Death Comes to Kincaldrum House - A Dark Jacobite Tale

 There were many stirring and exciting stories associated with the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745-46, and not a few odd tales, and this is a strange one indeed. There are a few different versions of the story, but

   Alexander Bower of Meathie and Kincaldrum was from an old Catholic family and naturally inclined to have Jacobite sympathies. He was travelling in Europe when news of the Jacobite insurrection filtered through to him and he rushed back to his home county and raised some of his tenantry and joined Lord Ogilvy's regiment. Following the defeat at Culloden, Ogilvy's regiment disbanded in Glen Clova, and the men were left to secure their own safety as best they could. The Angus Glens were teeming with fugitive Jacobites, including Rattray of Ranagulzion, Sir James Kinloch and his two brothers, Lord Ogilvy himself, a French engineer named Count Mirobel, and Chevalier Johnstone, who was hiding out in a shepherd's bothy in Glen Prosen.

   Bower joined with his cousin Colonel Ker of Graden in the Borders, and they skulked in the countryside by day, avoiding British army patrols, and went to Kincaldrum House in the nighttime. Bower's wife Margaret St Clair of Roslin was in charge of the household; her son was then eight years old. Also living there was Margaret's sister Miss Sarah St Clair, the child's nurse Betty Maxwell, plus other servants.

 Both Bower and Ker had served with the King of Spain's army, and there is a suggestion that Bower had actually returned to Scotland as early as 1744. By that time he was well advanced in years.

The Second Kincaldrum House, now in ruins. Photo: Anne Burgess, Wikimedia Commons

   The two men had apparently been hiding for around three weeks, but this was about to change. One night after dinner a party of Hessian Dragoons surrounded the house on the night of 6th May 1746. They had been informed about the two men by a disgruntled servant named Proctor. Some of the soldiers stayed outside, while their office and some other troops entered the mansion. They had hamstrung all the cattle and horses on the estate. On entering the house, a witness said, 'they amused themselves slashing the family pictures with their sabres'. Colonel Ker attempted to escape through a ground floor window, but he was captured by two soldiers. 

   Following his arrest, Ker produced a document showing his commission in the Spanish army. This led to his release, but only temporarily and he was soon re-arrested. It was said that the Presbyterian inhabitants of Forfar had some part in his arrest.

   Alexander Bower hid in a closet off a bedroom, with an entrance concealed by an old cabinet. But his hiding-place was discovered, and although Bower attacked several of the soldiers with a poker he was badly injured and taken prisoner. He was first taken to Dundee and then on to Perth. His grandson Graham Bower (who died in 1844)  left a record of what happened to his forefather. He reported that Alexander Bower,

having a fine head of hair, the Dragoons knotted it to one of their horse’s tails, and dragged him in this way for about two miles, to a place called Cothiewards (Cuttywards), near Findrick, where a poor man, of the name of Saunders Kinear, was holling (digging up) Broom, who, on his bended knees, interceded for his master, saying, 'If you will only put the gentleman on a horse, I will gi’e you a’ the siller I hae,' which amounted to ten Pounds. The relief seems to have come too late, however. He was then mounted behind a trooper, carried to Dundee, from there to Perth Prison, where it soon pleased God to relieve him from his tormentors, having expited from the brutal treatment he had received.

Mrs. Bower, although in poor health, followed her husband to Perth, where learning that the Duke of Cumberland was at Stirling Castle, she went thither and interceded for her husband’s life. At last the Duke consented to grant it, on condition that he would leave the country and never return; and he gave her passes for her husband, herself, and their only child, a boy about six years of age. Mrs. Bower immediately returned to Perth, but only to find her husband had meantime died of his wounds and cruel treatment. The sight of the dead body so terribly shocked her that she fell forward overt the corpse and expired. The two bodies were placed in one coffin and brought to Kincaldrum House, where they lay some days previous to interment.

A strange story is told in connection with this part of the tragedy. James Bower, a relative, being anxious to secure the property of the deceased insurgent, bribed the soldiers stationed in the district to kill the infant son, he being then the next-of-kin; but the nurse, when she heard them coming, hid the boy in the coffin containing his dead parents, covering him with the pall, and so escaped detection. The bodies were buried in the Chapel-yard on the farm of Easter Meathie, which then belonged to the Bowers of Kincaldrum.

Lieutenant Bower married in 1736 Margaret St. Clair of Rosslyn, the last of the real St. Clairs of that estate near Edinburgh, and their only child and heir was Alexander St. Clair Bower, who so narrowly escaped. For better safety he was sent to France in the custody of Miss St. Clair, an aunt, where, on the advice and influence of Lord Ogilvy, he was placed in the Scots College in Paris.

   There is a variant of the tale which states that a patrol of English dragoons first came to the house one eveing while Bower and Ker were inside. The two fugitives were hidden, while the Englishman  - 'a most gentlemanly young officer' (according to the account of Graham Bower - entered and inferred that he knew the two men were there but said he had no intention of searching the house. The ladies were so impressed by his chivalry that they invited him to dinner, and when he left he warned them that foreign troops in Hanoverian service were scouring the area, and he could not answer for their conduct.

   This tale then has Mrs Bower set out without delay to intercede for her husband with the Duke of Cumberland who was at Traquair House in Peebleshire. 'The only charge that could be brought against him was that he had worn a white cockade in his bonnet, and that he had been seen shaking hands with Prince charles Edward at the Salutation Inn in Perth.'

   Graham Bower's narrative continues:

While all his business [Bower getting detained] was going on there was a lady's corpse laid out in one of the bedrooms. Betty Maxwell who kept my father (then a little boy), got him in her arms and secreted herself - with her charge behind the bed containing the dead body to prevent his being taken hold by the Hessian soldiers. The faithful nurse's ruse was successful; and though the Hessians appear to have entered the death-chamber, they did not discover Betty Maxwell and her charge.

    The boy's aunt soon hurried the boy out of the house and found sanctuary overnight at the house of Graham of Fintry then took him to Broughty Ferry. There he played with Margaret Graham, daughter of the house, and Betty Maxwell suggested the two might be ideally suited for marriage in due course, which actually happened many years later. Miss St Clair took the boy to Broughty Ferry and they boarded a ship for Hull, and then went over the North Sea to Holland and then Paris. In that city Lord Ogilvy advised that the boy be placed in the Scots College, which she did. On the way back home she was attacked in the Forest of Crecy and never heard of again.

   Graham Bower, writing in the first half of the nineteenth century, told the remainder of the tale:

My grandmother, finding she could do nothing in favour of her husband from the Duke of Cumberland, returned home. On her arrival in Dundee she, of course, asked the news. On being informed of her husband's fate and the disasters at Kincaldrum - her boy being obliged to fly with his aunt - on entering the Red Lion she requested the landlady to show her into a bedroom; the moment after entering it she complained of being a little sick, dropped down, and never spoke more. The hearse that brought the remains of my grandfather from Perth took up the body of my grandmother in Dundee, carrying them to the burying-ground at Meathie, where they were laid side by side.

   Young Alexander Bower in France found service with the French king, although he nearly died there from smallpox, which deeply marked his face. When he returned to Scotland in 1764 he found that a relative named James Bower had taken over the estate, and this man claimed that the returning son and true heir was an imposter. Nobody knew the returning Bower, but in court a man was brought in and the judge asked the stranger from France if he knew who this man was, and he rightly identified him as William Maxwell, the miller of Kincaldrum. To make sure, another local man wa brought in and the returning heir greeted him warmly by shaking his hand and saying, 'Jamie, man, dinna you mind when you and I langsyne took puddocks wi' a girn in the Bark Hill Dub?' The memory was correct; the court was satisfied, and the heir retrieved his inheritance.

   The exiled laird in due course passed the estate on to his son Graham, who died in 1844. It was said that he lost his lands 'through misplaced confidence in a friend'. Graham Bower's son Colonel John Bower died at Droxford, Hampshire, 10th October 1910, aged one hundred and one. Four years before his death he wrote a letter to the The Standard, stating:

In my boyhood I knew a man named Sandy Both, who hailed from Douglas Town (a village in Forfarshire), and when between nine and ten years old was an eye-witness of some of the tragic events at my paternal home (Kincaldrum) in the cause of Prince Charles Edward in 1745, and in after years he often recurred to the subject... He was born in 1737.

 Another of Graham's sons was Alexander Bower St Clair who migrated to live in Lithuania, marrying Countess Kossakowska, after previously serving in the Indian Naval Service. 

   The truth of the exiled son's rightful return is complicated by the following record:

 On 31st July, 1750, a petition was made to the Court of Session by Alexander Bower of Kinnettles, tutor dative to Alexander Bower, eldest son of Alexander Bower of Easter Meathie, to whom, and the heir male of his body, the now deceased Alexander Bower of Kincaldrum had disponed his estate for love and favour, setting forth that Alexander Bower, an infant, while under the petitioner's tutorage, had been carried to France by his aunt, and settled in the Scots College at Paris. The Lords appointed the petitioner curator, and James Hay, W.S., agent. On 8th December following they found the conduct of James Hay in carrying out the matter censurable, and suspended him from the office of W.S., and as agent or solicitor before the Court for a year, and fined him £5 to the poor. His offence is not stated.

   Was there confusion between James Hay and James Bower?

                                                    Kincaldrum House

Kincaldrum House i was originally a home belonging to the Guthrie family of nearby Guthrie Castle. We know they held the estate in 1457 and it later passed to the Bower family, who were staunchly Catholic into the eighteenth century. At least one of the Bower family was a burgess of Dundee. In the seventeenth century brothers from this kindred acquired Easter and Wester Meathie, and the family also held the estate of Kinnettles. 

   The Kinnetles Kist local history booklet details the Bower family connection with that parish (p. 20):

A Roman Catholic chapel was built about 1659, by the Bower family of Kincaldrum, at the 
margin of a small den on Kincaldrum Hill. This was within the detached parish of Foffarty
(alternatively spelt Fofarty or Faferdie) which had been transferred to the tenant, Alexander
Pyott, by the Bishop of Dunkeld, “for his zeal in resisting the Reformation”. This chapel was burnt down by a party of Royal Dragoons in 1745 and stood roofless for many years. After the fire, the stone which held the holy water was moved to Kincaldrum where a chapel was set up in the mansion house. The Roman Catholics in the area, including some from Kinnettles, worshipped there for a number of years. The owners , the Bowers, were eventually forced by poverty, probably induced by the widespread persecution of ‘Papists’, to sell the land to the Earl of Strathmore in 1758. The remaining walls and foundations were removed about 1815 and are believed to have been used in land drains.

   In 1802 John Aberdein Harvey, a schoolmaster’s son who had become rich from his work in the plantations of the West Indies, purchased Kinnettles from the Trustees of Alexander Bower.

  Kincaldrum House passed to the Baxter family of Dundee, mill owners and textile magnates. There is some confusion about whether the exisiting mansion was pulled down or just extensively remodelled.    The mansion suffered a slow death after the Second World War. Its owner, William Elliot-Baxter, relocated to Ireland with his second wife. The house was stripped of its contents, which were sold off. The structure was left to a slow decay and the ravages of time. In the 1970s, some internal fittings were still visible. But it is now a complete derelict shell. 

Some Sources

Anonymous, 'Bridging Time (1745-1910),' Chambers Journal, series 7, volume 1, 344-7.

Hole Ousia Website

Kinnettles Heritage Group, Kinnettles Kist, Kinnettles, 2000. 

Rev James Fleming Leishman, 'Memorandum Relating to the Capture of Colenel Henry Ker of Graden, After Culloden,' History of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club, Vol. 21, 1909-1911, 289-292.

Rev John Stirton, Glamis Castle, Its Origin and History, Forfar, 1938.

Robert Riddle Stodart, Scottish Arms, Being a Collection of Armorial Bearings A. D. 1370-1678, Edinburgh, 1881..

Alexander Warden, Angus or Forfarshire, Vol. 4, Dundee, 1881

https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/2021/07/463-baxter-of-kilmaron-castle-and.html

The Arbroath Cliffs, Wells and Caves

  

   The many fascinating cliffs, inlets and caves near Arbroath probably deserve a whole book  to themselves. There are stories of ghosts, murders, suicides, and smuggling here. Some of the names of the places fascinate all the more because we do not know the stories behind them. Some we can guess. Among the places here, many were used to land and conceal contraband during the smuggling days, hiding goods from the zealous excisemen. Among the local places used for that purpose were Dickmont's Den and Cove Ha'en. Along this coast is Elliot, once called Ellot, where a local kirk-session elder was a prominent ringleader of a smuggling operation. He used to hide his illicit imported brandy and gin in the fields here and had a well-trained crew of local men. Brandy Cave most obviously speaks of the long-forgotten trade.

  This part of the coast has been blessed with imaginative names. On the more legendary side of things there is the recess in the cliffs known as the Mermaid's Kirk, though it is also known more prosaically as the Pebbly Den. There is, near the Arbroath end of the coastal stretch, The Elephant's Foot, a deep depression with a sea cave. (Other creature names are The Sphynx and The Camel's Back, plus the more humble Lesser and Greater Doo Caves.) You can see the holed rock called The Cruisie and nearby The Three Storey House.

   Not far from this is the Mariner's Grave, site in the 19th century of a terrible shipwreck. Some of the survivors were rescued by a basket being lowered from the cliff top. There is also the Monk and Maiden's Leap, the Forbidden Cave, Carlingheugh (Witch Cliff). Carlingheugh Bay is a wide, walkable stretch, and within it is the Dripping Well, or Dreepin Wallie. You can examined the flat rock formation called The Floors (or Flairs), and have a look at the Dark Cave (there is also a Light Cave). The Mermaid's Well lies in the deep den leading down to Castlesea Bay and Tangle Ha, near Auchmithie. 

   Some of the caves on this coastline have more innocuous, or at least less dramatic, histories. The Masons Cave gained its name from the Masonic Lodge in Arbroath using the space to conduct some of its ceremonies, particularly on St John's Eve, though formerly it was likely used as yet another natural feature frequented by smugglers, likely a place where they kept their boats. Inside the cave is a sping which has the constant temperature of 47.4 degrees all year long. Natural wonders are here, such as the blandly named Blow Hole, where the sea periodically spouts up through a natural aperture.

   The Geary or Gaylet Pot is a massive, collapsed sea cave located in a field along the Seaton Cliffs, roughly halfway between Arbroath and Auchmithie. It is about fifty yards in diameter, more than one hundred yards from the front of the cliffs facing the sea, and forty yards in depth. The Angus historian Andrew Warden described it in the fifth volume of his Angus or Forfarshire (1885, 116):

The most curious of all the wild scenes on this rocky coast is the Geary or Gaylet Pot, in a field not far from Auchmithie. It is a huge pit, about fifty yards in diameter, more than one hundred yards from the front of the cliffs facing the sea, and forty yards in depth below the surfiu^e of the field. The entrance from the sea is seventy feet high by forty broad, and it contracts gradually till it enters the bottom of the pit, where it is about twelve feet in height and breadth. At high water in easterly storms the water is impelled into the pit with extreme violence and loud noise, and the water boils, and surges, and froths in an extraordinary manner. The bottom of the pit can be reached from the field at low water, as the soil slopes down from the north-west side, but in other parts the rocks are all but perpendicular. 

 

   The cave is a haven for some species of birds. In 1950, some 165 kittiwake nests were counted in the entrance to the cave. Among the dignitaries who have been impressed by its natural wonder is Robert Burns, who visited Auchmithie on 13 September, 1787. It seems first to have been noted in Edward's Description of The Country of Angus (1678), as The Terrible Well or Pot of Auchmithie.

   As the late local writer Colin Gibson rightly said, 'The Devil owns a lot of property along the Arbroath Cliffs.' Colin went on to enumerate these natural features which the Evil One possessed nearby. There is his 'anvil,' a slab of sandstone at the entrance to the Dark Cave. Then there's his 'e'en', glittering in the Smuggler's Cave, Dickmont's Den. He also has a 'grindstone' on Auchmithie Beach and a 'letterbox' aperture in the rocks.

   Most magnificent however is the sea stack call the Deil's Head. Despite its forboding ownership, the stack has sometimes been targeted by climbers. The first known climb was in the late Victorian period. In 1911, some audacious adventurer scaled the stack and cemented in a flagpole on its summit. But the local storms (doubtless sent by Himself) ensured the erection did not endure.

More On The Stage Coach Days

 The last Scottish stage coach apparently took to the roads as late as 1913, running between between Tarbet and Campbelltown. In Angus and most other parts of Scotland, the coach had been displaced for decades at this date. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the stage coach was a necessity for many travellers who wanted to go any considerable distance within a 'reasonable' time. It is easy to forget that journeys we now take for granted were then a daunting proposition. One eighteenth century Dundonian trully remarked that a journey to Edinburgh 'was a serious business for a thinking person'. Before coaches, most letters and important documents were transported long-distance usually by messengers or 'runners' who travelled on foot. 

   An article in the Montrose Review (Friday 21 September 1928) dug up interesting information from the British Almanac for 1830, detailing the journey from coach between Dundee and London. The coach left the Bull and Mouth Inn at London shortly after eight in the evening, arrived at York at 5:30 pm next day and made Darlington shortly before the second midnight. Bu eleven next morning it had reached Berwick and was heading for Dunbar. Crossing the Forth at Queensferry, passengers arrived at Perth at 11 pm and in Dundee at a quarter past one in the morning. The whole journey took two days and nights, and five hours over.

   One of the earliest coaches in our area was the 'Royal Mail' which started running north to Aberdeen in 1798. I have detailed some of the names and stories of the various other early stage coaches in my earlier post Before the Days of Steam - the Stage Coach! Plus the Amazing Captain Barclay There were more than a dozen coaches ploughing the very rudimentary roads of Angus at various points in the nineteenth century. 

Journeys were perilious and comfort not guaranteed. the boldly named 'Flying Machine' travelled between the Grassmarket in Edinburgh and Dundee 'every Tuesday, God willing, and every Wednesday, whether or no'. 

     Leslie Gardiner paints a vivid picture of the bustling commercial hubs which the coaches were crucially part of for many years:

In Dundee's busiest days, just before the railways came, Sinclair's Hotel sent off the 'Royal Mails' to Aberdeen and Edinburgh every night; changed the 'New Times' on its way from Aberdeen to Perth; ran the 'Fair Maid' to Glasgow and a couple of locals, the 'Sir Henry Parnell' to Brechin and the 'Commercial Traveller' to Arbroath. Campbell's Hotel dealt with the flamboyant red-and-green 'Highlander' (Edinburgh-Montrose) and a slow coach ironically named 'Express' to Aberdeen. (Stage-Coach to John O'Groats, London, 1961, 135.]

      Among the establishments in Dundee which did a roaring trade with the coaches was the Merchants Hotel, where there was a large team of horses under a Mr Cruickshank. From Dundee, passengers could catch Croall's 'Strathmore Union' to Forfar, Brechin and Aberdeen, or the 'New Times', 'Highlander', or 'Royal Union' to Montrose and Aberdeen. The 'Strathmore' was deemed an unlucky coach. Three times in six months it overturned on Carrot Hill in Angus. On another occasion it was hit by a fallen tree at Laurencekirk.

    Pedestrians were wise not to get too close to the fiercely competitive rival vehicles. At ten in the morning the 'Kingdom of Fife' raced away from the Royal Hotel in Dundee, tearing along the Seagate, racing the 'Tally-Ho' east to Broughty Ferry, vying to be the first to board the ferry across to Fife. 

    There was occasional drama of other varieties too. Late on the night of 13 July 1834, the coach for Aberdeen was due to set off from Sinclair's Hotel in Dundee. An important passenger turned up late, delaying the journey. At Muirdrum, a strap on one of the horses snapped, nearly diverting the coach into a ditch. It was further delayed while Robert Steel, the guard, repaired it. On the outskirts of Arbroath, the road was barred because the toll-keeper had gone to bed. This was the third time the gate had been barred in a month, which riled Steel, who was no friend of the man and had sworn to get back at him if it happened again. Steel approached the cottage window and sounded a loud blast on his horn, but the only response was an enfuriating snore from inside. Enfuriated, the guard got his blunderbuss and blasted it through the window. The keeper rushed out in his night gown and opened the gate. The incident made Arbroath famous in the stage coach community.   

   'On the same road, a few months later, ' Gardiner wrote, 'David Gardiner drove through a funeral process and, not long afterwards, scattered a company of Seaforth Highlanders when they demurred at giving way before him.'

   Some of the coach drivers became famous celebrities for their skill and speed. The Lowdnes brothers often plied the route between Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Later, when the railways were taking business away from the old coaches, John Ross and John Kidd were two drivers who tried to race the locomotives on the Dundee to Perth route. They also had a serious rivalry with each other. 

Fairy Mounds and Other Places of the Fair Folk

 Where do the fairies dwell and what do they want with us? Not easy questions to answer definitively, unfortunately. There are few fully formed fairy stories in Angus. Those that do exist are sometimes frustratingly incomplete or have disappinting origins. Take, for example, the anonymous story which appeared in the venerable Readers Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Great Britain (1973). 

      According to a short tale there, there was a piper of Lochlee whose music so entranced the Fair Folk that they came to him one evening when he was playing at the Dalbrack Bridge. Nine of them sailed down the Esk in a boat and one fairy touched the piper on the shoulder with a wand, obliging him to follow them onto the craft. The boat then sailed nine times around the pool called Pontskinnen Pot, then vanished upstream forever. He lived thereafter in some mysterious underground real with his captors. Sometimes  his piper in heard in Glen Esk, but far away. 

   Unfortunately, this admirable 'tradition' may not be any older than the nineteenth century. It possibly has its origin in a poem by the Deeside stonemason poet Robert Dinnie (d. 1891). At least, I cannot trace the story any further back than his poem (which I have included at the bottom of this piece).

    Another, possibly more legitimate fairy tradition is associated with the Laird of Ballmachie, near Carnoustie (the link to my exploration of this tradition is at the bottom of this article). Near Ballmachie is Carlungie, site of an ancient Pictish earth-house or souterrain, and nearby is a place which was once called the Cur Hills. The hills were evidently low mounds, possibly Bronze Age burial sites, reputedly haunted by the Fair Folk. 

Engraving from Sir Edward Burne-Jones, The Fairy Family: A Series of ballads and Metrical Tales Illustrating the Fairy Faith of Europe (1857)

   There were a few other prehistoric sites in Angus which had an association with the fairies. In the parish of Carmyllie there was a prehistoric site which was noted in Ordnance Survey name books. It was variously known as Fairyfold Hillock, Fairy Hillock, or Fairy Knowe. The site was possibly a prehistoric tumulus, which was excavated around 1828. No full record of this excavation exists, but there was a small brass ring found, plus some bones and charcoal. Another investigation in 1835 yielded several plain pennanular rings. The hillock was 'extant though mutilated' in 1858. The site was later totally levelled, evidence that Victorian landlords had little truck with the superstitious awe which their ancestors may have treated such sites with. (For those interested, the location of this site was British National Grid (BNG) Coordinates: 354450, 743480, OS NGR 5445 4348.)

Arthur Rackham, 'Twilight Dreams'

    Trying to get to the root of places haunted by fairies or more malevolent supernatural beings is not always fruitful since there are umpteen spots reputedly haunted by suchlike without any stories to back it up. Montreathmont Moor (or Munrimmon as it was commonly called) was one such place. An article in the Montrose Review (Friday 13 July 1928) refers to Montreathmont as being regarded by local children as the haunt of 'evil goblins and will-o-the-wisps', yet it does not elaborate in any detail. Where are the actual tales about the place?

   In previous pieces on the fairies, I highlighted their association in the popular imagination with some underground places, particularly Pictish souterrains. An unrecognised souterrain at Barns of Airlie was responsible for swallowing up oatcakes that vanished from a hearth while cooking, and the unseen fairies were of course blamed. 

   Some hills were associated with the fairies, such as the Caterthuns. Smaller eminences also were their habitation, such as Elf Hillock in Glen Clova. But their name is recorded in relatively few places in Angus. Some minor 'elf mounds' (actually ancient monuments) were noted in Lunan, but here - as in all too many other places - nobody has throught to records the traditions associated with such places, and they are lost forever.

John Lamb ‘Primus’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ 1834

The Piper of Lochlee

Langsyne there lived ance on a day

A piper in Lochlee,

An' fowks wha heard the tale they say

He played a merry key.

Through a' the glen, baith up and doun,

At bridal an' at fair,

An' ilka meeting o' renown,

The piper he was there.

An' when across the chanter stick

His nimble fingers flew,

The mellow notes cam' sweet an' quick,

While aye the bag he blew.

But, ah! what mortal could foretell

The piper'f future fate,

Or wha divert the fairy spell

Afore it was too late.

Ae bonnie simmer blithesome e'en

Close by a birken tree, 

Beside Pontskinie there was seen

The piper o' Lochlee.

In haste he struck a merry strain,

An' played a famous spring.

From Craigmaskeldie to Millden,

Gart hill an' valley ring.

But ere he wist, the piper saw

A sight he ne'er hae seen -

Nine fairies dressed fu' trig an' braw,

In gowns o' bonny green.

They landed in a bonny boat,

Whar frae nae ane could tell,

But close beside Pontskinie pot,

There they drew in their sail.

They quickly formed an endless ring,

The piper played wi' glee,

"In troth," says he,

"ye fairly ding

The lasses o' Lochlee."

But ane, the bravest o' the band,

If braver ane could be, 

She ript the piper wi' her wand,

An' after her ran he,

When ane an' a' into the boat

Wi' haste they did convene,

Syne wheel'd three times aroun' the pot,

But never mair were seen.

The pipers drones, fowk heard them still,

Tho' ne'er a thing they saw;

But fainter grew the soun' until

At last it died awa'.

A mystic parth leads to a cave

Whaur mortals canna see;

Whaur ghasts an' fairies hant an' rave,

An' sport an' feast wi' glee.

Whiles on the dreary hour o' nicht.

Ere cocks began to craw;

Fowks heard the piper play fu' bright

Aneath auld Bathie ha'.

Baith ane an' a' throughout the Glen

Did sair the piper mourn,

An' after days an' years were gane,

Thocht aye he wad return.

Thrice fifty years had gane their roun'

An' fled syne he was lost;

But whiles ahint the sun gaes doun,

Some fowks yet see his ghost.

But what a gruesome sicht he's grown,

Fu' spectre like an' spare;

They say his matter hair hings doun,

An auld Scots ell an' mair.

More Fairy Stuff From Previous Posts

Away With the Fairies in Brechin

The Laird of Balmachie's Wife and Other Fairy Traditions

The Natural Mysteries of the Land

Underground Angus -Pictish Souterrains, the Fairy Tradition

Fairs and Markets, Part Five: The Muckle Fair of Kirriemuir

 This is the fourth article I have written concerning fairs and markets in the county and concentrates on Kirriemuir. Like most burghs, Kirriemuir had a number of periodic and regular fairs and markets. In the 1880s these were summarised by Francis Groome in his Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (volume 4): 

A weekly corn and provision market is held on Friday; four cattle fairs have been extinct for several years; a horse fair is held on the second Friday of March; a cattle and horse fair on the Wednesday after Glamis May fair, on 24 July or the Wednesday after, on the Wednesday after 18 Oct., and on the Wednesday after Glamis November fair; and a hiring fair is held on the Term Day if a Friday, otherwise on the Friday after. 

   The town's regular Friday market was described by the native J. M. Barrie in Auld Licht Idylls (1888):

Every Friday there was the market, when a dozen ramshackle carts containing vegetables and cheap crockery filled the centre of the square, resting in line on their shafts. A score of farmers’ wives or daughters in old-world garments squatted against the town-house within walls of butter on cabbage-leaves, eggs and chickens. Towards evening the voice of the buckie-man shook the square, and rival fish-cadgers, terrible characters who ran races on horseback, screamed libels at each other over a fruiterer’s barrow. 

  The annual Muckle Fair also took place on a Friday but it was a larger and more riotous affair, and children and adults keenly anticpated it:

On the Muckle Friday, the fair for which children storing their pocket money would accumulate sevenpence-halfpenny in less than six months, the square was crammed with gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and monstrosities who were gifted with second sight. There was a bearded man, who had neither legs nor arms, and was drawn through the streets in a small cart by four dogs. By looking at you he could see all the clockwork inside, as could a boy who was led about by his mother at the end of a string.

   Barrie wrote again of the anticipation of local bairns before the annual event in his novel Sentimental Tommy (1896): 'Every child in Thrums went to bed on the night before the Muckley hugging a pirly, or, as the vulgar say, a money-box...' Signs would be put up in the town to tell people to beware of pickpockets. Boys and girls would have trouble sleeping the night before the fair because of their excitement.

 

    On the day of the fair, people from the country would swarm into the district:

braw loons in blue bonnets with red bobs to them, tartan waistcoats, scarves of every color, woollen shirts as gay, and the strutting wearers in two minds - whether to take off the scarf to display the shirt, or hide the shirt and trust to the scarf. Came lassies, too, in wincey bodices they were like to burst through, and they were listening apprehensively as they ploughed onward for a tearing at the seams. 

    The gaudy attractions were gaudy and glorious to people who led monotonous and hard-working lives:

Four streets of them in the square! The best is the menagerie, because there is the loudest roaring there. Kick the caravans and you increase the roaring. Admission, however, prohibitive (threepence). More economical to stand outside the show of the 'Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride' and watch the merriman saying funny things to tlie monkey. Take care you don't get in front of the steps, else you will be pressed up by those behind and have to pay before you have decided that you want to go in. When you fling pennies at the Mountain Maid and the Shepherd's Bride they stop play-acting and scramble for them. Go in at night when there are drunk ploughmen to fling pennies. The Fat Wife with the Golden Locks lets you put your fingers in her arms, but that is soon over. 

   In common with many such gatherings, there was an extravagance of behaviour which turned less innocent as the proceedings went on: 'With the darkness, too, crept into the Muckley certain devils in the colour of the night who spoke thickly and rolled braw lads in the mire, and egged on friends to fight and cast lewd thoughts into the minds of the women.' [Sentimental Tommy, p. 214] And the women, Barrie said, would often behave as badly as the men, and no wonder as this was the one day of the year when they could be cut free of their laborious restrictions and did not know how to moderate themselves. 

  

   A later writer on Barrie remembered the fair less fondly than the great man. Patrick Chalmers, in The Barrie Inspiration (1938), wrote of the fair, which had long vanished by that time:

My own recollection of Muckle Friday is one of sodden drinking, small rain and cruelty to animals. Hulking nothy hands in hobnailed boots , corduroy trousers and calfskin vests walked together in gangs... By noon most people, men and women, were tipsy... the Muckley had outlived its usefulness and had degenerated into an orgy pure and simple. No doubt it was picturesque to see the lines of snowy tents rising in the early morning beneath the shadow of the steeple. The columns of steam from the bright burnished tin or brass cauldrons, in which great savoury joints and whole kailyards of cabbages and potatoes were boiled... The blue smoke from the fires curled peacefully into the morning air, before the struggling mass of bewildered animalism had become maddened by thirst, or driven desperate by the blows of men and the barking of dogs.

   

   Compare this with with the similarly Glen Esk fairs of the 19th century, as described by James Inglis in Oor Ain Folk (1909) which I quoted in The Angus Calendar: Fairs and Markets Part One

   A long way from the modern Kirrie Show, which is probably a good thing!

Fairs and Markets, Part Four: More On The Markets of Forfar

 The last post I wrote about fairs and markets in this blog largely focussed on those which happened in Brechin. This one gives a little supplementary information about the Forfar markets. Those interested in reading further about other Angus markets are invited to try the links at the bottom of this article. 

   The most celebrated and popular fair in Forfar was St James' Market. It lasted from the 20th to 30th July. Long past its heyday, by the 1920s it remained a holiday and the events at the fair consisted mainly of Highland sports and excusrsions. It original trading purpose had largely been set aside. 

   Among the records of the burgh of Forfar is a warrant of 1682 which empowers the magistrates 'to arme with halberts twenty-foure men duering the time of the faire, for keeping the peace, and collecting the customs thereof.

   Apart from St James, other local fairs and markets were named in honour of St Valentine, St Peter, St Trodlin. St Peter's Fair was held originally near Restenneth Priory and St Trodlin's at the Kirk of Rescobie. The traditional weekly market in Forfar was held on a Sunday. An Act of Parliament on 21 July 1593 ordained:

Our Soueraine Lorde understanding that be acte and ordinance maid anent observatione of the Sabbath-daie within this realme, the mercatte daie of the burgh of Forfar, being the head burgh of the shire quhilke was Sundaie, is taken from them; and his Hieness, with the advise of the estaites of this present Parliament, alteris and changis their said mercatte daie from Sundaie to Fridaie, and willis the samen Fridaie oukly to be their mercatte daie to them hereafter, and the samen to stande with the like priviledges and freedoms as the Sundaie did before.

   But Sundays were adhered to for some time, and when the switch came, the day actually chosen for the event was Saturday. 

 The Croft Markets held on Wednesdays were reckoned to be survivals of markets held in honour of St Margaret and St Ethernan, and possibly other saints. 

  By the mid-nineteenth century, the weekly corn-market on Saturdays was the most regular of these events held in Forfar, besides which there were around ten annual markets for the sale of cattle and transaction of general business. 

Previous Posts on Fairs and Markets

The Angus Calendar - Fairs and Markets, Part One

The Angus Calendar - Revised List of Fairs & Markets

Fairs and Markets (and Festivals), Part Three: Brechin

Fairs and Markets, Part Two

Further Information On Fairs and Markets

More About Fairs and Markets

The Playfair Family of Benvie and Liff

    The Playfair family comes from the small, tucked away corner of Angus nestled between Dundee and the Carse of Gowrie region of Perthshire.  The Rev James Playfair  (1714-1772) was minister of Benvie parish before moving his family to Liff a few years after the two parishes were combined in 1753. (His father, another James, was a farmer at Couttie, Perthshire. Immediate ancestors farmed Cupar Grange and Bendochy in Perthshire.) He and his wife Margaret Young (d. 1805) had three sons who achieved prominence in different ways. (They had ten children in all: seven sons and three daughters.) Further back, a branch of the family was farming around Errol in the Carse of Gowrie in the seventeenth century.

Sons of Rev Playfair and Margaret

John Playfair was born at Benvie in 1748 and firstly followed his father into the ministry, becoming minister of Liff from 1773 to 1783. However, he changed tack later and became a mathematician and professor of natural philosophy and also made distinguished contributions to geology in his lifetime, as well as founding the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He died in 1819.

It may have been a daughter of Rev John, Janet Playfair, who left a record of the somewhat stifling household she grew up in and was sadly contained by. Writing in her journal as a nineteen-year-old in the New Year 1798, she reflected that another year wasted in her life had gone by. 'To go for nothing,' she wrote, 'to be contented with dressing, undressing, visiting or receiving visits, or trifling household matters. It is too bad.' The Sabbath day was particularly stiffling, when no books were allowed to be read until after supper. 

John Playfair, 1748-1819

   Robert Playfair, the second son, married Margaret McNiven.

   James Playfair, third son of the first James, was born in 1755 and became one of Scotland's most renowned neoclasssical architects.  He designed many buildings in the New Town, Edinburgh, and, closer to home, Kirriemuir and the Glens old parish church. He died in 1794, aged only 38. His son, William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), followed in his footsteps and was also responsible for designing many prominent buildings in Edinburgh.*

William Henry Playfair, 1790-1857

   By far the most intriguing of the brothers was William Playfair (1759- 1823) who had a wildly varied career which encompassed some of the following: 'millwright, engineer, draftsman, accountant, inventor, silversmith, merchant, investment broker, economist, statistician, pamphleteer, translator, publicist, land speculator, convict, banker, ardent royalist, editor, blackmailer, journalist, participant in the storming of the Bastille, and personal assistant to James Watt'. He was also responsible for designing the first pie charts, line graphs and bar graphs. In his youth he had been apprenticed to Andrew Meikle, inventor of ghe threshing machine. Among his written works was Commercial and Political Atlas (1786), which traced and illustrated the economic progress of England from the mid-sixteenth century. He went on to aauthor over 100 pamphlets and books. Many of his original original publications and figures exist only in obscure manuscripts, which meant that his contributions were quickly forgotten after his death.But some recognised his contributions, including W. A. Guy, who noted in 1885: 'Nor should I be doing justice to ourselves did I omit a passing notice of the works of William Playfair of Dundee, who made such early, free, and skilful use of the graphic method in his statistical, historical, and political works published towards the end of the last century and beginning of this—to be more exact, between the years 1786 and 1805.' Playfair also diversified into many business areas, such as land speculation, but few of these were profitable. He also took out a number of patents for inventions. 

Chart representing the extent, population and revenue of the principal nations of Europe, William Playfair, 1805

 

* Rev Charles Rogers, The Scottish House of Roger, p. 24, states that William Henry Playfair was the son of Robert Playfair.

Some Works Consulted

Elizabeth Foyster and Christopher A. Whatley, A History of Everyday in Scotland, 1600 to 1800 (Edinburgh, 2010).

Rev. Charles Rogers, Four Perthshire Families: Roger, Playfair, Constable and Haldane (Edinburgh, 1887). 

Rev. Charles Rogers, The Scottish House of Roger, With Notes Respecting the Families of Playfair and Haldane of Bermony (2nd. edn., Edinburgh, 1875).