mm mimmmi pll mmH ■ SM ?l WisMfimPM lammiM yttjmwr; M bIISBi I ; • ' / •• •; . ' KWvmWwMwmt■ ■ • VWLMi -X ■y^rjPikaXjjv^ii>a / Jrv M m l#»f •*••< • r* ■ ', hMJfymMMS ¥Mm wW*- wmml i'AxW’MK'bx mmmiwMM mMmMm&im mmi H SV/ $cC. S^ SS 4v A PUBLICATIONS OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY VOLUME LIII MACFARLANES GEOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS VOL. III. March 1908 GEOGRAPHICAL COLLECTIONS RELATING TO SCOTLAND MADE BY WALTER MACFARLANE Edited from Macfarlane’s Transcript in the Advocates’ Library BY SIR ARTHUR MITCHELL, K.C.B. M.A., M.D., LL.D., AND JAMES TOSHACH CLARK LATE KEEPER OF THE ADVOCATES’ LIBRARY IN THREE VOLUMES VOLUME III EDINBURGH Printed at the University Press by T. and A. Constabi for the Scottish History Society 1908 PREFACE In Volume in. of Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections re- lating to Scotland there are several articles that cannot be described as either Geographical or Topographical. In this respect Volume in. differs from Volume i. and also, though to a smaller extent, from Volume n. It differs also from the second volume in that the articles, with only one or two exceptions, are all in English. The larger part of this third volume was transcribed for Macfarlane by John Taitt, who was also the transcriber of Volumes i. and n. The concluding part of Volume in.—viz., from the History of the Clans, p. 259, to the end—was done by another transcriber whose name we do not know. That he was very inferior to Taitt as a transcriber is shown by the abundance of errors in that part of the transcript done by him. As long as Taitt acted as transcriber the manuscript has, as in the case of Volumes i. and n., been closely followed. Eut with regard to the portion done by his successor, it was thought desirable to correct as far as possible what clearly appeared to be errors in transcribing. To a large extent these were known with certainty through collation with the originals from whicli he appears to have copied. In Jo. Ben’s Description of Orkney (p. 302), which has a special interest from its having been written as far back as 1529, the Latin in the Macfarlane manuscript was found to have errors in certain parts, and it was decided to follow some- f- , <s-Tn. UHX *. ir -v —i ■ viii PREFACE what closely the print of the Description as given in Barry’s History of Orkney, 1805. Errors, however—chiefly gramma- tical—also occur in Barry’s print, and these too have been corrected, but no change has been made that affects the sense. The translation of Ben’s Orkney (p. 313) here given formerly belonged to Captain F. W. L. Thomas, and is now in the possession of Sir Arthur Mitchell. The translator, whose name is not known, follows the Latin very literally, but there is sometimes a quaintness about the phraseology that gives it a certain charm. After the text of Macfarlane, with the above translation of Jo. Ben’s Description of Orkney, had been printed off, it was discovered that another old translation existed, and was in the possession of the Rev. Thomas Mathewson, Lerwick. It is headed as having been made by ‘ W. Henderson.’ It begins with the date 14th October 1812, and each day’s work, as the translation proceeded, has its own date on the margin, till the end is reached on the 17th October. It has the look of an original document and not of a transcript. There is no indication of where the Latin existed of which it is a transla- tion. The Note in English on the Husbandry of Orkney, that is given both in Barry and in Sir James Balfour’s transcript in the Advocates’ Library, is absent. At first the translator was accepted as being the William Henderson of Bardister, who gave large assistance to Hibbert in preparing his History of Shetland (1822), who was a man of considerable culture, and who, according to Mr. Francis J. Grant, died unmarried at Leith in 1824. The Rev. Thomas Mathewson, however, says that he was married but lived apart from his wife; that he had two sons, one of whom was called William and was buried at Ollaberry; and that the transla- tion was made by this son and is in his handwriting. The date does not exclude either view. The script of the elder Henderson, Hibbert’s friend, has been seen, through the kind- ness of his descendant Mr. A. Shaw Mellor, and it is found to PREFACE ix be not unlike that of the translation, but there is no such close correspondence as to remove all uncertainty. This Henderson Translation differs considerably from the Translation that came to Sir Arthur Mitchell from the Collec- tions of Captain Thomas, being less literal and in better English, but there is no difference that amounts to a differ- ence of sense or matter. A translation of Jo. Ben’s Description of Orkney is probably for the first time given in print in this volume. The Descrip- tion appears in print, but in Latin only, in the first edition of Barry 1805, in Headrick’s edition of 1808, and in the Kirkwall edition published by Peace in 1867; but in the last the Note in English about the Husbandry of Orkney, after- wards specially referred to, is disjoined, though it is stated that it occurs at the end of the Descriptio. It is not yet known who Jo. Ben was. The name, which is once given as Johannis Ben, has been accepted by some as a contraction for John Bellenden, the translator of Boece,andthe dates may be regarded as suiting. But this is nothing more than a guess. Bellenden, as secretary of the Earl of Angus, was implicated in the detaining of James V. at Falkland against the Monarch’s will, and he may have fled to Orkney in 1528 and been resident there in 1529, but of this there is no proof. From internal evidence, the writer of the Descriptio seems to have been a Priest, but, if he was an ordinary Priest serving an Orkney chapel, it is scarcely probable that he would have written Latin with freedom, nor is it likely that a settled Priest would have been able to visit so many of the islands. J. R. Tudor in his Orkneys and Shetland, 1883, p. 672, gives a list of his authorities, and among them he has:— '‘Bellenden John. Descriptio . per me, Jo. Ben . .’ with a reference to Headrick’s edition of Barry’s Orkney (1808), but Headrick nowhere says that Jo. Ben stands for John Bellenden. PREFACE Barry himself does not appear to have had any doubt as to the full name being Ben. Writing of Deerness, he says,—‘ To confirm this tradition we have the decided testimony of an -author who himself lived [1529] for some time at least in this country.1 The footnote to this is: ‘ Ben. MSS., Adv. Lib. Edin.1 See Barry’s ‘ Orkney,1 1805, p. 288. It has been suggested that Jo. Ben may stand for John Benston or Beinston, who was appointed co-adjutor to Edward Bishop of Orkney on the 24th of April 1524, but it is recorded that he died on the 9th of April 1526, when his successor was appointed—that is, three years before the Descriptio was written (see Maziere Brady’s Episcopal Succes- sion, vol. i. pp. 150-151). Benston was buried in St. Salvator’s College, St. Andrews {Hist. MSS. Commission, 5th Report, Ap. p. 639). His name is not in Keith’s Catalogue. There was a Bishop James Ben, Bene, Bane, Bennet or Biort in Scotland (see Dictionary of National Biography), but he cannot be the author of the Descriptio as he died in 1332. The name Ben, however, is thus shown to be very old in Scotland, as old probably as the occurrence of men with Fair Hair where Gaelic was the language. The following is Sibbald’s entry of Jo. Ben’s Descriptio, at p. 25 of his undated Repertory.—‘John Ben. John Bane a resident in the Orkney Isles, anno 1529 wrott a description of them in Latine MS. extant one sheet and a halfe.’ This mention of the size seems to indicate that Sibbald had seen the original, but of course the size may have been reported to him. There is a copy of the Description in the Sibbald MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, with the press-mark 33.3.20, which is believed to be a transcript in the handwriting of Sir Robert Sibbald. In 1711 Sibbald published The Description of Orkney and Zetland (Edin. Fob). Only four pages, written by Robert Monteith, 1633, are given to Orkney. Jo. Ben is not men- PREFACE xi tioned. Nor is he mentioned by Sibbald in his Admonitio de Atlante Scotico (1683), when giving a list of the Manuscripts and Prints that he had collected to aid him in preparing his projected Scottish Atlas. It is not known, therefore, at what time Jo. Ben's Descriptio became known to Sibbald, but it is almost certain that it was not known to him in 1683. The Descriptio by Ben also appears in the Balfour MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, with the press-mark 33.2.3. This transcript appears to be in Sir James Balfour’s own hand- writing. Therejxe thus in the Advocates’ Library two transcripts of Jo. Ben\ in manuscript. One of them, said to be in the script of Sibbald, does not contain the short additional Note in English Of the Husbandry used by the Orchadians that is given by Barry as appearing at the end of the MS.