The Last Wolf and Wildcats

Some time in the late 17th century, the last wolf in Angus stravaiged through Glen Lethnot, devouring many sheep there.  One evening a servant girl was sent by her master to sift a melder of corn at Glascarry Mill.  The task was so exhausting that, on her return journey, she lay down on a grassy bank and fell fast asleep.  Next morning she woke to find a huge, shaggy wolf sleeping beside her.  Worse still, it lay on a fold of her clothing, preventing her from getting up.  But she carefully managed to extricate herself, leaving her dress behind, and ran to raise the warning at the nearest farmhouse.  A crowd accompanied her back to where the wold had been, but all they found was the abandoned dress, ripped to shreds.  The party scoured the glen and finally located the wolf on the Hill of Wirren.  There was a fierce struggle and the beast was eventually slain by one Robert of Nathro, who later married the young maid.

    Places-names in  upland Angus show there was once a sizeable wolf population in the wild places.  There is a hill named Wolf Craig in Glen Lee and a Wolf Hill near Loch Brandy, and there is also a burn called Wolf Grain.  Meanwhile the deserted fishing village of Usan, south of Montrose, was called Wolfishavyn in 1512 and Howlshavin in 1496.

    While wolves may have gone, that other ferocious - if sadly endangered - creature the Wild Cat -still clings on in the remote nooks and corries of upland Angus.  I had a strange encounter with these animals while camping out in a bivvy bag one summer night twenty odd years ago. Sleeping on a high saddle of land between two hills above Glen Prosen, I was woken  by a strange sound which sounded like a cross between a steam powered machine and a highly displeased animal.  More disconcertingly, the sound seemed to circle me in the darkness, coming nearer and nearer.  That was the end of sleep for that night.  When dawn starting inching upwards, I eventually saw two crouching beasts in the middle distance and recognised them as Wild Cats, who seemed to be watching me intently, wondering what I was doing in the middle of their territory.  I had a disposable camera with me and took a flash picture of the pair.  The animal furthest behind ran off immediately, but the other one waited a menacing thirty seconds before it bounded away after the other, down an impossibly steep slope.  Sadly, I lost the camera before I had the chance to develop the picture.

    In 1817 a deer-stalker named Charles Duncan was travelling through Glen Doll when he spotted a Wild Cat and decided to shoot it.  As he crept closer, he lost his footing and his prey sprang away.  Dazed, Duncan looked up and was astonished to see that his surroundings had utterly changed.  Instead of an expanse of heather, he found himself in an overgrown kirkyard.  He was even more surprised to see an open coffin lying on the ground.  It contained a corpse which the stalker recognised as an older version of himself.  An inscription on the adjacent coffin lid stated his name, age and date of his death:  21st September, 1848, aged eighty-three.  The horrified Duncan swiftly ran away and afterwards avoided the place.  It hardly needs to be added that Charles Duncan died on the very day which his vision decreed.

The Angus Cannibal

The chink in the Sidlaws known as the Glack of Newtyle is the main route from Dundee to western Strathmore and it was haunted for centuries by robbers and brigands.  The most terrifying of these outlaws lived in the early 15th century and his story was re-told (or quite possibly invented) by James Grant in his novel The Yellow Frigate (1855).  Grant  told the story of a strange creature named Ewain Gavelrigg who lived in a turf-walled cottage at Uach-dar Tir, now Auchtertire, west of Newtyle.  Ewain was more monster than man, for his occupation was to waylay solitary travellers in the Glack, kill them, then drink their blood and consume their flesh.  The few men who escaped and found refuge in the castles of Baille Craig or Dudhope in Dundee said that their attacker was a huge man with a great mace. He was dressed in homespun grey, his head was covered by a forest of hair, and he could brain a mountain bull with a single blow.

    The country became so alarmed that none would dare cross the Sidlaws except as part of a large armed party.  Two men, on separate occasions, swore that they had slain the ogre.  A Dundonian arrow maker said he had slit its throat, and a Banff sword maker said he had stabbed it in the chest.  But the attacks continued, so the two men were dismissed as liars.  The situation became so serious that Sir James Scrymgeour of Dudhope, constable of Dundee, declared that he would deal with it personally.  On the evening of the feat of St John the Evangalist, 1440, he donned his armour and set out with Sir John Drummond.

    When they reached the Glack, the Constable blew his horn and shouted, ‘Ewain Gavelrigg - man or fiend - come out!’  The ogre appeared on the path before them and smashed Scrymgeour’s horse with his mace, dashing its brains into his face.  As the Constable fell, Ewain laughed happily and dragged him by the throat into the thick pine woods.

    Drummond had been behind Scymgeour and had not been spotted by the fiend.  He followed quietly to a clearing where Gavelrigg was about to kill the Constable.  Sir John galloped at the monster and transfixed him with his lance.  Ewain expired with a horrible piercing cry just as dawn arrived.  The two men carefully examined the body and found the wounds which the arrow maker and the sword maker had afflicted.  Soon two wild looking women approached, the wife and daughter of Gavelrigg, and asked to take him away for burial.  Scrygeour assented, but first he hacked off the hand which had grabbed his throat and later he nailed it to the West Port of Dundee as a warning to miscreants.

    The north-west road was considered safe again, but soon more travellers went missing.  Large pools of blood were seen in the Glack.  Ewain Gavelrigg had apparently returned from the dead. King James I’s governor, Sir Alexander Livingstone of Callendar, proclaimed a crusade against the fiend.  The hut at Auchtertyre was demolished, and a huge amount of human remains was found in a vault.  A patrol tracked Ewain to a narrow valley where he slew eight men and three horses before he was captured, bound beneath a horse’s belly, and transported to Dundee.  Ewain Gavelrigg, his wife, daughter, and infant son were burned to death at the Market Cross.  In the novel the tale is remembered by the evil Hew Borthwick, supposedly saved from the flames by a priest.

    Grant based his story on an intriguing passage from Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie’s Historie and Cronikles of Scotland (c. 1578):

                                 Thair was and briggant tane with his hail familie, quho
                                 hauntet ane place in Angus.  This michievous man had an
                                 execrable faschion to tak all young men, and children aither,
                                 he could steal away quietlie, or tak away without knawledge,
                                 and eat thame, and they younger they war, esteemed them
                                 more tender and delicious.  For the quhilk caus and
                                 dampnable abuse, he, with his wayff and bairnis, were all
                                 burnt, except ane young wench of ane year old, wha was
                                 saiffed , and broucht to Dundie, quhair show was broucht vp and
                                 fostered, and quhan shoe cam to ane vomanes yeires, shoe cam
                                 to ane vomanes yeires, shoe was condemned and burnt quick
                                 for that cryme.  It is said, that when shoe was coming to the place
                                 of execution, their gathered and hudge multitud of people, and
                                 speciallie  of vomen, cursing her that shoe was so unhappie to
                                 commit so damnable didis.  To whom she turned about with ane
                                 ireful countenance, saying, Quhairfoir chyd yea me so as if I had
                                 committed an vnworthie act?  Give me credence and trow me, if
                                 yea had experience of eating men and vomenis flesch, ye wold think
                                 it so delitious that ye wold nevir forbeare it againe.  So, bot ony sign
                                 of repentance, this vnhappie traitour died in the sight of the people.

    The legend seems obviously similar to the better know Ayrshire cannibal clan of Sawney Bean, though in fact Pitscottie’s tale was set down long before the abominable Bean made it into print.  Pitscottie does not mention the setting as being in the west Sidlaws.  Popular tradition placed the cannibal at Denfind, Monikie, several miles to the east, popularly called Fiend’s Den, which obviously appears to be a folk etymology.  Syrymgeour did have a known connection to the Glack of Newtyle, having killed the Laird of Fetterangus here in revenge for raiding his lands.

The Ogilvy-Lindsay Feud. Beardie!

One of the most famous ghosts of Glamis Castle does not belong there at all, though he was a famous character in Angus and beyond during his lifetime in the 15th century.  Earl Beardie (nicknamed after his beard) was also known as the Tiger Earl (because of his ferocity), and his given name was Alexander Lindsay, the 4th Earl of Crawford.  He was chief of the house of the ‘lichtsome Lindsays’, who were one of the most powerful kin groups in Angus, until their decline in the 17th century.  The chief opponents of the Lindsays were the Ogilvy family and the feud between the two kindreds rumbled on for over a century.

    One tale dates the rivalry to the early 14th century, when Lindsay of Finavon Castle invited local lairds to compete in an archery competition.  Twenty-four competitors lined up on the castle lawn, watched by their ladies sitting beneath the shade of a chestnut tree.  After many feats of skill, David Ogilvy, squire of Lord Ogilvy of Inverquharity Castle,  laded his arrow in a bulls-eye already hit by Lindsay’s man.  Lord Ogilvy then shot a falcon on the wing, an act which Lord Lindsay was too drunk to replicate.  The contestants then moved inside the castle.  Ogilvy recklessly accused Lindsay of being jealous of his ability, so Lindsay  set a more difficult challenge.  Each man was to shoot an arrow through  the twelve candle sconces fitted to the wall and hit a falcon held by a servant at the far end of the hall.  Lindsay loosed his arrow and killed his own henchman.  Ogilvy’s shot struck the bird.  Lindsay furiously challenged Ogilvy to a duel on Kelpie’s Haugh.  The combat was long and fierce, but finally Lindsay gained the advantage.  But, just as he was about to deliver the mortal blow, Lindsay dropped dead.

    This story is probably a literary fiction from the 19th century.  The real root of the feud was the wild temperament and greed of Alexander Lindsay, Master of Crawford, son of David, the 3rd Earl of Crawford and his wife Marion Ogilvy.  Sir Walter Ogilvy of Carcary and Lintrathen had been granted the lands and castle of Bolshan (in Kinnell parish) by Arbroath Abbey, around 1422.  He was made a baillie of the abbey at the same time.  When this knight died in 1440, the office and possessions passed to Sir Walter Ogilvie of Airlie.  The Master of Crawford purchased another office from the abbey, becoming Justiciar, but he was removed from the position after embezzling large sums of money.  Sir Alexander Ogilvy, 2nd baron of Inverquharity, was appointed Justiciar in Lindsay’s place.

    

   The Ogilvys and Lindsays met several times to try to resolve their differences, but to no avail.  They agreed to meet each other in combat  at Arbroath Abbey on 24th January, 1446.  Unfortunately the Master of Crawford did not inform his father, the Earl, about the forthcoming battle and the horrified Earl only found out a few hours before.  A manuscript of the Hamilton family, who fought alongside the Lindsays, takes up the tale:

                               The Erle of Crawfourd, being then at Dundee, posted in all

                               haste to Aberbrothock, and came there just as both parties

                               [were] ready to begin the fight...designing by calmness to

                               take up the quarrel [he] went too forwardly to demand a

                               parlie with Alexander Ogilbie for his sons.  But before he

                               could either be known or heard, he was encountered by a

                               commone soulder, who thrust him in the mouth with a

                               speir which lair him upon the ground...

     While the mortally wounded Earl was carried back to Finavon Castle, the Lindsays furiously attacked the Ogilvys.  Five hundred of the latter were slain, against a hundred Lindsays.  Among the Ogilvy allies to escape was Sir John Seton, brother-in-law of Sir John Ogilvy.  He had been travelling north to claim the inheritance which would make him the first Earl of Huntly.  He had stayed the night at Bolshan Castle and the code of hospitality obliged him to fight for his hosts until the last meal he had received from them had been digested.  Among the Ogilvy allies in the fray were Oliphants, Gordons and Forbes.  It seems there may be a resonance of the bloody battle remaining.  Forbes Inglis, in his book Phantoms & Fairies, Tales of the Supernatural in Angus and Dundee (2010), mentions visitors to the Abbot's House in Arbroath Abbey have sometimes been unsettled by an uncanny atmosphere.

After the battle, the Lindsays pursued their enemy to Leys, south of Kinnell, with the Lindsays coming off best, as this old rhyme remembers:

                                                      At the Loan o the Leys the play began,
                                                      an the Lindsays o’er the Ogilvys ran.

    One of the Ogilvy troops in this fray was a giant man with the old Angus name of Irons.  Despite his strength, Irons was slain and his giant boot and spur were hung up in the Ogilvy aisle of Kinnell church.  Above this aisle was written this legend:

                                                     While girse grows green and water runs clear,
                                                     let nane but Ogilvys lie here.

     After the aisle collapsed in 1766, the common folk of the parish were allowed to be buried here.

    Sir Alexander Ogilvy of Inverquharity was wounded in the fight.  The Lindsays took him to Finavon, not as a prisoner, but because it was feared that he would not survive the longer journey to his own home. He was tended by his cousin, Marion Ogilvy, Crawford’s wife.  Crawford himself suffered appalling agony before he died, exactly a year after he and the Earl of Douglas had raided ‘St Andrew’s Lands’ in Fife, a deed which caused him to be excommunicated.  Some people believed that his fate was the result of the curse of Bishop Kennedy of St Andrews.  His body lay unburied for four days until the excommunication was lifted.

    Crawford’s death seems to have driven Marion Ogilvy insane, for she removed the pillow from her husband’s death bed and used it to smother the helpless Sir Alexander Ogilvy.  The Lindsays made a gleeful rhyme about the murder, playing on the words Ogilvy and Ugly:

                                                      Ugly you lived, and Ugly you died,

                                                      and now in an Ugly place you lie.

     Inverquharity’s own brother, Thomas Ogilvy,  betrayed the family by fighting on the Lindsay side at Arbroath, and he was later rewarded by gaining the lands of Cortachy and Glen Clova.

     After the battle and the death of his father, Alexander Lindsay, now 4th Earl of Crawford, continued to rage against his enemies.  For ‘a gret tyme [he] held the Ogilbys at great subjecciounn, and tuke thair gudis, and destroyit their placis’.  One of his main targets was the recently completed castle of Inverquharity.

    Crawford allied himself with the Douglas family and became a major player in the rebellion against King James II which arose when the king killed the 8th Earl of Douglas.  At 11 a.m. on Ascension Day, 18th May, 1452, Crawford’s army met the king’s forces under the Earl of Huntly at the Battle of Brechin.  Huntly won the day, helped by a large defection from his enemy, led by one Collace, or Sir John Collessie, of Balnamoon, apparently disenchanted by not receiving a grant of the lands of Fern from Crawford.

Ruined remains of Finavon Castle

    After the bitter defeat, Earl Beardie fled back to his home of Finavon Castle , called for a cup of wine, and declared that, rather than having been defeated, ‘he wud be content to hing seven years in hell by the breers o' his e’en [eyelashes].’  Huntly had planned to follow Crawford, but was forced to flee north when the Earl of Moray invaded his own lands.  Crawford took the opportunity of his absence to burn down Kinnaird Castle, home of Huntly’s ally, Walter Carnegie.

    A legend says Beardie was warned of defeat years before when his wife encountered a strange old minstrel wandering by the Lemno Burn.  Hearing mention her husband, she brought him home and the Earl ordered him to speak.  When the old man predicted the murder of Douglas the defeat at Brechin, Crawford hanged the minstrel from an iron hook hung high on Finavon’s eastern wall.

    King James II was furious with Crawford after the defeat and swore he would make the highest stone of Finavon its lowest.  But Crawford courageously approached the monarch and begged mercy for his family and vassals, though none for himself.  The king forgave him and Beardie received him, bare foot and in sack cloth, on the Renet Green before Finavon.  The king entered the castle, climbed to the keep, and dislodged the highest stone, and so fulfilled his promise.  Crawford entertained the king for three days at the castle.

    It was long believed by the Lindsays that they had lost the day at Brechin for the same reason that the Ogilvys were defeated at Arbroath:  their uniform contained that deadly fairy colour, green.  The family later swore:

                                                     A Lindsay in green
                                                     should never be seen.

    But, strangely enough, the Lindsay tartan, as it is known today, does contain green.

    A story says that Beardie fled to Spain after his defeat and battled against the Moors.  He brought back a Spanish chestnut tree which he planted in the courtyard of Finavon.  It was called Earl Beardie’s Tree, or the Covin [Company] Tree, because nobles gathered beneath it to drink  before they went hunting.  The chestnut was the largest in Scotland and Earl Beardie was fiercely proud of it.

    One day a messenger from Lindsay of Careston stood under the tree while he waited for an answer.  Being bored, he cut a walking stick from a branch of the tree.  Crawford had the boy strung up from the chestnut.

    ‘The ghost of this luckless person,’  Andrew Jervise wrote in The Land of the Lindsays (2nd edition, 1886), ‘still wanders between Finhaven and Cariston, and is the constant attendant of benighted travellers, by some of whom he is described as a lad of about sixteen years of age, without bonnet or shoes, as is known as Jock Barefoot.  His freaks are curious and withal inofensive, and on reaching a certain burn on the road he vanishes in a blaze of fire.’

    Jock seems originally to have been an elemental or nature sprite, A rhyme gives him the character of a tree spirit:

                                                       Earl Beardie ne’er will dee

                                                       nor poor Jock Barefoot be set free,
                                                       as lang’s there grows a chestnut tree.

     The Covin Tree is said to have withered and died after Jock’s execution.  Actually the tree was killed by the sever winter of 1760 and later toppled during a storm.  A Mr Skene of Careston Castle made a table out of the timber.  The table later came into the ownership of the Earl of Aboyne (Marquess of Huntley) and was housed in Aboyne Castle.

     Six months after receiving the king at Finavon, the Tiger Earl ‘tuik the hot fever’ and died there.  His body was buried in the family crypt at Greyfriars, Dundee.  He has gained a certain niche celebrity in supernatural circles by regularly appearing as one of the star attraction ghosts who haunt Glamis Castle (of which more later...)

Who exactly is this Angus person anyway?

Unfortunately there is no definitive answer about who the ‘original’ Angus was, or even if the area was named after an actual person .  Although the county of Angus went through a period of identity crisis for several centuries, when it appallingly called itself ‘Forfarshire’, common sense won through in the end and Angus became Angus again (some time around 1928).  Even now, when we are lumbered with districts instead of bona fide counties, Angus is still Angus, more of less (don’t get me started on those parishes we have somehow lost to Perthshire - come back Kettins, all is forgiven!) 

    But who is Angus actually named after (if anyone):  a person, a tribe, a god?  The conservative and accepted theory says that the region was named after one of those semi-legendary ‘sons’ of the king of Erc, the Gaelic invader who seized the western seaboard of Scotland.  The three sons gave their names to the three dynastic tribes of the new kingdom.  But the tribe of Angus, whose heartland was Islay, was the least numerous and therefore least powerful of the kin groups.  What is the chance that they were able to  travel east into Pictland and carve out a territory in one of the most fertile parts of the country?  Yet the River Isla, bounding the west of the county, is possibly cognate with the island Islay, named possibly after a god.

    A legend set down in writing in the 12th century and contained in the geographical tract De Situ Albanie says that the kingdom was ancient divided between seven brothers, and the principal region was Angus with the Mearns.  The story is a variant of an origin legend found in Ireland which named and explained the original seven Pictish regions after the sons of a mythical monarch named Cruidne, or Cruithne (meaning ‘Pict’) who reigned for a hundred  years.  One of the sons was named Circinn, which is understood to have comprised the later region of Angus and the Mearns.  Significantly, as in the legend naming Angus, this tale confirms the prominence of Circinn.  The latter ‘son’ is marked out by being described as ‘warlike’.  So, at least most authorities believe that Circinn became Angus and Mearns, though it is unclear whether the place-name Angus existed before the Gaelic take over of Pictland in the 9th century, or some time later.  The first mention of a region named Angus comes in the death notice of the man who ruled it.  In 938 it was noted that the mormaer, or ‘great steward’, of Angus had died.  This ruler, Dubucan son of Indrechtach had died one year after the Battle of Brunanburgh, a major Scottish defeat by the English.  It might not be stretching supposition too far to imagine this Dubucan, a ruler or sub king, succumbed to wounds that he had sustained supporting his king in a national battle the year before.

    Back to the actual name of Angus, and another  possibility is that the place was named after the Pictish king Angus mac Fergus, the first of two rulers to have that name.  Angus is also styled Onuist map Urguist (supposedly the original Pictish form) or Óengus mac Fergusso.  Angus is thought to have come to power after a bloody four-way civil war in the early eighth century and was, as his name suggests, possibly of Irish descent.  Irish sources speak of a kin-group named the Eoganacht settling in the plain of Circinn, e.g. Strathmore.  After dealing with his Pictish opponents, Angus (who must have been middle aged by then) turned his attention to quelling the other nations who inhabited the space now known as Scotland.  In the early 8th century it was far from clear which kingdom would come out of top and dominate the others.  While the Northumbrian English had been prevented from permanent colonisation of Pictland after the battle of Nechtansmere in 685, they were still a potent force which controlled the formerly British Lothian territory.  The Irish Dal Riata realm’s fortunes shrunk and contracted, according to fortune and chance, and the enigmatic British kingdom centred on Dumbarton rock, stubbornly survived in astonishing fashion for centuries after its kindred territories in northern England and the borders fell like ninepins in the early medieval era, in the face of Anglo Saxon aggression.

    The bare annalistic records show that Angus was the most aggressive and successful northern warlord of his era.  Following his quelling of internal opponents, Angus and his kin fought against the Dal Riata.  He forced them to hand over a leader named Talorcan in 734, and this man was drowned, probably in a ritual fashion, as was an Irish ruler of Atholl five years later.  Angus ruthlessly targeted the Gaelic realm in Argyll, causing it to totter on the brink of collapse for many years.  He then fought against the Strathclyde Britons, allied at times with the northern English, and when he died (in 761), his reign was characterised as bloody from beginning to end.

    Perhaps some might want to believe that this Angus left his name of the region of his possible origin.  Others might shudder and prefer to believe the gentler fable that the county really takes its name from the Gaelic god of love.

   

Waters of Death and Tales of Bridges

An earlier entry in this blog mentioned the unsavoury reputation of the Water of Dean, a waterway which demanded (according to one version of the legend) a human life every seven years.  The burn was not the only stream in the region with a bad reputation.  Both North and South Esks had resident kelpies, as we have seen, and these were perhaps viewed as the supernatural personifications of more ancient, nameless protective entities which resided at one time within the coursing rivers.

    If we venture west along Strathmore, into Perthshire, we might have to cross the River Ericht at or near Blairgowrie.  A rhyme I remember gives this warning about the river:

                                     The River Ericht, bright and clear,
                                     taks a body every year.

    Of course, life seeking rivers are not unique to our area.  In Aberdeenshire, the Dee had an unhealthy appetite for humans, while its neighbour was more benevolent:

                                     Bloodthirsty Dee
                                     each year needs three;
                                     but bonny Don
                                     she needs none.

    Sir Walter Scott wrote about the murderous proclivities of the River Tweed, and the same tale is even told of certain rivers in England.  The legend, or the suspicion that some rivers, burns, streams are inherently bad may well be very ancient.  It is always tempting, though mostly misleading, to believe that certain bits of folklore have devolved from ancient Celtic and even pre-Celtic times, but in this case it might well be true.

    Sometimes certain rivers actively attempted to prevent mere humans from attempting to thwart their natural appetites by the means of building bridges.  The old North Water Bridge over the North Esk was built, allegedly, as the result of a supernatural visitation.  The person who had the vision was someone who should perhaps have been immune to such superstitious encounters.  He was John Erskine, 5th Laird of Dun (1509-1591), a 16th century reformer and a friend of the redoubtable John Knox.  In later life he was Moderator of the General Assembly, and he was also (as Religious Superintendent of Angus and the Mearns) zealous in rooting out witches in the area.  But Erskine also had a violent side.  He had to flee to exile in Europe after murdering a Catholic priest named Froster in the old steeple of Montrose church. 

 
    One day Erskine was walking in a troubled state along the banks of the North Esk (according to a story in the Old Statistical Account).  The previous night he had experienced an awful dream in which some being announced he would find no peace after death unless he constructed a bridge across the river at a place called Stormy Grain, where three waters run into one. (Places where two or more living waters combined were seen as dangerous.) The reformer woke up from his solemn day dream and realised he had no idea exactly where he was.  He asked a passer by and was informed that this spot was called Stormy Grain.  Impressed, Erskine soon started planning and building the bridge.  But the river spirits were against it and the foundations were washed away by a spate in the river.  When a second attempt was well advanced, the jealous river again destroyed the work.  The laird became melancholic and took to his bed in despair.  One day he saw a spider trying to make its web above his bed.  Twice it failed, but on the third attempt its web was completed.  This example gave Erskine heart (as it had done to Robert Bruce before him) and he ordered work on the bridge to be started again.  This time the bridge was built.

    The Gannochy Bridge, near Edzell, was built in 1732 at the expense of James Black, tenant farmer of Wood of Edzell.  Local farmers had long been troubled by the round about roads and decided they needed a bridge, though most of them could not afford to contribute.  Black, however, was wealthy and without wife or family.  The locals knew that Black was also very superstitious, so they decided to manipulate him.  During the winter of 1731, several people had been drowned in the North Esk.  For three successive nights, Black was visited by a drowned 'ghost', actually a farmer in disguise, who told the appalled Black that unless he personally funded a bridge, more people would surely perish.  Black built the bridge to supernatural order, exactly where the wraith ordered it to be placed.

    There are snippets of other 'bridge lore' in the region (but sadly, no other full blown tales).  The bridge across the River Isla at Ruthven was said to have been built by Lady Crighton as a punishment for killing her coachman.  Nearby, the bridge over the 'dowie' Dean at Cardean was locally believed to have been built by the Roman army.  When a hapless improver named Admiral Popham took it upon himself to build a new an improved edifice, the locals still used the old bridge, so the spiteful Admiral had the ancient monument blown up, an act which would now have rightfully landed him in prison.

The Graveyard Ghost and The Lochee Bloke

For this latest post, we stray ever so slightly over the western border of Angus into Perthshire.  But hopefully this little gem of a story is sufficiently worthwhile for the transgression to be forgivable.

     The anecdote comes from 'The Courier' on 17th November 1873 and is headed 'A Lochee Ghost Story'. According to the report, a young man from Lochee (in the west of Dundee) had been attending a ball in the village of Liff, several miles away.  When it was over, he was accompanying his sweetheart home and she decided to visit her parents, who stayed nearby, despite the fact that it was very late at night.  The parents' house was near the kirkyard and the couple unwisely crossed this place on their journey.  Soon they encountered a ghostly spectacle, a looming figure described as resembling one of the 'sheeted dead'.  It blocked their way on the road, holding a lighted candle in one hand and a long pole in the other hand.
    The girl screamed and clung onto her boyfriend.  The young lad was at first lost for words, but at last managed to summon up the strength to address the apparition, and he spoke to it (in primeVictorian fashion):
    'This is a fine night, sir.'
    But the bogle was immune to such a mannerly comment.  (I suspect that the boyfriend's words might have been a bit more fruity if the incident had happened in the present day.)  The only noise the un-dead creature made was a mere squeak.  As the couple were rooted to the spot in fear, the ghost grew larger and then levitated to the menacing height of twelve feet.  Then it crashed down to the ground with a terrific force and disappeared in a twinkling light.  The young maiden promptly fainted into the arms of her swain, who carried her to her mother's house nearby.

    And, that being the end of the report, we will never know who the ghost was or what it hoped to achieve by scaring the wits out of the poor young courting couple.

    But the antics of the unreal being bears some passing similarity to a ghost which appeared not many miles away at Invergowrie, according to a correspondent who contacted 'The Courier'.  The paper printed the tale on 31st January 1891:

                          A ghost has made its appearance at Invergowrie, and is causing
                          much perturbation by the antics it is carrying on.  This is not a
                          sham but a real ghost.  It can salaam to its victim, almost
                          touching the ground, and then raise itself up ten or twelve feet.
                          It has a bare skull, and burns a blue light in its mouth, emitting
                          a sulphurous smell, and rattles its bones in such a way as to strike
                          terror to the heart of its victim.  But retribution is at hand. 
                          Fathers and mothers are vowing vengeance.  Traps are being laid,
                          and the ghost's heid is to be split. Disappear, Mr Ghost, while
                          there is yet time!

Ghost stories, like everything else, has their cycles of different fashions in different ages.

Witchcraft in Brechin

While the records of 17th century witchcraft in Forfar have become the most famous records of a dark period in local history (and have been successfully marketed as such), other less known records are also fascinating.

    Brechin Prebytery conducted a number of trials in 1649 and 1650.  On 2nd January 1649, it heard that David Crystie had sworn on his deathbed to the minister and others 'that he thought he had gotten wrang be Marat Merchant'.  Trouble between neighbours seems to have swiftly led to accusations of supernatural threats and slander, as in many other cases.  Here the matter began when Marat and her husband James Clark, who lived at Balfield of Clochie, decided to leave their home at the end of their feeing time.  They moved next door and the first house was given to David Crystie.  Bad feeling began when they changed their min and wanted to move back to their original house, but were unable to do so.  Marat allegedly made David ill by blowing in his face, and when he apologised for occupying their house, the couple shouted curses at him.

    The dispute possibly led to more widespread unpopularity for the couple, fuel for their future downfall.  When the local miller refused to grind the couple's corn he found that suddenly he could not lift up the millstone, not even when he enlisted the help of four others.  When a man named David Bellie saw Marat grazing her sheep on his hillside, the grass dramatically caught fire and he rushed towards her.  His brother, who was standing nearer Marat (and who had possibly first seen her), was frozen to the spot until David arrived.

Late 17th century prospect of Brechin

    Other accusations accumulated.  Marat caused the death of cattle and sheep, sometimes by employing a magic cloth, and she caused ewe's milk to turn bloody.  John Webster of Barnyards said that he saw his cows transfixed all day outside the woman's house.  When David Mudie's wife left the house one day, she reminded him to let out the cows.  But soon afterwards Marat came to the door and said she had come to put out the cattle.  David called her a common thief, but he was struck with paralysis and unable to rise out of bed.  Eight days later he died 'in a high rage'.

    John Mertain, who was a herdsman in Craigendowie, Glen Lethnot, unwisely struck Marat's daughter.  The witch informed him, 'Because ye have struck my daughter, I shall keep thee.  You shall not thrive this year, nor win your fie.'  John subsequently became careless in his work, letting the cattle feed in the cornfield, and he began striking the animals.  His master beat him up and sent him away between terms, without his fee.

    Marat Merchant made her confession at Menmuir on the 19th March:

                               1st.  She confessed...that at a certyn tym, when shee was going to...

                               Brechin  with chopins of milk, she met with the Divell in the

                               common muir...at the LucifersLogh, and that he lay with her their.

                               2nd.  Confessed that the Divell bade her meet him there agan.

                               3rd...that he caused her renounce her baptisme, and called her by

                               name Jonat Archbald.

                               4th...that the Divell promised that at the naming of Peter and Paul

                               milk should come from other Kye to her Kowe's Edder.

                               5th...that shee practised the same by taking away John Archbald

                               and Thomas Trotter's kye's milk, both in the muir of Balrounie;

                               nixt, John Mertin and John Brand's key's milk, both in Dykehead.

                               6th...that shee was David Crystie's death by spitting in his face;

                               and when shee was askd what evil that would doe, shee answerd

                               much ill if ye knew it.

    The seven witnesses against Elspit Gray, a suspect from Balwyllo, came before the Presbytery in September 1650.  It was said that Elspit lit four fires in her barn and 'did cast sum great salt' in them as part of a magic ritual.  A man who argued with her became ill and died, as did a miller who accused her of stealing.  A man whom she had employed went off to work for the Laird of Dun.  He afterwards suffered hot and cold flushes and someone assured him that his illness was caused by the witch roasting his image.  The Prebytery was told that Elspit Gray had been under a 'reigneing brute', or demon, for twelve years.

   

    A witch called Finlayson lived at Auchmull in Glen Esk.  A Mearns man, named Robert Bruce, suspected that fatalities in his cattle were caused by her.  He threatened that he would have her burnt as a witch.  There were no more deaths in his herd.

Glen Esk

    Isobel Reany, of Magdalen Chapell, confessed that she had brought 'South-running watter' to Marat Forbes, but denied seeking  any 'secret thing' from her in return.  She was referred back to the session of Brechin.  On 11th April 1649, Thomas Humball, Navar, was cited for consulting the witch Marat Gold  in order to charm his animals.  He was ordained to appear in the kirks of Navar and Lethnot.  Isobel Fordell also consulted the same witch.

    Some victims fought back.  Janet Coupar complained to the Presbytery on 25th November 1649, that some people were calling her a witch.  This complaint led to her destruction.  She was asked if she objected to any witnesses saying anything they knew to be true:  she said she did not.  Isobel Kidd claimed that Janet had come to her house three years ago on Holy Rood Day (the old Celtic Beltane) and made her ill through a ritual which involved stroking her thigh.  When Isobel Murison had her side stroked by the accused, her new born infant lived only a further eight days.  Catherine Davidson's ale went sour, and Bessie Stiel's milk turned bloody.  One witness saw 'a branded dog meet Jonat Coupar whill shee was going alongst the bridge of Brechin, and that he lap upon her, but culd not tell  if shee kissed the Dog or not'.  Helen Kerr also saw Janet with the dog in the same place, and heard Janet ask the beast, 'What now, gossop?'  When Janet was asked who owned the dog, she replied cryptically, 'He would get a maister after noone.'

    Janet Coupar was imprisoned in Brechin Gaol.  When she was there, an unexplained fire broke out in her cell, which had neither hearth nor candle.  A fight erupted in the town, during which some local men were injured and a soldier killed.  In her confession, Janet claimed that she had known the Devil for around four years.  Her first meeting with him happened when she was on her way to the mill.  Catherine Skair and Catherine Walker told her to go down a certain lane, where she saw Satan and lay with him.  She then went on to the mill, and on her return journey had sex with the Devil again in the same place.  She affirmed that the greyhound on Brechin Bridge was actually Satan in disguise. On one occasion it followed her home and slept with her, in the guise of a man.  The Devil caused her to renounce her baptism and call herself Nikkie Clerk.

    Catherine Skair was brought to trial because of the confession.  It was heard that, after an argument with William Young, his son died.  She had cast some water from a well on a field at Careston for some, presumably magical purpose.  When David Daikens shot his gun over the hear of one of Catherine's sons, she informed him that it would be a 'dair stroke to him'.  He soon became ill.  A woman she also bewitched became sick on the eve of the Holy Rood.

   Catherine said that her familiar spirit appeared to her as a big, round-headed cat.  At first she 'boasted it away'.  But the creature told her, 'Let me be, ye shall not be the worse of me.'  Afterwards this spirits was sometime a cat and sometimes a dog.  One night as she was making her bed it appeared, 'and bade her mak that bed weill, and I and ye must lye in it this night'.  But a soldier came to the house and the spirit disappeared for three or four nights.  When she eventually slept with the demon she found it very cold.  She stated that she fed it in her kitchen with bread and drops of milk.

    When an ex-soldier, John Tullo, stayed in the house and lent Catherine and her husband £100, they refused to pay it back when Tullo asked for it.  The familiar spirit appeared and instructed her to kill the man with 'plumb Damouses' and sugar.  Tullo died and the couple kept his money, less the £10 it cost to bury him.  The obliging demon also provided Catherine with money.  In her confession, Catherine named several 'wyse folk' in her area. 

   
    Another accused woman was Catherine Lyall, whose supposed crimes generally follow the pattern of the others:  she caused the death of a woman and a horse; a cow produced bad milk at her bidding; the Mill of Dun burned down through her supernatural ill-will.  But the most remarkable thing about her case was the sinking of Thomas Scott's ship.  A woman named Isobel Simpson saw Catherine on the winter day when the vessel left port.  She was sitting within the tidemark - a notorious supernatural border region, being neither land nor sea - and she was staring hard at the waves.  When Isobel and her companion enquired what she was doing, Catherine said that she was keeping sheep.  This bizarre statement takes a while to comprehend, and is not otherwise explained in the testimony.  What could Catherine have meant?  To my knowledge, there is no recorded Scottish supernatural tradition explaining why sheep should be living in the sea.  But there is a tantalising connection, further down the coast past Dundee, where the famous and prophetic Goors of Gowrie, standing stones which somehow ended up in the River Tay at Invergowrie, had the alternative name of the Yowes - Ewes - of Gowrie.  Tradition said that these stones got nearer to land each year.

    Catherine was seen again on the shore when a crowd had gathered to watch Alexander Reid bring back Thomas Scott's new ship.  Asked what she was doing, Catherine commented, to their confusion, that she was keeping sheep.  Shortly afterwards, the ship foundered, drowning everyone on board.  Catherine confessed that she had sunk the ship, and said that Satan, the 'Foull Thief', visited her.  Her gripped her body unkindly, causing her to pull away from his embrace.  When she was asked by officials how a human and a spirit could co-join, she answered that she was strong in nature.  In her confession, Catherine also implicated other witches.

    The last witch to appear at this time in Brechin Presbytery records was Catherine Walker.  It was recorded that she had kicked a man named Beattie in the groin and he afterwards died.  Another man received similar treatment, then a child and some cattle also perished.  While she was held in prison, a guard stated that she had stared into a corner of her cell and muttered a spell:  'Here I cast a compass, there I cast a compass.'  The Devil appeared to her there and lulled her gently to sleep.
    Catherine knew that a confession meant her death and she vowed to her friends that she would never give one.  She swore that, if she was executed, some people in Brechin would suffer greatly two days later.  She remarked, reasonably, that some townsfolk were like swine and should be locked up in prison with her.  Several witnesses swore that her prayers brought an infection to the town.  One man spoke vaguely that he had seen Satan with her, shaped either like a cat or a dog. 
   
    It is highly likely that most, if not all of these women were tortured and killed, though several others examined sometimes survived. One woman, named Janet Sym, had her case examined by a committee who reported that the evidence against her was insufficient.  None of the Glen Esk charmers seem to have suffered the ultimate penalty.