The gradation of ranks considered in reference to the clan or tribe may be briefly described. The highest dignitary was the _righ_ or _king_, who in point of birth and station was originally on a footing of equality with the other chiefs, and only derived some additional dignity during his life from a sort of regal pre-eminence. “Among the ancient Celtæ the prince or king had nothing actually his own, but everything belonging to his followers was freely at his service;” of their own accord they gave their prince so many cattle, or a certain portion of grain. It seems probable that the Celtic chief held the public lands in trust for his people, and was on his succession invested with those possessions which he afterwards apportioned among his retainers. Those only, we are told by Cæsar, had lands, “magistrates and princes, and they give to their followers as they think proper, removing them at the year’s end.”[126] The Celtic nations, according to Dr Macpherson, limited the regal authority to very narrow bounds. The old monarchs of North Britain and Ireland were too weak either to control the pride and insolence of the great, or to restrain the licentiousness of the populace. Many of those princes, if we credit history, were dethroned, and some of them even put to death by their subjects, which is a demonstration that their power was not unlimited. Next to the king was the _Mormaor_, who seems to have been identical with the _Tighern_[127] and the later _Thane_. As we have already indicated, the persons invested with this distinction were the patriarchal chiefs or heads of the great tribes into which the Highlanders were formerly divided. But when the line of the ancient mormaors gradually sank under the ascendant influence of the feudal system, the clans forming the great tribes became independent, and their leaders or chiefs were held to represent each the common ancestor or founder of his clan, and derived all their dignity and power from the belief in such representation. The chief possessed his office by right of blood alone, as that right was understood in the Highlands; neither election nor marriage could constitute any title to this distinction; it was, as we have already stated, purely hereditary, nor could it descend to any person except him who, according to the Highland rule of succession, was the nearest male heir to the dignity.