Note 51 — STORY OF THE COUNTESS OF STAIR.

Negroes in a servile capacity had been long before known in Scotland. Dunbar has a droll poem on a female black, whom he calls ‘My lady with the muckle lips.’ In Lady Marie Stuart’s Household Book, referring to the early part of the seventeenth century, there is mention of ‘ane inventorie of the gudes and geir whilk pertenit to Dame Lilias Ruthven, Lady Drummond,’ which includes as an item, ‘the black boy and the papingoe [peacock];’ in so humble an association was it then thought proper to place a human being who chanced to possess a dark skin.