To drink from a golden cup might be becoming at great court, ceremonial feast, or in the halls of high nobility, where all was stately and cold; but when the heart warmed in the intense sympathy of friendship, then was expression given to earnest feelings from the cup long hallowed by the friends of the roof tree-the cup which belonged to our forefathers before us. The Kilsyth Cup was given by the last Lord Kilsyth to a confidential servant, said to have been his forester, named Marshall, whose great grandson still lives near Kilsyth, and from whom I received it. While preparations for the rising in 1715 were in progress, and after it, Marshall had made himself peculiarly useful to his master by conveying secret messages, keeping guard, obtaining information, assisting to conceal, and sometimes affording valuable aid under danger and privation. Before leaving the country for the continent, to be out of the way of the government authorities, who, if he had been captured, would have had him tried for high treason, the Lord Kilsyth presented to his faithful forester this old cup as a token of his gratitude. The simple act may seem to us unimportant, yet there was in it what no language could express. It was the last act of parting from family greatness-an ancient house had fallen. Its members had long faithfully served their sovereign. They had dared one more faithful effort in the hope of replacing on the throne its rightful master, under whose ancestors they had often proved their fidelity. Now were they deserted by craven compatriots, and the proud viscount felt that only one faithful servant man stood by him. It was Marshall, and to Marshall he handed over the family Cup. I wish to exhibit to this meeting another article which belonged to the old Kilsyth Livingstons. It is a halbert of very superior workmanship. The shaft is of fine oak, octagonal in section, alternate sides strengthened by slips of iron and nails, with round projecting heads at two inches apart, and the other sides fluted in the wood, an elegantly formed spear twelve inches long, having at its base a crown-shaped ornament, under which are the cut and hold projections elaborately worked in perforated decoration. This article came into the possession of the Gartshore family, and the present much honoured head of that house, Colonel Gartshore, holds the ancient weapon in great respect as a relic of the Kilsyth Livingstons. The head of another halbert which has been in the family of a person of the name of John Kerr, Townhead, Kirkintilloch, for more than two centuries, is here shown along with the other. It is good of its kind, but of inferior workmanship as compared with the Kilsyth one. The Kilsyth Estates and Teinds were sold by the Crown to the York Buildings' Company. Campbell of Shawfield became Tacksman of both, and held them until their sale in 1784 to Sir Archibald Edmonstone of Dunbreath, grandfather of the present Sir Archibald. It is thus seen that the Kilsyth Livingstons were detached from the Callander stock about 1450, and that they were proprietors of Kilsyth Estates during two centuries and a-half, and of the Campsie Barony rather more than half a century. At the time of the rebellion, 1715, the titles of Linlithgow and Callander were enjoyed by James, fifth Earl of Linlithgow, and fourth Earl of Callander. He also joined in that rebellion, and his estates and titles were forfeited. These lands were likewise sold to the York Buildings' Company, and upon the bankruptcy of that Company they were purchased at judicial sale by William Forbes, grandfather of the present Mr. Forbes of Callander. The earl died on the continent. TRANSACTIONS OF THE GLASGOW ARCHEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. NO. XII. ON THE ORIGIN, CORONATION, AND JURISDICTION OF THE LORD LYON KING OF ARMS: BY SHERIFF STRATHERN. [Read at a Meeting of the Society held at Glasgow on 14th January, 1861.] It is not within the limits of the subject on which I propose to enter, to consider the origin or purposes of armouries at any considerable length, the more especially as a very excellent paper has already been read in this Society, wherein several of the peculiarities of heraldry have been treated. But I find it impossible to omit some reference to this interesting theme as introductory to my prelection, although I disavow all pretension to skill in the art of armoury, and simply submit, as a gleaner, the fruits of my reading. The early enthusiastic writers on heraldry ascribe to it a very ancient origin indeed, and have expended both learning and illtemper in the vindication of their opinions. Thus we are gravely assured by a writer of the fifteenth century that heraldic ensigns were primarily borne by the "hierarchy of the skies." "At hevyn," says the author of the Boke of St. Albans, "I will begin where were V. orderis of aungelis, and now stand but IV., in cote armoris of knawlege, encrowned ful hye with precious stones, where Lucifer, with mylionys of aungelis, owt of hevyn fell into hell and oyder places, and ben holdyn ther in bondage; and all (the remaining angels) were erected in hevyn of gentill nature." The gentility of the great ancestor of our race is stoutly contended for, and, that his claim to that distinction might not want support, Sylvanus Morgan, an imaginative armorist of the seventeenth century, in his scarce work, The Sphere of Gentry deduced from the Principles of Nature, has assigned to Adam two coats of arms—one as borne in Eden-(where he neither used, nor needed coat for covering nor arms for defence) and another suited to his condition after the fall. The first was a plain red shield, decorated, in the language of modern heraldry, "gules;" while the arms of Eve, a shield of white, or "argent," were borne upon it, as an "eschoceon of pretence." The arms of Abel were, as usual, those of his father and mother, borne "quarterly," and ensigned with a crozier, like that of a bishop, to show that he was a "shepheard."-Morgan-"Adam's Shield," p. 99; Curiosities of Heraldry, pp. 2-3. But some little diversity of opinion occurs among heralds, on a subject of so much importance as the coat armour of Eve and Abel; and, considering the remoteness of date, the difference may be reasonably overlooked; for I find, in a small work published by Bettesworth, of London in 1723, called The British Compendium, or Rudiments of Honour, that "Abel, the second son of Adam, bore his father's coat, quartered with that of his mother Eve, she being an heiress, viz., gules and argent." The same learned author assigns to Joseph, a coat party per pale argent and gules. Sir John Ferne, a noted investigator in the science of gentility published his Blazon of Gentrie in 1586; he was a man of real erudition, but utterly carried away by extravagant notions of the antiquity of heraldic insignia; among others, he deduces the use of furs in heraldry from the "coats of skins," which the Creator made for Adam and Eve after their transgression, forgetting that coats of arms were as surely marks of honour, as that skins were the badges of the disgrace of our primeval parents. Cain, also, after his transgression, according to Ferne, changed his armorials "by ingrailing and indented lines, to show, as the preacher saith, that 'There is a generation whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives to devour the poor from the earth.'" The author makes this important observation that Cain was the first who desired to have his arms changed-"So God set a mark upon him." Among much prolixity the same author ascribes as arms to Jabal, the inventor of tents, vert, a tent argent; Jubal, the first musician, azure, a harp, or, on a chief-argent three organ rests, gules; Tubal Cain has assigned to him, sable, a hammer argent crowned, or; and Naamah, his sister, the inventress of weaving, in a lozenge, gules, a carding comb. Noah, according to the Boke of St. Albans, "came a gentilman by kynde, and had iij sonnys begotyn by kynde, yet in theys iij sonnys gentilness and ungentilness was fownde." The sin of Ham degraded him to the condition of a churl; and upon the partition of the world among the three brethren Noah pronounced a malediction against him. "Wycked kaytiff," says he, "I give to thee the north parte of the world to draw thyne habitacion, for ther schall it be, where sorrow and care, cold and mischef, as a churle thou shalt live in the thirde part of the worlde, wich shall be calde Europe-that is to say, the contre of churlys." "Japeth," the patriarch, continues, "cum heder, my sonne, thou shalt have my blessing dere. I make the a gentilman of the west parte of the world and of Asia-that is to say, the contre of gentilmen." Sem is in like manner created a "gentilman, and Africa is assigned to him, the contre of tempurnes." "Of the offspryng of the gentleman, Japheth," according to this ante-diluvian heraldry, "come Habraham, Moyses, Aron, and the profittys, and also the kynge of the righte lyne of Mary, of whom that gentilman, Jhesus, kynge of the londe of Jude and of Jues, gentilman by his modr, Mary, pryncess of cote-armure." The language of the blessing bestowed by Jacob on his twelve sons, as recorded in the 49th chapter of the book of Genesis, is likewise a favourite authority among the old armorists in support of their theory of the antiquity of arms. Morgan, from whom I have already quoted, furnishes the following choice verses, descriptive of the arms of the twelve tribes of Israel : "Judah bare gules, a lion couchant or; Reuben's field argent, and blew bars wav'd glides; The same authority gives as arms to Moses, a cross, because he preferred "taking up the cross," and suffering the lot of his brethren to a life "of pleasure and dignity in the Court of Pharaoh;" the "parfight armory of Duke Joshua" given by Gerard Leigh (who published his Accedence of Armourie in 1562), is "partie bend sinister, or, and gules, a backe displayed, sable." The arms of Gideon were-sable, a fleece argent, a chief azure, gutté d'eau |