Our Glasgow Letter The gallantry of the Scottish army in France is now so frequently mentioned that one would require an article by itself to record the various Victoria Crosses and deeds of valour which happen from month to month. The latest is that of Drummer Ritchie of our city, who received a Victoria Cross for mounting the parapet and blowing the charge several times on the bugle, and thereby reviving the scattered remnants of the men, at a critical moment. Another distinguished action was that of Pipe Major Anderson of the Royal Scots, who is at present lying wounded in a British hospital. He was wounded in the charge. and when he was hit a second time he threw down his pipes, seized a rifle and joined in the fight. He was selected for the award of the Cross of War by the French, as being considered the most conspicuous case of gallantry in the fight. Mr. A. G. Hales, a distinguished writer, in an article in John Bull, says: "In Egypt the gallant Murray has won back some of the prestige lost at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia, and there is small doubt that this dauntless Scot will hold the Suez Canal safe against all odds, and lift our banner high until once again it dominates the whole of the Eastfor he is of lion-breed; there never lived a Murray who ever failed his country in the fighting line. As they were at Flodden, when they fought against us before the days of the Union, so they are to-day in the blaze of battle-steadfast as granite rock; untamable as the storm; dour, passionless and deadly. We can stake our souls on the longtried courage of a Murray of grim old Scotland, and count that door well held-no shortage of food will come to us through the closing of the Suez Canal." The fund for the Scottish Hospital for Limbless Soldiers and Sailors has now reached the handsome total of £117,000. Mr. John Reid of the North British Locomotive Company, Glasgow, has presented to the committee, Erskine House, with about 360 acres of ground. Mr. Reid is well known as a generous giver to all Glasgow schemes. Last month we unfortunately lost by death a noted musical Scot in the person of Hamish M'Cunn, who was born at Greenock in 1868. Some of his compositions are among the best produced by British composers and will long be welcome before any Scottish audience. Whatever place M'Cunn will eventually fill several of his compositions will not readily be forgotten; among those are: "The Land of the Mountain and the Flood": "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow": "Bonnie Kilmeny"; "The Lay of the I ast Minstrel" and "The Cameronian's Dream." Mr. M'Cunn's latter days were spent as the musical conductor to the Carl Rosa and other opera companies. In 1889, Hamish M'Cunn married the daughter of the late John Pettie R. A.; his son, Fergus, is on active service. Another notable death which took place on the 23rd of August, is that of Mr. William Glover of the old theatre Royal, Glasgow. Mr. Glover was born in 1833, and during his long life he witnessed many changes in the fashion of theatrical entertainment. His last management was that of the Theatre Royal in Hope Street, where he continued till 1878, when the theatre was 'destroyed by fire. Mr. Glover was a scene painter of some note, his work adding charm to many plays, especially the Scottish drama; his scenes painted for "Rob Roy" and "The Lady of the Lake" were really splendid, and many people went to see the scenery who were not so much interested in the play. Almost up to the last he acted as scene painter more or less to Messrs. Howard & Wyndham, who succeeded him in the Theatre Royal. He was a familiar and picturesque figure on the streets of Glasgow and rich in reminiscences; his acquaintance with notable actors and actresses, as might be supposed, was very extensive. The Dundee Advertiser is a very patriotic newspaper, and has been indulging lately in a series of articles on the neglect of Scottish business by our members of Parliament. It is to be hoped that their acticles will stir up members to a better sense of their duty to their constitutents and their country; there is certainly something required to make our Scottish members toe the mark. A writer in The Advertiser, Mr. Ian Robertson, calls for new leaders and ventures to suggest that after the war the people of Scotland will not put up with so much indifference, nor will they tamely submit to the business of Scotland being set aside in favor of English and Irish legislation. Our Land Laws must have immediate and prompt attention; the £200.000 belonging to the Congested Districts Board. and which was coolly appro priated by the government for war purposes is one of the most barefaced acts of robbery ever perpetrated by the British Parliament. Our backboneless M. P.'s must be made to understand that they are not only neglecting their country, but betraying its best interests. Even on the day set apart for the 3 ottish estimates, in which every Scottish member should be interested, as it is the one and only day of the session allowed to the affairs of Scotland, not more than one-half of the Scottish members were at Westminster, only some 30 or 32 could be counted at any time during the evening. Much has been made of the gift by the Duke of Sutherland of 12,000 acres of land in Sutherlandshire, for the settlement of soldiers and sailors who have been on service. The government has agreed to a capital expenditure of £20,000 upon stock, equipment, building and afforestation. Several people have dared to look this gift horse in the teeth, but it is perhaps wise to wait and see how it will turn out; the experiment of land settlement, not only here, but elsewhere will be watched with keen interest. That may prove the fore-runner of other schemes which will ultimately transform the highlands from a pleasure ground for the rich into the dwelling place of a happy and contented people. Some strong invitations were held out for other noble Lords to follow this example, but although Argyll, Breadalbane and Atholl could well afford some thousands of acres, they are all of too grasping a nature to be generous, even at the call of their country at a time like this. Glasgow, Scotland. JOHN WILSON. YIDDISH "Yiddish," says a contemporary, "is a familiar term, but probably there are hazy notions as to its significance and origin. The Nation says the masses of Jews who use it as a native tongue refer to it as jargon or gibberish. Its base is the German dialect of the Rhinelands of the fourteenth century, and was carried into Poland by the enforced migration of the Jews. It is to-day the language of ten million people. It is predominantly a German dialect, written in the Hebrew alphabet, with borrowings from every land it has touched, and a structure that can only be described as a grammarian's nightmare. In the same sentence Hebrew, German, Russian and disguised Latin may jostle each other. Upon Biblical verbs and nouns are superimposed German inflections, and these according to no ascertainable rule. Yiddish, it is said, contains a large devotional literature for the use of those to whom the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the prayer book are inaccessible."-Ex. Clan MacKenzie and Its Chiefs This last writer proceeds to tell how Cailean acquired the coat of arms first used by the Mackenzie chiefs. The King, it appears, was hunting in the forest of Mar, when a furious stag, brought to bay by the hounds, made straight at him, and he would doubtless have been slain had not Cailean Fitzgerald stepped in front of him and shot the beast with an arrow through the forehead. For this, it is said, the King granted him for arms a stag's head puissant, bleeding at the forehead, on a field azure, supported by two greyhounds, with, as crest, a dexter arm bearing a naked sword, surrounded with the motto, "Fide parta, fide aucta." At a later day the Mackenzies changed this crest and motto for those of the MacLeods of the Lews, to whose possessions they had succeeded in that island. From the seventeenth century down to the later nineteenth, the origin of the great Clan Mackenzie was commonly supposed to be from a certain Colin Fitzgerald of the great Norman family of the Earls of Desmond and Dukes of Leinster, in Ireland. This Colin or Cailean is said to have been driven from Ireland in 1262, and to have found refuge at the Court of Alexander III of Scotland, under whom he distinguished himself by his valour at the battle of Largs, in the following year. So much is stated in the Record of Icolmkill. After that battle he is said to have been established by the King as Governor of Eileandonan, a strong castle in Kintail, at the junction of Loch Duich and Loch Long, which has been identified as the Itus of Ptolemy and Richard of Cirencester. The charter of 1266 on which this statement is founded is quoted by Sir George Mackenzie of Tarbat, first Earl of Cromarty, in his MS. history of the Clan Mackenzie, written in the seventeenth century, and it has been quoted from his work by later historians of the clan, including the Laird of Applecross in his genealogy of the Cailean was afterwards slain by Mac Mackenzies in 1669. According to the Earl of Cromerty, Cailean Fitzgerald married a daughter of Kenneth MacMhathoin, the Mathieson chief, and had by her one son, whom he named Kenneth, after his father in-law. Mhathoin out of jealousy at the Irish stranger's succession to his ancient heritage, and it was from the son Kenneth that all the later members of the family and clan took their name MacKenneth or Mackenzie. Cosmo Innes, however, in his Origines Parochiales Scotiae, vol. ii. pp. 392-3, points out that the original charter on which this Norman-Irish descent is founded does not exist, and is not in fact genuine, and Skene, in his Celtic Scotland, quoting an authentic Gaelic MS. of 1450, printed with a translation in the Transactions of the Iona Club, shows the Mackenzies to be descended from the same ancestor as the Earls of Ross. Their common ancestor, according to the MS. genealogy of 1450, was a certain Gillean of the Aird, of the tenth century. Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, author of the latest history of the clan, quotes unquestioned acts of Parliament and charters to show that the lands of Kintail, with the Castle of Eileandonan, were possessed by the Earls of Ross for a hundred years after the battle of Largs. It seems reasonable that the Mackenzie chiefs, as their near relatives, were entrusted with the lands and castle at an early date, and in any case there is a charter to show that the lands of Kintail were held by Alexander Mackenzie in 1463. The first chief of the clan who appears with certainty in history is "Murdo filius Kennethi de Kintail," who obtained the charter from David II, in 1362. According to tradition, filling out the Gaelic genealogy of 1450, the name of the clan was derived from this Murdoch's great-grandfather, Kenneth, son of Angus. This Kenneth was in possession of Eileandonan when his relative, William, third Earl of Ross, who had married his aunt, demanded, in pursuit of his claim to the Lordship of the Isles, that the castle be given up to him. The young chief, however, refused, and supported by his neighbors, the MacIvors, Macaulays and other families in Kintail, actually resisted and defeated the attacking forces of the Earl. He married a daughter of Macdougall of Lorn, and grand-daughter of the Red Comyn slain by Bruce at Dumfries, but his son Ian, who succeeded him in 1304, is said to have taken the part of Robert the Bruce, and actually to have sheltered that monarch for a time within the walls of Eileandonan. He is said to have fought on Bruce's side at the battle of Inverury in 1308, and to have waited on the King at his visit to Inverness in 1312, and he also led a following said to be five hundred strong of the men of Kintail at the battle of Bannockburn, three years later. His loyalty to Bruce is better understood when it is known that he was married to Margaret, daughter of David de Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, the warm supporter of that monarch. Ian's son, Kenneth of the Nose, had a severe struggle against the fifth earl of Ross. According to Wyntoun's Chronicle, Randolph, Earl of Moray, paid a visit to Eileandonan in 1331, for the punishment of misdoers, and expressed himself as right blythe at sight of the fifty heads "that flowered so weel that wall," but whether the heads were those of Mackenzies or of Ross' men we do not know. In 1342 the Earl of Ross granted a charter of Kintail to a son of Roderick of the Isles, which charter was confirmed by the King, and in 1350 the Earl actually dated a charter at Eileandonan itself, from which it may be gathered that he had seized the castle. Finally the Earl's men raided Mackenzie's lands of Kinlochewe; Mackenzie pursued them, killed many, and recovered the spoil; and in revenge the Earl had him seized and executed at Inverness, and granted Kinlochewe to a follower of his own. Mackenzie had married a daughter of MacLeod of the Lews, and on his execution his friend, Duncan Macaulay of Loch Broom, sent Murdoch, his young son and heir, to MacLeod for safe-keeping, and at the same time prepared to defend Eileandonan against the attacks of the Earl of Ross. He kept the castle against repeated attacks, but a creature of the earl's, Leod MacGilleandreis, the same who had procured the death of the late chief, and had received the grant of Kinlochewe, laid a trap for Macaulay's only son and murdered him. At last however, the young chief, Murdoch, having grown up a strong, brave youth, procured one of MacLeod's great war galleys, full of men, and with a friend, Gille Riabhach, set sail from Stornoway to strike a blow for his heritage. Landing at Sanachan in Kishorn, he marched towards Kinlochewe, and hid his men in a wood while he sent a woman to discover the whereabouts of his enemy. Learning that MacGilleandreis was to meet his followers at a certain ford for a hunting match, Murdoch fell upon him there, and overthrew and slew him. He afterwards married the only daughter of his brave friend and defender, Macaulay, and through her succeeded to the lands of Loch Broom and Coigeach. Then, after the return of David II from his captivity in England, he obtained in 1362 a charter from that monarch confirming his rights, and he died in 1375. He was known as Black Murdoch of the Cave, from his resort to wild places for security during his youth, and while laying his plans for the overthrow of his enemies. His son, Murdoch of the Bridge, got his name from a less creditable incident. His wife having no children, and he being anxious to have a successor, he had her waylaid at the Bridge of Scatwell, and thrown into the river. She, however, managed to escape, and made her way to her husband's house at Achilty, coming to his bedside, as the chronicler puts it, "in a fond condition"; whereupon, pitying her case and repenting of the deed, he took her in his arms. A few weeks afterwards she gave birth to a son, and they lived together contentedly all their days. Murdoch was one of the sixteen Highland chiefs who took part under the Earl of Douglas at the battle of Otterbourne, and against all threats he refused to join the Lord of the Isles in his invasion of Scotland, which ended at the battle of Harlaw. Murdoch married a daughter of MacLeod of Harris, and as that chief was fourth in descent from Olaf, King of Man, while his wife was daughter of Donald, Earl of Mar, nephew of King Robert the Bruce, the blood of two royal houses was thus brought to mix with that of the Mackenzie chiefs. The next chief, Alastair Ionric, or the Upright, was among the Highland magnates summoned by King James I to meet him at Inverness in 1427. With the others, he was arrested, but, while many of them were executed for their lawless deeds, he, being still a youth, was sent to school at Perth by the King. During his absence his three bastard uncles proceeded to ravage Kinlochewe, whereupon Macaulay, constable of Eileandonan, sent a secret message to the young chief, who, leaving school forthwith, and hastening north, summoned his uncles before him, and on their proving recalcitrant, made them "shorter by the heads," and so relieved his people of their ravages. In similar case, Alexander, Lord of the Isles, had been sent to Edinburgh by the King, but, escaping north, raised his vassals, burned Inverness, and destroyed the crown lands. On this occasion the young chief of the Mackenzies raised his clan, joined the royal army, and helped to overthrow the island lord. Later, during the rebellion of the Earl of Douglas, the Lord of the Isles and Donald Balloch, against James II, Mackenzie again stood firm in loyalty to the Crown. For this, in 1463, he received a charter confirming him in his lands of Kintail, and in various other possessions. So far these possessions had been held of the Earls of Ross, but after the rebellion of the Earl of Ross in 1476, when he was compelled to resign his earldom to the Crown, Mackenzie, who again had done loyal service, became a Crown vassal and received a further charter of Strathconan, Strathban and Strathgarve, which had been taken from the Earl. Of Alexander Mackenzie as a young man a romantic story is told. This is to the effect that Euphemia Leslie, Countess Dowager of Ross, set her fancy upon him and desired him to marry her. Upon his refusal, she turned her love to hatred, and made him a prisoner at Dingwall Then, by bribing his page, she procured his ring, and sending it to Eileandonan, induced Macaulay, the constable, to yield up the castle to her. To secure his master's freedom, Macaulay seized Ross of Balnagown, the countess's grand-uncle. He was pursued by the vassals of the Earl of Ross, and at Bealach na Broige a desperate conflict took place. Macaulay, however, carried off his man, and presently, managing to surprise Eileandonan, kept the countess's governor and garrison, along with Balnagown, in captivity until they were exchanged for the Mackenzie chief. The conflict of Bealach na Broige, the Pass of the Shoe, took place in 1452, and was so named from the Highlanders tying their shoes to their breasts to defend themselves against the arrows of their opponents. Many other romantic stories are told of the sixth chief. He was. so far, the greatest man of his me, and when he died at the age of ninety, in 1488, he left the house of Mackenzie one of the most powerful clans in the north. Till now the succession to the Mackenzie family had depended always upon a single heir. Alexander, the sixth chief, however, was twice married. By his first wife, Anna, daughter of MacDougall of Dunolly, he had two sons, the elder of whom succeeded him, and by his second wife, daughter of MacDonald of Morar, he had one son, Hector, who became ancestor of the Gairloch family. The seventh chief, Kenneth of the Battle, got his name from his part in the battle of Blair na pairc, fought during his father's lifetime, near their residence at Kinellen. To close the old family feud, Kenneth had married Margaret, daughter of John of Isla, Lord of the Isles, but John of Isla's nephew and heir, Alexander of Lochalsh, making a feast at Balcony House, invited to it, among other chiefs, Kenneth Mackenzie. On Mackenzie arriving with forty followers, he was told that the house was already full, but that a lodging had been provided. for him in the kiln. Enraged at the insult, he struck the seneschal to the ground, and left the house. Four days later he was ordered with his father to leave Kinellan, which they held as tenants of the island lord. Kenneth returned a message that he would stay where he was, but would return his wife, and he accordingly sent the lady back with the utmost ignominy. The dame had only one eye, and he sent her on a one-eyed horse, accompanied by a one-eyed attendant and a one-eyed dog. A few days later, with two hundred men, he besieged Lord Lovat in his castle and demanded his daughter, Anne, in marriage. Lord Lovat and his daughter agreed, and ever afterwards Kenneth and the lady lived as husband and wife. Meanwhile MacDonald had raised an army of sixteen hundred men, marched northward through the Mackenzie lands, burning and slaying, and at Contin, on a Sunday morning, set fire to the church in which the old men, women and children had taken refuge and burned the whole to ashes. Then he ordered his followers to be drawn up on the neighboring moor for review. But Kenneth Mackenzie, though he had only six hundred men, proved an able leader. He succeeded in entangling his enemy in a peat bog, and when they were thrown into confusion by a discharge from his hidden archers, fell upon them and put them to flight. This invasion cost the MacDonalds the Lordship of the Isles, which was declared by Parliament a forfeit to the Crown. Kenneth was on his way with five hundred men, under the Earl of Huntly, to support James III, when news reached him of his father's death, and Huntly sent him home to see to his affairs, and so he missed taking part in the battle of Sauchieburn, at which James fell. He was afterwards knighted by James IV. The eighth chief, Kenneth the Younger, was the son of the daughter of the Lord of the Isles, whom his father had so unceremoniously sent home. Along with the young Mackintosh chief, he was secured in Edinburgh Castle by James IV as a hostage for his clan. After a time the two lads escaped and reached the Torwood. Here they met the Laird of Buchanan, then an outlaw, and he, to secure the remission of his outlawry, surrounded the house at night with his followers, and demanded surrender. Mackenzie rushed out, sword in hand, and was shot with an arrow. This was in 1497. The next chief, John of Killin, Kenneth's half-brother, was considered illegitimate by many of the clan. though the marriage of his mother had been legitimated by the Pope in the last year of her husband's life. The estates were seized by the young chief's uncle, Hector Roy, ancestor of the Gairloch family. But Lord Lovat procured a precept of clare constat to protect his nephew's interest, and Munro of Fowlis, Lieutenant of Ross, proceeded to Kinellan to punish the usurper. As the latter was returning, however, he was ambushed at Knockfarrel by Hector Roy. and most of his men slain. Hector also defeated a royal force sent against him by the Earl of Huntly, in 1499. At last, however, his nephew, John, with a chosen band, beset him in his house at Fairburn, and set the place on fire. Hector thereupon surrendered, and it was agreed that he should possess the estates till the young chief was twenty-one years of age, Eileandonan being forthwith delivered up to the latter. Both the chief, John, and his uncle, Hector Roy, took part in the Battle of Flodden, and, strange to say, both escaped and returned home, though most of their followers fell. The chief was taken prisoner by the English, but escaped through the kindness of the wife of a shipmaster |