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Life in a Country
Manse about 1720
Mr.
James Laurie, the minister of Kirkmichael has noted down from the years
1711 to 1732 memoranda of his income and expenses, his bonds, his bills,
drugs he used, wages he paid, crops he reaped, books he bought, bargains
he made. For twenty frugal years this venerable little note-book served
him, and after the lapse of 180 years it may also serve us; for it
affords glimpses of the quaint quiet rural life of Scotland in the early
part of the eighteenth century.
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Scottish Officers
in Sweden
An account of some of the Scots Officers who served in Sweden.
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The Scalacronica
of Sir Thomas Gray
In his account of the Norman Kings he reveals information not available
elsewhere and from the point of view of a soldier. Written around 1355
this gives us a unique glimpse into that period.
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The Celtic Trews
The costume consisted of a blouse with sleeves, confined in some cases
by a belt, with trousers fitting close at the ankle, and a tartan plaid
fastened up at the shoulder with a brooch.' This form of Celtic dress is
of special interest to all who are connected with the Scottish
Highlands.
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Scottish Industrial
Undertakings before the Union
Some interesting facts about the industrial and other undertakings
around the 17th century.
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The Scottish Ancestors of
President Roosevelt
President Roosevelt,
whose name is unmistakably of Dutch origin, has nevertheless a more
decided ancestral connection with Scotland than with Holland.
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The Templars in Scotland in
the Thirteenth Century
Information from a Charter Deed from 1354 held in the General Registry
House in Edinburgh.
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Scottish Students in Heidelberg, 1386-1662
Lots of Scottish names in this article and amazing how far it goes back.
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The
History of Divorce in Scotland
Seems there were a lot more reasons accepted for a divorce settlement in
Scotland.
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Scotsmen Serving the Swedes
Quite an account of Scots who did great service for the Swedes.
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The
Hospitallers in Scotland in the Fifteenth Century
THE Knights of S.
John of Jerusalem, and their brethren the Templars, were popular Orders
in their early history, and as fighting forces of trained warriors their
services during the Crusades and in support of the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem are recognised as valuable, and would have been still more so
but for the jealousy and frequent quarrels between them.
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Superstition in Scotland of
Today
Probably few of those
who year by year visit the northern counties of Scotland have any notion
of the fairy lore and superstitions which, notwithstanding our modern
wholesale education, are still cherished and believed in by the natives.
The isolation of the crofter communities and the mystic temperament of
the Celt are probably the chief contributory causes for these survivals
elsewhere relegated to the limbo of forgotten things, and as every year,
with the spread of education from one source or another, they will
become less vigorous, it seems desirable to place on record the
following instances which have come under observation within recent
years.
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Notes on Swedo-Scottish
Families
THE editor is
indebted to Mr. John S. Samuel for these biographical and historical
Notes of Scotsmen in Sweden. They were prepared by Herr Eric E. Etzcl,
D.Ph., Upsala, partly from information in Anrep.: Svenska Adelns
Aettartaflor, and partly from researches in the private archives of
members of the Swedish nobility, who trace their descent from Scotsmen
who migrated to Sweden, for the most part during the Thirty Years' War.
That prolonged struggle attracted a large number of Scottish soldiers of
fortune, who at its close settled in Sweden, and afterwards made for
themselves a name in its military and industrial annals.
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Helenore,
or The Fortunate Shepherdess
THIS manuscript
volume is, so far as I know, the only copy in existence in Alexander
Ross's autograph of one of the finest Pastorals in the Scottish
vernacular—a poem which, in the counties of Forfar, Kincardine,
Aberdeen, and so along to Inverness, easily holds in public estimation a
place equal, if not superior, to that held by Allan Ramsay's Gentle
Shepherd in the Lothians and other lowland counties of Scotland. In
one respect it is undoubtedly superior—as a genuine and faithful record
of the habits, customs and common speech of the locality and period the
poet professes to describe.
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John Bruce, Historiographer
1745-1826
Mr. Bruce's
intellectual powers were of the very highest order. He was equally
distinguished as an accurate historian and an elegant scholar. The
extent, the variety, and the correctness of his general information was
astonishing.... In the more vigorous period of his life he was eminently
distinguished by that qualification which is so rarely to be met with,
in which great knowledge is combined with a shrewdness and pleasing
urbanity of manners which rendered his communications agreeable to
everyone. His conversational powers were captivating in the extreme, and
his sallies of innocent humour and flashes of wit were irresistibly
entertaining.
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Scots in Poland
This article gives many Scottish names in Poland.
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A List of Persons Attainted
after the '45
Mr. James Stillie,
bookseller, George Street, Edinburgh, had discovered amongst his papers
a rare, if not unique, copy of the official list of men attainted for
their share in the rising of 1745.
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Lord Elgin in Canada.
1847-1854
Of such too readily
forgotten statesmen, the eighth earl of Elgin and Kincardine is one of
the foremost. He dominated Canada during seven critical years in the
most critical period of Canadian history—1841-1867; but since his work
was not that of war but only of its prevention, and of the creation of
Canadian self-government, he has been relegated to the background of
history, to make room for more romantic figures. It is time to restore
him to his rightful place of pre-eminence.
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A forgotten Scottish Scholar of the Sixteenth
Century
A French
historian, M. Ferdinand Buisson, well known for his services to primary
education in France, has given a picture of Wilson and his surroundings
which puts it beyond doubt that he was one of whom his country had
reason to be proud.
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The Castle Campbell Inventory
An Inventory of
Archibald, 7th Earl of Argyll's Castle of Campbell (formerly called
Castle Gloume), in the Shire of Clackmannan, taken on 21 February, 1595.
Transcribed from the original, preserved in the Argyll Charter Chest.
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Four
Representative Documents of Scottish History
Life of St Columba by Adamnan, Life of St. Margaret, Book of Discipline,
Autobiography of Dr Alexander Carlyle Minister of Inveresk.
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Intellectual Influences of Scotland on the Continent
It is a natural
question to ask—has Scotland, on her part, exercised any perceptible
influence on the sister nations of the Christian group?
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Narrative of a Journey from
Edinburgh to Dresden in 1814
William Anderson
journey from Edinburgh to Dresden and back in 1814, on which he
travelled as quickly as he could, partly post, partly by Diligence,
and faster than the mail, occupied fifty-nine days, of which,
however, in consequence of enforced delays, only thirty-six were spent
in actual travelling, when his progress was at the average rate of
eighty-eight miles a day.
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Sir David Lindsay: 1490-1555
THERE was a time, not
so long ago, when Lindsay's name was familiar and honoured among the
people of his native land, and when, as Dr. James Taylor says, his
writings were to be found in almost every cottage north of the Tweed. In
his Scottish History and Literature, Dr. John M. Ross testifies to the
piety with which Scotland remembered her old "makar." During the
sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries upwards of twenty
editions of his works were published. His verses were on almost every
tongue. Until Burns appeared he was in fact the poet of the
Scottish people.
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A Scottish Charter-Chest
SIR JAMES RAMSAY has
laid historical students under another and an unexpected obligation by
publishing to the world the large series of deeds and other documents
connected with his own estates in Forfarshire and Perthshire, from the
early part of the thirteenth to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Apart from their value to the family in possession, the contents of a
charter-chest have always more or less of general interest. They often
throw curious light on the domestic life of bygone generations, and thus
supply fresh data to the historian.
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A Biographical Sketch of
General Robert Melville of Strathkinness
GENERAL ROBERT MELVILLE was
descended from the Melvilles of Carnbee, in the county of
Fife, in Scotland, a branch of the antient and noble family of the same
name, of which the chief is the Earl of Leven and Melville. The ancestor
of the family is held to have been the first Norman who passed into
Scotland. He was a person of distinction of Normandy, named De Malville
or De Melville, who accompanied William the Conqueror into England, in
the autumn of 1066. Meeting, however, with some cause of disgust from
William, he, before the close of that year, secretly withdrew to the
court of Malcolm Canmore, King of Scotland.
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The Royal Regiment of Scots
Dragoons (now the Scots Greys)
Amongst a number of
papers which lately came into the possession of Colonel F. J. Agnew
Wallace, late of the Scots Greys, a collection of letters written in the
years immediately before the Union by Lord John Hay, Colonel of the
Royal Regiment of Scots Dragoons (now the Scots Greys), came to light,
and I am indebted to Colonel Wallace for permission to publish a
selection of extracts from them.
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Alexander Farquharson of
Brouchdearg and his Farquharson Genealogies
The 'Genealogy of the
Name of Farquharson ' down to the year 1733, by Alexander Farquharson of
Brouchdearg—commonly known as the Brouch-dearg MS.—in which the writer
traces the descent of practically all the members of his clan in his
time, scattered though they were through four counties, with a
completeness and accuracy which leave little to be desired, and with a
modesty and frankness not always observable in such performances.
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The Revolution Government in
the Highlands
AN unfortunate
prominence has been given to the massacre » of Glencoe, which, however
discreditable to its authors, was an isolated event, and cannot be
regarded as a real indication of a settled policy. The interest taken in
it has only tended to distract attention from the more important
question of the way in which the problem of Highland government was
regarded by the Revolution statesmen, and of how they attempted to deal
with it.
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Mr. Hutcheson's 'Journal,'
1783
Mr. Charles Hutcheson, a
young man (aged 21) of some spirit and intelligence, with a taste for
good literature and a device of a sentimental journey engaging his
holiday mind, has been able to set down some part of the truth about the
life of himself and his friends, and may be thanked for another
instalment of his travels to Arran.
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Journal to Arran in [Buteshire]
Argyle-Shire
A continuation of the previous article.
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Peasant Life in Argyllshire in the End of the Eighteenth Century
I
was born in the year 1774 at Barichreil, a small village of Nether Lorn.
My father was a descendant of that McCallum of Colagin, the sight of
whom, as he entered Kilbride Church one Sunday, followed by his twelve
sons in order of their age, provoked the Lady of Dunollie to exclaim:
A third of Albyn were none too much for McCallum of Colagin!
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John of Swinton: A Border
Fighter of the Middle Ages
Close on five hundred and
fifty years ago, on 22nd February, 1370-71, died David the Second. The
male line of Bruce failed, the Stewarts succeeded, and Froissart tells
us that a truce was established between England and Scotland with a
provision that the Scots might arm and hire themselves out like to
others for subsidies, taking which side they pleased, either English or
French. Of this provision John of Swinton availed himself, and rode
south to make his name and fortune.
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The Highland Emigration of
1770
It is worth while to
analyse the nature and the causes of the first great exodus from the
Highlands, an exodus which reached its highest point of activity in the
early seventies of the eighteenth century.
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The Causes of the Highland
Emigrations of 1783-1803
THE first great
period of Highland emigration ended in 1775 with the outbreak of the
American War of Independence. Then followed a perceptible pause, not
broken until- the Treaty of Versailles, which formed the starting-point
of a fresh movement.
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Eighteenth Century Highland
Landlords and the Poverty Problem
During the latter
part of the eighteenth century the inhabitants of many parts of the
Highlands and Hebrides were living permanently in a state that bordered
upon destitution. They were badly housed, they were poorly fed, and they
had a continual struggle to pay their rents.
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Eighteenth Century Highland
Landlords and the Poverty Problem
This is part 2 of the above article.
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The Western Highlands in the
Eighteenth Century
IN the muniment room
at Dunvegan, the seat of MacLeod of MacLeod in Skye, are preserved a
great number of documents which throw much light on the conditions
prevailing in the Highlands during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries.
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Aesculapius in Fife: a Study
of the Early Eighteenth Century
AMONG the many
records of Scottish domestic accounts during the seventeenth century
which have been published there are few which make any reference at all
to expenditure on medical attendance, though, as the papers dealt with
in here clearly show, the doctor's bill must have formed an appreciable
item in the annual budget of the family man.
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Rent-Rolls of the Knights of
St. John of Jerusalem in Scotland
IN the years
1828-29-30 the late James Maidment, Advocate, Edinburgh, published in
very limited editions copies of certain papers which had come into his
hands relating to the history, privileges and possessions of the
Knights-Templars in Scotland and their successors the Knights of St.
John of Jerusalem. These pamphlets, five in number issued in paper
covers, are now rare. To one of them entitled Abstract of the
Charters and other papers recorded in the Chartulary of Torphichen from
1581 to 1596 is prefixed an introductory notice wherein the
loss, or supposed loss, of the greater part of the Chartulary is
deplored.
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Sir Archibald Lawrie's Charter
Collections
BORN at 48 West Nile
Street, Glasgow, 8th September, 1837, oldest child of Professor James
Adair Lawrie, M.D., and of Janet Finlay of The Moss, the future Sir
Archibald Campbell Lawrie was fated to win high distinction as an
advocate, judge and historical scholar.
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St. Helena in 1817
THE following account
of a short visit to St. Helena is extracted from a MS. diary which was
purchased at the recent sale of the Ardpatrick Library.
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The Scots in Ulster
A close connection
has existed for nearly a thousand years between the west of Scotland and
the north of Ireland, and a stream of migration has for eight hundred
years flown as strongly from east to west as from west to east.
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Medical Folk-Lore in the
Highlands of Scotland
The writer, Dr.
Fortescue Fox, Strathpeffer Spa, and the Editor of The Lancet,
have most kindly permitted us to reprint the following paper, which we
arc sure will prove most interesting to many of our readers.
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Use of Shortbread at the
Communion
At a meeting of
Dumfries and Galloway Antiquarian Society on Thursday evening an
interesting discussion took place regarding the use of shortbread at the
celebration of the Lord's Supper, which appears at one time to have been
universal throughout the south-west of Scotland.
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Various Forms of Scottish
Surnames
Surnames sit easy on
Scotsmen. They are changed or undergo variation in a way that is
confusing to the genealogist and interesting to the antiquary.
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Examination for Lord's Supper 1591
The first
volume of the Registers of Stirling ends with an entry made March 1591,
after which is written the table of forbidden degrees, and then an
interesting form of 'examination for the Lord's Supper.'
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Orkney Folklore
Sea Myths
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A Scottish Song
The Land o' the Thistle and the Brose
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Tartan in Family Portraits
On page 48 of the
June number, the editor comments on the illustration of the arms of
Skene of that Ilk in Alexander Nisbet's Heraldic Plates recently
published. A reproduction of the supporters of these arms is here given
as being of interest to antiquaries. The date of registration of the
arms is about 1672.
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Ogilvies in Austria
I have often heard
from competent and well-read persons that some time after what is called
the Reformation a great body of Ogilvies emigrated en masse to the
shores of the Baltic, and settled in Poland, principally in the province
of Podlachia. This they are said to have done to enjoy the free exercise
of their religion.
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Skean Dubh
An old Skean Dubh belonging to the first Lord Campbell of Lochaw.
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Cant
Family
Inquiries have been
made about the Scottish family of Cant in connection with the parentage
of Hans or John Cant or Kant of Memel, who was grandfather of the
philosopher Immanuel Kant and was (as slated by Immanuel) a Scotsman.
The name occurs in Scottish records of the fifteenth century as
connected with Edinburgh and Dunfermline.
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Communion Tokens
During the past few years a great deal of interest has been taken in the
old Communion Tokens used in various Scotch churches.
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