Clan Mackenzie - Eilean Donan Castle - Photo Print

Photographer Aly Wight took this photograph of Eilean Donan Castle, the great Mackenzie stronghold at the mouth of Loch Duich on the road to Skye. The clan had been settled here since at least 1267, and in the centuries that followed the castle became the heart of a territory stretching from the Black Isle to the Outer Hebrides. The MacRaes, a smaller clan closely allied with the Mackenzies, served as its hereditary constables and fought with such dedication on their behalf that they were known as "Mackenzie's shirt of mail." When government warships arrived in 1719 to crush a Jacobite uprising, one of Scotland's attempts to restore the exiled Stuart dynasty to the throne, the garrison held out until the castle was battered and blown up with gunpowder.

If you carry the Mackenzie name, Eilean Donan is where so much of that story was written.