St Kilda Kilts & Scottish Gifts

The Drummond crest is a goshawk atop of a strawberry-leaved crown. The motto is ‘gang warily’, i.e. ‘go carefully’. It’s not clear if this is a recommendation for the Drummonds to act with caution, or a warning to others to go carefully around them. The presence of the hawk perhaps suggests the latter.

We’ve not been able to find an exact event the goshawk may be a reference to, although it may fit within the broader tradition of hunting birds expressing a nobleman’s right to hunt – see Clelland for other examples)

The crown and motto at least were recorded in Sir Alexander MacKenzie’s Families of Scotland manuscript of the 1680s, where a crown befitting their rank as earls was noted, along with the motto ‘gang warrily’. However, the crest at that time was a ‘slutch hound collared and leashed’. The goshawk was recorded for the Drummond Lord Maderty, a cadet branch, whose motto was ‘Lord have mercy’.

The Drummond Earls of Perth would be forfeited in the eighteenth century for their support of the Jacobite cause, and not restored until 1854. Commentators have indicated that this full-blooded support of the Jacobites and their subsequent downfall, was perhaps not the best example of ‘gang wearily’. The Lords Maderty, meanwhile, became Viscounts Strathallan and they succeeded to the chiefship and earldom of Perth in 1902. They kept the earl of Perth’s motto, but replaced his dog with the goshawk.

A satirical poem of 1800 by ‘Amicus’ in his ‘A Translation in Verse of the Mottos of the English Nobility and Sixteen Peers of Scotland’ makes light of the motto: “Gang warily”; ay, that I do; / And, if a Scotsman, so would you: / Had I not done so, much I fear / I’d not been now and English peer!

Our older Carrick range of clan crests version of Drummond, showing a different interpretation of the blazon. 

MKP 1 September 2023