Both MSS., the Red and the Black, are closely allied and supplement each other. The only English in the former is a satire on Bishop Burnet, whereas nearly the whole of the last half of the latter is in that language. The writers were the Macvurichs, hereditary bards of the Clanranald chiefs, who traced their descent from Muireach Albanach. The early history of the Macdonalds, down to about 1600, was probably composed by successive members of this line, but the record of the Montrose wars and following events is evidently the work of Nial Macvurich, whose life extended from the reign of Charles the First beyond Sheriffmuir. It may have been written prior to 1700. Its chief purpose is to vindicate the Gael in his marvellous exploits under Montrose. Here Alasdair Macdonald and not the brilliant Lowland leader is hero. Needless to say, besides Ossianic fragments, old as the _Ages of the Feinn_ and _Cnoc an Air_, the MSS. contain genealogies, chronologies, history, poetry, geography, grammar, and various disconnected jottings. A most curious production is the genealogy of Clanranald as far back as Adam, often with name and date, and some of the names are portentously long. The Macdonald history begins with the superscription, “The age of the World at the time the sons of Milé came into Ireland 3500” (that is, 1700 B.C.), and in the opening sentence announces that Amergin Whiteknee was poet and historian and judge to them, and the first Gaelic author. There is a wonderful prose poem on page 210 of the Red Book, on the “Army and Arming of the Last Lord of the Isles,” part of which is worth quoting for the way in which it hits off the characteristics of the clans, and the graphic description it gives of the armour of this supreme King of the Gael.