which are termed thanages; Convalt, which is termed a ‘dominium’ or lordship; Lydgat, Uchterless, and Rothymay, called baronies; and other lands which have no particular designation, with the towns of Aberdeen, Cullen, and Banff.[104] We also learn that the upper part of the vales of the rivers Dee and Don formed the domain of the earldom of Mar, which consisted of the districts of Braemar, Strathdee, Cromar, and Strathdon, while an extensive territory on the Dee, which had formerly belonged to the earldom, was held in the reign of Alexander the Third by one of his most powerful feudal vassals, Alan the Doorward, to whose father it had been given as a compensation for a claim he had to the earldom of Mar; but though we do not find any of the lands of this earldom bearing the name of thanages, this denomination was still retained in the demesne of two of the more westerly earldoms. In Atholl we have the thanages of Glentilt, Crannich, Achmore, Candknock, while the great abthanrie of Dull belonged to the Crown; and in Stratherne we find the thanages of Strum and Dunning held under the earls, and that of Forteviot with the abthanrie of Madderdyn or Madderty in the Crown. While in the eastern districts we find the older holdings which survived from the Celtic period though disguised under a Saxon nomenclature, which owes its origin probably to the reigns of Edgar and Alexander the First, explained in language more appropriate to feudal holdings, when we pass over to the western districts which still possessed a Celtic population where the Saxon terminology has not penetrated, we come in contact at once with the realities of the Celtic tribal system which the adoption of feudal forms little affected, and whose customs are therefore less disguised by feudal forms, while the relation of the different classes to each other, though nominally feudal, are practically tribal. Although, when the great district of Argyll was annexed to the Crown and other insurrections among the Gaelic tribes were repressed, grants of land were, to some extent, given to Norman barons, with a view to the more effectual suppression of the unruly inhabitants, they conveyed little beyond a bare feudal superiority and introduced no foreign resident element, and thus hardly influenced the Celtic tribes who remained the actual holders of the soil; and when, by the cession of the Isles in the reign of Alexander the Third, the Norwegian dominion over them was transferred to Scotland, we find that the great Celtic lords of the Southern Isles, who had held them as kings under the Norwegian Crown, retained the same position under the Scottish king. At the great meeting of the Community of Scotland, which settled the succession of the Crown in 1283, we see the heads of three great families descended from Somerled—viz. Alexander de Ergadia, Angus, son of Dovenald, and Alan, son of Rotheric—appearing among them, the first