The Battle of Drumnacoub, 1427

The Battle of Drumnacoub was a clan battle fought in the far northwest of Scotland between the Clan Mackay and the Clan Sutherland. The battle took place between 1427 and 1433 on a hill called Carn Fada, between Ben Loyal and the village of Tongue. The background to the conflict was a power struggle within the Mackay clan, with the elderly chief Angus Du Mackay and his second son John Mackay opposed by Angus’s cousins Morgan Neilson Mackay and Niel Neilson Mackay. The Mackays were divided after the imprisonment of Niel Vasse Mackay, the eldest son of Angus Du Mackay, by King James I of Scotland in 1427. The Earl of Sutherland supported Niel and Morgan Mackay in their efforts to take the Mackay lands from Angus Du Mackay.

The battle was recorded by the 15th century chronicler Walter Bower in his work Scotichronicon. Bower’s account of the battle describes it as a fierce encounter with hardly any survivors on either side. Other 16th century accounts by George Buchanan, John Lesley, and Sir Robert Gordon provide similar descriptions of the battle as a brutal and bloody conflict. The outcome of the battle is not clear, but it is believed that few of the fighters on either side survived.

After the battle, it is not known what happened to the Mackay clan or the individuals involved in the conflict. It is possible that the power struggle within the clan continued, or that the surviving members of the Mackay clan reconciled and moved on from the events of the Battle of Drumnacoub.