[az_gila]

Check out the Clan Macalister history...

http://www.clanmacalistersociety.org/historians-corner/article1.htm

This clan was from the SW corner of Scotland (Ayr) and sailed amongst the islands mentioned previously. The distance from the Scottish Isles to Northern Ireland is less than 20 miles, so intermarriage would certainly happen.

According to the history above, the King of Norway controlled these islands up to the 12th Century.

I'm proud to be from a smaller Clan within the Macalisters...:^)

[Verginius Rufus]

I did some research on this many years ago so don't remember all of the details of the top of my head, but according to the medieval genealogies, Clan Donald, Clan Dougal, and Clan Alaisdair/Alister are all descended from Somerled, ruler in the Hebrides in the mid-1100s (killed in 1164 in an attack near Glasgow). Alexander of Islay, then head of the Clan Donald, was killed by his own cousin, the head of Clan Dougal, in 1299.

I saw a book a few years ago that was about using DNA to trace relationships, and it had a chapter on the descendants of Somerled--the current leaders of the clans let their DNA be tested and they all had the same Y chromosome (in other words, in their direct paternal lines, there was never a female ancestor who had a son by a lover instead of by her husband).

Back in the 1970s a professor in Edinburgh named Sellar had an article on Somerled where he argued that he was of Gaelic ancestry, but the DNA evidence seems to prove that he was Norse.

[Verginius Rufus]

I didn't look at the Clan MacAlister link until after I posted my previous message...they quote the passage I was referring to about Alexander of Islay. He wasn't the brother of Angus Mor but the son of Angus Mor. There are some confusions in the sources where men with similar names get confused--this Alexander gets mixed up with his nephew. Angus Mor was a supporter of Robert the Bruce (the grandfather of the famous Robert the Bruce) in the 1280s.

There are surviving documents with Alexander of Islay's seal on them when he submitted to Edward I in the 1290s (I've seen them in the Public Record Office in London). That seems to have more to do with the fact that family rivals were supporting Balliol than any love of Edward I.