Munro
History
The ancient territory of this clan slopes from the high
massif of Ben Wyvis, down to the shores of the Cromarty Firth and the fertile farmlands of
Easter Ross. The area is rich in Pictish remains. had the records of the Lordship of the
Isles survived, the relationship of the Munros to the Gaelic west might be easier to
define. Suffice it to say that the origin of their name is a matter of speculation, that
they held their lands of the earls of Ross until it was forfeited from the Lord of the
Isles and that afterwards they held directly from the crown.
It is a piece of 15th century Munro pipe-music that might
be called the earliest embryo of pibroch. Its name is "Blar bealach nam brog",
which means The Field of Shoe-pass - in the sense of a battlefield. But unlike the Mac
Crimmons to the west of them or the Mac Kays to their north, the Munros made little
further contribution to this art.
It was as early Gaelic promoters of the Reformation in the
extreme north of Scotland that they made their most profound mark in those days. Alexander
Munro of Kitearn (c.1605-1653) conducted his ministry in the most distant corner of
Scotland, at Durness beside Cape Wrath, and his signature appears on documents as a
justice of the peace throughout the decade of the 1630’s. But above all, he was the
first man to remedy the fact that here was still no Bible in the vernacular, although the
Catholic Church had been abolished by Act of Parliament as long before as 1560. Alexander
committed the Bible story to Gaelic poetry for the benefit of his parishioners.
The wonder of the works of the Creator
Made by Him at the beginning of time;
This is an epistle each man may read,
The might of God, written in the
Universe.
The Chief of the Mac Kay country in which
Alexander served sailed with a regiment in 1626 to fight in the Thirty Years’ War.
With the Mac Kay regiment sailed Robert Munro of Foulis, the clan Chief, and also a cadet
of the Obsdale branch who spelt his name Robert Monro, and who rose to the rank of
General. It was he who published his account of the fortunes of the Mac Kay regiment in
1637; a record which has no parallel in Europe in the annals of that terrible war.
"If you ask why I wrote these observations," Munro explained, "it was
because I loved my comrades; if why I published them, know it was for my friends."
There was yet another Robert Munro, a descendent through
younger sons of the 10th Chief of Foulis, who was Commissary of Caithness and who died in
1633. Ebenezer Munro (1752-1825) was a member of the body of Lexington minute-men who
turned out on 19 April 1775, and he claimed to have fired the first shot in the American
War of Independence that day. But the Munros had long demonstrated in their country of
origin that the pen is mightier than the sword, and they were soon to do so in the country
of their adoption. James Munro was President of the United States between 1817 and 1825,
and it was by a stroke of the pen that he warned European nations not to molest his
country’s shores through the "Munro Doctrine".
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Munro
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Clan
Tartans