DUKES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3244, 23 November 1881, Page 4

DUKES.

Dukes were unknown in Scotland previous to the year 1398, when, upon the occasion of a meeting between John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster and the Scots Lords to arrange terms of peace, some question of precedence seems, according to the suggestion of Douglas, to have arisen. Robert Stuarfc, Earl of Fife, was afc this time virtually Governor of the Northern Kingdom. His father, King Robert 11, was stricken in years j his elder brother, the Earl of Carrick, was in ill health. The English Prince bore the ducal title, and set a fashion for Scotland which was immediately followed. Hie Hereditary Prince, whose position had so far been sufficiently illustrated by his boor--1 ing the old title of Robert Bruce, was now ' made Duke of Rothesay, in the Isle of Bute ; while the Regent, as if to dignify his own position to the utmost, was not content to be styled Duke of a single town, or even of a county, but chose a name which, however obscurely, should denote nothing less than the wholVof what we know as the Highlands of Scotland. Such seems to be the meaning of the name of Albany. Mr Skene has used the word as signifying Celtic bootland. Ifc is to te- found, slightly disguised, as a name for the whole island in various classical authors. There is no essential difference between it and Albion, which occurs in Aristotle, It has often been asserted that the word is an allusion to the white cliffs of our southern shores as they gleam across the channel, while ifc has also been derived from fche same root as Alb or Alp, a iei S llfc - Shakespeare has made good use ot tbe title in King Lear, the plot of which it/- found in many of the old romancing chronic, ers, who were particularly in fashion when the bouse of Stuarfc ascended the English throne. According to them, the first Duke of A_ bony was named Magland, and marying Gonial, one of the coheirs of Lear, or Llyr, hacia son Morgan, who gave his name to a Wels. i county. When Fife chose Albany for his dukedom the meaning of the name had gradually shrunk. Long before his day the Irish historians apply Alba to Scotland ; yet the other form of the name, Albion, occurs n an English charter as late as the beginning of the eleventh century j and ifc is possible fchoA Ethelrad, when he styled himselr. ' monarchic totius Albonis,' intended to denote that the whole of Great Britain was Under Ills power. Ptolemy, tLe geographer, mentions a tribe of 'Albini,' who were among those he enumerates as dwelling north of the Brigantes ; and some recent writers have not hesitated to identify them with the inhabitants of what is now called Bredalbane. Be this as ifc may, there seems little reason to doubt that when the Regent assumed the title Duke of Albany afc Scone in 1398 the name signified to him and to his contemporaries that part of Scotland which lies north of the Firths of Clyde and Forth. He had no idea of becoming a duke in partilus. Albany was a place, not merely a name, and we cannot but conclude that its revival implies more than an accidental reference to the Highlands.—Saturday Review.