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

20 COMMENTS ON KEIR PERFORMANCE,
This we learn from one of Marinontel's works about the epoch of the first
French Revolution, who being de infima plebe, and certainly one of its
promoters, did not with sufficient coquetry approve of such elevated 7'etenue,
affecting, at one time, to ridicule it, though it ^vfts in truth his highest object
and ambition to be honoured with the patronage and intimacy of the preced-
ing, which enabled him so gi'aphically, and with such zest, to delineate their
leading and polished characteristics and manners (elsewhere subjects of study
and imitation) in one of his most noted productions.
One word or two more on heraldic insignia, besides landed designation of
the Strivelins of Cadder, and its orthography.
What is withal passing strange, the notable Keir Performance, apparently
in a perverse or splenetic mood, either through bhndness or caprice, has
chosen not only to abjure the rights and interests of the Keir family, and,
moreover, of all the Jibulati Strivelienses, in so far as regards their armorial
buckles, but also to sacrifice them to those of a distinct foreign race, for
whom it seems to have an extraordinary penchant and predilection, even
preferably to the Keir, though they never for a moment should have been
brought into the discussion.
Extra- The right of the fibulati Strivelienses to their three buckles, a distin-
ordinai'y
attack by guished chivalrous bearing, is proved to have dated, at least, from 1292, if
the Keir _ _ o i
Perform- not earlier, while antecedently they have not yet been shown to have been
ance upon j ^ j
theorigiuai borne by another family. They hence may be said to be privative to, and
and innate -^ j j j i '
st1rUn*s*o indigcnous in them ; and such being the case, what could induce the Keir
inthdr'^''^'' advisers to sport the notion,^ that the arms in question were not so, but may
a™a«r have been derived from a Calder race, solely in the north, who thus, and not
they must the formcr, were their ancient and original possessors 1 They expressly affirm
derived that this ancievt ''family carried hucHes ; " to give some consistency to their
from the
caidersin conccivcd inference, while in support of this assertion, reference is merely
the North. .
1 See Keir made to oue of their seals of arms, so late as 1431.* But even that
ance. pp. scal, trivial at any rate, by no means bears out the above, as may be held
unfair and untrue representation of the matter. It, on the other hand,
in^cor-""' distinctly proves tJiat a stag's head affronti, or " caboshed" {tvhich the
i^'sTof""' -^ezV work altogether omits or withholds !) was the siihstantive arms
3itk>n.''^° of these Calders,t as it in fact still continues, though a small single buckle,
1 See Keir * As engraved in Laing's Scotch Seals,'' p. chief charged on the dexter point with a
work, p. 14. 3j^ jjp ^gQ ^^^g ^j^jy authority quoted), who buckle."
thus describes them as " a stags head, and a t See in corroboration also here, p. 25.