Kelpies

The most famous Kelpies - or Water Horses - in the county of Angus lived in the sister rivers, the North and South Esk.  The favourite haunt of the North Esk Kelpie was the Ponnage (Pontage or Ferry) Pool, a fortunate spot where it could take advantage of human traffic  and drown those unfortunate people who fell into the water when the ferry boat overturned.  Once the Laird of Morphie captured this supernatural beast by throwing a pair of branks over its neck.  He then used the creature to carry stones for his new house and power his mill on the Mearns side of the river.  When the work was completed, Graham of Morphie freed his slave.  As the Kelpie dived back into its watery abode, it pronounced a curse upon its tormentor:

                                              Sair back and sair banes,
                                              drivin' the Laird o' Morphie's stanes:
                                              the Laird o' Morphie'll never thrive
                                              as lang's the Kelpie is alive!

    Another Kelpie haunted the River Isla and also the 'dowie' Dean Water, terrifying people by rushing up and down both waterways, roaring like thunder.  He once overturned the Isla ferry at Crathies, but was captured by the farmer at Balmyle, who made him clear his field of stones.  Capture and enforced manual labour was obviously an occupational hazard for Kelpies.  Upon his liberation this Kelpie uttered the familiar refrain:

                                               Sair back and sair banes,
                                               carryin' auld Bawmyle's stanes.

    The North Esk Kelpie was sometimes seen in Glen Lethnot's West Water, near Craigendowie.  The North Esk was apparently also haunted by an Urisk, an odd being sometimes described as halfway between a goat and a human being, or else likened to a kind of wild man of the woods.
    The South Esk Kelpie favoured a spot at the confluence of the Esk, Posen Water and Quharity Burn:

                                                The Water o' Prosen, Esk, an' Carity
                                                meet a' at the birken buss o' Inverquharity.

    This Kelpie is said to have built the old Shielhill Bridge, and he was so proud of it that he set up a carved image of his own head on the structure.
    The Noran Water, a tributary of the South Esk, had a particularly nasty Kelpie.  When a person fell into the river the Water-Horse lured away any rescuers by calling out from a distance, 'A' the men of Waterstone!  Come here!  Come here!', causing enough of a diversion to ensure that the endangered person drowned.  There is a place in the Noran Water called Tammy's Pot commemorating a drowned child, who was possibly one of this Kelpie's victims.  Close by this pool is a flat rock with a strange hollow in it, known as the Kelpie's Footmark.  It was formed when the river was raging in full spate and the Kelpie leapt around the rocks, lustily calling out for human blood.

William Wallace Was A Dundee Schoolboy

    Or was he?

    The poet Blind Harry said that the young, future rebel Wallace went to grammar school in Dundee (probably around the year 1291) while he was living with his mother and uncle at Kilspindie in the Carse of Gowrie.  One day the foppish son of the town's English governor Selbie accosted young Wallace outside Dundee castle and mocked his suit of 'gemming green'.  When he then demanded that the young Scot hand over his knife, William refused.  Selbie grabbed his collar and shook him violently, whereupon Wallace stabbed him dead.  He fled west out of town on 'cleanly clever heels', hotly pursued by Selbie's associates.  He sat down to rest on a stone meal-kist at Longforgan and was taken in by the inhabitants of a cottage, a couple named Smith.  When some English troopers burst into the house they found an outlandish, apparently female, figure busy at the spinning wheel, all covered in fluff.  When they left William Wallace threw off his disguise and fled to his uncle's house at Kilspindie.
    This story was recorded in the 19th century by James Cox, Provost of Dundee, who heard it from Rachel Smith, a descendant of the Longforgan couple.  After her family left the village in 1862 the meal-kist was given to the owner of Castle Huntly and later ended up in Dundee Museum.

    Despite the original literary provenance of the association with Dundee, Wallace was a west coast boy, and it seems slightly doubtful that he would have relocated to Dundee.  But the story lingered in the area and was elaborated through the years.  The folk hero apparently left behind his name at Wallace's Trenches, on Clatto Hill, supposed site of the hero's encampment which he used before besieging Dundee Castle.
    A mile to the north is Fallow's Mill, where a local rhyme remembered him securing provisions:

                                     Wallace pitched his camp on Clatto Hill,
                                      and ground his corn at Philaw's Mill.

    A short distance away was Auchterhouse Castle, which was home in 1296 to Wallace's ally Sir John Ramsay.  Ramsay captured Perth from the English in the Wars of Independence and slaughtered two thousand of its English garrison.  Sir John met Wallace when he returned from exile in Europe.  Embaring at Montrose, Wallace accompanied Ramsay back to Auchterhouse, then they went on to capture Perth for a second time.  In the grounds of the present house at Auchterhouse is the ruin of an old building called Wallace's Tower.

 

Dundee Ghosts In The 1920s

While I think you should always be doubly cautious when you come across newspaper stories of ghosts, whether they are vintage or contemporary, some reported tales are too good or too intriguing to be entirely ignored.  Such is the case of the ghost which appeared in  Dundee, near the Craigie Quarries in 1927.  The Evening Telegraph, on 27 September, reported that spectral white figures had been seen in the area, which led to women and children collapsing.  One 17 year old youth stated that he saw two figures jump into the quarry, issuing odd sounds.

    The Tele let rip with a tantalising headline the next evening:
    '5000 hunt Dundee "ghosts".  Evening search at Craigie Quarries.'
    According to the story:

                          What the Residents Think:  A "ghost" hunt on a large scale took place in
                           Dundee last night, when over 5000 people of all ages went in search of
                           the "spooks" which have been appearing near Craigie Quarries.  The
                           crowd gathered early in the evening, intent on laying the "ghost" or
                           "ghosts" which have been causing such terror in the district.  Nothing,
                           however, manifested itself, and although the crowd gradually dispersed,
                           it was steadily joined by fresh arrivals.

                           Throughout the evening and up to late hour the crowd scoured the
                           environs of Dalkeith Road and the quarries, but apparently the "game"
                           which they were after thought better of it than put in an appearance.
                            Further instances of what had taken place was given by several
                            persons who had been previously alarmed by the strange happenings.
                            When coming home from evening School one night, a youth  was
                            greatly disturbed the sight of a white pony in one of the fields, on which
                            was mounted a ghostly figure.  There are a number of ponies grazing in a
                            field nearby.
                      
                            Residents in the district have been greatly troubled by these unusual
                            ongoings, but according to many they would rather have the "ghosts"
                            than the crowd which gathered last night.  A white sheet has been
                            observed by more than one person lying on the high ground near the
                            quarries.  It is possibly part of the equipment of the "ghosts".  The
                            sheet has been lying for several days.  Armed with lamps, torches,
                            and even a miniature searchlight, the crowd surged over all the
                            waste ground in the vicinity, but failed to unearth anything of an
                            unusual nature.

    The next day the paper reported that a crowd of between 2000 and 3000 visited the area, but  the ghost again failed to appear.  By the third night the numbers were down to a few hundred, much to the relief of local residents.  Whether the ghost was actually a denizen of the nearby Eastern Cemetery is unknown.
    One of the more interesting factors here is that the same period saw an outcrop of similar hauntings (or instances of mass hysteria) the length and breadth of Great Britain, from Markinch to Warrington.
(For further details, consult The Magnolia Blog: http://pelicanist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/when-springheeled-jack-wore-galoshes.html)

    Must have been something in the ether, or the water, that year.

                         

                            

Early Records of Witchcraft

One of the earliest records of witchcraft in Angus comes from Arbroath and gives an insight into the motivation of those who accused others of abusing supernatural powers.  On 26 November 1563 it was recorded that:

                            The qlk day it is found by the buileyeis and court that Richart Brown sall
                             pass to the chapel the morne, and ask Jonat Cary and Jhon Ramsay her
                             son forgyffnes for calling her ane shoe witch, and him ane he witch; and
                             the said Jhon Ramsay sall ask the said Richart forgyffnes for calling him
                             thief carll.

   Another case of probable neighbourly bickering and slander was noted here on 28 July 1564, when George Hallis appeared before the local authorities and  said 'gif there was ony sic thing as ane witch Jonat Lam was ane, and James Davis affirmit the samin'. The matter was passed to an assize due to convene fifteen days later, but there is no surviving record of that meeting.

   The Protestant Parliament of 1563 decided to take more severe action against witches and those who consulted them, so witches now faced the death penalty.  When the Regent of Scotland, the Earl of Moray, visited Dundee in July 1569 he 'causit burn ane company of witches'.  John Erskine of Dun, religious superintendent of Angus, led a witch hunt through the county and neighbouring Mearns  in 1568-9, leading to at least forty accusations.

   Witchcraft accusations increased dramatically in  the 17th century.  Around 1630 several Monifieth women were excommunicated and punished from the parish for 'charming and witchcrafte'.  During the next decade Auchterhouse kirk session noted 'the pregnant scandal of witches in this part of the land', and 'supplicat the Lord therefore that he would enlighten and enclyne ministers and people, and enflame their hearts with more zeal to God and love his truth...'  In Auchterhouse there was another case of domestic, dangerous slander when, on 27 September  1646, Isabel Gall of Leoch declared that a woman named Janet Thomson (who was a servant of Robert Turnbull) had slandered her by calling her a witch and a thief.

   In 1649 local ministers attended 'the committee appointed by the provisional assemblie for the trial of witches and charmers'.  The perceived problem of witchcraft was obviously gathering momentum again.  In this same year the Presbytery of Brechin dealt with a number of male diviners from Glen Esk.  One was the charmer John Donaldson, who had already been punished by Lochlee kirk session.  Called to give evidence he admitted 'charming in casting the Shemfur', which was possibly a form of divination employing shears and a sieve.  Donaldson named others who also used this method:  John Crystison, Thomas Bowman, Johns Shanks, Alexander Davidson.  The Presbytery was unhappy with the depth and quality of his confession, 'because it is not so ample as that given his minister'.

   On 6 June 1650 the 'Lochlie Charmers; Crystison, Shanks and Thomas Kyneir were sharply reprimanded for casting the Shemfur.  They were ordered to appear in sackcloth before the congregation of Lochlee until the minister was satisfied that they had repented.'
   Meanwhile, Auchterhouse continued to root out offenders.  On 2 July 1650:

                                Janet Fyffe  made her public repentance before the pulpit for
                                learning Mrs Robertson to charm her child, and whereas Mrs
                                Mrs Robertson to charm her child, and whereas Mrs Robertson
                                should have done the same, it pleased the Lord before that time to
                                call upon her by death.

   The above action may have been the result of the minister's previous plea, on 6 January 1650, when he asked members of his session 'to make a search everywhere in their own quarters if they know any witches or charmers...and delate them to the next session'.

Big Cats Roaming Wild in Angus

From the world of cryptozoology comes a report of strange and unidentified Big Cats roaming the prairies and fields of Angus, according to the 'Courier' newspaper:


http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/angus-the-mearns/fresh-big-cat-sighting-near-edzell-1.70596


  Mysterious large cat beasts have of course been reported from all parts of Great Britain and beyond for many decades, perhaps most famously roaming the moors of Devon and Cornwall.  It is interesting to speculate whether these are actual animals, escapees from people's imaginations or merely rumours transferred into shadows mistaken for flesh and blood.
  Whatever the Big Cats are, there are few traces of them in 'traditional' written folklore down the ages.  But no need to be sniffy about these newcomers. According to the newspaper report there have been sightings of these creatures near Edzell and other northern areas of Angus for several decades.  Approach with caution!

                                     


                                        

The Earliest Legends of Glamis

Mention the name Glamis to followers of Scottish ghost stories or folklore and they will probably conjure up memories of the 'Monster of Glamis', the hidden secret of the owners of the castle, which has been popularised in umpteen books (of varying credibility) from the mid-19th century onwards.  The story, with its hints of scandalous conspiracy and melodrama, is absolutely the product of its times: the Victorians loved nothing more than romantic and gothic intrigue.  But there is more to Glamis that this tale and the boast that it is one of Scotland's most haunted sites. 
   The history of the 'Monster' will be dealt with in future entries, but in the meantime it's worth asking whether there is anything in the actual site or location of Glamis that somehow made it a place where strange things could thrive.  Glamis may have been an important, if not an unusual place long before Glamis Castle was built.  The earliest reputed resident at Glamis was the 8th century Irish saint Fergus.  He came to live in a cave beside the Dean Water here and 'consecrated a tabernacle to the God of Jacob'.  When he died his head was severed in Celtic pagan fashion and carried away to a monastery at Scone.  St Fergus seems to have been a contemporary of the equally elusive St Donald of nearby Glen Ogilvy in the Sidlaw Hills.
   A small group of Class II Pictish symbol stones testify to the importance of Glamis as an early Christian site.  A few centuries after St Fergus the Scottish kings are said to have maintained a hunting lodge here.  The wooded hill just south of the village is still called Hunter's Hill, though its alternative name of Fierypans (or Fierytops) may recall a time when great ritual fires once blazed on its summit.
   Glamis Castle itself was originally planned to be built on Hunter's Hill.  But every morning the builders arrived they found the foundation stones scattered and broken.  A nightly watch was set and out of the darkness one evening came this mysterious pronouncement:

                                    Build not on this enchanted spot,
                                    where man hath neither part nor lot,
                                    but build it down in yonder bog,
                                    and it will neither shake nor shog.

   The castle was accordingly shifted to its present site, away from the domain of the supernatural beings on the hill.

Centaur from Glamis Pictish stone.

   Several early records state that King Malcolm II (1004-1034) met his death at Glamis, but they disagree about the manner of his death.  The Chronicle of Melrose vaguely speaks of 'a shameful death...underfoot', after the monarch was defeated by enemies in battle.  Another source insists that Malcolm was murdered by 'parricides', the his main opponent - termed the 'Aggressor' - was also slain.  Local opinion once stated that the king fought his last battle on Hunter's Hill, beside the King's Well.  Other sources hint at a dynastic dispute.  The chronicler John of Fordun said that King Malcolm was waylaid at midnight by followers of nobles he had executed.  The bandits were slaughtered, but Malcolm died from a haemorrhage three days later.

   There is a chamber in Glamis Castle named King Malcolm's Room, which is reputed to stand on the site of the hunting lodge where he perished.  A usefully indicative and indelible bloodstain marked the floor of the room until a squeamish owner of the castle boarded it over.  Andrew of Wyntoun, writing in 1406, writes that the king was assassinated because he had 'rewyist [ravished] a fair May of the land there lyand by'.  But, like other authorities, he gives the impression that he did not know the exact cause of Malcolm's death.

   In the manse garden at Glamis is King Malcolm's Stone, a Pictish slab predating the king by several centuries.  On the cross side are carved scenes which were once believed to be symbolic of the murder.  An unidentified beast, resembling a lion, and a centaur signified 'the shocking barbarity of the crime'.  Two fighting men were 'forming the bloody conspiracy'.  A fish on the other side represented Forfar Loch, 'in which, by missing their way, the assassins were drowned', apparently after falling through thin ice at night. 
   These traditions were recorded in 1783 by the minister of Glamis.  He also noted St Orland's Stone nearby at Cossans.  On each side of this monolith are striking water monsters.  One side shows four horsemen, which the minister said were 'officers of justice pursuing the killers'.  There is also a boat containing six people and a bull being attacked by a serpent.  Excavations in the 19th century revealed five crouched burials at the base of this stone.
   John Bellenden, translating Hector Boece's 16th century Latin version, continues the story: ;Nocht long eftir, they wer drawn out of the loch with creparis, and their quarteris hung up in sindry townis of Scotland in punition of their crueltie'.
   Malcolm's burial site is also a matter of dispute.  Fordun says he was buried on Iona, though a Pictish stone on Hunter's Hill, once surrounded by a cairn, was named King Malcolm's Grave.  The Welsh traveller Thomas Pennant, who visited Glamis in 1789, heard that when the castle was modified in 1686 a great round tower was built in an angle to retain a spiral staircase down which the royal corpse was thrown.  But who would have wanted to keep that sinister element in their house?
   The story of the king's death is too convoluted and distant to disentangle.  Was there the suggestion of a pagan sacrificial element to his end and in the ritual drowning of his killers.  Perhaps not, but the waters around Glamis are sinister and lethal.  The Dean Water, connecting Forfar Loch and Glamis, was known to be dowie or 'doleful', a characteristic acquired from its demand for human sacrifice:

                                    Dowie, dowie, dowie Dean,
                                    ilka seven years ye get eene [one].

   An alternative version runs:

                                     The Dowie Dean, its runs its leane [alone]
                                     and every seven years it gets eene.

   A third rhyme has the Dean taking one life and leaving one life every seven years.  Salt was once cast into the burn to placate its angry spirits.

   Macbeth is another king associated with the castle, though the link appears to be entirely unhistorical.  There are a string of Macbeth traditions running along the northern side of the Sidlaws.  But the ghost of Macbeth, once resident at Glamis, has not been glimpsed for many years.

                                                  

King Malcolm's Stone

                                                   

                                 

The Battle of Nechtansmere

One of the most famous battles in Angus was not recognised as taking place in Angus until George Chalmers published his book Caledonia in the early 19th century.  The battle was Nechtansmere, the English name for an encounter between the rampant Northumbrian kingdom and the embattled southern Picts.  Almost uniquely for a battle of this period, there are alternative names for the fight.  The Britons called the place of conflict Lin Garan, the 'Pool of Herons', a name that may reflect the original Pictish place-name.  The Anglo-Saxon alternative helps place the fight at Dunnichen, but raises questions as to who the original Nechtan was - there are several recorded Pictish rulers with this name.  Modern writers style it the Battle of Dunnichen and more or less agree that it was fought in the marshy shadows beneath Dunnichen Hill.

    The background of the battle was the patchwork, fluctuating ethnic and political map of northern Britain.  The Irish Gaels of Dal Riata were not in the ascendant and the Picts had been hemmed in at their southern borders by the Northumbrians, who had themselves pinned back the Britons of Strathclyde and ruled British Gododdin for nearly half a century.  The ferocious warrior king Ecgfrith of Northumbria had terrorised his neighbours, even to the extent of ravaging the eastern coast of Ireland (possibly pursuing exiled British warriors from Galloway).  This latter act earned him the hatred of the Irish monks of Brega, who prayed for the Pictish king who rose up to face him, Brudei son of Bili.  The meaning of the surviving verse attributed to a monk of Bangor is extremely allusive, but full of dark hints that the monks cursed the Northumbrian.  The words celebrate the 'green swords' of the Picts and praise the Pictish war leader.  There is also a strange hint that the English king drank 'black draughts' - a reference possibly to poisoning or a sarcastic reference to the fact that he perished in the murky swap waters of Pictland?

Aberlemno Pictish stone:  a commemoration of the battle?

  The Northumbrians overran much of southern Pictland in 658 and swiftly crushed a native rebellion in 672.  Ecgfrith came north in pursuit of the new Pictish leader Brudei, a native Briton whose father was the king of Strathclyde.  The great St Cuthbert and others in Northumbria were against the campaign because supernatural omens predicted disaster.  In that year in Northumbria butter and milk was tainted with the colour of blood and throughout Britain there were reports of red coloured rain showers.  Even as the war band probably pursued a band of Pictish cavalry north across the Forth on Saturday, 20th May, the monks of Brega were aware of the impending battle, hearing the news on the early medieval grapevine.  Their prayers and curses went along with the opposing armies.

Dunnichen Pictish stone.

  The English army may have been lured up Strathearn by their 'fleeing' enemies, then went deeper and deeper into enemy territory, crossing the Tay and travelling east along Strathmore.  They may have followed the Pictish men through a cleft in Dunnichen Hill and found themselves trapped in marshy ground by the pool or mere.  Behind them a great army poured out of the previously unseen hill fort on the southern slope of the hill.  Ecgfrith and his bodyguard were cut to pieces; most of the few English survivors were enslaved.  The dreadful slaughter was witnessed far off in England.  St Wilfred of York, an old opponent of Ecgfrith, was on his knees in a Sussex church on the afternoon of the battle.  Suddenly he had a vision of the king's decapitated corpse falling forwards.  Just before the body hit the ground, two demons grasped Ecgfrith's soul and carried it off to hell, moaning dreadfully on its final journey.  Did Wilfred smile at the vision of death, along with the monks in Brega?

   The psychic panorama of the military disaster was seen in a third place.  On the same day, gentle St Cuthbert was indulging in antiquarian examination of the Roman remains in Carlisle.  When he suddenly became silent his companions asked him the reason and he told them that he had certain knowledge that the Northumbrian army had been defeated.

   The battle certainly led to the liberation of much of Pictland and to the gradual waning of the northern English empire.  The Pictish victory of Dunnichen was celebrated by the erection of the famous cross slab at Aberlemno, several miles to the north.  It shows helmeted Picts on horse back chasing the enemy cavalry, and native soldiers on foot, armed with swords and shields.  One Northumbrian trooper is seen being attacked by a goose, a bird with some of the Celts associated with violent death.

   A surprising, delayed 'vision' of the battle, or of its aftermath occurred in the 20th century.  Late on the night of 2nd January, 1950, Miss E. F. Smith was walking home to Letham after her car broke down.  She felt oddly nervous as she walked along the minor road west of the A932, then she saw a number of strange lights in the distance near Dunnichen Hill.  Turning south towards the village, she noticed figure in the field to her right, part of Drummietermont Farm.  Each figure carried a flaming red torch in its left hand and they seemed to be searching the ground for something.
   Miss Smith then saw shapes on the ground exactly like dead bodies.  The figure nearest to her stooped down and examined several of these 'corpses', turning them over and back again, as if looking for recognisable faces.  This scene lasted for around ten minutes, with Miss Smith's dog barking throughout.  Eventually she simply walked away.  She only realised that the whole event was peculiar when she woke up next day and thought about it.  Later she gave details of the experience to the Society for Psychical Research.  She reported that the searchers wore garb like body stockings, along with tunics and flattened oval helmets.  They appeared to be moving around the edge of the vanished mere, the shape of which was later traced by archaeological investigation.
   Although this post battle manifestation has not been repeated. some motorists passing through Dunnichen on misty nights have caught sight of fleeting human forms which vanish before their cars hit them.

   

Dunnichen Hill