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).

An Honorary Son of Angus - Peter F Anson

 Too few people know about the life and work of Peter F. Anson (1889-1975). He was a man of many parts, and his biography has a description that few other modern men could match: monk, writer, artist. Although born in the south of England, Anson's mother (who died when he was fourteen) was a native of Mull and was profoundly patriotic and nationalistic. Anson came to live in Scotland in the 1930s and was acquainted with nationalistic minded writers such as Neil M. Gunn and Compton Mackenzie. Earlier in his life he had been an Anglican Benedictine monk on the Welsh island of Caldey before converting to Catholicism. Among his many achievements was writing some forty books, many on different aspects of the sea, fishing and religion. 

   One feature of Anson's life, almost a correlary to his intense spiritual nature, was his physical restlessness, which continued through his middle and old age. Moving to the south of England in 1952, he upped sticks again and settled in Macduff, where he managed to stay until 1958. Then he decamped for a cottage near Ramsgate Abbey. This again did not suit him and he headed north in 1960, choosing a residence in Portsoy, near Macduff. This too was a brief stay and he came to stay in Montrose, and then nearby in Ferryden. He moved to 1 King Street, Ferryden, in 1963 and shifted to 3 King Street in 1965. There was a connection with his family here: one of the house's feu charters had been signed by his maternal great-grandfather in 1841. He regarded it as a kind of homecoming. His maternal great-great grandfather was Hercules Ross, who built Rossie Castle near Montrose. 

   These were years of extraordinary creativity for Anson. As well as working on a panorama of Scottish fishing he authored numerous books. Fisher Folk-Lore (1965), contains some interesting material regarding his adopted home of Ferryden and other Scottish material. Also interesting, from an Angus viewpoint, is his 1970 book Underground Catholicism in Scotland, 1622-1878 (a revised edition of his 1937 publication The Catholic Church in Modern Scotland).

   After he left Angus, Anson lived in both the monastery on Caldey Island and in Sancta Maria Abbey in East Lothian. He died in 1975. Those who wish to view his art can visit the Buckie Maritime Museum, recipient of 400 of his watercolours which Anson donated in 1971.

Further Information

 

Anson Collection, Falconer Museum, Forres

Life of Peter F. Anson at Scanlan.co.uk

Peter Anson – Artist, Writer And Sometime Priest/

Chris Loughran, Peter Anson and a Horse-Drawn Caravan

Michael Yelton, Peter Anson: Monk, Writer and Artist, An Introduction to His Life and Work, The Anglo-Catholic History Society, London, 2005.

More On Haunted Ethie Castle

   It is surprising how stories of the same old ghosts are doomed to haunt the pages of anthologies about haunted places, and this seems to be one aspect of their eternal doom: being allowed no rest, but trudging endlessly through the plagirised (or highly derivitive) pages of yet another weakly researched book about the 'Haunted Places of Scotland' or the like. The sources I have used below offer rather more on the subject of Ethie thankfully.

  Ethie Castle near Arbroath is said to have at least three ghosts: a ghostly child, Cardinal David Beaton, and a rather more anonymous Green Lady. I wrote previously about the hauntings in the blog piece Cardinal Beaton's Ghost and Other Castle Ghosts  The Green Lady is possibly the most intriguing of the big three haunters of the building. She was said to have made a regular appearance which presaged a death of the family of the Carnegie Earls of Northesk who inhabited the old house until the early decades of the 20th century. Nobody knows who she was, an if there is a tale which gives her an identify, I have not discovered it. Many castles have Green Ladies, and this one has the reputation of having a slightly different appearace on each sighting. She can be compared with the Green Lady of Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, who forecasted the death of a member of the resident Gordon family when she was seen by one of them. 

   The ghost of Cardinal Beaton, who died in 1546, is an exceptionally long-lasting presence in the building, outstripping the other residual spirits which faced away in the 20th century or even earlier. More often heard rather than seen, Beaton is identified by his lame leg. During his lifetime he is said to have suffered badly from gout.  A housekeeper named 'Old Fyvie' was said to have barricaded herself in her bedroom whenever she heard the tell-tale sound of the long-gone prelate approaching. One of the earlist written accounts came in a history of the Carnegie family published in 1867

The haunted room, which is in one of the attics, has long been unoccupied. It is always kept locked, and few have been privileged to enter it. By the kinddness of Lord Northesk, the writer was allowed to explore this mysterious apartment. He found a veritable trace of the Cardinal in the form of a large oak cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room.

A mansion-house of such antiquity as that of Ethie, and possessing so many historical associations comlected especially with a character so celebrated as Cardinal Betoun, could not fail, bke other old castles, to gather around it many singular traditions, which have passed down from one generation to another, and which even at the present day are articles of faith at Ethie. As a specimen, it may be mentioned that it is still reported, as an indisputable fact, that at a certain hour of the night, a sound is heard resembling the tramp of a foot, which is believed to be the Cardinal's, and is popularly called his leg, walking very deliberately up and down the original stone stair, which still connects the ground flat with the second storey of the house. The haunted room, which is in one of the attics, has long been unoccupied. It is always kept locked, and few have been privileged to enter it. By the Idndness of Lord Northesk, the writer was allowed to explore this mysterious apartment. He found a veritable trace of the Cardinal in the form of a large oak cabinet, the only article of furniture in the room.

   A strange flickering light and unexplained noises, reputedly the cardinal moving about, were experienced by someone staying in the castle in the 1960s or 1970s, according to Forbes Inglis.

   In Confessions of A Ghost Hunter (1928), Elliott O' Donnell recounts the haunting of a castle 'overlooking Lunan Bay' which must be Ethie. Friends took the author to view the castle, which was then undergoing building repairs and renovation. Asked whether they had ever noticed anything strange about the place, the workmen stated that they often heard things but had only once seen anything. 

'It was last week,' he said,  'Thursday afternoon, 'about half-past four. Three of us, Jock, Ned and

myself, were doing some repairs on one of the spiral stone staircases here, when we suddenly heard a curious sound. We had all heard the castle was said to be haunted by a phantom leg, supposed to be Cardinal Beaton's wooden leg, but we had only laughed at the idea. Now, however, the noise we heard was so much like the tapping sound of a wooden leg, that we all stopped our work and looked at one another. Tap, tap, tap, down the stairs it came, until it sounded close to us, and then, suddenly, coming round the bend of the stairs, we saw an eerie blue light coming towards us. It was coming up the stairs at a fairly rapid pace, and it took us so much by surprise that we sprang back against the wall as if we'd been shot, and remained there, still as death, until it had passed us and was out of sight. I can laugh now as I think of the expression on the faces of my mates, they looked so scared, but I didn't laugh then, I can tell you! I was just as badly scared as they were.'

   'Some of the other men working there heard the tapping too, and when we spoke about it to the 

servants at the castle, next day, they only said, "You needn't be at all afraid; what you heard and 

saw we often hear and see in the same place, and it's quite harmless. It must be the ghost of Cardinal Beaton, for the sound is exactly like the tapping of a wooden leg." '

   O'Donnell also tells this story in his book Rooms of Mystery.

   The mystery of the haunted child is quite insoluble, but at least we have a general origin story for the haunting, even if it names no guilty names. In 1896, Horace Pym had the following story direct from the Carnegie family who then owned the castle:

Many years ago, it is said that a lady in the castle destroyed her young child in one of the rooms, which afterwards bore the stigma of the association. Eventually the room was closed, the door screwed up, and heavy wooden shutters were fastened outside the windows. But those who occupied the rooms above and below this gruesome chamber would often hear, in the watches of the night, the pattering of little feet over the floor, and the sound of the little wheels of a child's cart being dragged to and fro; a peculiarity connected with this sound being, that one wheel creaked and chirruped as it moved. Years rolled by, and the room continued to bear its sinister character until the late Lord Northesk succeeded to the property, when he very wisely determined to bring, if possible, the legend to an end, and probe the ghostly story to its truthful or fictitious base.

   Consequently he had the outside window shutters removed, and the heavy wall-door unscrewed, and then, with some members of his family present, ordered the door to be forced back. When the room was open and birds began to sing, it proved to be quite destitute of furniture or ornament. It had a bare hearth-stone, on which some grey ashes still rested, and by the side of the hearth was a child's little wooden go-cart on four solid wooden wheels!

   Turning to his daughter, my lord asked her to wheel the little carriage across the floor of the room. When she did so, it was with a strange sense of something uncanny that the listeners heard one wheel creak and chirrup as it ran!

   Since then the baby footsteps have ceased, and the room is once more devoted to ordinary uses, but the ghostly little go-cart still rests at Ethie for the curious to see and to handle. Many friends and neighbours yet live who testify to having heard the patter of the feet and the creak of he little wheel in former days, when the room was a haunted reality...

   The story was too good to die however. In 1928, the castle passed from the Carnegies to a gentleman named Cunningham-Hector. A story says that his child's nanny, around 1930, heard the sound of an unknown infact crying, accompanied by the sound of a push along child's cart. The remains of a child's cart were found in a bricked up place in the castle, then laid to rest, after which the haunting sounds were no more heard (accoridng to Forbes Inglis). Something of the same gist was retold by Peter Underwood, with the additional information that a set of pathetically small bones were found alongside the remains of the toy cart.

   Those interested in reading about Beaton's mistress can consult the previous post Marion Ogilvy: Lady of Three Castles

Some Sources

William Fraser, History of the Carnegies, Earls of Northesk, and of Their Kindred (Edinburgh, 1867)

Elliott O'Donnell, Confessions of A Ghost Hunter (London, 1928)

Elliott O' Donnell, Rooms of Mystery (London, 1931)

Forbes Inglis, Phantoms and Fairies: Tales of the Supernatural in Angus and Dundee (Brechin, 2010)

Horace N. Pym, Chats in The Book-Room (London, 1896)

Underwood, Peter, A Gazeteer of Scottish Ghosts, London, 1974