The Fortunate Dream of William Imrie of Lunan

A strange dream is one thing and an odd dream that manifests in waking life as reality is another.  But the rarest, most amazing sub-category perhaps is that class of dream which promises a brilliant future and sometimes, somehow comes to pass.

    Here is the tale of such an incident from Angus in the 18th century; this version contained in
Haunted Rooms, Elliott O'Donnell (1931), p. 25:

The first William Imrie of Lunan, fearing his father would force him to become a farmer, ran away from home.  He slept, the first night, amid the ruins of Redcastle, and had a most vivid dream.  He thought he went to London, married a rich woman, became owner of a fine house, and, on returning to Lunan, with his pockets well lined with money, was addressed by everyone as laird.  Awaking with the feeling that the dream was no ordinary one, he tramped to the nearest port, and sailed thence to London.  The dream came true.  He married a woman with money, became proprietor of an hotel in Fountain Court, the Strand, where Angus lairds often met, and which was ultimately converted into the famous Judge and Jury Tavern, returned to Scotland a rich man, and bought an estate in Lunan.  He died in 1798.

  The book Around the Ancient City, published by D.H. Edwards in Brechin (1887) adds further details.  Imrie was actually a native of Aberdeenshire and had been making his way south of foot when he entered Angus and had the fateful dream in the ruins of the venerable old castle.  He returned to Scotland, rich of course, and settled in Lunan in 1759.  The source quoted below,  which relates the later inheritance of the estate, gives a different date of death for the fortunate Mr Imrie.

   I will be on the look out for earlier versions of this intriguing tale.  In the meantime, I wonder if it was something in the sepulchral atmosphere of Redcastle itself which sponsored his involuntary seership?

The Later Lairds of Lunan

The following details are taken from appendix I to Andrew Jervises's Memorials of Angus and the Mearns, volume 2 (Edinburgh, 1885), pp. 269-70:

William Imrie's children all died in infancy, and his wife only survived her removal to the mansion-house of Lunan for the short space of six weeks. He died in 1790, and was succeeded by Alexander Taylor-Imrie (greatgrandfather of the present proprietor), who married Agnes Simpson, a niece of William Imrie. Alexander Taylor-Imrie died on the 21st September 1813, and was succeeded by his second son, William. On the 24th of October 1846, William Taylor-Imrie executed a disposition and deed of entail of the lands of Lunan in favour of himself and certain heirs of tailzie; he died on the 11th March 1849, unmarried. The first heir of entail named in the deed after the entailer himself was his nephew, Lieutenant-Colonel and Brigadier James Blair, eldest son of his eldest sister, Elizabeth, who had married Captain James Blair, of the (8th) Forfar and Kincardine Militia. He never succeeded to the estate, having predeceased his uncle. When Captain Blair's regiment was quartered in Musselburgh, in 1806, the freedom of that burgh was presented to him on the 10th October of the same year.

   Brigadier James Blair, who, as above mentioned, predeceased (1847) his uncle, married Charlotte Cecilia, seventh daughter of Brigadier-General Jacob Vanrenen. During the Nepaulese war in 1815, while carrying by assault the fortified heights and town of Almora, he was severely wounded by a bullet, which, however, struck two rupees which he had in his pocket. The extracted bullet, and the two coins which saved his life, are still treasured in the family. William Blair-Imrie, the second, but eldest surviving son of Brigadier James Blair, succeeded to the estate while a minor, in 1849, on the death of his granduncle, and assumed (according to the terms of the entail) the name and arms of Imrie.

Welcome to the House of Dun - Very, Very Haunted (or Not Haunted at All)

The beautiful House of Dun, near Montrose, is now in the guardianship of the National Trust for Scotland.  Its long history is intertwined with the Erskine family, whose most famous member John Erskine, the famous 16th century religious reformer, will be considered at length in future.  This article considers some of the other history and folklore of Dun.

The old church of Dun in a mid 19th century representation

 The shades of the dead seem to favour grand properties more than average dwellings, as if spirits develop an inexplicable sense of snobbery after death. The House of Dun in the north-east of the county, was built in the Georgian era for the Erskine family who lived here into the 20th century. The house can be said, without exaggeration, to be fully infested with ghosts. The House of Dun probably first came to national prominence after its inclusion in Catherine Crowe’s classic compendium The Night Side of Nature (1848):

Not very long since, a gentleman set out, one fine midsummer’s evening, when it is light all night in Scotland, to walk from Montrose to Brechin. As he approached a place called Dunn, he observed a lady walking on before, which, from the lateness of the hour, somewhat surprised him. Sometime afterwards, he was found by the early labourers lying on the ground, near the churchyard, in a state of insensibility. All that he could tell them was that he had followed this lady till she had turned her head and looked round at him, when seized with horror, he had fainted. “Oh,” said they, “you have seen the lady of Dunn.” What the legend attached to this lady of Dunn is, I do not know. [The Night Side of Nature, 226.]

  This ghost cannot be definitely identified, but in more recent times there have been sightings of an woman riding a horse through the grounds; unusually, she is facing backwards on her horse. Other ghosts on the estate include a headless horseman, plus – near a certain yew tree - the spirit of a knight killed after he returned here from the east and found his lover had betrayed him. In recent years voices have been heard inside the house, plus the sound of a crying baby and an invisible harpist. More bizarrely, a phone has been heard ringing in a part of the house where there was no actual physical telephone. Diverse other phenomena include: unseen dogs, a dress floating around without a body inside, plus an array of spirits both male and female, some of whom resented modern, living intruders.

   All very romantic, no doubt. But - and this is a major - but, someone who knew this mansion well  and wrote about it directly contradicts the supposed prevalence of spectral inhabitants within the mansion house. The person in question was the great Violet Jacob (1863-1946), poet and writer and daughter of the Laird of Dun.  Her birth name was Violet Augusta Mary Frederica Kennedy-Erskine and she wrote a history of the house and her family, The Lairds of Dun, in 1931.  

   This is what Violet has to say about alleged supernatural associations of her home:

There is no well-authenticated ghost to trouble Dun; neither monk nor white lady to scare the loiterer in the Den nor uncomfortable shadowy inmate of the house. Vague traditions exist of a limb falling from one of the spreading yew trees of the kitchen garden at the death of a Laird, and, in the event of twins being born in the family, the arrival of one of them in the world with a black leg. But, though the generation that is thinning every day has seen the death of two Lairds and the birth of twin sons in the direct line, these tales have been proved by the event to be futile; and only the Scottish poet, George Beattie, has thought fit to invent a spectre for the place in his ballad of 'The Murderit Minstrel.'[The Lairds of Dun, pp. 14-15.]

   Was she being coy, disingenuous, or was she genuinely ignorant of the darker traditions about the House of Dun?  I know which one I want to believe.

   Alleged hauntings in the mansion feature prominently in Forbes Inglis's book Phantoms and Fairies, Tales of the Supernatural in Angus and Dundee (Brechin, 2010). One of his informants was Mary Brownlow, house manager on site in the early part of the present century.  Among the strange phenomena she reported were the eerie sound of a baby crying and the sound of a phone ringing in part of the property where there was no phone, plus her husband hearing voices at night which wakened him up, despite being quite alone in the house at the time.  A visitor in the holiday apartment within the house states that their children had seen a spectral dress - minus body wearing it - floating around the place, while other have witnessed a white shape wearing a bonnet on the top landing.

   A psychic visited the property in 2005 and heard chatter and sensed many spirits, including long gone (but friendly) dogs, a girl with dark hair and an austere and imposing gentleman who was evidently to the manor born.  Several other ghosts were sensed or seen, mostly servants attached to the place lost after their mortal servitude had ended.  Inglis also quotes a fascinating snippet of apparently genuine local folklore from the Montrose Review, 4th January 1850. The correspondent stated that old people in the district made a habit of giving the old mansion a very wide berth if forced to pass by on dark nights, the reason being that they did not want to encounter 'the aerial rider, commonly called the "headless huntsman" who was said to gallop nightly in that locality.'

   Those reckless souls who wish to delve further into the alleged paranormal occurrences and atmosphere at Dun can read the online summary of the Ghost Club's investigation of the famous old mansion here.

Part of the contents of this article were incorporated in the previous post Some Ghosts to Keep You Going.

Our Ancient Tongue - Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary (Part One)

Those who even have a cursory glance at John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (published in 1808) will have no doubt that the past is an extremely foreign place.  Even those moderately well acquainted with Scottish history and culture will fail to recognise the majority of the words in this wonderful book.  Jamieson was not a native of Angus, but he spent many years hear as a religious minister, during which time he gathered much of the living language published in his groundbreaking dictionary.

   This post gathers a sample of the wonderful words gathered by Jamieson which he specifically mentions as being current in  Angus during his time there. It has to be said that these words may not all be specific to Angus only, for language is not mindful of county demarcation.  (Future posts will give more examples and  another will give the background of Jamieson's life, and particularly his time in Angus.)

   But first, a few observations... I dare you to take these next few long gone words and swill them around in your mind or, better still, say them out loud and ponder how they came to be, or how magnificently they match the concepts they are supposed to convey.  Of course there is no equivalent in the anodyne lexicon of modern standard English.  If you're ready we'll begin with...

• Jingle.  Not used in the modern sense, but a beautiful term for a minutely noticed movement in nature.  Jamieson states that the Angus meaning, delightfully, was 'the smooth water at the back of a stone in the river'.

• Karriewhitchit. More intimate, this word. It means 'a foundling term for a child'.

• Goutherfow. A specific and unpleasant type of astonishment: 'It seems to suggest the idea of one who appears nearly deranged from terror or amazement.'

 Auld Words of Angus

Here's  the things with the Scots tongue:  there's wistful, supernatural, beguiling, but a lot of it is disdainful, contrary, unforgiving and sarcastic.  What does that say about us?  I leave you to ponder fully.

It is not the high faluting things one notices, but those indefinable and contemptible conditions of physical, moral or emotional weakness... 

Things of nature, obsolete rural activities and places

Aith, Aiftland - 'That kind of land called infield, which is made to carry oats a second time after barley, and has received no dung.'

Awat - 'Ground ploughed after the first crop from lea.  The crop produced is called the Awat-crop.'

Bag Rape - 'A rope of straw or heath, double the size of the cross-ropes used in fastening the thatch of a roof.  This is kinched to the cross-ropes, then tied to what is called the pan-rape, and fastened with wooden pins to the easing or top of the wall on the other side.'

Baikie - 'The stall to which an ox or cow is bound in the stall.'

Bardie - 'a gelded cat'.

Bilbie - 'Shelter, residence...This, I apprehend, is a very ancient word.'

Blithmeat - 'The meat distributed among those that are present at the birth of a child, or among the rest of the family.'

Bourach/bowrock - 'An inclosure; applied to the little houses that children build for play, especially in the sand...'  Also: 'A confused heap of any kind...Such a quantity of body clothes as is burdensome to the wearer, is called a bourach of claise...'

Brathins - 'The cross ropes of the roof of a thatched house, or stack; also called etherins.'

Bun - 'A large cask, placed in a cart, for the purpose of bringing water from a distance.'

Bune - 'The inner part of the stalk of flax, the core, that which is of no use, afterwards called the shaws.'

Bykat - 'A male salmon; so called, when come to a certain age, because of the beak which grows in his under jaw.'

Calflea - 'Infield ground, one year under natural grass...It seems to have received this designation, from the calves being turned out on it.'

Candavaig - 'A salmon that lies in the fresh water till summer, without going to the sea; and, of consequence, is reckoned very foul.'

Daise - 'The powder, or that part of a stone, which is bruised in consequence of the strokes of the pick-axe or chizzel.'Also, doyce, meaning a dull, heavy stroke.

Doister - 'A storm from the sea, as contradistinguished from bau-gull, which denotes a breeze from the sea during summer.  The word is used by the fishermen in Angus.'

Donie, 'A hare.'

Doock, duce. 'A kind of strong, coarse cloth, manufactured in the coast towns of Angus.  one kind of it is called sail-doock, as being used for sails.'

Drizzen - The lowing sound of cattle.

Emmis, Immis - 'Variable, uncertain, what cannot be depended on...Ground which often fails to give a good crop, is called immis land.'

Fauch, faugh - 'A single furrow, out of lea; also the land thus managed.'

Faucumtulies - 'Certain perquisites which the tenant is bound to give the proprietor of the land, according to some leases; as fowls & c.'

Flaucht - 'A piece of ground, a croft.'

Flist  - 'A keen blast or shower accompanied with a squall.'  In Angus it could particularly mean a flying shower or snow or, figuratively, an outburst of anger.

Flot-whey - 'Those parts of the curd, left in whey, when it is boiled, float on the top.'

Fordel work - 'Work done before it be absolutely necessary.'

Forthgeng - 'The entertainment given at the departure of a bride from her own, or her father's, house.'

Frog - A verb meaning to snow at intervals.

Fuffars - Bellows.

Gaberts - 'A kind of gallows, or wood or stone, erected to support the wheel to which the rope of a draw-well is attached.'

Garb - 'A young bird.'

Gaw - 'A hollow with water springing in it.'

Goat - 'A narrow cavern or inlet, into which the sea enters.'

Golach - 'The generic name for a beetle.'

Gosk - 'Grass that grows through dung.'

Gurr - A knotted stick.

Haddie's Cog - 'A measure formerly used for meting out the meal appropriated for supper for the servants.'

Hagger - It's haggerin, raining gently.

Hustle - A pleased sound emitted by an infant or a cat.

Descriptions of the Uncertain Human Condition

Balmullo - 'To make one lauch Balmullo, to make one change one's mind; to make one cry.  "I'll gar you lauch, sing, or dance, Balmullo...is a threatening used by parents or nurses...'  Surprisingly the term derives from the Gaelic work for eyebrow.  'Hence bo-mullach is equivalent to "the grisly ghost, the spectre with the dark eyebrows".'

Bardish -  'Rude, insolent in language.'

Bein - 'Bone...One is said to be aw frae the bein, all from the bone, when proud, elevated, or highly pleased...'

Bloisent - 'One is said to have a bloisent face , when it is red, swollen, or disfigured, whether by intemperance, or being exposed to the weather...'

Camscho - Primarily meant crooked.  In Angus the specific meaning was, 'Ill humoured, contentious, crabbed; denoting crookedness or perverseness of temper.'

Collyshangie - Commonly meant 'An uproar, a tumult, a squabble.' In Angus it particularly signified, 'a ring of plaited grass or straw, through which a lappet of a woman's gown, of fold of a man's coat is thrust, without the knowledge of the person, in order to excite ridicule.  This trick is most commonly played in harvest.'

Crok - 'A dwarf.'

Dordermeat - 'A bannock or cake given to farm-servants, after loosing the plough, between dinner and supper.'

Eastie Wastie - 'An unstable person, one on whose word there can be no dependence.  One who veers like the wind, or who fights east and then west.'

Eeghie nor Oghie - 'I can bear neither eeghie nor oghie, neither one thing nor another...'

Fadle - 'To walk in an awkward and waddling manner.'

Fairfassint - 'Having great appearance of discretion or kindness, without the reality.'  Compare with Fair-farand - 'Having a goodly or fair appearance.'  Jamieson:  'It is now used to denote one who assumes a specious appearance, who endeavours by his language or manner to cajole another.  Thus it is commonly applied to one who is very plausible.  He's owre fair farrand for me, Angus.'

Flanter - 'To waver, to be in some degree delirious; used concerning persons under affliction, when the bodily disease affects the mind.'

Flett -  General Scots term for house or residence, as in Angus saying, denoting poverty, that one has 'neither fire nor flett'.

Flinder - 'To flirt, to run about in a fluttering manner; also applied to cattle, when they break through inclosures, and scamper through the fields.'

Foryoudent - 'Tired, out of breath, overcome with weariness.'

Fraik - He maks a great fraik - 'He pretends great regard.'

Gloit - 'To work with the hands in something liquid, miry, or viscous.'

Glorg - 'To work in some dirty business.'

Grouk - 'To look over one with a watchful and apparently suspicious eye.'

Gulp - 'A term applied to a big, unwieldy child.'

Gynkie - 'A term of reproach applied to a woman; as, She's a worthless gynkie.'

Hervy - 'Mean, having the appearance of great poverty.'

Hudderin, huderon - 'Slovenly.  It is generally applied to a woman who is lusty and flabby in her person, or wears her clothes loosely and awkwardly.'

Ill fond - unprepared.

Juttie - A drinker.

Kabbelow - 'Cod-fish, which has been salted and hung for a few days, but not thoroughly dried.'

A Laidly Flup - 'An awkward booby.'

Thole the dool - to accept the punishment or evil consequences of anything.

Things of Darkness, Plus Miscellaneous Terms

Beshacht - 'Not straight, distorted. ' (This was the sense in Angus.  In Perthshire, it meant torn, tattered, conveying the idea of dirtiness.')

Besle - 'To talk much at random, to talk inconsiderately and boldly on a subject that one is ignorant of.'

Beuld - 'Bow legged.'

Braal - 'A fragment. "There's nae a braal in the fore," There's not a fragment remaining.'

Cruisken - A word relating to whisky; a specific measure of that spirit.

Cundie - this survives in modern Scots, or in Dundonian at least, as a term for a drain in the street.  More anciently, it's meaning in Angus was slightly different, for it signified, 'An apartment, a place for lodging, a concealed hole.'

Daidled - from daddle, besmirched. Daidled meat in Angus was that which was improperly cooked.

Daikit - When a thing is new , 'It has ne'er been daikit.'

Dreel - 'To move quickly, to run in haste.'

Drob - To prick with a needle.

Drow - 'A fainting fit, a sort of convulsion; also, a state of partial insensibility in dying persons.'

Eekfow - Equal.

Filchans - 'Bundles of rags patched or fastened together; the attire of a travelling mendicant.'

Finnin - 'A fiend, a devil.'

Geing - 'A term used to denote intoxication liquor of any kind.'

Glammach - In Angus, either an ineffectual effort, or a mouthful.

Glaum - Groping, reaching ineffectually, either because of blindness or the dark.

Glock - A gulp.

Grapus - 'A name for the devil, or for a hobgoblin.'

Hadderdecash - 'In a disorderly state, topsy-turvy.'

Heeliegoleerie - 'Topsy-turvy, in a state of confusion.'

Kebbie-Lebbie - 'To carry on altercation.'

Kelties - Children. 

Nae Coudy - While couthy survives as a term meaning something like comfortable, with a negative attached it had the meaning in Angus of, 'Anything accounted ominous of evil, or of approaching death, is said to be no coudy.  The term is also applied to a dreary place, which fancy might suppose to be haunted.'

Tracking Down the Spaewife - Dundee's Last Witch?

It's been over two years since I wrote anything substantial about witches, though it's a subject I knew I would return to.  That post was called A Last Look at Witches, though I want to pick up the thread of another article (The Later Witches) which was published even further back.  In that piece I wrote the following about a woman in Victorian Dundee who had the reputation as a witch and pursued  fortune telling as a profession:

One of the last Angus spae-wives was Spunk Janet, who lived in Cathro's Close, off the Murraygate in Dundee, in the middle of the 19th century. Her customers were chiefly 'old maids, wanton widows, and impatient lassies'. She charged half a crown for supernatural advice. One client was a love sick girl who asked Janet to cure her of her love for a particular man. Janet advised her to go to a certain well each morning at dawn for a week and immerse her feet in water. The repeated exercise would soon make her forget her swain. A maid who entered Janet's house once found her sitting as usual in an old armchair with a black pipe stuck into her mouth. 'Janet, I want my fortune,' she said. But Janet didn't answer - she was stone dead.

   Who was Janet in 'real life'?  I admit that I have drawn a blank about discovering her true identity.  However, there is a poem by Robert Leighton which tells of a fictional transaction between Janet and a love-lorn client, which I reproduce in full at the bottom of this piece.  Dundonian Leighton was born is 1822 and the poem about Janet, together with many other compositions was first printed in the magazine of the Dundee Literary Institute before being collected in book form.  He died in Liverpool in 1869, at the age of 47, leaving behind a wife and five children.  

   The same verse is included in the book Dundee Worthies (published by David Winter in Dundee in 1934, pp. 109-10). This is prefaced by a version of the tale above, where we are told that Janet's last client came from 'Pill Row,' another name for South Tay Street. 

   Is there a clue perhaps in Janet's nickname?  One of the older meanings of spunk, according to the Concise Scots Dictionary, is 'a hot-tempered, irascible person', which is perhaps fitting for someone in her profession, who perhaps used fear and superstition to enforce her supposed powers. A further clue comes in an article in the Edinburgh Magazine, or Literary Miscellany, February 1818 (volume 2, pp. 116-17) which relates the evil reputation of a local witch some decades earlier.  Could this woman, called either Jean or Janet be Spunk Janet? It is possible, especially if Leighton was writing not about a contemporary, but a notorious local character alive in Dundee around the time of his own birth:

Janet Kindy, otherwise Hurkle Jean, is poor, old, and deformed; her evil eye is so dreaded in this neighbourhood that the sickness of children and cattle is often attributed to it, and if she happen to cross a fisherman’s path as he goes to his boat, the fishing is invariably spoiled for that day... Six years ago, a boat having been for some months unfortunate in fishing, a council of war was held among the elder fishers, and it was agreed that the boat should be exorcised, and that Janet was the spirit which tormented it. Accordingly, the ceremony of exorcism was performed as follows. In each boat there is a cavity called the tap-hole; on this occasion the hollow was filled with a particular kind of water, furnished by the mistress of the boat, a straw effigy of poor Jane was placed over it, and had they dared to touch her life, Janet herself would have been there. The boat was then rowed out to sea before sunrise, and, to use the technical expression, the figure was burnt between the sun and the sky, i.e. after daylight appeared, but before the sun rose above the horizon, while the master called aloud ‘Avoid ye Satan!’. The boat was then brought home, and since that time has been fortunate as any...

   Are we any closer to establishing an identity, or a link?  Unfortunately not. Resorting to the Concise Scots Dictionary again, we find that 'hurkle' is defined as  'crouched' and the like, while 'hurkle backit' meant someone with a hump.  At least we know that poor Janet was real, even if her true identity eludes me at the moment.

Spunk Janet's Cure for Love

I've vow'd to forget him again and again;
But vows are as licht as the air is, I trow;
For something within me aye comes wi' a sten',
And dunts on my heart till I gi'e up the vow.

I gaed to Spunk Janet, the spaewife, yestreen —
I've often heard folk o' her wisdom approve: —
Quoth she, " It's your fortune you're wantin', I ween? " —
" Na! Janet, " quoth I, " will ye cure me o' love? "

" I'll try it, " quoth she; " say awa' wi' your tale,
And tell me the outs and the ins o' it a';
Does love mak' ye lichtsome', or does't mak' ye wail?
Ye see, lass, I ken it does ane o' thae twa. "

" Aweel, then, to tell you the truth o' it, Janet,
There's sometimes I'm clean overflown' wi' glee,
And ither times, woman, I'm no fit to stan' it, —
Ye'd think I wad greet out the sicht o' my ee. "

" But then there's the laddie, I never can get him,
And here am I ready and willin' to pay,
Gin ye'll play some cantrip to mak' me forget him —
The thochts o' him deave me by nicht and by day. "

" Ill e'en try my skill on't, " quoth Janet, " I shall, —
The cost o' my coonsel is but half-a-croon, —
Hooever, i' the first place, ye ken the Witch-walle,
That bonnie clear spring at the end o' the toon:

" When the sun frae his bed is beginnin' to teet,
Gang ye ilka mornin', blaw weet or blaw wind,
And sit by the wallie and dip in your feet,
Withoot e'er a thocht o' the lad in your mind.

" Do this for a week, and the cure will be wrocht —
But, mind ye, tak' care o' what comes in your head!
If e'er it should chance that the lad be your thocht,
Like mist o' the mornin' the cantrip will fade! "

Thus ended Spunk Janet: I paid her the fee;
And by her directions I promised to bide:
To-morrow the cantrip begins, I maun be,
By the first peep o' day, at the Witch-wallie's side.

The cauld o' the water I weel may endure;
But then, there's the thocht , it's the warst o' it a':
For if ower the thochts o' my mind I had pow'r,
I wadna ha'e needed Spunk Janet ava!

Previous Posts on Witchcraft

A Last Look at Witches

Grissell Jaffray, Last Dundee Witchcraft Execution

Early Records of Witchcraft

Kirriemuir's Strange Tale of Witchcraft

Witchcraft in Brechin

The Forfar Witches

Witches of Angus - A Sampler