The idea that St Donan (died 617) had anything to do with Kildonan in Sutherland is extremely questionable.
The idea that St Donan has anything to do with Kildonan lacks credence. St Donan should be removed from the Gunn history… ***** For more discussion see clangunn.weebly.com/on-saint-donan--saint-donnan-and-on-kildonan-having-nothing-to-do-with-him.html
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The 'Zeno narrative' shows the 'Clan' Gunn Westford Knight discovers the USA' story to be totally impossible.
The Gunn ‘Westford Knight’ fairy story was meant to have occurred in 1380 when Sir Henry Sinclair was meant to have sailed from the Orkney Islands to Nova Scotia and beyond and taken a knighted Gunn with him (whose coat of arms / shield is later found carved on a rock at Westford, Massachusetts, USA). And so a Gunn was meant to be one of the first white people to ‘discover’ northern America. There is not a grain of truce in the story. Why is it impossible to have happened? There is only one supposed source for this Henry Sinclair story - the 'Zeno narrative' a work of fiction written in 1558 in Venice. This story includes detailed discussion of one Niccolo Zeno supposedly exploring the northern Atlantic for many years in the late 1300s - shame this Niccolo Zeno's life is fully detailed in the Venetian archives for this time period and he lived in Venice and nearby lands and never went to the northern Atlantic. A person can't be in two places at the one time to state the blindingly obvious... I note the 'Dictionary of Canadian Biography' view that 'the Zeno affair remains one of the most preposterous and at the same time one of the most successful fabrications in the history of exploration '. Brian Smith who is archivist at the Shetland Museum and Archives and also an Honorary Fellow at the Centre of Nordic Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands considers the 'Zeno narrative' to be an 'elaborate practical joke'. His summary of Henry Sinclair and the Zeno narrative is - 'Henry Sinclair, an earl of Orkney of the late fifteenth century, didn’t go to America. It wasn’t until 500 years after Henry’s death that anybody suggested that he did. The sixteenth century text (Zeno narrative) that eventually gave rise to all the claims about Henry and America certainly doesn’t say so. What it says, in so many words, is that someone called Zichmni, with friends, made a trip to Greenland. None of Henry Sinclair’s contemporaries or near-contemporaries ever claimed he went to America; and none of the antiquaries who wrote about him in the seventeenth century said so either, although they made other absurd claims about him. The story is a modern myth…' So - the the original source document which is meant to show how a Gunn got to Northern America and become the ‘Westford Knight’ has no mention of Scotland, no mention of Caithness, no mention of the Orkneys, no mention of Henry Sinclair, no Gunns and no mention of North America. That’s a major problem for the ‘Clan Gunn Westford Knight’ myth. Shame the Clan Gunn Societies give support to this hoax... For more information see http://www.alastairhamilton.com/sinclair.htm There are many other historical and archaeological impossibilities with the Gunn Wesford Knight myth but the total failure of the only source for the myth is the point of this entry... See clangunn.weebly.com/on-a-gunn-helping-discover-north-america---sir-james-gunn-of-clyth-crowner-of-caithness-and-the-westford-knight-myth.html Mark Rugg Gunn’s sole ‘proof’ for the existence of ‘Chief’ Ingram Gunn is that he ‘witnessed a Charter in the time of David II (1329-1370)’.
The problem is that the Ingeram de Gynis who was the said witness was the cousin of King Alexander III of Scotland and was actually Enguerrand de Guines, later Lord of Coucy. He was witness to letters of King Alexander III c 1285 which were later mentioned in an Inspection of King David II in 1369. This ‘Enguerrand de Guines, went to Scotland to make his fortune under his cousin, Alexander III. The king arranged his marriage to Christiana de Lindsay, daughter of William de Lindsay of Lamberton and a niece of John de Bailleul (future King of Scots). She was the heiress to the Barony of Durisdeer and Enoch in Galloway and held lands in southern Scotland and in England at Kendal in Westmoreland. Their marriage and his kinship to the king catapulted his career and included him in the core of the Scottish court… ’ (Page 196, M. A. Pollock, Scotland, England and France after the loss of Normandy 1204-1296; ‘Auld Amitie’) It makes sense – a King would have witnesses from amongst his family or well-known courtiers, not a random unknown person from the Highlands of Scotland. With Enguerrand de Guines he had a witness who was both family and a well known member of his court. 'Chief' Ingram Gunn never existed. For the equally never existed 'Clan Gunn' knighted chiefs see clangunn.weebly.com/on-the-non-existent-gunn-lsquochiefsrsquo-between-the-orkneys-and-before-gunn-coroner-for-orkney-gunns-see-the-next-column.html |
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