Page 1.
Jeanne d’Arc is said to have led a Scottish force at Lagny, when she
defeated the Burgundian, Franquet d’Arras. A Scottish artist painted her
banner; he was a James Polwarth, or a Hume of Polwarth, according to a
conjecture of Mr. Hill Burton’s. A monk of Dunfermline, who continued
Fordun’s Chronicle, avers that he was with the Maiden in her campaigns,
and at her martyrdom. He calls her _Puella a spiritu sancto excitata_.
Unluckily his manuscript breaks off in the middle of a sentence. At her
trial, Jeanne said that she had only once seen her own portrait: it was
in the hands of a Scottish archer. The story of the white dove which
passed from her lips as they opened to her last cry of _Jesus_! was
reported at the trial for her Rehabilitation (1450–56).
Page 2.
_One of that Name_.
Two archers of the name of Lang, Lain, or Laing were in the French
service about 1507. See the book on the Scottish Guard, by Father Forbes
Leith, S. J.
_Thy Church unto the Maid Denies_.
These verses were written, curiously enough, the day before the Maiden
was raised to the rank of ‘Venerable,’ a step towards her canonisation,
which, we trust, will not be long delayed. It is not easy for any one to
understand the whole miracle of the life and death of Jeanne d’Arc, and
the absolutely unparalleled grandeur and charm of her character, without
studying the full records of both her trials, as collected and published
by M. Quicherat, for the Société de l’Histoire de France.
Page 4.
_How they held the Bass_.
This story is versified from the account in _Memoirs of the Rev. John
Blackader_, by Andrew Crichton, Minister of the Gospel. Second Edition.
Edinburgh, 1826. Dunbar was retained as a prisoner, when negotiations
for surrender, in 1691, were broken off by Middleton’s return with
supplies. Halyburton was, it seems, captured later, and only escaped
hanging by virtue of the terms extorted by Middleton. Patrick Walker
tells the tale of Peden and the girl. Wodrow, in his _Analecta_, has the
story of the Angel, or other shining spiritual presence, which is removed
from its context in the ballad. The sufferings from weak beer are quoted
in Mr. Blackader’s Memoirs. Mitchell was the undeniably brave Covenanter
who shot at Sharp, and hit the Bishop of the Orkneys. He was tortured,
and, by an act of perjury (probably unconscious) on the part of
Lauderdale, was hanged. The sentiments of the poem are such as an old
cavalier, surviving to 1743, might perhaps have entertained. ‘Wullie
Wanbeard’ is a Jacobite name for the Prince of Orange, perhaps invented
only by the post-Jacobite sentiment of the early nineteenth century.
Page 44.
_Rousseau’s delight_.
The _pervenche_, or periwinkle.
Page 64.
One of the college bells of St. Salvator, mentioned by Ferguson, is
called ‘Kate Kennedy’; the heroine is unknown, but Bishop Kennedy founded
the College. ‘Kate Kennedy’s Day’ was a kind of carnival, probably a
survival from that festivity.
Page 77.
_The Disappointment_.
As a matter of fact the Haunted House Committee of the Society for
Psychical Research have never succeeded in seeing a ghost.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press