322 



NOTES AND QUEKIES. 



[No. 260. 



SLA,VEKr IX SCOTLATfC IN THE EIGHTEENTH 

 CENTOBT. 



Mr. Hugh Miller, the eminent geologist, in his 

 very interesting and instructive work entitled 

 My Schools and Schoolmasters; or the Story of 

 my Education, Edinb. 1854, 8vo., alludes to the 

 existence of slavery in Scotland in the last cen- 

 tury, which may not be generally known. Speak- 

 ing of a collier village in the vicinity of Niddry 

 Mill, he observes : 



" Curious as the fact may seem, all the older men of 

 that village, though situated little more than four miles 

 from Edinburgh, had been born slaves. Nay, eighteen 

 years later (in 1842), when Parliament issued a com- 

 mission to inquire into the nature and results of female 

 labour in the coal pits of Scotland, there was a collier 

 still living that had never been twenty miles from the 

 Scottish capital, who could state to the Commissioners 

 that both his father and grandfather had been slaves; 

 that he himself had been born a slave ; and that he had 

 wrought for years in a pit in the neighbourhood of Mus- 

 selburgh ere the colliers got their freedom." 



In a note he states that — 



"The act for manumitting our Scotch colliers was 

 passed in the year 1775, forty-nine years prior to the date 

 of my acquaintance with the class at Xiddry." 



This act for various reasons had no practical 

 effect, until they were set free by a second act 

 passed in 1799. 



" The language of both acts strikes with startling effect. 

 ' Whereas,' says the preamble of the older act, that of 

 1775, * by the statute law of Scotland, as explained b}' 

 the judges of the courts of law there, many colliers and 

 coal-bearers, and salters, are in a state of slavery or 

 bondage, bound to the collieries or saltworks where they 

 work for life, transferable with the collieries and saltivorks ; 

 and whereas the emancipating,' &c. A passage in the 

 preamble of the act of 1799 is scarce less striking ; it de- 

 clares that, notwithstanding the former act, ' many colliers 

 and coal-bearers still continue in a state of bondage ' in 

 Scotland. The history of our Scotch colliers would be 

 found a curious and instructive one. Their slavery seems 

 not to have been derived from the ancient times of general 

 serfship, but to have originated in comparatively modern 

 acts of the Scottish Parliament, and in decisions of the 

 Court of Session — in acts of parliament in which the 

 poor ignorant subterranean men of the county were of 

 course wholly unrepresented, and in decisions of a court 

 in which no agent of theirs ever made appearance in their 

 behalf." — Pp. 303—305. 



EiRIONNACH. 



The Literary Pensions of the Year. — When the 

 world read in the columns of The Times the other 

 day, how the " eminent services" and the "valuable 

 contributions" of so many distinguished scholars, 

 poets, musicians, missionaries, naturalists, orien- 

 talists, naval architects, &c. &c., ai'e rewarded by 

 a rich and mighty nation like England, with the 

 pittance of 1200^., distributed among some thirty 

 or forty individuals, all of whom, by the force and 



splendour of their genius, talents, and virtues, 

 have contributed so greatly to advance the pros- 

 perity and renown of their country — one cannot 

 but lament that the statesmen who bestow such 

 pensionary rewards have not a more enlightened 

 and better appreciation of their gifted country- 

 men's services : for in such a case — and the 

 country at large I am sure responds with one 

 heart and soul to the appeal — the tribute to the 

 services and merits of such great men would be 

 more worthy of them, their destitute relatives, 

 and their country. Indignans. 



St.Maudifs Well The following extract from 



the West Briton of Sept. 29, 1854, deserves a niche 

 in " X. & Q." as a record of a ruin obliterated : 



" At length this well, which, since the days of Camden, 

 has been the indicator of the site of St. Mawes Chapel, 

 has yielded, like many of the bits of vei-tu, to the Vandalic 

 taste and Boeotic spade of men, who wield the trowel and 

 deal in mortar. The cavity has now been filled up, pipes 

 have been laid down, a new facies has been implanted, 

 and the venerable spot is lost to the inquirer. It will no 

 longer h6 a bone of literar\' contention, whether the de- 

 scriptive words in an old legend, 'infr^ mures,' placed 

 this well within or without certain boundaries. A par- 

 liamentary section was not long since engaged in this 

 mighty question ; they, however, came to no decision, 

 and the subject is never likeh' again to occupy senatorial 

 attention. This relic now falls deeply into the far-off 

 perspective ; doomed, like many other antiquarian gems, 

 to be removed from scientific research unheeded, unvalued, 

 unremembered. Among all the Savans, and amidst all the 

 fervour of. lamed disputation, on the observation of the 

 sacred little spring, not one single sigh was elicited for 

 poor old St. Maudit's Well, so long the general exponent of 

 the important and contiguous chapel. The monks of old 

 held the bubbling waters of this ancient well in high 

 estimation ; but mutability is the character stamped on 

 all human movements, and the issue of this well is another 

 of the * sic transits' in the great page. 



" 'We build with, what we deem eternal rock; 

 A distant age asks, where the fabric stood .' ' " 



S. K. P. 



Greenes " Lives of the Princesses.'" — The Lives 

 of the Princesses of Ens^land., by Mary Anne 

 Everett Green, is a work of very considerable 

 merit, both for the industrious research of the 

 authoress, and the very instructive and interesting 

 narratives she has constructed from materials in- 

 accessible to most readers. But she has fallen into 

 errors which in any future edition we are hopeful 

 she will correct. 



Vol. i. p. 392. Ringhorne Castle is mentioned as 

 the residence of Queen Ermengarde. There is no 

 such place. Ivinghorn (Cornu Regis) must be 

 meant. 



Vol. i. p. 394. " The powerful Lord of Galwny." 

 Gal way is in Ireland, and the person alluded to 

 was Lord of Galloway. This mistake occurs again 

 in the second volume, p. 181. 



Vol. ii. p. 184. "The Castle of Edinburgh 

 stands on a sea-girt precipice." The castle is 



