The foundation of the Grant story seems merely to be that the earliest Grant known was Gregory le Grant, whose sons Laurence and Robert called Grant (_dicti Grant_) witness an agreement between the bishop of Moray and John Bisset in 1258. The name Grant is obviously a personal epithet, and may as well be derived from the Gaelic _Grannda_, ill-favoured, as from the Latin _Grandis_, or any other foreign word which resembles it. The Clan Chameron, as we have seen, formed originally one tribe with the Clan Chattan, and their true ancestor in the early part of the reign of Alexander the Second can be ascertained, for the Irish MSS. deduce their descent from a certain Gillroid, son of Gillamartan, to whom a line of Celtic progenitors is given, and he seems to be the same person with the Gillroth who, according to Fordun, was the chief supporter of Gillespic Macohegan, of the line of MacWilliam, who raised an insurrection in 1222, as a charter of lands in Galloway, about the same period, is witnessed by Gillespic Macohegan and Gilleroth son of Gillemartan.[479] But the most remarkable of these spurious origins is that claimed by the Mackenzies. It appears to have been first put forward by Sir George Mackenzie, first Earl of Cromarty, who wrote an account of the family in the form of a letter, and afterwards a shorter account under the title of ‘The Genealogie of the Mackenzies preceding the year 1661, written in the year 1669 by a persone of qualitie,’[480] of which there is no doubt he was the author. The story, as told by him in the first account, is this:—‘Tradition informs us that our first was a sone of the earl of Kildare’s, who came to Scotland in King Alexander the Third’s time, called Coline Gerald, fought on the side of the Scots at the battle of Largs;’ but finding that there was no earl of Kildare till 1290, he corrects it by making him son of John Fitz-Thomas, chief of the Geraldines in Ireland, and father of John, first earl of Kildare, who was slain in 1261. But in the second account, two sons of John Fitz-Thomas, Colin and Galen, fled to Scotland, were graciously received by Alexander the Third, and the next year fought at the battle of Largs. After the battle Walter Stewart was sent with forces to reduce the Isles, and builds a fort in Kintail, called the Danting Isle, in which Colin Fitzgerald is placed with a garrison. He then marries the daughter of Kenneth _MacMahon_ or Matheson, with whom he gets one-half of Kintail, the other half belonging to the earl of Ross, and has a son Kenneth, from whom his descendants were called _M‘Channiches_, taking their patronymic from the M‘Mahon rather than from Colin, whom they esteemed a stranger. In support of this story two documents are quoted. First, a fragment of the records of Icolmkill, which he says were preserved by him, and mention the principal actors in the battle of Largs, among whom is ‘a stranger and Irishman of the family of the