Lord Macaulay, in one of his essays, thus
writes:— "To call up our ancestors before us, with all their
peculiarities of language, manners, and garb,—to show us over
their houses, to seat us at their tables, to rummage their
old-fashioned wardrobes, to explain the use of their ponderous
furniture;—these parts of the duty, which properly belongs to
the historian, have become appropriated by the historical
novelist. In these pages I have endeavoured to present a
portraiture of Scottish life and manners from the Reformation
downwards, dissociated from fiction, and founded on original
materials. I have collected my information from many sources. I
gathered much in the course of antiquarian rambles in different
parts of Scotland. The ecclesiastical records have been of
especial service. Annals, journals, diaries, provincial
histories, club books, and books privately printed, have yielded
a store of information. MSS. relating to Scotland in the British
Museum, and the Public Record Office, London, and in the Library
of the Faculty of Advocates, and the General Register House
Edinburgh, have been laid under tribute. I have been favoured
with communications from intelligent persons in various parts of
the country. My special acknowledgments are due to Captain
Dunbar Dunbar, author of "Social Life in Moray;" to John Gorrie,
Esq., Advocate; and to Hugh Barclay, Esq., LL.D.,
Sheriff-Substitute of Perthshire. To my accomplished friend,
Thomas Laurence Kington Oliphant, Esq., of Gask, I have been
deeply indebted for many valuable suggestions during the
progress of the work at press. My thanks, lastly, are due to the
Grampian Club, for printing this work as the first of their
issues.
Snowdoun Villa, Lewisham, Kent.
July, 1869.
