Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/169

 10 s. vm. AUG. 17, loo:.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

139

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

Aberdeenshire Epitaph* and Inscriptions. With Historical, Biographical, Genealogical, and Anti- quarian Notes by John A. Henderson. Vol. I. (Aberdeen, printed for the Subscribers.)

INTENSELY self-centred from its geographical posi- tion, and almost painfully industrious, owing to climatic conditions, the North-East corner of Scot- land has produced an unusually large amount of the quarrywork of history. Deficient in historical imagination, and lacking the journalistic touch which can make what Americans call a " story," it has, with characteristic apology, fought shy of creating a structure from the vast amount of material which has been accumulated. It prefers to continue its spadework, and remains obsessed by foundations. A good example of this kind of inquiry is furnished in 'Aberdeenshire Epitaphs,' by Mr. Henderson, who is already known by some useful books on the topography of Deeside. It is typical of the sound digestions of readers in the North that Mr. Hen- derson's investigations, like those of Andrew Jervise which they supplement after a lapse of thirty years, should have first appeared in newspapers; but without the subsidy involved in serial publication they might not have appeared at all.

It is doubtful whether history proper could be produced from mere epitaphs, and Mr. Henderson leaves " to those who are minded to engage in it " the task of disintegrating the "material for romance or moral reflection." His book, therefore, is a compi- lation rather than a co-ordination : but we venture to think that he and most of the epitaph-hunters set about their laudable task in the wrong way. An epitaph in the past performed the duty of a news- paper obituary of to-day. If its occasion is a churchyard, its co-relative is no more an account of the parish ministers who represented the owners of the "lairs" than the "funds" are the co- relative of the births, marriages, and deaths in a newspaper. Yet Mr. Henderson, with his Hew Scott handy, has detailed the ministers' careers ; and as he proceeds he is tempted to go further afield and launch on a general history of the parishes with which he deals, thus traversing much ground that is covered by existing books. The real eo- relative of a collection of epitaphs of this kind would be the publication of the births, marriages, and deaths of each parish, as contained in the registers now housed in Edinburgh. The epitaph is, in the case of a great many people, the only means of identifying and co-ordinating extracts from these registers. In one way it is a misfortune that these invaluable documents should be in the Register House, for the average local antiquary has neither the time nor the means to secure tran- scripts, and he breaks down here, just as he does in tracing people who have left the shire, and are to be followed: up only in comprehensive libraries like that of the British Museum. An example occurs on p. 259, where Sir Theodore Martin "is said to be a great-grandson " of a James Martin whom a stone in Fraserburgh describes, in a characteristic Scotticism, as " presently [1781] residing at the House of Cainibulge." Surely a letter to Sir Theodore would have settled the point.

Within these limitations, Mr. Henderson has

done much useful work in preserving inscriptions; which the rain and the wind from the chill North hea obliterates more quickly than in most places in some cases not only do the inscriptions become indecipherable, but the whole stone disappears Ihere is one case in particular in a lonely Aberdeen- shire parish where an inscription might settle the destination of a dormant baronetcy. The families most widely represented in the graveyards of Aberdeenshire are those of Abercroroby, Anderson Barclay, Bisset, Buchan, Burnett, Chalmers, Cheyne' Crmckshank, Davidson, Dingwall, Duff, Elphin- stone, Farquhar, Farquharson, Forbes, Fordvce Fraser, Garden, Geddes, Gill, Gordon, Grant, Gray' Harvey, Hay. Innes, Johnston, Keith, Leith' Leslie, Lumsden, Milne, Mitchell, Moir, Reid Rose, Seton, Shand, Simpson, Strachan, Turing' Urquhart, Watt, and Wilson.

Comparatively few of the epitaphs quoted by Mr Henderson possess that quaint sense of epigram which was formerly a marked attribute of grave- yard inscriptions. Here is one, however, in the Cabrach :

Death of all men is the total sume, The period unto which we all must com ; He hvs but a short life that lives the longest, And he is weak in death that in life was strongest. A stone of 1717 in Fraserburgh, "upon Jean Cock, a child of eight years," reads : Here lyes beneath, this ston

A pleasant child, Was lovely to behold,

Who dying smil'd.

A Waterloo veteran was commemorated in Old Deer by the lines :

Billeted here by death, And here I shall remain

Until the bugle sounds. I '11 rise and march again.

again.

1 Proverbs of Alfred. Re-edited by the Rev W. W. Skeat,Litt.D.,F.B.A. (Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

IT takes many qualities to make a good editor of an old English text. The two which are perhaps most conspicuous in Prof. Skeat are his sagacity and accuracy, and of these the one to which he would himself attach the greater value, if we are not mistaken, is accuracy, as without that all other qualities are of small profit.

In the present little book he has made a careful study of one particular text of the Proverbs of ? d 'J i at ' namelv ' ? iven >n the Trinity College Cambridge, MS.; and here his intimate knowledge of Old English has enabled him to correct many strange blunders made by its previous editors, Wright, Kemble. and Morris ; and even to detect sundry slips and miswritings passed by the tran- scriber of the MS., who manifestly was an Anglo- Frenchman. The Norman origin of the writer serves to account for most of the peculiarities of the orthography, of which Prof. Skeat gives a full analysis (pp. xvi-xxi). The Jesus College, Oxford MS. (thirteenth century) is printed on the one opening for comparison.

The date of the Proverbs Prof. Skeat judges to be about 1210; at all events, the phrase "England's darling," which is here applied to Alfred, is already found in Layamon's ' Brut,' written about 1205, from which it seems to be derived. It was, no doubt,