AUTHOR'S PREFACE. THE Author of this undertaking collected the materials of it at different times, and wrote them for his own amusement, without any design of offering them to the public. He perused descriptions of several counties, but had not the good fortune to meet with any tolerable account of the Province of Moray; whereof, mindful of the observation, Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos he has arranged his collections into the order in which they now appear. The Geographical Part would be less entertaining if it was not intermixed with a Genealogical Account of several families of eminence and distinction. In this his chief view was to give the true origin and antiquity of those families. It is generally agreed that we had not fixed surnames in Scotland earlier than the eleventh century. Before that period our Kings were named patronymically-as Malcolm MacKenneth, Kenneth MacAlpine, &c. The Author has in his hands manuscript accounts of the families treated of, from which entertaining anecdotes might have been extracted. But this he was afraid, would too much swell the work. He has added the Armorial Bearings of Families. The Romans preserved the distinction of families by the Jus Imaginis. They divided the people into Nobiles, Novi, et Ignobiles. He that had the Images or Statues of his ancestors, who bore eminent offices, as Prætor, Edile, Consul, &c., was called Noble; he that had only his own Image or Statue was Novus, or an Upstart; and he that had no Statue was Ignoble. Those little statues of wood, marble, brass, &c., were carefully preserved and exposed at funerals and other solemn occasions, and possibly from this came our coats of arms. (Vide Suet. in Octav. et Diocles and Nisbet's Use of Armories.) In the Geographical and some other parts of this work, the Author has given the names of places in the Gaelic language, which is a dialect of the Celtic. In this he has generally observed the proper orthography, which often differs from the common pronunciation in this kingdom. This he has done to make the etymology of these names of places the more intelligible. The Natural History, although it contains little to gratify the curiosity of those who are much versant in such reading, yet valuable authors have given an account of natural productions of countries such as they write of, and the peculiar product of this Province ought not to be omitted, and may be entertaining to many. In the Civil Part there is such variety as cannot but be agreeable to some readers. In the Roll of Barons there are several alterations since the 1760-in some, sons have come into the place of their fathers, in others, collaterals have succeeded; and in 1774 the King and Parliament granted to Major General Fraser the lands and estate of the late Lord Lovate, his father. But the Roll as it now stands is so well known that it is unnecessary to write it. The Military History is drawn up from the best writers the Author has met with. The Ecclesiastic Part may appear to some readers too long; the length, however, may be excused, considering the great variety of matter it contains. The Author has. used a style so laconic and brief that he could not express his thoughts intelligibly in fewer words; and it may be agreeable to some to find the succession of Ministers in parishes and the changes in ecclesiastical government since the Reformation. In a Collection of this nature there cannot but be mistakes and errors, which the Author hopes the candid reader will correct rather than condemn. |