Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/321

 9* s. VIIL OCT. 12, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Principal Shairp have shared in the Logan- Bruce controversy. The Rev. Drs. Robert Small and G. W. Sprott, Dr. David Laing, Mr. John Small, M.A., Rev. J. King Hewison, and Mr. Douglas J. Maclagan have all upheld the claims of Logan. The last mentioned, in his valuable monograph on 'The Scottish Paraphrases '(Edinburgh, A. Elliot, 1889), has given very good reasons for supporting Logan's authorship of the eleven Paraphrases claimed by Dr. Grosart for Bruce. Mr. Maclagan devotes chap. v. to 'Logan and Michael Bruce ' (pp. 48-51), and sums up by saying :

" There is such a vagueness about Dr. McKelvie's, and specially about Dr. Grosart's statements, that we feel compelled to leave the possession of author- ship in Logan's hands ; and even the verses quoted, (From * The Complaint of Nature ' : Who from the cearments of the tomb

Can raise the human mold ? and

The beams that shine from Zion's hill

Shall lighten every land, The King that reigns on Salem's tow'rs

Shall all the world command. ) under a certain amount of reservation, we do not feel inclined to hand over to Bruce."

In 1897 the Glasgow Herald, the North British Advertiser (Edinburgh), and the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch devoted con- siderable space to this controversy, in which the present writer took part. Articles also appeared in the Kinross-shire Advertiser, Ayr Observer, Cumnock Express, the Scots Magazine, and the United Presbyterian Magazine, about the same period. While much was urged on behalf of Michael Bruce, it may fairly be said that the Rev. John Logan was very ably supported. * The Ode to the Cuckoo ' occupied the first place in his volume of poems issued in 1781, again in 1782, and after his death in 1789 (third edition). I am still of opinion that the balance of evidence is in favour of Logan as the writer of this much-admired piece. ADAM SMAIL.

Edinburgh.

Anent the claims of the Rev. J. Logan and Michael Bruce totheauthorship of ' The Ode to the Cuckoo,' there is a pamphlet published 1892 by Stride, Green Road, Southsea, entitled "A Complete Vindication of the Rev. John Logan, F.R.S.E., from the Slanderous Charge brought against him by MacKelvie, Grosart, Brooke, Julian, and others of stealing the Hymns and Poems of Michael Bruce. A letter to a friend by (Rev.) W. Tidd Matson." He says in I. 6 Bruce probably wrote one stanza of the ode. CLIO.

Bolton.

THE ROYAL STANDARD (9 th S. yii. 269, 353). If the apparently simple question asked by C. C. T. When and why did the kings of England adopt the lions or leopards on their coats of arms 1 has not yet been answered, perhaps I may be permitted to refer your correspondent to what has been so well stated on the subject by your late valued corre- spondent DR. JOHN WOODWARD in his great work ' Heraldry : British and Foreign,' a new and enlarged edition of which was pub- lished in 1896.

The title of the lion to be considered a most royal beast is well recognized ; but its adoption as an heraldic charge so royally and so largely in early times may not be so well known.

Dr. Woodward states (vol. i. p. 221) :

" The earliest known example of it [i.e., the lion in heraldry] was on a seal of Philip L, Count of Flanders, appended to a document of 1164 ; and before long it became the ensign of the princes of Normandy, Denmark, Scotland, and (according to most writers on the subject) England, of the counts of Holland in fact, of most of the leading potentates of Europe, with the important exception of the German emperors and the kings of France. In England in the reign of Henry III. it was borne by so many of the principal nobles that no idea can have existed that sovereign houses had an exclusive right to it. In foreign armory the coats in which the lion appears as the principal, most frequently as the sole charge, may be numbered by thousands."

It has been generally assumed, I think, that our early English sovereigns from the Norman Conquest down to at least the Plantagenet succession had adopted as their royal insignia the two golden lions passant -gardant in pale on a field gules which formed the traditional cognizance of the Duchy of Normandy. But Dr. Wood- ward, in his chapter on ' National Arms ' in the second volume of his work, is not dis- posed to agree with this assumption, which he characterizes as "extremely doubtful." He says (vol. ii. p. 317) :

" No armorial bearings appear upon any of their seals until the reign of the Plantagenet kings. The earliest who used them is Richard L, upon whose second great seal, of the date 1198, the mounted effigy of the monarch bears a shield charged with the three lions passant-gardant of England ('Cata- logue of Seals in the British Museum,' p. 14, No. 87).

They appear to be a composite coat formed from

those of the Duchy of Normandy by the addition of the single lion of Guyenne, which the first Plan- tagenet king Henry II. assumed in right of his wife Eleanore of Aquitaine."

Your correspondent rightly says " lions or leopards," thus expressing a doubt which has long existed amongst heraldic students. Upon this question Dr. Woodward writes (vol. i. p. 221)]: