Great-grandma was from the old country. She always said that while there were many many ways to get your nose broken in a Scottish pub, bringing up the MacDonald-Campbell blood feud was one of the more certain methods.
I’m presently reading Neal Stephenson’s, “The System of the World,” which alludes to the feud, its origins, etc. and found myself wondering about it.
Scottish dopers (or anyone else): Is the feud still going on? Does no one mention it?
What’s the deal on that?
It’s really just old history now; people might pretend to be antagonistic, but it never goes beyond a few jokes… I’m a Campbell, or at least my clan is related to the Campbells of Cawdor, and my SO is descended from MacDonalds… we get along ok! 
(Some of her family do occasionally still make the obligatory jokes, though)
Maybe some more direct descendants still take it more seriously, but I doubt it.
I don’t know about current conditions or feelings, but you might want to read this aricle on the Massacre of Glencoe for some of the history behind the feud.
Briefly, the Campbells and MacDonalds were two of the most powerful clans in Scotland, and wound up on opposite sides of the Jacobite cause after the “Glorius Revolution.” The article does a better job than I would of filling in the particulars.
If you banged on about it in an insensitive way in a pub in the wrong place in Scotland (likely north of Stirling, say, rather than in the lowlands), I’m sure you could get “filled in” by one of the locals.
My granny, who died 10 years ago at age 94, used to say “Ye cannae trust a Campbell,” pretty much to her dying day. Not that she was a MacDonald, mind.
Of course, she also used to claim that “pigs could see the wind…”
Does this thread have anything to do with soup or fast food? That’s sure what I was expecting to read about.
They may not take it seriously, but last time I was in Scotland, I got a ton of flak for being a Dalrymple. See the previously cites Wikperia site for the involvement of the Dalrymples in the Glencoe Massacre. The “Dirty Dalrymples” indeed! :eek:
Aye! Ye canna trust a Grossbottom!
Aye. The McDonalds have claimed that for a long time.
Zoe of Argyll
Our neighbors were Maclains, and I heard of this feud, so it’s remembered as history. This is in California.
Descendant of Campbells
So basically it’s the Hatfields and the McCoys, only in Scotland?
Basically…with politics, religion and a good healthy dose of Scottich stubbornness thrown in to boot!
“Baill Inneraora” 
Well, Hatfields vs McCoys had politics (if not religion) as a central factor too. That little blue versus grey thing, you know.
How so? My information has the feud starting after the war, and no mention was made of sides in the Great Unpleasantness.
The fact that when they opened their new visitors’ centre at Glencoe in 2002, the National Trust for Scotland appointed someone called Roddy Campbell as the manager can either be used as evidence that the feud continues, in that some MacDonalds made a fuss about it, or as evidence that it is mostly a non-issue, in that the NTS calculated that it didn’t really matter.
What needs to be remembered is that the Campbells had long been the most powerful clan in the western Highlands, which made them unpopular anyway. Invoking Glencoe became a crude way of summing up all the existing anti-Campbell resentments.
The feud is ancient history. Now only played up for the benefit of the tourists. The last time I heard it mentioned was when some museum was looking for publicity for their Glencoe exhibition. So they “banned” anyone called Cambell from visiting it. :rolleyes: Lots of media coverage inevitably followed.
And I think they also banned Campbells, which may have been more to the point. :smack:
Well the Clachaig Inn in Glencoe still has a brass plaque that reads No Hawkers or Campbells, though as the article says, quite accurately, “the message is left more for the amusement of tourists than in any sense of lasting revenge for the infamous massacre of Macdonalds which took place near here in 1692”.
You wouldn’t find much evidence of it in lowland Scotland; when I was a wee boy (1970s) there was a department store in Glasgow called “Campbell, Stewart and MacDonalds” - obviously some quite close cooperation there. Heck, let’s face it, we’re too busy with the Old Firm rivalry to have much time left over for other forms of bigotry.
And it’s a total myth that Campbells prefer Burger King.
I know this was asked forever ago but I find it amusing so I’m answer it anyways. I am related to both the McDonalds and the Campbells through my mother’s side of the family. No we don’t hate each other… we are all a very loving tight family.
I do find it pretty amusing that my family slaughtered my family though 
The Scottish aren’t stubborn, they’re just very definite in their convinctions.
Nava, whose people aren’t stubborn either.
