Comments in refutation of pretensions advanced for the first time, and statements in a recent work "The Stirlings of Keir and their family papers"

WITH DRUMPELLIER'S EXPOSITION, &c. 5
most modern authorities — if we can use the last term on tlie occasion — i sec KcIi
being fain, in explanation of " the ancient name of Stryveling," to quote the under the
idle and childish supposition of Nimmo^ (here rather synonymous with thesur-
Nemo or nil), in his Histo)-y of Stirling, published but in our day, in 1817, 2, note.
that it was from the term signifying " strife," — seemingly, par excellence, as
if strife was more pecuhar to that town, and the other Scotch towns or cities
less obnoxious to the charge ! What greater platitudes and make-weights 'i
And will it be credited that the obscure and twaddling Fairbairn — or
pulchra j^roles, as he might have been Latinised by the punning practice
of his century, notoriously introduced by James VI.* — with the modern
Nimmo, are the sole writers whom the Keir Performance can adduce on the
origin of Stirling or the Stirlings.
The same Keir work or compilation with which we have been favoured,
under the auspices of the honourable member for Perthshire, professes to
give, in the first place, a full pedigree of the Strivelins or Stirlings, especially
including the chief and principal line of Gadder, which is also affirmed, from
the reign of William the Lyon, to have " continued in the family " (that is, face to
in one and the same original Stirling stock, from the context)^ " without p. x.
interruption to the present time." This, like similar assertions, as may trans-
pire in the sequel, cannot justly be maintained, seeing Gadder actually, on
the other hand, was interrupted in its original Stirling descent ; it indubit-
ably having diverged therefrom through a singular title in 1541, as will also
be shown, for the Jirst time, to the distinct race of Keir (as must be pre-
sumed in hoc statu), with whom only subsequently it has " without interrup-
tion " remained.
The Keir editor, too, at the outset of his performance,^ after stating the ^Seeibid.,
p. ix.
loss the Keir family had sustained of their old documents by the burning of
the Tower of Keir in 1488 (comprised in their ancient patrimony of Auld aftenvnrds
or Old Keir,* subsequently ahenated, in 1527, to undoubted Drumpellier proveri.
ancestry, who were infeft therein for a time), adds, that " the Stirling family
have continued in possession of the barony of Keir ever since " — which it-
thus, certainly, in part refuted ; and, moreover, that they " acquired many
other properties, each acquisition bringing with it the usual feudal progress
of title-deeds, including those of their earliest inheritance of Gadder." This
* Greek also was sometimes here called into of the houses of Douglas and Angus, being
play, the cotemporary Gorhcroft, historian then styled Theagrius.
S