Gentleman is generally defined to be one who, without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen; and by the coat that a Gentleman giveth, he is known to be, or not to be, descended from those of his name that lived many hundred years since."]

"PRETTY POLLY OLIVER."— Among some old music, in the house of an ancient Scotch family, was lately found a beautiful air in MS., with "Pretty Polly Oliver, 1745," written over it. Can any information be given as to the air and the name? Was "Polly Oliver" a loyal heroine, and adherent of the Stuarts, at that time?

L. M. M. R. ["Pretty Polly Oliver" is the tune of an old ballad, entitled "Polly Oliver's Ramble," which may probably be in print in Seven Dials. It commences thus: — "As pretty Polly Oliver lay musing in bed, A comical fancy came into her head:

Nor father nor mother shall make me false prove,
I'll list for a soldier, and follow my love.”
The old song on the Pretender, beginning —
"As Perkin one morning lay musing in bed,

The thought of three kingdoms ran much in his head,”— appears to be a parody on it. See Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, where, at p. 676, will be found the music of it.]

EVENING MASS.-Can you kindly explain the allusion to "Evening mass" in Romeo and Juliet, Act IV. Sc. 1? Was the term used popularly of any evening service of the church of England before the Reformation, or is it a mistake of Shakspeare's? X. Y. Z.

[Juliet means Vespers. "Masses," as Fynes Moryson observes, "are only sung in the morning, and when the priests are fasting." So, likewise, in The Boke of Thenseygnemente and Techynge that the Knyght of the Toure made to his Daughters, translated and printed by Caxton: "And they of the parysshe told the preest that it was past none, and therfor he durst not synge masse, and so they hadde no masse that daye.”—Ritson.]

Replies.

THE IRISH HARP.*

(3rd S. xii. 141.)

The paths of civilisation and progress have ever led from the East, and as Ireland unfortunately laid at the extreme West, they reached her the last. The Danes, or Easterlings as they were termed, who invaded and subdued Ireland, first brought the slightest knowledge of civilization to her previously secluded shores. They built the maritime towns of Limerick, Waterford, and Dublin; they pursued commerce, they coined money, and by their thorough consistency of character they stamped the * Continued from p. 211.

word sterling upon all the languages of Europe. And it was these Scandinavian settlers, who, inheriting the old Northern blood, living in stone-built towns, better armed and better organised than the natives, offered the only really formidable resistance to the Cambro-Norman Earl that invaded and conquered Ireland for the King of England. Sir William Petty, writing in 1675, says these words, which are strictly true, and I defy any one to contradict them:

"There is at this day no monument or real argument that, when the Irish were first invaded, they had any stone housing at all, any money, any foreign trade, nor any learning but the legends of the saints, psalters, missals, rituals, &c., nor geometry, astronomy, anatomy, architecture, engineery, painting, carving, nor any kind of manufacture, nor the least use of navigation, or the art military."

There were a few stone churches and round towers built by Irishmen, who were travelled ecclesiastics in Ireland, before the time of the Norman invasion. St. Malachy O'Morgair, who died in 1148, built a stone oratory at Bangor, in the county of Down-the first, or one of the first, ever seen in Ireland. Mabillon, speaking of it, says that a building of the same material had been heretofore "nusquam in Hibernia visum." From what glimpes we may see of Ireland in St. Bernard's Life of St. Malachy, we know that it was Malachy, visiting Connaught, found the people just then in a state of profound barbarism. St. where, being Christians only in name, but in more barbarous than any he had ever seen elsereality Heathens and beasts rather than men. And when preaching his funeral sermon, St. Bernard says:

"This good man, though born in Ireland, where the people are barbarous, yet savoured no more of barbarism than the fishes do of the salt of the sea.'

Primate Gelasius made a lime-kiln at Armagh in 1145, and it was considered to be so extraordinary and remarkable an event as to be specially recorded in the Annals of Ulster. As late as the sixteenth century, Con O'Neill cursed any of his posterity that would speak English, sow corn, or build a house-the three first steps out of the gross barbarism in which they then lived. And when this King O'Neil, as he has been termed, just as we now-a-days speak of King Pepple, Poet Close's patron, submitted to Henry VIII., and was created Earl of Tyrone, he could not write his own name. Giraldus tells us that in his time the Irish were "Gens ex bestiis solum et bestialiter vivens." Con O'Neill would still have kept them in the pastoral state which the words of Giraldus imply they lived in in his time. such a state they could scarcely fail to be brutish, for bread is the staff of civilisation as well as of

In

* Vita S. Malachia, by St. Bernard, Abbot of Clair

vaux.

life, though it be produced by ploughing without any harness save the tail of the unfortunate garron. For it must be remembered, when we are talking about the antiquity of the harp in Ireland, that the Supreme Council of Kilkenny, in 1646, when making articles of peace with the Duke of Ormond, commissioner for the king, inserted this short sentence, "That the acts prohibiting ploughing by horse-tails, and burning of oats in the straw, be repealed."

Milton truly observes that this article

"more ridiculous than dangerous, declares in the Irish a disposition not only sottish but indocile, and averse to all civility and amendment; that all hopes of reformation of that people were forbidden by their rejecting the ingenuity of other nations to improve and wax more civil by a civilising conquest, and preferring their own absurd and savage customs before the most convincing

evidence of reason and demonstration."

How, it may be asked, did the Irish then live? All the Irish chiefs, at least in the North, where they were farthest from English teaching and influence, lived in crannogs, or islands in lakes and bogs. They are plainly to be seen in the old MS. maps of Ulster preserved in the State Paper Office. And all through the Irish State Papers of the sixteenth century, the name by which an Irish fortification is spoken of, is a lough, or an island. These crannogs were used as fortifications so late as the Rebellion of 1641, and as places of refuge from the laws and for illicit distillation, down almost to our own time. The very same kind of dwellings that were inhabited in the Swiss lakes in prehistoric ages, before mankind knew the use of metals, were lived in by the Irish chieftains down to the seventeenth century of

our era.

If we take up at random any part of the Annals of the Four Masters, we see at once why the Irish chieftains hid themselves, like water-rats, in holes, in islands of lakes and bogs. Bloodthirsty, cruel, internecine wars, conducted with circumstances of horrible barbarity, seems to have been the normal state of the country. At the first appearance of a plundering incursion, the chief fled to his island, the ecclesiastic with his sacred valuables ascended the round tower, and there they remained till the sudden danger had passed away. The mystery, which has long been held over these curious buildings, vanishes at once when we consider the state of the country. Well might one of the old sayings of the French people be, “Li plus sauvage

sont en Irlande."

MR. O'CAVANAGH takes it upon him to say that many of the Irish minstrels "as late as the seventeenth century occupied stately castles"; and "the legal records of that period show that the annual rental of one of this class was equivalent

Crapelet, Proverbes et dictons populaires au XIIIe Siècle, p. 8.

to 5000l. of our present money." Now, if he means the seventeenth century A.M., I can only reply that I know nothing whatever of such extreme dates; but if he refers to the seventeenth century of our era, I want words to properly stigmatise so absurd a story.

That the Irish were great musicians, and, among other things, invented the harp, is a complete fable, and cannot be believed by any person that knows what the people, the wild Irish as they were termed, actually were. There were no towns, no artificers, no agriculture amongst them; they could not make a harp any more than they could build a house of stone, or coin a piece of money. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the harp came amongst them from the opposite side of the Channel, or perchance from Scandinavia. WILLIAM PINKERTON. (To be continued.)

THE PALACE OF HOLY ROOD HOUSE.
(3rd S. xii. 209.)

alluding to the Palace of Holyrood House, says: MR. PINKERTON, in his article on the Irish harp,

They actually show among other shams the stains of Rizzio's blood on the floor, though the building in which that murder was committed was burned down in 1650. Crowds of gaping common people come by excursion train every summer to see the apartments of Mary Queen of Scots in a building that was burned to the ground by Cromwell's soldiery.”

Now this is a very rash assertion, for that part of the building which contains the queen's apartments, in one of which Rizzio was murdered, is still in existence. I refer to the following authorities:

1. Mr. Chambers, in his Domestic Annals of Scotland-a work distinguished for its minute accuracy-referring to the date of 1650, says (vol. ii. p. 204):

"The Palace of Holyrood being then in the occupation of a party of the English troops, took fire, and was in great part destroyed. The most interesting portion of the building, the north-west tower, containing the apartprincipal façade was laid in ruins; so that the general ments of Queen Mary, were fortunately preserved, but the appearance was, on a restoration, much changed."

2. The volume published by the Bannatyne Club in 1827 has this paragraph, p. 186* :—

stroyed by wilful or accidental fire, on 13 October, 1650, "The Palace of Holyrood House was eventually de

at a time when a body of Cromwell's soldiers were quartered there, and (quoting a contemporary diarist, Andrew Nicol), the haill royal part of the Palace was put in a flame, and burnt to the ground in all the partes thereof except a lyteil. The small part which is here stated to have escaped the conflagration was the double tower on the north-west, with the adjacent building, still known as Queen Mary's apartments."

3. See also Wilson's Edinburgh in the Olden

This brings me to notice that MR. PINKERTON'S assertion involves the absurd supposition that when the palace was rebuilt in the reign of Charles II., Queen Mary's apartments were made to answer their former appearance, in order to cram the public with the notion that they were the identical old rooms-an attempt which need only be mentioned to show its impracticability. A picture of the palace, as it existed before the fire, is given both by Mr. Chambers and by the Bannatyne Club, where the tower in question is shown entirely coinciding with its present position and aspect. That it is far older than the rest of the building is quite apparent to any one who looks at the actual building itself; and, in fact, that other part has obviously been designed so as to assimilate with it.

MR. PINKERTON, I must presume, has never personally inspected the building in question or its internal aparments; otherwise, I think, he would be satisfied of the hopelessness of any attempt to show that they have only existed since 1650. The rooms are still in the state described by Arnot.

As to the marks of Rizzio's blood, I am aware that many poor enough jokes have been attempted about them, but I can see no improbability as to their being what they are said to be. Mr. Arnot-by no means a credulous writer-seems not to discredit the statement. See foot-note to his work, p. 306.

Crowds of people undoubtedly come by excursion trains to Edinburgh, but that they do so for the special purpose of visiting these apartments, I use the freedom to question; and I have no doubt that, on the whole, they are inspected more by Englishmen and foreigners than by Scots folks.

Edinburgh.

EARL OF HOME. (3rd S. xii. 129.)

G.

As SP. has access to Surtees' Durham, one might expect, from the reputation of that work, it should contain an accurate pedigree of the Dunbars. He is quite right in "setting aside" Drummond's Noble Families, in which too much reliance is placed on tradition. Perhaps the following outline may show how the family of

is merely a cadet, and never inherited a tithe of their power) stocd in the estimation of Scottish antiquaries. Their greatness is pretty well known-not so their decay, and the degraded condition of their chief lineal representatives in the sixteenth century. Gospatric, or Cospatric (Comes Patricius) was undoubtedly (next to the Etheling and the Princess Margaret), the most illustrious of the Saxon refugees who came to Scotland after the Norman Conquest. He was at once the descendant of the princes of Northumberland, and through his mother, of Ethelred, King of England. Appointed by the Conqueror Governor of Northumberland, he was in 1072 deprived of his government under the pretext of having instigated the massacre of Robert Comyn, his predecessor, and the garrison of Durham, and was succeeded in it by another noble Saxon, Waltheof, whose tragic fate at Winchester is matter of history. Lord Hailes (Annals, vol. i. p. 20) thus describes Malcolm Canmohr's grant to Gospatric: "Donavit ei rex Dunbar, cum adjacentibus terris in Lodoneio, ut ex his, donec latiora tempora redirent, se suosque procuraret." From this period till the rise of the Douglasses under Bruce, the heads of this princely house held the foremost rank in Scotland. After that era, their vacillating policy, perhaps partly owing to the important situation of their great fortresses of Dunbar and Colbrandspath, the keys of the East Marches, hastened their downfall. George, the eleventh earl-" that illustrious traitor" who, in revenge for the slight put upon his daughter by David, Duke of Rothesay, her affianced spouse, leagued with the Percies against his country, and afterwards, siding with his cousin Henry IV. at Shrewsbury, helped to defeat both the Percy and the Douglas-was the most remarkable of the race. His herald is said to have borne the proud designation of "Shrewsbury," in commemoration of the battle. He lived to a very great age; in fact he must have been an octogenarian, a singular longevity in that day. Besides his own vast estates in the Merse, he, as grandson and heir general of the renowned Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, was Lord of Man and Annandale, and assumed the arms of Man, once (perhaps still) visible on the mouldering ruins of Dunbar Castle. Though he was pardoned and restored by the Regent Albany in 1409, at the cost it is said (in Extracta ex Cron.

* His epitaph, said to have been the earliest recorded in Scotland, is thus given in Extracta ex Cronicis Scocie, p. 254:

"This is the superscripcioun of George Dumbar, erle of Marches sepulture or toume in his College of Dumbar [founded by himself in 1342]: Heir lyis erle George the britane to thir three Kingis that bair the Croun, wes of thair bluid and of thair kin, and hes governit this land within xlviii, zeiris space, and deit than the zeir of grace 1416. Scotland, Ingland, and Denmark."

Scoc. p. 214) of part of his estates bestowed on his rival the Earl of Douglas, and Walter Halyburton, Lord of Dyrlton, Albany's son-in-law, Earl George's treason was never really forgiven; and in the Parliament of Perth, August 7, 1434, his son and successor, George the twelfth earl, was harshly and unjustly forfeited by James I., the king offering him the earldom of Buchan and a pension of 400 marks to him and his son Patrick. The earldom certainly was rejected, but a pension was paid to the forfeited earl for some time. (Rymer, Fad. x. p. 618.) The family thenceforth passed out of history, and sunk to the comparatively inferior position of Lairds of Kilconquhar in Fife, a barony held under the Archbishop of St. Andrews as superior, which tenure alone saved it from forfeiture by James I. The last direct heir male, Andrew Dunbar of Loch of Mochrum, Wigtonshire, and Kilconquhar, died circ. 1568, and was succeeded in these estates by his four sisters and coheiresses, whose low marriages, divorces, and general depravity are strikingly referred to by Mr. Riddell (Tracts Legal and Historical, 1835, pp. 190-4). Their story is not surpassed by any in Sir Bernard Burke's Vicissitudes, and quite as authentic.

Mr. Riddell (loc. cit.) says.

"There can be no doubt that, in this degraded line, so meanly married-supposing Margaret" (the eldest sister) "to have left lawful descendants, which may be doubtful in every view-must now centre the senior and direct representation of confessedly the noblest and most ancient family in Scotland."

The Earls of Home descend from a younger son of the third or fourth Earl, and bear the white lion of Dunbar on a field vert, for a difference.

There are several baronets of the name in Scotland, who trace their descent from the junior branch, which once held the earldom of Moray. One of these is styled "of Mochrum," the property, as was seen, of the direct and last heir male, and his four sisters in the sixteenth century. It confessedly descends of the Moray branch, and in the person of a "James Dunbar, Esq." whose detailed descent is not given, is stated (Burke's Peerage) to have "had a charter under the Great Seal of the Lands and Barony of Mochrum in 1694," in which year its baronetcy was created. There was an earlier baronetcy, "Hannay of Mochrum," in 1630, seemingly but recently extinct, and it would therefore be interesting to know by what steps this later family of Dunbar, from the "far North," acquired that estate, and how both they and the Hannays took the same title? The respectable family of Spens, formerly of Lathallan, Fife, is said (Landed Gentry), but on the very questionable authority of Sir Robert Douglas, to be the heir of line of the Earls of March, in honour of which The Heraldic Illustrations dignifies them with the eight roses on a bordure, an important part of the

Dunbar shield. The "representation" is, however, apparently a moot point.

If SP. refers to Hailes (Annals, vol. iii. pp. 55-7), he will find a convincing refutation of the theory that the royal Stewarts are descended from "Alden" (not Alan), the Dapifer or Steward of Earl Gospatric the fourth, and his son Earl Wal

deve. Is he not aware that Chalmers and Riddell long since proved that Walter Fitz-Alan, the first "High Steward," was the younger brother of William Fitz-Alan of Oswestry, head of a great Shropshire house, subsequently represented by the Earls of Arundel? ANGLO-SCOTUS.

1. Was Dolphin the eldest son? Yes.

2. Was Cospatrick the youngest? No. Waldeve was. Both these points are indirectly but clearly established by that well-known and most important document, the Instrumentum Possessionum Ecclesia Glasguensis (circa 1118), where, in the list of the assize we find, Cospatricius frater Delphini, Waldef frater suus. Dolphin was probably disqualified for serving on this assize by the fact that the bishop claimed the patronage of his church of Dolphinton in Lanarkshire.

3. Cospatrick appears to have been made an earl about 1157. În the Acta Parl. Scot. vol. i. p. 47, we find him described in the first column by his old designation of frater Delphini; but in the second, there is a deed bearing the above date, wherein he appears as "Gospat'ria Comes."

4. I should say "No," from the position of their names in the documents above referred to. 5. Certainly not. Among the witnesses to a confirmation by King William, we find both Comes Cospatrick and Alanus Dapifer REGIS. (Act. Parl. Scot. vol. i. 65.)

6. George, eleventh Earl of Dunbar, was never exactly forfeited. His father was, and of course the attainder extended to him. He was restored by the Regent Albany, but James I., on his return to Scotland, refused to acknowledge the validity of this transaction.

GEORGE VERE IRVING.

Earl Gospatrick was a Northumbrian chief, who, in 1072, obtained lands in the Merse and Lothian from Malcolm III. (Ceanmore), after being deprived of his own territory by William the Conqueror. Gospatrick left three sons, Dolphin, Gospatrick, and Waldeve, who were witnesses to the Inquisitio Davidis (1116, A.D.). Gospatrick succeeded to his father in his Scotch estates (Smith's Bede, Ap. 20). Waldeve obtained large estates in Cumberland and Westmoreland. He was succeeded by his son Alan in those lands, who was succeeded by his nephew William. William was son of Duncan (the bastard son of Ceanmore, who reigned from May to Nov. 1094, when he was killed by Maoelpeder, the Maormor

This