Further details may be found in an article in the Catholic Magazine for February, 1833 (the writer of which gives as his authorities the Douai Diary, the Register of St. Gregory's Seminary, and the Obituary of the London Clergy), and in Gillow's Bibliographical Dictionary of the English Catholics.

Downside Abbey, near Bath.

RAYMUND WEBSTER.

LOWLAND TARTANS (S.H.R. v. 367). Mr. H. A. Cockburn asked in your columns whether any Lowland tartans appear in 'the old collection of tartans' which is at Moy Hall, and I took steps to inquire.

The Mackintosh kindly sent me the list, and as-though undertaken much nearer our own time than Mr. Cockburn probably imagined—it was a genuine attempt on the part of a Highland chieftain to get to the bottom of the tartan question, it is well worth placing on record.

On the first page is written:

SCOTTISH TARTANS collected through the agency of MR. MACDOUGALL of Inverness in the year 1848. They are believed to be the only authentic tartans, and are bound by me ALEXANDER MACKINTOSH OF MACKINTOSH, 1873, with a view to their preservation as the only authentic tartans.

Now when dealing with this list we must remember that we are considering tartans only, and not the origin of Highland families and names. The Norman-born Stewarts held dominion over Highland and Lowland, and so in a lesser degree did many a Southern brood. Their following was of their territory, not of their blood. Frasers, Hays, and Gordons, and a score of others, at some period took the tartan from their environment, and to a certain extent gave their name to a district and lost their distinctive Lowland character. When Mr. Cockburn wishes to know whether there is any proof of the antiquity of Lowland tartans, we must confine ourselves to those families which had no connection with the Highlands. In this list we will see that his own Berwickshire patronymic has to back it only Douglas and Dundas. For the rest of us on the Border there is only shepherd's plaid; I believe quite rightly.

If Sir Walter Scott, steeped in historic lore, keen to rake up traditions, and born nearly a century and a half ago—in the days before the dividing lines were smudged over by frequent intercommunications-had no faith in Lowland tartans, it would be rash of us to think otherwise to-day. It is possible also to propound an argument in favour of this contention. He would be a bold man who would dogmatise as to the evolution of a Highland clan and as to the period at which certain combinations of colour were acknowledged as the joint property of a certain territory or sept, but we do know that from early days the old Highlanders were fond of bright hues, that they were cunning with the dye-pot, and that

they remembered the Celtic tradition of many interlacing lines. When it came to fighting they wanted to travel light, and on foot. Coat armour and closed helmets were almost unknown among them. The true Highland chieftain was only primus inter pares, and he and his followers alike snatched their badges from the hillside, and the plaid became their uniform.

In the low country, where the steel-clad mounted man was everything, matters were quite different. From the first dawn of heraldry the shield, the crest, the banner of the knight were the sign and the rallying point in battle. It is hardly too much to say that heraldry dominated medieval warfare. But, unless they were of his male kin, the knight's followers could not bear his arms save as a badge of his service.

Hence we have it that, whereas the armorial coat is a claim to a definite aristocracy of blood, the tartan is a sign of the mysterious democracy of clan feeling. For both, their origin and their history were for the purposes of war, that, where every stranger was a possible enemy, friend should be known from foe.

Personally I believe that the rigid rules of heraldry kept their grip on Lowland warfare until the nation settled down to peace, and that, so far as historical accuracy is concerned, one of the Douglas breed has no more right to tartan than a Macdonald would have to the 'Bloody Heart.' GEORGE S. C. SWINTON.

PROVINCIAL ORTHOGRAPHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (S.H.R. iv. 402). In Mr. Firth's interesting fore-note to the Border Ballad contributed to the July number of the S.H.R., he comments on the peculiar spelling of certain words, and quotes Mr. G. M. Stevenson's observation that it is a philological puzzle how it arises. May I submit that the puzzle may be solved by remembering that the old (and true) value of the vowels survived longer in Northern English and Lowland Scots than in the southern dialects. This affected the symbols. i and u in a peculiar manner. In modern literary English these symbols represent a variety of sounds, some of them pure vowels as in 'pit' and 'put.' But they also represent sounds which can only be rightly expressed as diphthongs, as in 'life' and 'unit.' That the i and u here represent a sound which is not a single vowel can easily be proved if one attempts to prolong the sound. There is no difficulty in prolonging the sound of the modern English a, e or a because they are single vowels; but the i sound in life' cannot be prolonged, because it is a compound of the sounds a and ee, neither can the u in unit,' because the proper oo sound is prefixed by the sound of an unwritten consonantal y. The ballad spellings of fayting' for 'fighting,' 'thayne' for 'thine,' etc., appear to be an attempt at phonetic writing, to express a sound which the symbol i did not convey to the speakers of Northern English, for in that dialect that symbol expressed the sound of the modern ee. It was a device to convey through the eye the impression of a diphthongal sound altogether different from that suggested by the vowels i and y. HERBERT Maxwell.

PROVINCIAL ORTHOGRAPHY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (S.H.R. iv. 402). It is seldom satisfactory to discuss questions of phonetics briefly. Recourse should rather be had to books that deal specifically with the subject, especially the works by Ellis and Sweet. They have established the point that the long i in such a word as thine was usually pronounced like the ei in vein in the time of Shakespeare, and we have a large number of examples of the graphic confusion between ei (or ey) and ai (or ay); as in the modern English grey or gray. Hence such a spelling as thayne can easily be explained, if we suppose it to mean that the ay meant the ei in vein, which was, in fact and of necessity, the chief of the very numerous intermediate sounds between the sound of i in wine in Chaucer's time (when it was pronounced as ween), and i in the modern sound of the same. The three modern words ween, wain, wine exhibit, respectively, the pronunciations of wine in the times of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Tennyson. The second of these is very well expressed by the Ballad spellings faytinge (fighting), may (my), and the like, if we suppose that ay was pronounced then as it is pronounced now; and this seems to have been the fact. Readers may profitably consult Sir James Murray's standard Essay on the Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland. There is a passage at 81 which is so much to the point that I venture to reproduce a part of it here, premising that by the symbol ey he intends the ey in prey (the same as ay in pray).

p.

As regards the pronunciation, the most striking peculiarity of this dialect consists in its using (like the Northern English counties) the diphthongs ey, uw (palæotype ei, au), for the simple vowels ee, oo-that is, where a native of the centre, west, or north-east of Scotland says he, me, see, free, lee, dee, a Borderer says hey, mey, sey, frey, ley, dey,' etc. The whole passage, and indeed the whole of the book, should be carefully read. Cf. p. 147.

Note, in particular, the last two examples, which refer to the modern English lie and die. Wright's English Dialect Grammar gives lee and dee for North and Mid Scotland, lay and day for South Scotland, and lie and die for the standard speech. Here we have Barbour's lee and Shakespeare's lay preserved in modern times as dialectal forms.

WALTER W. SKEAT.

Notes and Comments

'Danes'

Skins'

A FRESHNESS as of a northern sea breeze pervades the work of the Viking Club, which bids fair, by the initial vitality it displays as well as by the variety of research from new standpoints which it fosters, to build up a body of Norse history for Great Britain of dubted. no slight significance. The evidence gains so enormously from collective treatment, which gives volume to what, apart, might have remained of small account. The Club's Saga Book (April) reflects both the broad outlooks of literary, social and political history and the closer view of archaeology. Professor W. P. Ker is felicitous in his inaugural address, as President, on Iceland and the Humanities.' Incidentally he breaks down another barrier and virtually ranks the Norse saga-histories as literature of the first plane of the Icelandic achievement, repenting himself handsomely, by the way, of a disparaging judgment on the Hákonar Saga. Perhaps the sum of the whole matter of criticism of the saga as history lies in the observation: It is a high order of intelligence that sees life as it is seen by these historians.' This is a very moderate statement of the case, for in the mingling of domestic and personal drama with public history the saga men are unsurpassed. We might take a single instance; the story of Hacon's Scottish expedition in 1263 is fuller of real fact, richer in its colour of its time, and more vitally readable to this day than any other chapter of Scottish story, whether by an ancient or a modern hand.

Mr. St. George Gray tempts disputation by his 'Notes on Danes' Skins,' which group a large number of examples of such gruesome memorials on church doors, but which lack a very necessary element of criticism for what is accredited sometimes by tradition and oftener to it. Science as usual displays an obliging readiness to fall in with the current idea, and the authorities with a charming unanimity declare that sundry and divers pieces of human hide from English church doors came from the backs of a fair-haired race, although in some instances the specimen was admittedly from some part of the body where little hair grows.' Had Mr. St. George Gray been a little sceptical about his Danes he might perhaps have remembered some things. (1) After the supposed period of these skins being removed from their owners and adhibited to church doors, was there not a Danish king of England? Does this make more likely or less likely the persistence of such memorials under Danish sovereignty? (2) How many church doors are there in England which reasonable evidence carries back to days antecedent to King Knut? (3) Is there not so much absolute evidence of later resort to flaying as a punishment (probably