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

24 COMMENTS ON KEIR PERFOEMANOE,
search had been employed, it would have been found at once that the arms
in question, so far from being in the least those of Stirling, were actually
1 First the heraldic insignia of " Dennestoun of Duntraith," who, as Nisbet, a very
p. 104. ' accessible authority, informs us,^ carried " argent, on a bend azure, between
two unicorns' heads sable erased, armed, or, thkbe rings, with carbuncles
of the last ; " — that is, a jewel or precious stone placed at the end of each
ring, and obviously the precise addition noticed, and in the identical position
with that to the three rings, also on the bend in the left impalement of the
Wrighthouses' shield !
The mutual identity is thus complete, proving both coats of arms one and
the same ; and the unicorn's head erased below the bend — while' the uj^per
one, in the above, still remains as in the Denneston of Duntraith arms — has
been there obliterated either by weather or lapse of time.
It is almost superfluous to observe, that the form of the shield on the
Wrighthouses' stone, is comparatively modern — not earlier, perhaps, than
the seventeenth century — but not certainly coeval with the date " 1399 "
{literally, &?, added to the accompanying motto), at a time when the husband's
and wife's arms were not impaled, as in this instance, but given on separate
shields. On what account such date may be there does not transpire, nor is
it worth inquiring — no more than the initials I. S. — if they really be such —
on the left of the shield in question. But, at any rate, the date " 1399 " is
a manifest modern interpolation,- — these Arabic numerals not having been
then introduced or employed by us, so that no relevant antiquarian argu-
ment can be based thereupon.
On the whole, it must be confessed that the Keir Performance has been
rather unhappy in its attempted armorial elucidations and conclusions ; while
even within the small compass of this peccant p. 14, there is more of error and
hallucination to be exposed, besides the misrepresentations as to the origin
of the Stirling buckles, and visionary Cawdor alliances, and subserviency.
Corrobora- Yct the Writer's sand-glass here is not yet run out. In corroboration, as
winter's im- has becu remarked, of the stag's head alone having been the proper or sub-
prGssioD
as to the stautivc. gcntilitial arms of the Calders, or rather Cawdors, in the north, in
Calder °
arras in exclusiou of the buckles that have been substituted for them in the preceding
the north. ^ °
work, so unfairly, upon a palpably misrepresented authority, the Exponent
may appeal to the respectable evidence of Mr Thomas Crawford, professor of
mathematics in the University of Edinburgh in 1646, and its known historian