Blair Collection > Celtic monthly > Volume 5, 1897

THE CELTIC MONTHLY
15
Lilt of what is apparently a basket-hilted clay-
more is seen among the folds of the plaid; and
it is also true that there are claymores in
existence with stamped blades of earlier date,
but it will usually be found on close examina-
tion, that where such is the case, the old blade,
]irobably because of its superior quality of
steel, has been inserted into
a comparatively modern
hilt. The writer's own
opinion is, that when the
double handed swords
were discarded, their
blades were cut down and
furnished with new basket
hilts. This would account
jiJ for the extraordinary
I ll width of blade often found
' ' in the claymore, and also
'I affords a reasonable expla-
[ nation of the fact that so
1 •>: many of the 17th and
I i 18th century claymores
! 1 1 bear the marks of Andrea
i M Ferara who is believed to
^ have lived in the IGth
century, or even earlier ;
for a [tradition exists that
this celebrated sword-smith was induced to
come to Scotland by James IV. (1488-1513),
and that having set up a forge in a cave in the
Highlands he commenced the manufacture of
his famous blades for the Highland chiefs and
Lowland noblemen. He is said to have kiUed
one of his sons who had been bribed to betray
the secret process by which the splendid
temper of the steel was produced.
{To be continued.)
D. G. MEARNS,
OF DISBLAIR.
B.D.,
^^yEV. DUNCAN GEORGE MEARNS,
CRK/ minister of Oyne, proprietor of Disblair
"^^^ and South Kinmundy, is one of the
best known and most highly esteemed men of
the Garioch, and one in whom are united and
inherited excellences of a long line of gifted and
distinguished ancestors.
The son of the Rev. William Mearns, D.D.,
who was at one time minister of Glenrinnes,
and afterwards of Kinnefl', the subject of our
sketch was born in tliis prettily situated
Kincardineshire parish on January lltli, 1846,
while the echoes of the Disruption were yet
ringing through Scotland. He can trace his
ancestry, if not exactly to the retinue of the
Conqueror, yet far back into the misty fifteenth
century to the knightly scions of the house of
Dyss, who also held important otKce in the
Church of Scotland in Aberdeen and its
neighbourhood. His grandfather was the Rev.
Duncan Mearns, D.D , of Disblair, a son of
Anne, sister of the well-known and revered
Rev. Dr. Geoige Morison of El sick and Disblair,
himself a SOh of a worthy Lord Provost of