s Motto.

The founder Of the Scotch family of Naesmyth is said to have derived
his name from the following circumstance. In the course of the feuds
which raged for some time between the Scotch kings and their powerful
subjects the Earls of Douglas, a rencontre took place one day on the
outskirts of a Border village, when the king's adherents were worsted.
One of them took refuge in the village smithy, where, hastily
disguising himself, and donning a spare leathern apron, he pretended to
be engaged in assisting the smith with his work, when a party of the
Douglas followers rushed in. They glanced at the pretended workman at
the anvil, and observed him deliver a blow upon it so unskilfully that
the hammer-shaft broke in his hand. On this one of the Douglas men
rushed at him, calling out, "Ye're nae smyth!" The assailed man seized
his sword, which lay conveniently at hand, and defended himself so
vigorously that he shortly killed his assailant, while the smith
brained another with his hammer; and, a party of the king's men having
come to their help, the rest were speedily overpowered. The royal
forces then rallied, and their temporary defeat was converted into a
victory. The king bestowed a grant of land on his follower "Nae
Smyth," who assumed for his arms a sword between two hammers with
broken shafts, and the motto "Non arte sed Marte," as if to disclaim
the art of the Smith, in which he had failed, and to emphasize the
superiority of the warrior. Such is said to be the traditional origin
of the family of Naesmyth of Posso in Peeblesshire, who continue to
bear the same name and arms.

It is remarkable that the inventor of the steam-hammer should have so
effectually contradicted the name he bears and reversed the motto of
his family; for so far from being "Nae Smyth," he may not
inappropriately be designated the very Vulcan of the nineteenth
century. His hammer is a tool of immense power and pliancy, but for
which we must have stopped short in many of those gigantic engineering
works which are among the marvels of the age we live in. It possesses
so much precision and delicacy that it will chip the end of an egg
resting in a glass on the anvil without breaking it, while it delivers
a blow of ten tons with such a force as to be felt shaking the parish.
It is therefore with a high degree of appropriateness that Mr. Nasmyth
has discarded the feckless hammer with the broken shaft, and assumed
for his emblem his o