Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/112

 90 NOTES AND QUERIES. p» a VL AOO. 4, WOOL newspapers came into the field, not the least original of which was the Noon Gazette and Daili/ Register described by your correspond- ent MR. ROBINSON. It must have been a journal published about the time of day this claimed to come out that Disraeli had in mind when he described his burlesque hero Popanilla as having " breakfasted rather late," when he "looked over the evening papers which were just published." And another of our distinguished writers has his own men- tion of these journals, for when the elder Osborne in 'Vanity Fair' "spread out the evening paper, George knew from this signal that the [after-dinner] colloquy was ended, and that his Papa was about to take a nap." ALFRED F. ROBBINS. PlCTS AND SCOTS (9th S. v. 201, 418, 482).— CANON TAYLOR does not answer MR. J. FOSTER PALMER'S question, Why is Duncan called a usurper ? The reason is given in Mr. Lang's 'History of Scotland,' of -which the first volume has recently been published. " Kings in Pictland," says Mr. Lang, "doubtless were theoretically elective, just as in the German constitutions ; but they were elective out of a Riven family or kinship. When a king of Scots died, then the question arose, which brother of his was to succeed him Precedency of the eldest brother, however, in time became the rule, with exceptions, and so tar the anarchic tendencies were mitigated."—P. 41. The " accession of Duncan," Mr. Lang tells us further on (p. 53), " was the first example of inheritance of the Scottish throne in the direct line." On the system prevalent up to that time the rightful king was Lulach, son of Gruoch, daughter of Boedhe and grand- daughter of Kenneth III. Gruoch, for her second husband, married Macbeth, who "as guardian and representative of his stepson, Lulach, stood for the child's claims on the Scottish crown, now held by Duncan, son of Malcolm's daughter, Bethoc, by the head of the Athol family, Crinan, lay Abbot of Dunkeld. Thus the gracious Duncan, in the eyes of strict Pictish legitimists, was really a usurper." Discussing the origin of the Picts, by the way, Mr. Lang says (p. 4), " At present it seems unsafe to regard a race as necessarily ' non- Aryan' because its institutions offer traces of kinship through females." C. C. B. "The Ulster plantation under James was nothing short of a return of the descendants of the original Irish colonists to the mother country." In writing thus MR. McGovERN surelv shows that he can have given the sub- ject but slight study. Here is a list of the names of the Scottish planters, noblemen and gentlemen, most of whom were connected with the Court: Stewart, Hamilton, Balfour, Jlapen, Cunningham, Douglas, Home. McLel- .an, Boyd, Fowler, Haig, Hepburn, Murray, Wishart, Aitchison, Auchrnutie, Baillie, Craig, Drummond, Dunbar, Gibb, Hume (=Home), Lauder, Lindsay, Macaulay, McCulloch, McKie, Monypennv, Ralston, Smailholme, Trail, and Vaus. The planters bearing these names numbered fifty-nine persons. Taking out the four Macs, not one of the names de- notes an Erse (i.e., Scoto-Irish) extraction, and of the Macs it is questionable if even they were Erse. Macaulay certainly was not, being, like Macfarlane, a branch of the great Saxon family of Lennox, while McLellan was Galwegian, a distinct nation of Kelts from the Irish or Scoto-Irish. Skene believed McKie (=McKay) to be indigenous to Caith- ness, which isinimicable to the name being Erse. McCulloch I cannot speak about, but there is a curious tradition concerning the name in connexion with Sweetheart Aboey, in Gal- loway, deducing it from that of the Italian architect of that foundation. In any case, it seems more likely to be Galwegian than Scottish, using " Scottish " in its narrow and original sense, or say Erse. By name, there- fore, the probability is that not one of the planters themselves represented the Scots who came to Argyll from Ireland. But the planters did not alone constitute the planta- tion, for they were bound within a limited period to plant their portions of Ulster with inland Scottish inhabitants. That is to say, the Scottish settlers were to be from the Lowlands, and not from the country inhabited by the Erse, i. e., the Western Highlands, adjacent to Ireland. It would practically have been no change otherwise, or only after the manner of sending coals to Newcastle, which was precisely what King James the Wise ordained against. He desired a radical change in Ulster, and, so far from sending back " the descendants of the original Irisn colonists," he forbade that, directing, in effect, that the Ulster plantation should be peopled by the stout Saxon, the hardy Danish, and the enterprising and intelligent Anglo-Nor- man races whose blend comes out best and strongest in the Lowlands of Scotland. In thesesameLowlandstheNorman blood is more dominant than in any other portion of Great Britain on the basis of surnames. WALTER M. GRAHAM EASTON. This ancient controversy seems to have con- siderable vitality left, but let us hope that the wild guesses and unfounded assertions of the last century will remain in oblivion. Scotland must be " in a bad way " and far from "standing where she did" if what MB.