Quote Originally Posted by Twa_Corbies View Post
Perish the notion that clans should behave like anything other than proper English gentlemen and be all lawless and given to strife!
Perish the thought indeed, although one would have thought that the phrase "proper Highland gentlemen" would have been more appropriate. The reason that strict controls are necessary is to prevent montebanks, charlatans, and outright scoundrels from laying claim to dormant or non-existent chiefships. Even with such controls in place the occasional fraud does slip through the cracks-- a good case in point is that of the self-styled "McCarthy Mor", a fraudster who managed, over a ten year period, to produce dozens of forged documents to shore up his claim. It should be pointed out that these forgeries were extremely well crafted. They were done, apparently, by his partner, a Mr. Davidson, who was a well-trained and highly skilled restorer of antique documents.

But not all charlatans are as sophisticated in their attempt to gain recognition. In fact, most of their clumsy, ill-conceived schemes unravel almost as fast as they can come up with the lies they hope others, with less intelligence than they have, will believe. These fraudsters leave in their wake a collection of badly engraved tea pots, ancestral portraits done in acrylics, and ancient family bibles with pedigrees written with ball point pens. They now rely on the magic of photo shop, without having either the art or artistry to create anything even remotely believable.

This is why Lord Lyon has raised the bar, and clearly set forth the requirements that need to be met if one is to be recognized as a chief. Hopefully the wide dissemination of these requirements will at last bury these two-bit con men somewhere in potters field with the word FRAUD carved on their tombstone.