Me. Seem:role—In your last paper you infer from the Gaelic
salutations of the Highlanders to our gracious Sovereign, that the aborigines of the district where she now resides have no title for the Queen but that of "the King's wife." But this translation, by the Morning Chronicle's correspondent, of the term ",Khan Righ," is erroneous. Righ is a word of either gender, meaning " Sove- reign"; and Man, the primitive meaning of which is white, or fair, is used poetically to designate the female sex. In the same way as we speak of a fair author, or a fair artist, the Highlanders, in their acclamations, hailed their "fair
re
Soveign." In one of Lady Morgan's tales, (Florence Macarthy, I think,) the heroine, the representative of an old feudal family, is called by the country-people the "Shan Tiern3" or fair chieftain; and everybody knows the pretty Irish tune "Peggy Hawn" or " Bhan,")—which means "fair Peggy." As to the word Righ, it is appli by the Highlanders to Queen Victoria in the same sense in which the loyal Hungarian nobles used the word Rex when they exclaimed " Moriamur pro Rege nostro, Maria Theresa! "
Your constant reader. H. [" H." deals more seriously with our badinage than the trifle deserved; but we believe he is correct, and far deeper-read in Gaelic interpretations than the London reporters of Ardverikie.—En.)
Previous page
