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 regards education the county is under school-board jurisdiction, and in respect of higher education its equipment is effective. St Andrews contains several excellent schools; at Cupar there is the Bell-Baxter school; at Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy there are high schools and at Anstruther there is the Waid Academy.

History.—In remote times the term Fife was applied to the peninsula lying between the estuaries of the Tay and Forth and separated from the rest of the mainland by the Ochil Hills. Its earliest inhabitants were Picts of the northern branch and their country was long known as Pictavia. Doubtless it was owing to the fact that the territory was long subject to the rule of an independent king that Fife itself came to be called distinctively The Kingdom, a name of which the natives are still proud. The Romans effected no settlement in the province, though it is probable that they temporarily occupied points here and there. In any case the Romans left no impression on the civilization of the natives. With the arrival of the missionaries—especially St Serf, St Kenneth, St Rule, St Adrian, St Moran and St Fillan—and conversion of the Picts went on apace. Interesting memorials of these devout missionaries exist in the numerous coast caves between Dysart and St Andrews and in the crosses and sculptured stones, some doubtless of pre-Christian origin, to be seen at various places. The word Fife, according to Skene, seems to be identical with the Jutland Fibh (pronounced Fife) meaning “forest,” and was probably first used by the Frisians to describe the country behind the coasts of the Forth and Tay, where Frisian tribes are supposed to have settled at the close of the 4th century. The next immigration was Danish, which left lasting traces in many place-names (such as the frequent use of law for hill). An ancient division of the Kingdom into Fife and Fothrif survived for a period for ecclesiastical purposes. The line of demarcation ran from Leven to the east of Cults, thence to the west of Collessie and thence to the east of Auchtermuchty. To the east of this line lay Fife proper. In 1426 the first shire of Kinross was formed, consisting of Kinross and Orwell, and was enlarged to its present dimensions by the transference from Fife of the parishes of Portmoak, Cleish and Tulliebole. Although the county has lain outside of the main stream of Scottish history, its records are far from dull or unimportant. During the reigns of the earlier Stuarts, Dunfermline, Falkland and St Andrews were often the scene of solemn pageantry and romantic episodes. Out of the seventy royal burghs in Scotland no fewer than eighteen are situated in the shire. However, notwithstanding the marked preference of the Stuarts, the Kingdom did not hesitate to play the leading part in the momentous dramas of the Reformation and the Covenant, and by the 18th century the people had ceased to regard the old royal line with any but sentimental interest, and the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 evoked only the most lukewarm support.

See Sir Robert Sibbald, History of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross; Rev. J. W. Taylor, Historical Antiquities of Fife (1875); A. H. Millar, Fife, Pictorial and Historical (Cupar, 1895); Sheriff Aeneas Mackay, sketch of the History of Fife (Edinburgh, 1890); History of Fife and Kinross (Scottish County History series) (Edinburgh, 1896); John Geddie, The Fringe of Fife (Edinburgh, 1894).

 FIFE (Fr. fifre; Med. Ger. Schweizerpfeiff, Feldpfeiff; Ital. ottavino), originally the small primitive cylindrical transverse flute, now the small B♭ military flute, usually conoidal in bore, used in a drum and fife band. The pitch of the fife lies between that of the concert flute and piccolo. The fife, like the flute, is an open pipe, for although the upper end is stopped by means of a cork, an outlet is provided by the embouchure which is never entirely closed by the lips. The six finger-holes of the primitive flute, with the open end of the tube for a key-note, gave the diatonic scale of the fundamental octave; the second octave was produced by overblowing the notes of the fundamental scale an octave higher; part of a third octave was obtained by means of the higher harmonics produced by using certain of the finger-holes as vent-holes. The modern fife has, in addition to the six finger-holes, 4, 5 or 6 keys. Mersenne describes and figures the fife, which had in his day the compass of a fifteenth. The fife, which, he states, differed from the German flute only in having a louder and more brilliant tone and a shorter and narrower bore, was the instrument used by the Swiss with the drum. The sackbut, or serpent, was used as its bass, for, as Mersenne explains, the bass instrument could not be made long enough, nor could the hands reach the holes, although some flutes were actually made with keys and had the tube doubled back as in the bassoon.

The words fife and the Fr. fifre were undoubtedly derived from the Ger. Pfeiff, the fife being called by Praetorius Schweizerpfeiff and Feldpfeiff, while Martin Agricola, writing a century earlier (1529), mentions the transverse flute by the names of Querchpfeiff or Schweizerpfeiff, which Sebastian Virdung writes Zwerchpfeiff. The Old English spelling was phife, phiphe or ffyffe. The fife was in use in England in the middle of the 16th century, for at a muster of the citizens of London in 1540, droumes and ffyffes are mentioned. At the battle of St Quentin (1557) the list of the English army employed states that one trumpet was allowed to each cavalry troop of 100 men, and a drum and fife to each hundred of foot. A drumme and phife were also employed at one shilling per diem for the “Trayne of Artillery.” This was the nucleus of the modern military band, and may be regarded as the first step in its formation. In England the adoption of the fife as a military instrument was due to the initiative of Henry VIII., who sent to Vienna for ten good drums and as many fifers. Ralph Smith gives rules for drummers and fifers who, in addition to the duty of giving signals in peace and war to the company, were expected to be brave, secret and ingenious, and masters of several languages, for they were oft sent to parley with the enemy and were entrusted with honourable but dangerous missions. In 1585 the drum and fife formed part of the furniture for war among the companies of the city of London. Queen Elizabeth (according to Michaud, Biogr. universelle, tome xiii. p. 60) had a peculiar taste for noisy music, and during meals had a concert of twelve trumpets, two kettledrums, with fifes and drums. The fife became such a favourite military instrument during the 16th and 17th centuries in England that it displaced the bagpipe; it was, however, in turn superseded early in the 18th century by the hautboy (see ), introduced from France. In the middle of the 18th century the fife was reintroduced into the British army band by the duke of Cumberland in the Guards in 1745, commemorated by William Hogarth’s picture of the “March of the Guards towards Scotland in 1745,” in which are seen a drummer and fifer; and by Colonel Bedford into the royal regiment of artillery in 1748, at the end of the war, when a Hanoverian fifer, John Ulrich, was brought over from Flanders as instructor. In 1747 the 19th regiment, known as Green Howards, also had the advantage of a Hanoverian fifer as teacher, a youth presented by his colonel to Lieutenant-Colonel Williams commanding the regiment at Bois-le-Duc. Drum and fife bands in a short time became common in all infantry regiments, while among the cavalry the trumpet prevailed.

For the acoustics, construction and origin of the fife see. Illustrations of the fife may be seen in Cowdray’s picture of an encampment at Portsmouth in 1548; in Sandford’s “Coronation Procession of James II.,” and in C. R. Day’s Descriptive Catalogue, pl. i. (F) (description No. 42, p. 27).

 FIFTH MONARCHY MEN, the name of a Puritan sect in England which for a time supported the government of Oliver Cromwell in the belief that it was a preparation for the “fifth monarchy,” that is for the monarchy which should succeed the Assyrian, the Persian, the Greek and the Roman, and during which Christ should reign on earth with His saints for a thousand years. These sectaries aimed at bringing about the entire abolition of the existing laws and institutions, and the substitution of a simpler code based upon the law of Moses. Disappointed at the delay in the fulfilment of their hopes, they soon began to agitate against the government and to vilify Cromwell; but the arrest of their leaders and preachers, Christopher Feake, John Rogers and others, cooled their ardour, and they were, perforce, content to cherish their hopes in secret until after the Restoration. Then, on the 6th of January 1661, a band of fifth monarchy men, headed by a cooper named Thomas Venner,