Nairne, Carolina Oliphant, Baroness

(1766-1845)

   Born at Gask, Perthshire, the daughter of Laurence Oliphant, she was known as "The Flower of Strathearn." She married her cousin, Major William Murray Nairne, assistant inspector of barracks, in 1806. Under the dispensation afforded to Jacobite supporters, her husband was raised to the peerage in 1824, the fifth Lord Nairne of Nairne, Perthshire. When Lord Nairne died in 1829, Lady Nairne with her son left Edinburgh and spent several years moving around England, Ireland, and the Continent, trying to find a climate to suit his delicate health, but after an attack of influenza the young Lord Nairne died at Brussels in 1837. After two years of poor health, Lady Nairne died at Cask and was buried within the chapel there. Her Lays From Strathearn were published in 1846, with a new edition in 1886. Some of her song/poems: "Caller Herrin'," "Charlie is My Darling," "Farewell to Edinburgh," "The Auld House," "The Banks of the Earn," "The Hundred Pipers," "The Laird o' Cockpen," "The Land o' the Leal," "The Lass o' Gowrie," "The Rowan Tree."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Life and Songs of the Baroness Nairne of Caroline Oliphant the Yonger. John Grant, 1886. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of English History in Verse. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1988. The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Scottish Collection of Verse to 1800. Eileen Dunlop and Kamm Antony, eds. Richard Drew, 1985.