyteries. Evanton ( or Baile Eòghainn in Gaelic) is a small town, or rather, a large village in Easter Ross, in the Highland region of Scotland. It lies between the river Sgitheach and the Allt Graad- north of Inverness and Dingwall and south of Alness. Evanton lies within the ancient parish of Kiltearn (Gd: Cill Tighearna), within the medieval lands known as Ferindonald (Fearann Dhòmhnaill) in the heart of the old "Earldom" of Ross. The Cineal Loairn derive their descent from Loam, son of Erc, a king of Dal Riada in the fifth century. This territory comprised the northern part of Scottish Dal Riada, and when the time came for expansion, the Cenél Loairn migrated up the Great Glen. The Osraighe migrated to Ossory (County Kilkenny) in Thomond, which they gave their name to, in very early times, incorporating the separate territory of Ossory-Leix or Queen's County within over-kingdom of Leinster included Ormond and Desies. The area around Ossory were said to have been anciently occupied, according to some interpretations of Ptolemy's 2nd century map, by tribes referred to as the Brigantes, the Cauci and the Usdiae. The southeastern part of Ossory was sometimes referred to as Comor na tri uisge, "the district of the three waters."
Traditionally, Ferindonald is supposed to be derived from a grant of King Máel Coluim III to Domnall "Munro" (Domhnall mac an Rothaich), the legendary progenitor of Clan Munro. There were also two Malcoms in the Strathclyde Royal house Malcolm I and II between 971 and 973 prior to Domnall and Malcolm III an IV after him. The Dunbars descend from the above Gospatrick, who was also known as Earl of Northumbria and who was forced to flee that earldom, but was later given the barony of Dunbar in East Lothian by his cousin Malcolm III, Ceann-Mor ("great-head"), who was killed in 1093, Later his line acquired additional lands in what is now southwest Scotland. His descendants, the earls of Dunbar, thus became the head of an important Lowland family. Upon the death of Simon de St. Liz, Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, his elder son, Simon, should have succeeded to both dignities, but it appears he only inherited the former. The Earldom of Huntingdon being assumed by David, son of Malcolm III, King of Scotland, who had married the deceased earl's widow, the Countess Maud, under the especial sanction of King Henry I. Since 1057, King MACBETH mac Finley mac Ruaidhri of Strathclyde, mormaer of Moray was killed by Malcolm III at battle of Lumphanan. MacBeth slew Duncan I, father of Malcom III and Malcolm III Slew Macbeth 1057. King of Strathclyde. Soon after, Duncan was slain by Macbeth, the Morronor of Moray, whose father, Finley, had regained the mormaorship after the death of Earl Sigurd... Malcolm III was to reign for thirty five years and be remembered as 'Malcolm Canmore'. He founded a dynasty which extinguished any remnants of the Celtic character of the kingship of the Scots. The patronymic O’Ceann, Skene, in his Highlanders of Scotland, ingeniously converts into O’Cathan, and so makes out that the race is a branch of the great Clan Chattan or Siol O’Cain.
Evanton (Gaelic; Baile Eòghainn) is in close proximity to Balconie Castle, an old seate of the Mormaers and Earls of Ross. By the early modern period, the area was dominated by the Munroes of Foulis (Foghlais). The Monros (Mac an Rothaich), derive their name from a place at the foot of the River Roe in Derry, and according to the Clan Donald tradition, they came into Scotland in the train of a daughter of the O’Cahan that became a MacDonald princess. They possessed the vast district of Foulis on the Cromarty Firth in Ross, and also lands in Strathoykell.
Evanton is in close proximity to Balconie Castle, an old seate of the Mormaers and Earls of Ross. Duncan I was not the old king in Shakespeare's play, but neither was he a skilled warrior. Furthermore, the Scottish crown is said to have lost nine earldoms (which extended into the heart of Scotland via an alliance and kinship with the Mormaers of Moray) to the Norseman, Thorfinn, Earl of the Orkneys, during Duncan's reign of six years. The Annals of Tigernach (s.a. 976) reports that three Scottish Mormaers were in the warbands of the Leinster kindred called Uí Failge, with the three mormaers each meeting his death. The Book of Deer records a prominent Buchan kindred called Clann Morggain...Ruadri is the name of the progenitor of all the known Moravian rulers of the 11th century. Bede certainly viewed Pictland (Fortriu) as a single political entity in his own day, in the early eighth century; he describes the kingdom of Nechtan in 710 as embracing all the provinces of the Picts.
By the early modern period, the area was dominated by the Munroes of Foulis (Foghlais), who had their castle just a few kilometres away. The Monroe or Munro family was founded by Ocaan, Prince of Fermangh, chief of a clan of Scots who, in the 4th Century, had been driven by the Romans into Ireland (O'Kane). Ocaan dwelt by Lough Foyle, on the Roe water, about 1000 A.D., from whence the name Munro (Man from Roe), is derived. The name of this district is still preserved in the sl river "Bredagh," which falls into Lough Foyle, Tirowen. For LC1188, Ruaidhri O'Canannáin, king of Cenel-Conaill for a time, and also royal heir of Érainn. Conall Gulban was the son of Niall who established his kingdom, among other places, in Mag Ithe in the valley of the Finn. Clockwise from the Point of Ayre, Isle of Man, anti-clockwise from Lough Foyle, Ireland, and from the River Dee to the Solway Firth and from the River Tweed to the Bristol Channel, England. During the Glacial Epoch great masses of ice must have descended from the mountains of Mull, and pressing over the low promontory of the Ross, sent floating icebergs to lona, and to the open sea. Foreland is the easternmost point of the Isle of Wight.
Ferindonald is supposed to be derived from a grant of King Máel Coluim III to Domnall "Munro" (Domhnall mac an Rothaich), the legendary progenitor of Clan Munro. Foulis Castle has been the seat of the Clan Munro for over eight hundred years. Hugh Munro was the first Munro recorded to be authentically designated of Foulis, he died in 1126. He is believed to have been the son of Donald Munro who in turn was the son of O'Ceann of Derry. The Uí Tuirtre of South Derry moved eastward across the River Bann as their lands were absorbed into the expanding Uí Neill over-kingdom of Cenél Eoghain in the eighth century. The neighboring territory of Feara Li was in the barony of Coleraine. The Uí Tuitre of co. Derry are known to have moved west across the river Bann, into county Antrim, supplanting the lands of the Eilne branch of the Dal nAraide by the 10th century.
By tradition it is believed that during the 11th Century the Munro's fought as mercenary soldiers under the Earl of Ross. During the 11th century, the clan chief was given the castle and Foulis lands as a reward from the Earl of Ross for defeating Viking invaders. After the Battle of Clontarf (1014) many of the Hiberno-Norse Vikings migrated from cities that came under the control of the kings of the Provinces of Meath, Leinster, or Munster to England and settled in the north-west, from the Wirral to the Lake District. Gruffydd ap Cynan (c. 1055–1137) was a King of Gwynedd. In the course of a long and eventful life, he became a key figure in Welsh resistance to Norman rule. Gruffydd's mother, Ragnaillt, was the daughter of Olaf of Dublin, son of King Sigtrygg Silkbeard and a member of the Hiberno-Norse dynasty, including those of the Ua Briain. Gruffydd had not been king very long when he was enticed to a meeting with Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester and Hugh of Montgomery, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury at Rug, near Corwen. Hugh d'Avranches became an important councilor of William, Duke of Normandy. In the summer of 1098 Hugh d'Avranches joined with Hugh of Montgomery, 2nd Earl of Shrewsbury in an attempt to recover his losses in Gwynedd.
During the 11th century Dublin became an important aquisition for any King with eyes on the High Kingship and, by the end of the 1000's it had overtaken Tara to become the de-facto capital of the island. The Uí Fiachrach descend from Fiachra, brother of Nial of the Nine Hostages, ancestor of the Uí Niell. Fiachra’s son and grandson were both High Kings in the second half of the fifth century, though after that the High Kingship of Tara was vested in the Uí Neill. The Christian faith was brought to Mann around 447 A.D. The original ethno-tribal invaders known as the Gaels were the last of a series of Celtic invaders that would come to be considered native to the Emerald Isle after the beginning of the historical period about A.D. 500. Although Gaelic has been supplanted by English in the Lowlands of Scotland for nearly a thousand years, it is an acceptable convention to refer to the great Lowland families, like the Douglases, as clans, although the heads of certain families, such as Bruce, prefer not to use the term.
The adjacent region to the north of Caledonia was occupied toward the beginning of the 6th century by the Scots, Celtic invaders from North Ireland, who established the Gaelic kingdom that became known in history as Dalriada, including Derry, Pictland, Antrim, Breifne. About the middle of the 6th century the Angles, a people who were related to the Saxons, overran most of Caledonia south of the Firth of Forth and east of Strathclyde. Together with the extensive Angle holdings in the north of what is now England, this region became the kingdom of Northumbria. The kingdom of Súðreyjar; the Southern Islands, comprising the Inner and Outer Hebrides and Kintyre, formed the Kingdom of the Hebrides and the kingdom of Sodor and Mann was formed by Godred Crovan to reinforce Norse control through Dublin on the only remaining Viking possesions in the British Isles in 1079-1266.
The Cistercians were the first of the medieval orders to set up in Ireland, when St. Malachy set up an abbey at Mellifont in 1142. Founded in 1139 for the Benedictine monks of Savigny, St. Mary’s was founded three years before Mellifont and this led to conflict between the two houses over seniority in Ireland. The mother house of Abbeyshrule is Mellifont near Drogheda at Louth. In 1227 the abbot of Assaroe, Ballyshannon was involved in the ‘conspiracy of Mellifont’ (1216-1228). The final move was to Ath-da-Larc on the river Boyle in 1161. It seems that this was the site of an earlier monastery, also known as Ath-da-Larc, but no remains of it survive and it had probably died out before the community from Mellifont arrived. When the Irish church was reformed, over the course of three synods at Cashel (1101), Ráth Breasail (1111) and Kells-Mellifont (1152), the church was organised under an Archbishop placed at St. Patrick's monastery at Armagh, - although the church in Dublin remained under Canterbury's control for some further time. However, there is no evidence for the existence of Munro family until the fourteenth century. Indeed, the latter began to bury their family at Kiltearn after 1588. Dingwall was the traditional county town of Ross.
By the 12th century, the Bishopric of Ross had been established, with its centre in Fortrose. Scottish kings made use of the spread of centralised church organisation to help them establish control over this frontier with Norwegian territory. They also encouraged the development of towns for the same reason - Tain's charter dates from 1066. Norse influence however survives in the name of the county town: Dingwall was the Thing-vollr, the local Norse parliament, as survives today in the Isle of Man's Tynwald. Scotland is divided effectively into a Western and Northern Highland region, generally mountainous or hilly but universally harsh land agriculturally, and an Eastern and Southern 'Lowland' area including good farmland in the Central belt and along the North-eastern coast from Lothian through Fife to Angus and Moray. Prince Kentigern / St. Kentigern Garthwys (abt. 528-614), was the fruit of King Owein and Princess Thaney the daughter of a king of Lothian. Thaney set adrift in a coracle which takes her to Culros on the north shore of the Forth and there St. Kentigern is norn in a wood. Under his nickname of Mungo (Dear Fellow) in Scotland, he was brought up by St. Serf in Culross (Fife); a missionary north of the Forth. Later he travelled to Strathclyde where he was ordained by an Irish missionary Bishop before continuing the work of Saint Ninian in converting the locals around Glasgow. All the major medieval church monuments of any size (Iona arguably excepted) fall within the latter zone. The Firth of Forth (Abhainn Dhubh [Black River] in Scottish Gaelic) is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, and East Lothian to the south. The river is tidal as far inland as Stirling. The West Riding of Yorkshire in England, though Lindsey also possesses a West Riding. At its greatest the kingdom Northumbria extended from the Humber to the Forth. The later earldom was bounded by the River Tees in the south and the River Tweed in the north (broadly similar to the modern North East England) and was recognised as part of England by the Anglo-Scottish Treaty of York in 1237.