In the charter-room at Slains Castle, where the records, genealogies, private journals, official deeds, etc. of the family are kept, one might find ample material for curious investigation of our forefathers’ way of living.  Among other papers is a kind of inventory headed, “My Ladies Petition anent the Plenissing within Logg and Slanis.”  The list of things wanted for Slains speaks chiefly of brass pots, pewter pans and oil barrels, but, the “plenissing” of Logg (another residence of the Errolls), “quhilk my Ladie desyris as eftir followis, quhilk extendis skantlie (scantily) to the half,” contains an ample list of curtains of purple velvet, green serge, green-and-red drugget and other stuffs hardly translatable to the modern understanding, and shows that in those days women were not more backward than now in plaguing their liege lords about upholstery and millinery.  But the most amusing and natural touch of all is in the endorsement, hardly gallant, but very conjugal, made by the fair petitioner’s husband:  “To my Ladyes gredie (greedy) and vnressonable (unreasonable) desyris it is answerit....”  Here follows a distinct admission that the furniture of both houses, put together, is too little to furnish the half of each of them, and therefore nothing can be spared from Logie to “pleniss” Slains.

The family coat-of-arms commemorates to this day the poetical genealogy of the Hays.  Its supporters are two tall, naked peasants bearing plough-yokes on their shoulders:  the crest is a falcon, while the motto is also significant—­“Serva jugum.” Scottish tradition tells us that in 980, when the Danes had shamefully routed the Scots at Loncarty, a little village near Perth, and were pursuing the fugitives, an old man and his two stalwart sons, who were ploughing in a field close by, were seized with indignation, and, shouldering their plough-yokes, placed themselves resolutely in a narrow defile through which their countrymen must pass to evade a second slaughter by the victors.  As the Scots came on the three patriots opposed their passage, crying shame upon them for cowards and no men, and exhorting them thus:  “Why! would ye rather be certainly killed by the heathen Danes than die in arms for your own land?” Ashamed, and yet encouraged, the fugitives rallied, and with the three dauntless peasants at their head fell upon their astonished pursuers, and fought with such desperation that they turned defeat into victory.  Kenneth III., the Scottish king, instantly sent for the saviors of his army, gave them a large share of the enemy’s spoils, and made them march in triumph into Perth with their bloody plough-yokes on their shoulders.  More than that, he ennobled them, and gave them a fair tract of land, to be measured, according to the fashion of that day, by the flight of a falcon.  From the name of this land the Hays came to be called; lords of Erroll, and it is said that the Hawk Stone at St. Madoes, Perthshire, which stands upon what