Muriel Calder of Cawder

ID: I19331 Name: Muriel Calder 1 2 3 4 Sex: F Birth: 13 FEB 1498 2 4 Death: ABT 1575 2 4 Birth: ABT 1528 in Scotland 5 Death: ABT 1560 5 Note: [Richard Hodgson]

Heiress of the old Thanes of Cawdor.
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Muriel is sometimes reported, eg in TSP (Argyll), as having been born about 13 Feb 1498. However, if it is true that her father died in 1494 (when she was an infant), such must be incorrect. She was forced by Archibald Campbell, 2nd Earl of Argyll, to marry his son.
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Following the untimely death of the 8th Thane, the sole heiress was his baby daughter Muriel Calder. A party of Campbells forcibly took her from Kilravock Castle where she was staying with her grandmother at harvest time. Her quick-witted nurse branded her on the hip with a red-hot key so that she could be identified by the family were she ever found again. The tip of her little finger was bitten off to also help with subsequent identification. Only a very young child, she was taken by the men to Inveraray Castle. In 1510 when she was old enough to be married, she wedded Sir John Campbell, the Earl of Argyll's son. Despite this traumatic beginning, the 'red-haired lassie' would seem to have enjoyed her life to a large extent. The couple returned to Cawdor in 1524 and Muriel became Thaness of Cawdor herself after her husband died in 1546. She lived until 1575.
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Survived her husband and her son.

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[montrose.ged]

Scottish Clans and Tartans, by Ian Grimble, states: "John of Calder died in 1494, leaving a daughter, Muriel, as his posthumous heir.... A force of Campbells then seized her by force and carried her away to Inveraray in 1499. Legend tells that her mother had time to brand her with a red-hot key, and her nurse to bite off the joint of a little finger, lest the Campbells should put a spuious heiress in her place. It would have been a wise precaution. The Campbells lost many of their men as they beat off their pursuers, and someone suggested that if the child were to die, much blood would have been spilt in vain. To this the leader of the Campbell gang replied that the heiress could never die so long as there was a red-haired lass on the banks of Loch Fyne. Supposedly it was the genuine heiress Muriel who was married in 1510 to Sir John Campbell, third son of Argyll, and returned with him to live at Calder in the country of Nairn, now known as Calder..... Here the heiress Muriel outlived her husband by several decades and was succeeded by her grandson when she died in 1573."