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The standard was probably present shortened state. No displayed in a notable raid knight in his senses would have which this earl made into Scot- gone into single or any other land in December 1532, at the combat with four yards of silk head of 2500 men, in reporting hanging upon his lance! Anwhich he declares that "thankes other tradition makes the flag be to God we did not leave one to be Percy's banner captured pele, gentleman's howse at Otterbourne; but this also grange unburnt or undestroyed, is impossible, first, because it is and so reculed to England. . . . not a knight's banner, but a Such a roode [raid] hath not standard; second, because it been seene in winter this two bears, besides a lion, the cross hundrede years." of St Andrew next the hoist, and, on the fly, the Douglas heart and stars and the Douglas motto Jamais arrière (written Jamais arreyre).

(4) Lastly, there is the famous Cavers standard, still in the possession of E. Palmer Douglas, Esq. of Cavers-that flag of sage green silk to which tradition assigns a higher antiquity than any of the others. Bishop Percy of Dromore, visiting Cavers in 1744, notes that "the family of Douglas of Cavers, Hereditary Sheriffs of Teviotdale, have long had in their possession an old standard, which they believe to be the very pennon won from Hotspur by the Earl of Douglas, to whom their ancestor was standard-bearer in the expedition [to Otterbourne in 1388]." On the face of it, this cannot be the truth. Without questioning Froissart's word for it that Douglas did encounter Hotspur in single combat before the gates of Newcastle, that he did capture the pennon from his adversary's lance, and that it was to recover that pennon that Percy followed Douglas to Otterbourne, it is clear that this flag is not that pennon. A pennon was a small pointed or forked affair, like that on the weapon of a modern lancer, whereas the Cavers flag remains twelve feet long in its

Again, a third story, which was accepted, I believe, till lately as the true version by the family of Cavers, identifies the flag as the Douglas standard carried at Otterbourne by Archibald Douglas, founder of the line of Cavers. There are at least two objections fatal to this tradition. First, the lion was no part of the bearings of the Otterbourne Earl of Douglas, and the lion is conspicuous among the devices on this standard; second, Archibald Douglas, first of Cavers, was the second illegitimate son of the Earl; his father was only thirty when he fell at Otterbourne, therefore Archibald cannot have been of an age to act as standard-bearer in that battle.

It has remained for Lord Southesk to clear up the mystery of the Cavers flag, and to assign it to a date nearly seventy years later than that of Otterbourne. When the house of Douglas, already powerful, divided into two branches the Red Douglas

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and the Black-by the bestowal of the earldom of Angus upon George, illegitimate son of the first Earl of Douglas in 1397, the Red Douglas quartered his paternal coat with the lion of Angus, which remained ever after a conspicuous figure in the arms of his descendants. On the fall of the Black Douglas in 1455, his lands and power were transferred to the fourth Earl of Angus, who, being Warden of the West Marches in 1452, appointed Douglas of Cavers his keeper of Hermitage Castle. It is probable, therefore, that the lion on the Cavers flag is that of Angus, and that this was the standard displayed by the keeper of Hermitage.

Now, although we have forgotten all about heraldry, we are still great people for flags. What with our jubilees, coronations, royal progresses, and so forth, the consumption of bunting in this country during the last ten years must have been prodigious; yet the result of it all is a trifle monotonous. When an occasion arises for throwing up of hats, we repair to the stores and lay in a stock of cheap Union - jacks and Royal Standards, either of which it is a grievous breach of privilege for any private citizen to display. Perhaps we vary the scheme by investing in what used to be, but no longer are, the Royal Standards of the individual realms composing the United Kingdomignoring the fact that the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland have no heraldic existence except as quartered with each

other; any more than the crosses of St Andrew, St George, and St Patrick have any significance except as components of the national flag. The red ensign, and that alone, is all that every British subject is entitled to fly in his own right, unless he has arms and chooses to hoist his own banner

or pennon. For a couple of guineas anybody can have his arms done upon bunting twelve feet by four; but whereas many people feel restrained by characteristic British dislike of swagger from hoisting their rightful banners, let these but reflect how greatly they would contribute to the interest and variety, not only of festive occasions, but of everyday travel through the country, were they to display when at home their proper banners, often of ancient historic association, from the flagstaffs of their mansions.

Oh but, one will say, the world is too serious and busy to fret itself about obsolete frivolities. The age has gone by when common gravity would tolerate a lady's garter being taken as the emblem of the premier order of knighthood. (By the by, if one may speak from hearsay, it appears that the garter is no longer an article of feminine attire, any more than the nightcap; and that if the most noble of British brotherhoods had chanced to be founded in the twentieth century instead of the fourteenth, it must have been named the Order of the Suspender!) Well, it may be so, and the day may be at hand when the display of bunting in

any form may be discarded as childish. All I urge is that, so long as we do hoist flags, it were well that they should mean something intelligible. Even the serious science of botany has found it consistent with its dignity to borrow its nomenclature from heraldry. There is no more cosmopolitan plant than the common brake fern, which has made itself at home in almost every quarter of the globe. Take a bracken root, cut it across with a sharp penknife, and the brown veins in the white pith will present you with a very fair representation of a double-headed eagle. This, the emblem of the Holy Roman Empire, was claimed by its heralds as a token of its supremacy wherever the bracken might be found-practically the whole habitable northern hemisphere. Hence Linnæus named this plant Pteris aquilina, the eagle fern, a title which has been confirmed to it in modern classification.

One cause of the degradation of heraldic art towards the close of the seventeenth century was the increasing knowledge of zoology on the part of heraldic painters. So long as people in general had never set eyes upon a lion, they found no fault with the attenuated creature of terrific aspect which represented that creature in early heraldry; but so soon as conventional drawing was sacrificed to an attempt at realism, the rampant lion became an absurdity, with no more dignity than a dancing poodle. There is no middle course in

heraldic painting. If you have to represent an azure lion with scarlet tongue and claws, you only make the beast ridiculous by making it anatomically correct; and presently you will be landed in that preposterous eighteenth century attempt to introduce landscapes, pyramids, palm-trees, and what not upon the escutcheons of distinguished

men.

The precocity and scope of Japanese civilisation is a trite subject: even in such superfluities as heraldry they have caught the true spirit of abstraction. They have chosen as their national flag the rising sun, but they are too good artists to make any attempt at realism. A scarlet orb, emerging from the dexter flank of the shield, sends scarlet rays across the argent field. Nothing could be simpler; nothing less like actuality; yet nothing could be a more perfect emblem, or fulfil more admirably the purpose of an ensign.

Before releasing the reader from what he may denounce as a tiresome dissertation, let me notice one term in heraldry, commonly used and as commonly misapplied. It has come to be the practice, even of good writers, to apply the verb "to blazon" in a sense wholly different from its meaning in heraldry. Professor Skeat, whom it would be difficult to catch tripping, gives two different words-(1) blazon, a proclamation, to proclaim, which he assigns to an AngloSaxon or Scandinavian source; and (2) blazon, to pourtray armorial bearings, from the

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French blason, a coat-of-arms. He quotes Brachet's Etymological Dictionary' to the effect that, in the eleventh century, blason meant buckler or shield. It may be so, though one may venture to doubt it; but, technically, to blazon never means "to pourtray armorial bearings." To do so in colour is "to display" or "to limn" arms; to draw them without colour is "to trick" them. "To blazon," says Guillim, "is to express what the shapes, kinds, and colours of things born in Armes are, together with their apt significations." Ruskin had quite lost sight of the true sense when he wrote: "Their effect is often deeper when the lines are dim than when they are blazoned in crimson and pale gold" (Modern Painters'). It may be said that literature has no concern with the technical meaning of words; yet it conduces to understanding that words should not be misapplied. Readers may remember the uncertainty caused by a recent historian, who, in attempting to describe Cromwell's wars, several times writes of a "division" of infantry, when he means a battalion or company. Shakespeare, at all events, frequently uses the term blazon, and never in any

sense but that of describing or proclaiming.

"Beatrice. The Count is neither sad, nor sick, nor merry, nor well; but civil, Count, civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion.

Don Pedro. I' faith, lady, I think your blazon to be true."

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"He hath achieved a maid," says Cassio about Desdemona, one that exceeds the quirks of blazoning pens." Here the reference is clearly to literary description; whereas the Ghost in "Hamlet" alludes to oral communication

"But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison-house, I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy
But this eternal blazon must not be
young blood.
To ears of flesh and blood."

Modern usage may be held to sanction the use of this word to signify the illumination of arms; but Dr Johnson knew better than so to interpret it, for he cited Addison for the primary meaning of the verb being "to explain in proper terms the figures on ensigns armorial." However, all this is matter fitter for the precise disputants of 'Notes and Queries' than for the sparkling pages of 'Maga.'

A HIGHLAND GENTLEMAN.

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SCOURIE is a hamlet some twenty miles south of Cape Wrath. It consists of a few crofters' houses, two shops-one is also the post office and a comfortable inn, and is dominated by the Factor's House, which looks down upon it from a pleasant eminence on the other side of a sandy bay. The Free church and manse about a mile distant; the parish church and manse, where the distinguished Celtic scholar who edits the volume before us ministers, are still farther off, at Badcall, with its bay of the hundred islands. Here is the wildest and most striking scenery in Scotland. The coastline on the map gives promise of bays and lochs and islands; but no map can give any idea of the strange, rugged, and majestic hills, each with a strong personality, from Suilbhein, the great landmark, to Cunneach with its crown of rugged peaks, on to the graceful Ben Stack and away to the majestic Loyal. No one who has come under the glamour of these mountains, all of which rise almost sheer two to three thousand feet from the water's edge, can ever get away from the memory of their majesty and

their beauty. There is nothing like this land in Scotland. It is not like Norway it is more personal,

more individual. It is the country of the Macleods and the Mackays. General Hugh Mackay, who fought at Killiecrankie, was Mackay of Scourie. The Macleod who surrendered Montrose lived under the shadow of Cunneach; but north of the great arm of the sea which divides into the two lonely lochs, Glendhu and Glencoul, you come to the Mackay country, which stretched north to the Cape and west to Caithness. There are few Macleods in Assynt now, and the Mackays are to be sought in Canada.

Scourie seen from the sea seems but a waste of rocks surrounded by patches of green grass, with here and there a potato- or a corn-field the size of a pocket-handkerchief. A few hayricks show that grass does grow, but the first impression is grey rocks in unending sequence till they rise to the placid cone of Ben Stack. Were, however, a traveller to arrive by night and wake up on a summer day at Scourie House, he would find, sheltered by a belt of trees, a garden lying in terraces to the south, rich in vegetables, fruit-trees, rare plants and shrubs, and gay with flowers, and beyond it a sandy bay on which the Atlantic, its force broken by

Memoirs of a Highland Gentleman, being the Reminiscences of Evander Maciver of Scourie. Edited by the Rev. George Henderson, M.A. (Edin.), B.Litt. (Oxon.), Ph.D. (Vienna), Sch. Hon. Coll. Jesu. Oxon. Edinburgh: 1905. Printed for the Subscribers by T. & A. Constable.

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