the rowan tree..............

The more common Scots Gaelic name for the rowan is Caorunn which crops up in Highland place names such as Beinn Chaorunn in Inverness-shire and Loch a'chaorun in Easter Ross. This indicates the rowan's importance in bleak and lonely Highland areas, where other trees would not easily grow, and where the rowan is called the Lady of the Mountains.

Rowan was also the clan badge of the Malcolms and McLachlans and the surnames Mac Cairthin and MacCarthy come from the old Gaelic word for rowan and literally mean "Son of the Rowan".

In Scotland at least, the rowan seems to have been the Tree of Life or Cosmic Axis tree. Such trees stood at the sacred centre [often also the geographical centre] of a place, connecting it to the realms of above and below, as well as the four directions. Kings were crowned there, and all important decisions made under the auspices of the tree, giving them the authority of the Otherworld as well as this one.
Such a rowan tree stood on one of the Orkney islands. The fate of the island was bound up with it: if even one leaf was carried away from the island, the Orkneys would pass under the dominion of a foreign lord.