Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, says:
"Musica est mentis medecina mæstæ, a roaring meg against melancholy, to rear and revive the languishing soul."
The earliest edition of the Anatomy of Melancholy is, I believe, the Oxford one of 1624.[6]
[6] The first edition was published in 1621, 4to.—ED.
The large old-fashioned piece of artillery, called Mons Meg, in the castle of Edinburgh, which is so great a favourite with the Scottish common people, is said by Sir Walter Scott to have been "fabricated at Mons in Flanders, in the reign of James IV. or V. of Scotland;" that is, between A.D. 1508 and 1514 (note to Rob Roy, vol. ii. ch. 10.).
This accounts for the Mons; but whence comes the Meg? The tradition of the Edinburgh people is different from that of Sir Walter: and Black, in his Tourist of Scotland, pp. 51. 341., says, it was forged at Threave Castle, a stronghold of the Black Douglases; was used by James II. in 1455; and that it was called Mons Meg after "the man who cast it and his wife." The date in the above must be a mistake, as I believe James II. was killed in A.D. 1437.
There is another cannon of similar caliber, and bearing the name of Roaring Meg, presented by the Fishmongers' Company of London to the city of Londonderry in 1642 (Simpson's Annals of Derry, chap. vii. p. 41.).
Can any of your readers explain the origin of the name, and say whether the phrase "A roaring Meg" occurs in any English author earlier than Burton?
W. W. E. T.
Warwick Square, Belgravia.