Hanna - Hannay - Hannah

by GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFF

"AS EVERY SCHOOLBOY KNOWS…….." is a cliché that is often completed in the form of a highly dubious statement. It would not however be so grossly inaccurate to say that every schoolboy, and girl, knows the name of Hannah or Hanna, since once or other, and sometimes both appear almost daily on television dominating the credits of two favorite cartoons. Jack Hannah directs Donald Duck, and William Hanna directs the unending conflict between Tom and Jerry.

Both these cartoon award winners are of course Americans. Another Hanna, Pat, is a well-known Australian cartoonist, besides being a leading light in the new-formed Clan Hannay Society.

The Hannays were originally a Galloway folk. The name is an ancient one, and its origin a matter of dispute. As all names in early times it is rendered in a variety of spellings. Ahanna or Ahannay seems to be the commonest early form, and this has caused some to suggest that it is of Brythonic Celtic origin, the "A" being the Welsh "Ap," meaning son of. Others have argued in favor of a Norse origin. Others consider it a Pictish name since Galloway was long an independence Pictish providence- indeed in St. Ninian Galloway can claim the first Christian missionary in Scotland, the founder of the Pictish Church about the year 400.

The first firmly established home of the Hannays was at Sorbie, near the county town of Wigtown, in the Machars, that promontory jutting into the sea between Luce Bay and Wigtown Bay. They were not the original owners of the fortified homestead of Sorbie. The de Vetereponts, a powerful Norman family, acquired the lands of Sorbie and are the first owners of record.

The de Vetereponts in the way customary with the Norman incomers (who were of course themselves originally Norsemen who had spent a century or so acquiring French polish) built their wooden castle on top of a motte, or mound raised at least partially artificially. The present stone-built tower of Sorbie stands by the site of the original wooden home of the de Vetereponts. It was built by the Hannays, although there is some uncertainty as to both exactly how and when Sorbie became Hannay property. Certainly they were the owners well before the year 1550, which is about the time when the Castle was being built, and there is a suggestion that they acquired the property peaceably, possibly by marriage with an heiress, as their motto, Per Ardua ad Alta, is very similar to that of their predecessors, nor are there any tales of bloodshed and battle associated with the change of ownership, although the Hannays were involved in plenty of feuds with other Gallovidian clans.

The castle the Hannays built themselves at Sorbie is an unusually high and a substantial L-plan tower, common in its time, standing in the middle of what has been, the security of marshland (hence the name, originally "Sourby"), but is now wooded. Long uninhabited, and parts of it regrettably used as quarry by inconsiderate persons, Sorbie is in ruinous state. However, in 1965, it was generously gifted to the Clan Hannay Society who intend to ensure it preservation.

Hannays were a power in the land of Galloway. Like other Galloway families, the MacDowalls and MacCullochs among them, the Hannays supported Balliol, and therefore for a time sided with the English in Scotland’s War of Independence, until they were defeated by Edward Bruce and submitted to King Robert the Bruce in 1308. Thereafter Hannays fought for Scotland at Sauchievburn and Flodden, while there was almost incessant feuding with their neighbors, Kennedies, Dunbars and Murrays, the Hannays would find themselves now allied to one party, and now to another. Hannays went on at least on of the Crusades as is testified by the family crest, a fitched cross mounted on a crescent - signifying the triumph of Christian over infidel.

Sorbie Tower, or the Place (or more pretentiously, Palace) of Sorbie was probably started by Alexander Ahanna who succeeded his father Patrick, who was murdered in 1543. Alexander was doubtless determined that he would at least be safe from being murdered at home, for Sorbie, with its turrets and gun-loops, was a sternly defensible residence. The family was at this time at the height of its power in Galloway, a power that thereafter declined, due largely to reckless feuding. The Hannays were put to the horn (outlawed) in 1601 for their depredations on the Murrays. At the same time they were heavily fined, which brought ruin to the House of Sorbie so that the estates were sold off, passing through the Agnews to become part of the estates of the Stewart Earls of Galloway.

Not that the Hannays were only interested in fighting their neighbors. A number of them became increasingly active in the developing trade and industry of Wigtown, where they had a town house - obtaining royal permission to fortify it. They became burgesses and provosts of the burgh, and one Alexander Hannay made a fortune sufficient to buy the estate of Kirkdale (pronounced Kirdle) just across the border with the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, the eastern half of Galloway, in 1532. A descendant of his, Patrick Hannay, Provost of Wigtown, was killed in a skirmish with the Kennedies at the Cruives of Cree, but Kirkdale remained with the Hannays.

Hannays had already shown themselves venturesome and prepared to fare forth of Galloway. John Hanna became shipmaster to the King, sailing out of Aberdeen and being granted warrant for safe conduct when trading with London. Peter Thomas Hannay was granted property in Perth, while a family of Hannays who had settled Edinburgh people of Court of James V with the royal baker, the royal tailor, and the commander of artillery. Another Hannay became royal falconer, and was succeeded in office by more than one descendant.

It was, however, the Ulster plantations that saw the first great overspill of Hannays beyond Scotland. Doubtless the new environment, lying only twenty miles across the water from Galloway, appealed to the more militant, even it might be said, to the more uninhibited side of their nature - for there was any amount of bloodletting. By the time of the siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne there were Hannas fighting on both sides, and one Captain Hanna had his gallantry recorded in a ballad. In Ulster the main line is that of Hannas of Newry.

A member of the clan who combined military prowess with the gentler art of poetry was Patrick Hannay, probably a younger son of the Kirkdale family. Patrick was a poet in the Court of James VI and afterwards attended his daughter Anne of Bohemia, the Winter Queen, both as courtier and as a soldier - in this having something in common with the great Marquis of Montrose. At this time several Hannays and Hannas are on record as having distinguished themselves as soldiers of fortune in the service of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden.

Now the clan moves still further afield, George Hannay carrying on the family tradition of fighting for the Stuarts, was taken prisoner by Cromwell’s forces at the Battle of Worcester and transported to the Barbados as a slave. Freed under Charles II, he made what must have been a welcome change in status, becoming Provost Marshal of the Colony. About the same time we get the first record of a Hannay on the American mainland, a settler in New England. A little over a century later, there were 126 Hanna families in the USA.

In America, continuing in the tradition they established as Covenaters in staunchly covenanting Galloway, Hannas have been numerous in the Presbyterian ministry. But these were by no means the first Hannay churchmen. There were Ahanna monks and Canons recorded in 1289 and 1390. The most notable if not exactly the most distinguished of the Hannay churchmen must however surely be that Dean of Edinburgh who read from the new prayer book in St. Giles’s and became the target for the stool thrown, reputedly, by Jenny Geedes - although it has been argued that her aim Wanda to good that she must have been a boy dressed up as a maidservant! In the life of Belfast in the last century the Rev. Hugh Hanna was a sufficiently dominant political figure for his stature in Carlisle Circus to have been blown up during the present troubles. Canon Hannay of the Church of Ireland is better known by his nomme de plume of George A. Brimingham, author of many successful novels of Irish life.

Hannays and Hannahs are still strong in Galloway, and Kirkdale is still the home of Hannay descendants of the founder of that line. The present laird, Major R. W. Rainsford-Hannay, has been able to preserve the splendid house, set in some lovely surrounding, that Sir Samuel Hannay built for himself in 1783 out of silver granite from the neighboring Creetown quarry, to the designs of Robert Adam. He has done so by successfully converting the great house into six flats, with two individual houses in the wings. His son Dr. David Rainsford-Hannay, engaged in medical research in Glasgow, is prospective Liberal candidate for the Galloway constituency - one that perhaps more than any other tends to be loyal to native representation. Another branch of Sorbie family has been settled in Fife, at Kingsmuir on the far seaboard from the Solway, since 1700, and there is also a cadet branch of the main line long associated with the Port of Leith.

But the most remarkable fact remains that today there are more Hannays, Hannahs and Hannas in America than there are in Scotland, Ireland, England and Australia.