To establish the antiquity of this pattern of the Mac Neill it is but necessary to mention that it occurs in many old collections, including those of Craignish, Moy Hall, the Highland Society of London, and Messrs Romanes and Paterson. Several branches of the clan have other designs, but none is found in the ancient repositories either so early or so often as that now illustrated. A hitherto unnoticed reference to what is possibly the distinctive tartan of the Mac Neills appears in _The Grameid: an Historic Poem descriptive of the Campaign of Viscount Dundee in 1689, by James Philip of Almerieclose, 1691_, translated by the Rev. Alexander D. Murdoch, F.S.A. Scot., for the Scottish History Society, 1888. It reads: “The illustrious son of warlike Mac Neill comes from the winding shore of Barra’s isle, around whom, as their chief, a great company of the youth of his name presses on the right hand and on the left. Carrying his battle-axe, he advances on foot, panting as he goes, leading his tall clansmen, himself the tallest, and his shoulders covered with a Tyrian mantle. He displays as many colours woven into his plaid as the rainbow in the clouds shows in the sunlight.” Whether or not the tartan here presented was that worn by the chief in Dundee’s campaign cannot be determined, but, at least, it is the sole pattern associated with the name having any trace of red. The writer of the poem was a close observer, and many of his descriptions of dress and arms are highly valuable; while the allusion to “the winding shore of Barra’s isle” evinces an intimate knowledge of the peculiarly indented character of that island. [Illustration: XXV. MAC NEILL] MACPHERSON. The Macpherson tartans present unwonted difficulty in consequence of the multiplicity of setts, each having claims of its own. These are (1) the Chief’s, (2) the Cluny, or full dress, (3) the Hunting, and (4) the Clan tartans. The first, though one of the oldest designs, has often been wrongly presented. Of the second, which was illustrated in the _Vestiarium Scoticum_, the Cluny Macpherson of 1850 wrote to Messrs Smith, then compiling a book of tartans, that:- The design was known as the Breacan Glas’ long before John [Sobieski] Stuart was heard of in this country, although I rather think the addition of the yellow stripe was introduced by him, or rather taken from his MS., but, at all events, the tartan is an old Macpherson. The _Vestiarium_ had only been published eight years before (1842), though strenuous efforts had been made to issue it in 1829. It is evident from an unpublished correspondence between Sir Walter Scott and Sir Thomas Dick Lauder that the chief of Cluny received his first drawing of the tartan from the brothers Stuart—a fact obviously unknown to his successor of 1850. Sir Thomas, writing to Sir Walter on 1st June 1829, observes:—