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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 July 2012
Since my last, I have not had an occasion of seeing old Taylor; but he is still alive and well, and I hope soon to have an opportunity of visiting him, when I shall take care to have the fullest account of him I can possibly obtain.
page 230 note [z] An account of this very old man was received, and read to the Society: “John Son of Barnabas or Bernard (he calls him Barny) Taylor, by his wife Agnes Watson, was born in Garry Gill, in the parish of Aldston in Cumberland. His father was a miner, and died when John was four years old. At the age of nine years, he was set to work at dressing lead ore, which he followed two years at two pence a day. He then went below ground to assist the miners, and had been thus employed for three or four years, when the great Solar eclipse, vulgarly called the Mirk Monday, happened (November 29, 1652.) He, being then at the bottom of the shaft or pit, was desired by the man at the top to call those below to come out, because a black cloud had darkened the sun, so that the birds were falling to the earth. And this, which he always relates with the same circumstances, is the only event by which his age may be ascertained. About the age of twenty-six, he went to work at the lead mines at Blackwall in the bishoprick of Durham, He was afterwards employed as a miner or overseer in the island of Islay, where he continued till 1730, when he went to Glasgow. From thence he came, in 1733, to Lead Hills, where he wrought constantly in the mines till 1752; and has still the Profit of a bargain (about 8 or 10 l. per ann.) from the Scots Mine-company, which supports him comfortably.
His wife bore him nine children in Italy; four of whom died young. His eldest daughter, born in 1710, was married; and died in 1753. Two sons and two daughters are alive in this place (Lead Hills), and are married, except the youngest son born in 1730. His wife died in 1758.
He was always a thin spare man, about five feet four inches, black-haired,, ruddy-faced, and long-visaged. As miners are obliged to work at all hours, he never found any difference of times, with regard to working, sleeping, or eating. His appetite is still good; but must have a glass of spirits once or twice a day, to warm his stomach, as he expresses it. His sight and hearing are not greatly impaired. His hair not more gray than that of people generally about fifty; but his eyebrows, remarkably bushy, and his beard, are entirely white. In cold weather he lies much in bed; but in the warm months he walks about with a stick; and is very little bowed down. In October last, he walked from his own house to Lead Hills (a computed mile); and, having entertained his children and grandchildren in a public house, he returned the same day.” T. M.
page 232 note [a] The Scythians, who migrated Westward from the Palus Maeotis, their first settlement, were, in process of time, distinguished by several names, too many to be enumerated here; and, from many authorities, It appears, that it was that nation of them who were the Getae or Getes that passed very rapidly, and in very early times, into Scandinavia; and overspread Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the islands of the Baltic, Of these, a colony called the Picts, came into Britain and Ireland, and multiplied exceedingly in both islands, and were a distinct people, in the one, from the Irish Scots; and in the other, from the Britons and Caledonian Scots, who were the same People with the Irish. Venerable Bede says, they came over from their Northern abodes in long boats: for it appears from a very ancient Irish record, that Heremon, the son of Milesius, drove them out of Ireland into Scotland, which increased their numbers in the latter to a prodigious degree, from which expulsion there was not one left in Ireland; but they were a very formidable people in Britain many centuries after.
Venerable Bede makes them a distinct: people in another place; in ch. i. of his Eccles. Hist. he says: “Procedente autem tempofe, Britania, post Britones et “Pictos, Scotorum nationem in Pictorum parte recepit, &c.”
page 237 note [b] Armach cannot be derived from the word for an oak and the place of its growth in th6 Irish tongue; because the word for an oak is dair, and sometimes. dairvre: Armach is compounded of two words without the least mutilation, arm and mach; arm signisies arma arms, and mach a place, country, or territory; so that it is most naturally “a place of arms.”
As to Venerable Bede's appellation, the particle de is only a prepositive particle, as is practifed now in many local titles, and always was both in Latin and French: and if taken away, it leaves the armach intire; whereas if dair was the first part of this compound word, and the d taken away, it would be changed to airmach, which would signify an airy place, instead of a place of oaks. This shews, that the writer of Columba's life was mistaken, who should have rendered the Armach “Armorum “campi,” instead of “Roboris campi.” P.