Motto: Ab obice suavior (Gentler because of the obstruction) ; An obice Saevoir (Feicer because of the obstruction)
Crest: Gules, three bears' heads erased Argen muzzled Azure.
    The First known chief, who appears in the 12th century, was Gilchrist Behreatnach. Inchgalbraith was his stronghold, the ruins of which still stand on the man-made island. He married the daughter of the Earl of Lennox. The fourth chief was Sir William Galbraith who was one of the Co-Regents of Scotland in 1255. Sir Arthur, his son married on of the daughters of Sir James Douglas.

     The Galbraiths had many ties with the Lennoxes. They lent their support when James I returned to Scotland from England and murdered his own kinsmen. After the murder of James III in 1488, Thomas, the 12th Chief, took up arms with Lennox but after the defeat of Talla Moss in, he was captured and hanged in 1489.

     The 17th chief, Robert Galbraith, lost all the lands held by the Galbraith's due to his lawlessness. He fled to Ireland sometime before 1642. His grandson, James the 18th chief, was the last known chief. About this time the Galbraiths began to travel to other parts of Scotland and Ireland.

The Clan Galbraith has been without a chieftan since about 1700.

     Various publications have listed the Galbraiths as a sept of the MacDonald Clan, but this is no historical basis for theses claims. After the defeat of the Lennox rising in 1425, some Galbraiths left the area and settled on Kintyre and the Isle of Gigha. Due to their location, thses families would have been vassals of Donald. This relatively small group of families did not include the Galbraith chief or any armigerous gentlemen, or any known cadets of the chief's line. This appears to be the only basis for the MacDonald claims. These questions of differences were posed to the Lord Lyon in 1982 by the Clan Galbraith Association. His reply stated unequivocally that the Galbraihts were not a sept of any other clan, and are considered a separate clan entitled to a chief of their own.

     Scottish classicists of the period to which the composition of the motto probably belongs. (There are in fact four manuscripts of Ovid's major works dating from the 12th and 13th centuries still preserved in Scotland.) ....... "The third book of Ovid's Metamorphoses (lines 568-571), where Ovid describes a damned river thus:"

     sig ego torrentem, qua nil obstabat eunti, lenius et modic strepitu decurrere vidi; at quacumque trabes obstructaue saxa tenebant, spumeus et fervens et ob obice saevior ibat.

(so have I myself seen a river, where nothing barred its course, flow on quite smoothly and with no great noise; but whatever logs and boulders were piled up in its way to hold it back, it would continue on its way, foaming and boiling, fiercer because of the obstruction.)
    The name Galbraith is said to come from the Gaelic for "strange or foreign Briton". This leads us to believe that the original Galbraith probably was from the south and came to live in Strathclyde around 1208, Gillescop Galbraith witnessed a charter by the Lord of Lennox. The son of Galbrath, William, received land in Lennox at Buthernockis and Kincaith. These Galbraiths became the principal family of this name.
    Here "Obice" is used by Ovid with nice exactitude; a river dam is precisely "something thrown in the way to obstruct progress. This leads one to believe that the composer of this motto took Ovid's striking and original phrase, ab obice saevior (fiercer because of the obstruction) and by the simple change of just two letters (substituting ua for ae) cleverly produced the motto ob obice suavior, carrying exactly the opposite meaning(gentler because of the obstruction), which he wanted in order to describe the effect of the muzzle on the bear.
    He, no doubt, felt that the slight inappropriateness of obice for a muzzle was justified by the neatness (one might almost say wit), of his adaptation of Ovid's phrase, which would be recognized and relished by most of his comtemporaries who were well educated in the classics."
Galbraith Tartan
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