Duke of Fife

Duke of Fife is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom which has been created twice, in both cases for Alexander Duff, 6th Earl Fife, who in 1889 had married Louise, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of the future King Edward VII.

The dukedom of Fife was the last dukedom in Britain created for a person who was not a son, grandson or consort of the Sovereign.

History

Alexander Duff (1849–1912) was the eldest son of the 5th Earl Fife. Upon his father's death on 7 August 1879, he succeeded as 6th Earl Fife in the Peerage of Ireland and 2nd Baron Skene in the Peerage of the United Kingdom (only the latter title gave him a seat in the House of Lords). In 1885, Queen Victoria created him Earl of Fife in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

On Saturday, 27 July 1889, Lord Fife married Princess Louise, the third child and eldest daughter of the then-Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) and his wife Princess Alexandra, in the Private Chapel at Buckingham Palace. The couple were third cousins in descent from George III. The wedding marked the second time a descendant of Queen Victoria married a British subject (the first being the marriage of The Princess Louise, the Queen's fourth daughter, to the Marquess of Lorne).

Fife

Fife ([ˈfəif]; Scottish Gaelic: Fìobha) is a council area and historic county of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries to Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland.

It is a lieutenancy area, and was a county of Scotland until 1975. It was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire in old documents and maps compiled by English cartographers and authors. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer.

Fife was a local government region divided into three districts: Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and North-East Fife. Since 1996 the functions of the district councils have been exercised by the unitary Fife Council.

Fife is Scotland's third largest local authority area by population. It has a resident population of just under 367,000, almost a third of whom live in the three principal towns of Dunfermline, Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes.

Fife (instrument)

A fife /ˈfaɪf/ is a small, high-pitched, transverse flute, that is similar to the piccolo, but louder and shriller due to its narrower bore. The fife originated in medieval Europe and is often used in military and marching bands. Someone who plays the fife is called a fifer. The word fife comes from the German Pfeife, or pipe, which comes from the Latin word pipare.

The fife is a simple instrument usually consisting of a tube with 6 finger holes, and diatonically tuned. Some have 10 or 11 holes for added chromatics. The fife also has an embouchure hole, across which the player blows, and a cork or plug inside the tube just above the embouchure hole. Some nineteenth-century fifes had a key pressed by the little finger of the right hand in place of a seventh finger hole.

Fifes are made mostly of wood: grenadilla, rosewood, mopane, pink ivory, cocobolo, boxwood and other dense woods are superior; maple and persimmon are inferior but often used. Some Caribbean music makes use of bamboo fifes.

Fife (Parliament of Scotland constituency)

Before the Acts of Union 1707, the barons of the shire of Fife elected commissioners to represent them in the Parliament of Scotland and in the Convention of the Estates.

After 1708, Fife was represented by one Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons at Westminster.

List of shire commissioners

During the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross were jointly represented by one Member of Parliament in the Protectorate Parliament at Westminster. After the Restoration, the Parliament of Scotland was again summoned to meet in Edinburgh.

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