Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 125, March 20, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 125, March 20, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
They are clearly the compositions of a person of an unsettled intellect;
but we may collect from them the following facts:--His captain's
commission was dated May 29, 1703; he was called by his mother, a few
days before her death, both Jacob and Israel. This is further explained
when he relates that Lady Cumming, his mother, set out from Edinburgh
the first of the "Borrowing Days," towards the end of March, 1709.
"The three last days of March are called 'the Borrowing Days' in
Scotland, on account of their being generally attended with very
blustering weather, which inclines people to say that they would
wish to _borrow_ three days from the month of April, in exchange
for those three last days of the month of March. This lady was
seventeen days in her journeys upon the road, and lived ten days
after her arrival in London. She died on the Monday se'nnight in
the morning after she came to London. On the Thursday before her
death she called her son, Captain Cumming, to her bed-side, and
gave him her blessing in the terms of the prophet Isaiah, to which
she referred him, and gave him her own new Bible to read over on
the occasion, and to keep for her sake. But this Bible was lost,
with other baggage, taken by the French towards the end of the
campaign, 1709. Colonel Swinton, this lady's eldest brother, was
shot at the battle of Malplaquet, and died upon the field of
battle."
The lady travelled attended by her daughter Helen Cumming, and her
servant Margaret Rae.
But I see we have been wrong in writing the name Cumming with two _m_'s.
He writes it invariably _Cuming_. This would appear of little moment,
but the change a little diminishes the probability of the writer's
favourite notion, that the Hebrew word _Cumi_ is in some way obumbrated
in his patronymic _Cuming_.
The passage of the prophet Isaiah which formed the substance of his
mother's last benediction is chap. xli. verses 8 and 9, and chap. xliii.
verses 2 and 3: "Thou _Israel_ art my servant, _Jacob_ whom I have
chosen, the seed of Abraham, my friend," &c. He inclines to think that
"the writer of the book called Isaiah was a friend to the British
nation, and that the islands of Great Britain and Ireland are those
addressed to, in order to renew their strength."
It was on April 23, 1730, O.S., that "by the unanimous consent of the
people he was made law-giver, commander, leader, and chief of the
Cherokee nation, and witness of the power of God, at a general meeting
at Nequisee, in the Cherokee Mountains." He brought with him to England
six Cherokee chiefs, and on June 18, in that year, he was allowed to
present them to the King in the Royal Chapel at Windsor. This was at the
time of the installation of the Duke of Cumberland and the Earls of
Chesterfield and Burlington. On June 22nd was the ceremony of laying his
crown at the feet of the King, when the Indian chiefs laid also their
four scalps and five eagles' tails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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