A VOLUME OF SCOTCH GENEALOGY.*
Ix is a pity there should be a ridiculous flavour about pedigrees. and genealogies, but so it is, that those very words evoke a host of absurd associations. Yet heraldries and pedigrees and genealogies are very good things ; they are very noble things in their way ; excellent, like history, or any other investigation of the dead past, if marshalled into their right place in the order of worthiness, which must always be subordinate to the living present. If we make it our prime business to "live that each to-morrow finds us. further than to-day," we may assuredly disregard that other in- junction to "let the dead past bury its dead." As Colonel New- come said,—one would like one's father to have been an honour- able man, and so why not one's grandfather, and his father, and so on? It is only that there is such a miserable amount of sham- ming and insincerity about the thing as it goes. The sham.. pedigrees of Burke, the sham heraldries and all the hideouts snobbishness which Thackeray laughed so to scorn, make the whole matter suspect. What per-centage of the people who use crests or arms stamped on their paper or engraved on their plate could make out any reasonable evidence of a right by descent? Setting aside sheer ignorance, such as the ignorance appealed to by those persons who invite the public to "send name and county" to a "heraldic studio," the thing is merely like any other sham,—like dyeing your hair, for instance, or wearing a. dickey, or saying you know Lord So-and-So when you don't,—& trying to pass yourself off as the possessor of something which you. have not got. If Mr. — chooses to assume the arms once borne by a family bearing the same name of —, without being able- to produce any evidence of a descent, Mr. — is merely to that. extent a snob. But again, other people who do take some pains to search for proofs seem to treat descents very much as if they were flexible garden-hoses, and capable of being hitched on to any source ; trace the thing as far as you can go, and then lead. the hose on to your fancy stock. If generations dead and gone could look on while this sort of thing is being done, how as- tonished they would be at the summary process by which genealogies begun at two ends are hitched together in the middle. People say to themselves,—the fact is certain, it is only the technical proofs that are missing ; whereas, in any other subject, one would ask, what is the process of revelation by which the fact is established without proofs? But the wonder is that people do not recognize this,—that the sole value of things of this. sort lies in their truth. Either So-and-So was your lineal ancestor,. and you have his blood in your veins, or else not ; if he was not, your genealogical garden-hoses and Leotard-springs won't make him so ; the process is one of discovery, not creation. As a mat- ter of justice the garden-hosers and wearers of genealogical and heraldic dickeys are hardly likely to trouble themselves about the: suspicion they throw on the genuine thing. After all, it is a pity,. if people ao care or affect to care for knowing who and what their progenitors were, that they do not take the pains to try and trace them out ; the process is much:easier than folks generally imagine,. and a moderate amount of trouble would usually settle the question, whether or no it is possible at all. As a mere matter of procreation, we have all had forefathers of some sort, for none of us were originated, like the Yahoos, by the heat of the sun acting upon mud-banks. It is probable that great numbers of us who do not know who our- great grandfathers were, more particularly country folk of the. yeomen clam, might, if we cared to make search, trace back some- centuries in the male line. With average fortune in happening, on good preservation among Parish Registers and Subsidy Rolls you may often run back a farmer's pedigree, say to Henry VIII.'s time.
Here, for the benefit of the extant Braces and Comyns and all, others whom it may concern, is a big volume of history and. genealogy, containing 700 pages quarto, and weighing, in its cover- embossed with gorgeous blazonry, just under 61b. The genealogy of Bruce appears to have been on this wise. First, six Earls of Orkney, father and son, one after the other :-1. Eistein (The- Noisy): 2. Rognvald ; 3. Turf-Eynor ; 4. Thorfin (The Skull- Cleaver); 5. Lodvic ; 6. Sigurt, who died A.D. 1014. Rognvald.
• The Bruce, and the Compu. With an Historical Introduction and AppmAr from Authentic Public and Private Docunents. By II. B. Oummlng-Bruce. London: Black- wood and Sou.
also begat Rollo, who made for himself and his a dwelling and a sway in Normandy, and was in process of time the great-great-grandfather of that Robert who is known as the father of " Gulielmus Conquistator." Sigart had several sons, of whom " Brusee " was one. Brusee had a son, Rognvald Bru- cesson, and died about 1033. Rognvald Brucesson dwelt and ruled in Gothland, travelled and skull-cleaved about much as his forefathers had done, had various intercourse, friendly and crafty, with King Olaf of Norway, the elder brother of Harold Har-
draada, and became the father of, inter ales, one Eyliff, who with Harold Hardraada went with his father into Russia. Rognvald Bracesson died in 1046, and after him his issue seem, for anything that appears, to have forsaken the old homes of Norsemen, Sweden and Norway, for the new home which Rollo had estab- lished. Harold Hardraada, of course, became King of Norway, and was slain fighting Harold Godwinson, our Harold, at Stam- ford Bridge ; but, according to Mr. Cumming-Bruce, who seems to show good reason for differing in this part of the history from some other chroniclers, Eyliff and another son of Rognvald Bru- -cesson settled themselves in Norway, were received into the Church there, and were the Regenvald and Robert Brusee who then became known there. Regenvald, who seems to run some danger of being confused with his father, married one Felicia de Hastings, while Robert Brusee wedded the daughter of a "Lord of Brittany." About this point the pedigree gets misty ; the Braces turn up in England and Scotland, and it is not quite certain -how they got there, or whether any one of them is himself, his uncle, his father, or his cousin, Scc. A 'William Brusse, however, 4 came over with the Conqueror," and is down in the Battle- Abbey roll ; his posterity are traceable in England for several centuries later. King Robert, the Bruce of Scotland, et id genus Aomne, seem to hail from the line of Alan, a son of the Robert Brasee last mentioned. The origin of the Cumyns seems a little mistier than that of the Braces ; Mr. Cumming-Bruce cites Sir Bernard Burke, who deduces the stock from the fifth son of Charlemagne.
Thus much we may say at once respecting this 6 lb. of Scotch genealogy, that it is all very honestly intended and done, and no shamming or garden-hosing about it. Colonel Newcome, we feel sure, would cordially approve the attitude of honest satisfaction in which Mr. Cumming-Bruce regards these honourable descents. On the fly-leaf is fitly inscribed the following good stave :—
" Those who on glorious ancestors enlarge
Produce the debt. We look for the discharge."
—Old Chronicle.
This "Old Chronicle "by the way, must be an uncommonly apocryphal one. Having commended the industry with which the compiler has raked together his vast congeries of facts from all sorts of sources, ranging from old sagas to modern mural tablets, and embracing an appalling array of "instruments of sasine,' -" charters of novodamus," " precepts of resignation," and manifold other instruments by which hereditaments have been " disponed " under Scotch law (surely in sound, at any rate, the most repulsive coqusjuris ever administered by lawyers),—having commended this, we have exhausted the praise in our bestowal. The volume is ill-ordered and unscholarlike in the last degree. The compiler seems to have edited his great mass of collections after the fashion ascribed by Mr. Carlyle to the Dryasdust editors of the last -century. "Edited, as you edit waggon-loads of broken bricks and dry mortar, simply by tumbling up the waggon." We have the most exasperating transitions from one period to another ; sometimes, again, a matter disposed of in one part of the volume is repeated all over again, as if the author had lost his memory in the interval. Names of people and places are spelt in the most haphazard way, :scarcely any name occurs frequently which is not spelt by the author in three or four ways indifferently ; it is perfectly true that a
xed canon of spelling is a modern invention, and a writer may recapitulate variations for the reader's information, but for his own use he should adhere to one form ; for want of this it is really impossible at times to determine, except by painful groping, who is the precise person of whom Mr. Cumming-Bruce is speaking. The volume opens with an introduction of 180 pages on Scotch history. This was a good plan, because Braces and Comyns lave been well in front throughout that history ; but unhappily, owing to the defects before mentioned, readers are likely to be merely bewildered or misled by it. Accuracy exhibits itself not only in thoroughly exhausting the materials for truth, but in a selection of such phrases as will precisely communicate it to readers. Mr. Cumming-Bruce's volume, on the contrary, is full of passages which must inevitably mislead an unlearned reader, and which we are induced to ascribe not to ignorance, but to mere slovenliness of
diction. For instance, what can be unhappier than to speak of "the present system of congi d'aire" as "founded on the charter of King John by which he granted the freedom of election of bishops to the clergy " ? The essence of "the present system" is that the conge dare is a permission in name only, being in reality an injunction to elect the Crown's nominee. The system, as such, is "founded" on the gradual encroachments of the Crown which took place between the reigns of Edward III. and Henry VIII., and the statute of 25 Henry VIII., as revived by Elizabeth Nothing but the mere phrase conge d'elire is left of the freedom granted by John.
It is right to add that in his preface Mr. Cumming-Bruce says that his book " was intended merely for private circulation,- but so many friends feel interested in it, and desire its publication, that I have yielded to their wishes, although painfully aware of my own incompetence to execute, unaided, so arduous a task." We do not wish to be hard on one who modestly deprecates criticism, but we must repeat that diffidence can be no excuse for printing an immense tangle of collected notes, without any effort at digesting them for the reader's benefit ; and still less for neglecting to correct printer's errors.
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