There are stories aplenty about the cliar-Sheanchain, and John Shaw has written extensively about the tradition, which goes back many centuries. They take their name, Seanchan’s Band, from Senchán Torpéist, Ireland’s chief poet in 600AD. They were a notorious problem, arriving in large bands, with wives and children and dogs, eating their hosts out of house and home and refusing to leave unless unrealistic demands were met (or they lost in a battle of wit and eloquence – beàrradaireachd or gearradh cainnte).
The Scottish Parliament enacted laws against them in 1407 and 1574, and there is evidence that some were hanged in Edinburgh in the late 1500s. John Lorne Campbell argued that this was conscious suppression of “the intellectual class of Gaeldom”.