SCA Name:

Laird Tadhg Fairbarin, Squire to Sir Stephen of Huntington

Yrs fighting:

18

Weapons
Preferred:

Sword and Shield GreatSword Glaive Pike

Nickname:

Clan offices
currently held:

Clan Chief, Captain, Sniper 2005/2007, Iron Dog 2007

SCA Awards:

Ordo Hastæ Leonis, Award of Arms, Chivalry Award Sand and Surf War I

Personal Motto:

You never truly own anything that you can't carry at a dead run

My Story:

Born in the spring of 1549 in a cottage near Hollows Tower in the Scots Middle March to a Border Riever father of the riding family Armstrong and a Highland Scots mother he was named for his mother’s Irish grandfather. Tadhg spent much of his early adult life learning the art of foray and raid against those unfortunate enough to be neighbors of his clan.

Late in the summer of 1563 while being pursued by a hot trod after a raid into the English middle march his father was shot and killed. Tadhg along with several companions were able to evade the pursuing forces of the English march warden and return to the safety of the Armstrong’s valley. Thirty men had started the raid, three had been killed trying to escape the hot trod, five had been captured. At the next Warden meeting the following spring, Tadhg and several of the others that had taken part in the raid were condemned as outlaws and put to the horn*.

Fearing for her family’s safety, his mother moved them to the highlands back to her kinsfolk where they could hide and hopefully blend. Finding Gaelic almost impossible to learn, he had difficulty adjusting. The only exception was a piper named John Henderson, who’s English was only slightly better than Tadhg’s Gaelic. Befriending the dispossessed lowlander he took to teaching him how to pipe.

In 1567 the Chief of the Davidson’s discovered that they had been harboring an outlaw in their midst (a lowland outlaw mind you, they would never have considered him an criminal if he had been a Gaelic speaking highlander) and asked him to leave.

With that Tadhg returned to the borders and took up residence in the Debatable Lands just to the west of the Armstrong territories and along with other broken men such as Keith Mac Neil and a MacGregor who was called Bear decided to travel to the continent and work as mercenaries. Thus starting the beginnings of what would later become Clan Carn.