Is there something odd about Brechin? No, obviously not. But is there something supernaturally strange about the burgh? Maybe.
I only ask after uncovering the folk tale related below, which features Brechin as the favoured destination of a fairy queen and her hapless mortal abductee. Enjoy the tale for itself. I will be asking questions afterwards.
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| Brechin c. 1833 |
In the book Dunblane Traditions, by John Monteath, first published in 1835, we are given many quaint historical traditions of the south Perthshire town. Also included (and this was a general nineteenth century trend) were picturesque pen portraits of eccentric and amusing characters who formerly inhabited the locality.
The subject of this story was an old tailor nicknamed the Black Laird, who stuck to his old manner of clothing (blue bonnets and hodden grey clothes) long after the nation had moved on. Before the incident we are going to relate, the Laird had suffered an unsolicited encounter with the Devil, but afterwards he was loathe to communicate what had happened. His next supernatural encounter was decribed by Monteath as follows:
The Laird had been at Alloa on a visit to a friend, who accompanied him in the evening so far as Menstry, when, after a parting gill, they separated—the Alloa tailor returning by the way he came, and the Laird by the Brae of Menstry, as the nearest way home. At a green brae, adjacent to the farm-house of Loss, the Laird saw, by the clear moonlight, a vast number of little women in green-gowns collecting ivingle-straes, which they tied in small bunches. The Laird observed them with attention, while he leaned on the beam of a pleuch, which by chance was there, with the sock and coulter in the fur, as it had just been left by the ploughman not an hour before.
When the pigmies had collected about a handful each of the wingle-straes, one of them, a bonny little kimmer, stepped a-side to the Laird, and bade him just do with the pleuch-heam as he would observe her do with the handful of wingle-straes, and he should have a good supper before he went home. The Laird promised obedience, and accordingly, when he saw the Fairy Queen get astride upon her bunch of wingle-straes, he mounted his plough-beam. The Queen then waved her wand, crying, "Brechin to the Brithal," and instantly the whole group. Laird and all, having repeated Brechin to the Brithal, ascended in the air on coursers fleet as the wind, and white as the driven snow.They soon arrived at Brechin, entered the sumptuous apartments by the key-holes, preceded by the Fairy Queen; where, invisible to all the guests, they fared of the very best and savoury viands, and drank of the most delicious and costly wines. Having liberally partaken of everything good at Brechin, the Queen waved her switch and cried out, "Cruinan to the Dance," when presently the whole re-passed the key-holes "like a sough o' wind," and found their coursers below them on the outside, panting
for the dance at Cruinan.Up again they got, high in the air, and were instantly on the wings of the wind, flying to the dance, but just as they had returned to the spot whence they started the Laird, highly elated with the success of the adventure, could not help exclaiming, "Weel done, Watson's auld Pleuch-beam!" which, unfortunately for the Laird, had the effect of undoing the charm, and leaving him astride on the identical auld pleuch-beam, and exactly in the same position he had been previous to the commencement of his flicht to Brechin. The pretty green-coated fairies, at the same time, disappeared, leaving the Laird to plod his way homeward in the best manner he could—a task which, with his good supper and wine, he felt no difficulty in accomplishing.It was of no use hinting to the Laird, when he told this story, that the Menstry gill with the Alloa tailor might possibly have occasioned his jiicht to Brechin during a nap on Watson's auld pleuchheam— and that instead of an old plough he had, in all likelihood, ascended on a gill-stoup. " Na, na," the Laird would reply to any such as ventured to question the truth of his story—" I couldna be mista'en, and ye ken weel aneuch there's mony ane been carried awa' by the fairies, an' never heard o' mair—forbye Davy Rae's wife o' Tullibody, that was seen ridin' on a clud twenty years after she was stown frae her ain man's side, ae Halloween night when he was sleepin'.
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| Brechin c. 1774 |
Leaving aside the veracity of the man's kidnapping, we might first of all wonder where the scene of the abduction was. A prime candidate is the Hill of Airthrey, a notorious fair knowe located to the west of Menstrie. This place features in several other folk tales, including one in which a farmer's wife was kidnapped by the fairies which lived in the hill. He only managed to free her, some time later, when he made a random, odd physical gesture which broke the fairy spell. In another story, a farmer named Davy Rae made a compact with the fairies on the hill to steal away his errant wife.
But why was Brechin the destination for the fairy adventure, I wonder? Is there anything which specially links Dunblane with Brechin. Both of course were centres of early Christianity: Brechin possibly had a Pictish monastery which was replaced with Irish clerics, while Dunblane seems to have been founded as a British ecclesiastic site dedicated to St Blane. The austere order of Culdees may have been prominent in both places before regular Roman priests and monks took over the establishments.
That apart, the matter is a mystery. There may be some special piece of buried lore about the Good People inhabiting the Ancient City of Brechin, but if there is, the tradition is as elusive as the fairies themselves, and I've never heard of it!
