Big Cats Roaming Wild in Angus

From the world of cryptozoology comes a report of strange and unidentified Big Cats roaming the prairies and fields of Angus, according to the 'Courier' newspaper:


http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/angus-the-mearns/fresh-big-cat-sighting-near-edzell-1.70596


  Mysterious large cat beasts have of course been reported from all parts of Great Britain and beyond for many decades, perhaps most famously roaming the moors of Devon and Cornwall.  It is interesting to speculate whether these are actual animals, escapees from people's imaginations or merely rumours transferred into shadows mistaken for flesh and blood.
  Whatever the Big Cats are, there are few traces of them in 'traditional' written folklore down the ages.  But no need to be sniffy about these newcomers. According to the newspaper report there have been sightings of these creatures near Edzell and other northern areas of Angus for several decades.  Approach with caution!

                                     


                                        

The Earliest Legends of Glamis

Mention the name Glamis to followers of Scottish ghost stories or folklore and they will probably conjure up memories of the 'Monster of Glamis', the hidden secret of the owners of the castle, which has been popularised in umpteen books (of varying credibility) from the mid-19th century onwards.  The story, with its hints of scandalous conspiracy and melodrama, is absolutely the product of its times: the Victorians loved nothing more than romantic and gothic intrigue.  But there is more to Glamis that this tale and the boast that it is one of Scotland's most haunted sites. 
   The history of the 'Monster' will be dealt with in future entries, but in the meantime it's worth asking whether there is anything in the actual site or location of Glamis that somehow made it a place where strange things could thrive.  Glamis may have been an important, if not an unusual place long before Glamis Castle was built.  The earliest reputed resident at Glamis was the 8th century Irish saint Fergus.  He came to live in a cave beside the Dean Water here and 'consecrated a tabernacle to the God of Jacob'.  When he died his head was severed in Celtic pagan fashion and carried away to a monastery at Scone.  St Fergus seems to have been a contemporary of the equally elusive St Donald of nearby Glen Ogilvy in the Sidlaw Hills.
   A small group of Class II Pictish symbol stones testify to the importance of Glamis as an early Christian site.  A few centuries after St Fergus the Scottish kings are said to have maintained a hunting lodge here.  The wooded hill just south of the village is still called Hunter's Hill, though its alternative name of Fierypans (or Fierytops) may recall a time when great ritual fires once blazed on its summit.
   Glamis Castle itself was originally planned to be built on Hunter's Hill.  But every morning the builders arrived they found the foundation stones scattered and broken.  A nightly watch was set and out of the darkness one evening came this mysterious pronouncement:

                                    Build not on this enchanted spot,
                                    where man hath neither part nor lot,
                                    but build it down in yonder bog,
                                    and it will neither shake nor shog.

   The castle was accordingly shifted to its present site, away from the domain of the supernatural beings on the hill.

Centaur from Glamis Pictish stone.

   Several early records state that King Malcolm II (1004-1034) met his death at Glamis, but they disagree about the manner of his death.  The Chronicle of Melrose vaguely speaks of 'a shameful death...underfoot', after the monarch was defeated by enemies in battle.  Another source insists that Malcolm was murdered by 'parricides', the his main opponent - termed the 'Aggressor' - was also slain.  Local opinion once stated that the king fought his last battle on Hunter's Hill, beside the King's Well.  Other sources hint at a dynastic dispute.  The chronicler John of Fordun said that King Malcolm was waylaid at midnight by followers of nobles he had executed.  The bandits were slaughtered, but Malcolm died from a haemorrhage three days later.

   There is a chamber in Glamis Castle named King Malcolm's Room, which is reputed to stand on the site of the hunting lodge where he perished.  A usefully indicative and indelible bloodstain marked the floor of the room until a squeamish owner of the castle boarded it over.  Andrew of Wyntoun, writing in 1406, writes that the king was assassinated because he had 'rewyist [ravished] a fair May of the land there lyand by'.  But, like other authorities, he gives the impression that he did not know the exact cause of Malcolm's death.

   In the manse garden at Glamis is King Malcolm's Stone, a Pictish slab predating the king by several centuries.  On the cross side are carved scenes which were once believed to be symbolic of the murder.  An unidentified beast, resembling a lion, and a centaur signified 'the shocking barbarity of the crime'.  Two fighting men were 'forming the bloody conspiracy'.  A fish on the other side represented Forfar Loch, 'in which, by missing their way, the assassins were drowned', apparently after falling through thin ice at night. 
   These traditions were recorded in 1783 by the minister of Glamis.  He also noted St Orland's Stone nearby at Cossans.  On each side of this monolith are striking water monsters.  One side shows four horsemen, which the minister said were 'officers of justice pursuing the killers'.  There is also a boat containing six people and a bull being attacked by a serpent.  Excavations in the 19th century revealed five crouched burials at the base of this stone.
   John Bellenden, translating Hector Boece's 16th century Latin version, continues the story: ;Nocht long eftir, they wer drawn out of the loch with creparis, and their quarteris hung up in sindry townis of Scotland in punition of their crueltie'.
   Malcolm's burial site is also a matter of dispute.  Fordun says he was buried on Iona, though a Pictish stone on Hunter's Hill, once surrounded by a cairn, was named King Malcolm's Grave.  The Welsh traveller Thomas Pennant, who visited Glamis in 1789, heard that when the castle was modified in 1686 a great round tower was built in an angle to retain a spiral staircase down which the royal corpse was thrown.  But who would have wanted to keep that sinister element in their house?
   The story of the king's death is too convoluted and distant to disentangle.  Was there the suggestion of a pagan sacrificial element to his end and in the ritual drowning of his killers.  Perhaps not, but the waters around Glamis are sinister and lethal.  The Dean Water, connecting Forfar Loch and Glamis, was known to be dowie or 'doleful', a characteristic acquired from its demand for human sacrifice:

                                    Dowie, dowie, dowie Dean,
                                    ilka seven years ye get eene [one].

   An alternative version runs:

                                     The Dowie Dean, its runs its leane [alone]
                                     and every seven years it gets eene.

   A third rhyme has the Dean taking one life and leaving one life every seven years.  Salt was once cast into the burn to placate its angry spirits.

   Macbeth is another king associated with the castle, though the link appears to be entirely unhistorical.  There are a string of Macbeth traditions running along the northern side of the Sidlaws.  But the ghost of Macbeth, once resident at Glamis, has not been glimpsed for many years.

                                                  

King Malcolm's Stone

                                                   

                                 

The Battle of Nechtansmere

One of the most famous battles in Angus was not recognised as taking place in Angus until George Chalmers published his book Caledonia in the early 19th century.  The battle was Nechtansmere, the English name for an encounter between the rampant Northumbrian kingdom and the embattled southern Picts.  Almost uniquely for a battle of this period, there are alternative names for the fight.  The Britons called the place of conflict Lin Garan, the 'Pool of Herons', a name that may reflect the original Pictish place-name.  The Anglo-Saxon alternative helps place the fight at Dunnichen, but raises questions as to who the original Nechtan was - there are several recorded Pictish rulers with this name.  Modern writers style it the Battle of Dunnichen and more or less agree that it was fought in the marshy shadows beneath Dunnichen Hill.

    The background of the battle was the patchwork, fluctuating ethnic and political map of northern Britain.  The Irish Gaels of Dal Riata were not in the ascendant and the Picts had been hemmed in at their southern borders by the Northumbrians, who had themselves pinned back the Britons of Strathclyde and ruled British Gododdin for nearly half a century.  The ferocious warrior king Ecgfrith of Northumbria had terrorised his neighbours, even to the extent of ravaging the eastern coast of Ireland (possibly pursuing exiled British warriors from Galloway).  This latter act earned him the hatred of the Irish monks of Brega, who prayed for the Pictish king who rose up to face him, Brudei son of Bili.  The meaning of the surviving verse attributed to a monk of Bangor is extremely allusive, but full of dark hints that the monks cursed the Northumbrian.  The words celebrate the 'green swords' of the Picts and praise the Pictish war leader.  There is also a strange hint that the English king drank 'black draughts' - a reference possibly to poisoning or a sarcastic reference to the fact that he perished in the murky swap waters of Pictland?

Aberlemno Pictish stone:  a commemoration of the battle?

  The Northumbrians overran much of southern Pictland in 658 and swiftly crushed a native rebellion in 672.  Ecgfrith came north in pursuit of the new Pictish leader Brudei, a native Briton whose father was the king of Strathclyde.  The great St Cuthbert and others in Northumbria were against the campaign because supernatural omens predicted disaster.  In that year in Northumbria butter and milk was tainted with the colour of blood and throughout Britain there were reports of red coloured rain showers.  Even as the war band probably pursued a band of Pictish cavalry north across the Forth on Saturday, 20th May, the monks of Brega were aware of the impending battle, hearing the news on the early medieval grapevine.  Their prayers and curses went along with the opposing armies.

Dunnichen Pictish stone.

  The English army may have been lured up Strathearn by their 'fleeing' enemies, then went deeper and deeper into enemy territory, crossing the Tay and travelling east along Strathmore.  They may have followed the Pictish men through a cleft in Dunnichen Hill and found themselves trapped in marshy ground by the pool or mere.  Behind them a great army poured out of the previously unseen hill fort on the southern slope of the hill.  Ecgfrith and his bodyguard were cut to pieces; most of the few English survivors were enslaved.  The dreadful slaughter was witnessed far off in England.  St Wilfred of York, an old opponent of Ecgfrith, was on his knees in a Sussex church on the afternoon of the battle.  Suddenly he had a vision of the king's decapitated corpse falling forwards.  Just before the body hit the ground, two demons grasped Ecgfrith's soul and carried it off to hell, moaning dreadfully on its final journey.  Did Wilfred smile at the vision of death, along with the monks in Brega?

   The psychic panorama of the military disaster was seen in a third place.  On the same day, gentle St Cuthbert was indulging in antiquarian examination of the Roman remains in Carlisle.  When he suddenly became silent his companions asked him the reason and he told them that he had certain knowledge that the Northumbrian army had been defeated.

   The battle certainly led to the liberation of much of Pictland and to the gradual waning of the northern English empire.  The Pictish victory of Dunnichen was celebrated by the erection of the famous cross slab at Aberlemno, several miles to the north.  It shows helmeted Picts on horse back chasing the enemy cavalry, and native soldiers on foot, armed with swords and shields.  One Northumbrian trooper is seen being attacked by a goose, a bird with some of the Celts associated with violent death.

   A surprising, delayed 'vision' of the battle, or of its aftermath occurred in the 20th century.  Late on the night of 2nd January, 1950, Miss E. F. Smith was walking home to Letham after her car broke down.  She felt oddly nervous as she walked along the minor road west of the A932, then she saw a number of strange lights in the distance near Dunnichen Hill.  Turning south towards the village, she noticed figure in the field to her right, part of Drummietermont Farm.  Each figure carried a flaming red torch in its left hand and they seemed to be searching the ground for something.
   Miss Smith then saw shapes on the ground exactly like dead bodies.  The figure nearest to her stooped down and examined several of these 'corpses', turning them over and back again, as if looking for recognisable faces.  This scene lasted for around ten minutes, with Miss Smith's dog barking throughout.  Eventually she simply walked away.  She only realised that the whole event was peculiar when she woke up next day and thought about it.  Later she gave details of the experience to the Society for Psychical Research.  She reported that the searchers wore garb like body stockings, along with tunics and flattened oval helmets.  They appeared to be moving around the edge of the vanished mere, the shape of which was later traced by archaeological investigation.
   Although this post battle manifestation has not been repeated. some motorists passing through Dunnichen on misty nights have caught sight of fleeting human forms which vanish before their cars hit them.

   

Dunnichen Hill

The Phantom Drummer of Cortachy

One of the most famous hauntings recorded in Angus also involved one of the most ancient families of the area, the Ogilvys who inhabited the castles of Cortachy and Airlie, among others.  The alleged haunting came to prominence when it was included in Catherine Crowe's best-selling compendium of 'true' supernatural tales The Night Side of Nature (1848).  Mrs Crowe states that a visitor named Margaret Dalrymple stayed for several days at Cortachy in 1845.  While dressing for dinner on the first night she heard faint sound, like fifes playing, then a loud drum beat beneath her window.  During dinner she asked the Earl of Airlie, 'My lord, who is your drummer?'

   The earl turned pale and the countess looked upset, while the rest of the company appeared extremely embarrassed.  Another guest later informed her that the Drummer was 'a person who goes about the house playing his drum whenever there is a death in the family.  The last time he was heard was shortly before the death of the last Countess, the earl's former wife...The drummer boy is a very unpleasant subject here, I assure you.'

   Ann Day, Miss Dalrymple's maid, had her own uncanny experience the next morning her employer was at breakfast.  She heard a carriage draw up to the castle, followed by the distant sound of music and marching feet which gradually grew louder.  She saw nothing when she went to the window and peered out.  Worse was to come.  She heard a drum beating, first outside and then inside the house.  The sound came closer and closer, only stopping when it was directly outside her room.  She was scared and perplexed by the incident; allegedly she had not heard the Drummer the previous day and claimed that she knew nothing about the legend.

   Miss Dalrymple heard the Drummer a second time the following day.  She left the castle the same morning.  Five of six months later the Countess of Airlie passed away at Brighton. Among her papers was a note which stated that she was sure that the Drum had sounded for her.

   The origin of the haunting was also detailed in The Night Side of Nature.  A young drummer at Cortachy Castle had incurred the wrath of a former Lord Airlie by trying to woo his wife.  Ogilvy angrily thrust the man through his own drum and hurled him from a window in the tower.  Before the man died he cursed the Ogilvys of Airlie and Cortachy forever.  The murder happened in the room which Miss Dalrymple later occupied.  Local tradition says that the Drummer was  the servant of a neighbouring laird who was constantly feuding with Ogilvy.  He arrived with a message from his master which so enraged Lord Airlie that he killed the man in the manner previously described.  Yet another version maintains that the Drummer was the outcast brother of Lord Airlie's wife.

   In 1849, the Drummer was heard before the death of the 7th earl.  A young Englishman was travelling up Glen Isla to join a shooting party at the Ogilvy property of Tulchan Lodge.  Around half past eight in the evening, as he neared Tulchan, he became aware of a faint strain of fifes and drums.  He asked the gillie travelling with him if he heard anything, but was told he did not, but the man told him it was 'uncanny to hear such things'.  When they reached the lodge they discovered that Lord Ogilvy had left to travel to London to see his seriously ill father.  The Earl of Airlie died the next day.

   The next account came from Lady Mary Cameron of Lochiel, daughter of the 5th Duke of Buccleuch.  one evening in 1881 at Achnacarry House in the Highlands she left her two friends along for a few minutes in a room.  When she returned they were strangely silent.  Two days later Lady Dalkeith asked her if there were any traditions of strange sounds in the family.  Lady Cameron said there were no tales and Lady Dalkeith informed her that, while she had been out of the room, she and Lady Skelmersdale had heard a drum beating outside.  She only mentioned it now because that day's newspaper carried a report that the 8th Earl of Airlie had died in Denver, Colorado, on the 25th September.  They calculated the time difference and discovered that the Drummer had been heard around an hour fore the earl's death.

   But why had the ghostly Drummer been heard at the home of the Camerons in Inverness-shire?  Old Mrs Maclean of Ardgour supplied a fourth identity for the ghost:

                       Because the Drummer was a Cameron, and that the Ogilvys, thinking
                       he had betrayed them (to the Earl of Argyll), left him to perish when
                       Airlie Castle was burnt.  The Drummer was said to have climbed to
                       the top of the Tower and to have continued to play the signal of alarm
                       till he was overwhelmed by the flames and protesting his innocence;
                       since that time he is supposed always to have been heard before the
                       death of any of the family of the House of Airlie.

   The background to this tale was the Wars of the Covenant in the 17th century.  James, 7th Lord Ogilvy (who became the first Earl of Airlie in 1639) was a staunch royalist and enemy of the Presbyterian Covenanters.  One of his particular foes was the Campbell clan, headed by the 8th Earl of Argyll.  In 1639 Argyll had ordered the earl of Montrose to take and destroy Airlie Castle.  But Airlie's son Lord Ogilvy, a friend and cousin of Montrose, refused to surrender the house and Montrose retreated, giving the excuse that he had insufficient men to capture the castle.

   But on 12th June, 1640, Argyll himself received a commission of fire and sword to march into Ogilvy lands.  He arrived at Airlie on the 7th July with some five thousand men.  Airlie was with the king in England.  The house was occupied by Lord Airlie, his heavily pregnant wife and their children.  Ogilvy escaped up the glen to Forter Castle and warned his mother about the raiders.  Argyll dispatched a party to look for him at Iverquharity Castle, while another group wasted the lands of Lintrathen and drove off the cattle.  Nearby Craig House, home of another of Airlie's cousins, was raided, but there was only a gentlewoman there, along with her servants.

   With the fall of Airlie inevitable, Lady Ogilvy escaped south across the River Isla, going first to Dundee, then to Kinblethmont House, where her daughter Marion was born a few days later.  Both Airlie and Forter castles were destroyed by Argyll.  The attack was commemorated in the famous, if inaccurate, ballad 'The Bonnie House o' Airlie':

                      Lady Ogilvy looked frae her high castle wa',
                      An' oh, but she sighed sairly,
                      To see Argyll an' a' his men
                      Come to plunder the bonnie hoose o' Airlie...

   The phantom Drummer sounded again in 1884, before the death of the Countess of Airlie.  It was also apparently heard in 1900 when David, the 9th earl, died in the Boer War, at Diamond Hill in South Africa.  One Sunday a British officer in camp heard a military band playing.  This was forbidden at Bloemfontain, so the officer complained.  But he was told that there was no band in the camp.  Music was also heard in the sergeants' mess.  This happened shortly before the earl's death.
   But the Drummer seems to have retired at the start of the 20th century.  A visitor to the turret room at Cortachy in that century saw the drum, describing it as being in two pieces, without any parchment.

   It is tempting to dismiss the story of the Drummer as a melodramatic, literary invention of the Victorian era, and indeed it seems to have affinities with the heavily stylised tale of the Monster of Glamis castle, only a few miles away, was also being written about in the late 19th century.  Certainly there are other phantom drummers in Britain, and various other death warnings associated with various families.
   But could it be that there warnings are descended from memories of banshee traditions linked to certain ancient kindreds?  The Ogilvy family was an offshoot of the original Celtic Earls of Angus, whose own origins may have been a hybridisation of Pictish and Gaelic nobility.  There were other omens associated with the family.  When a ram appeared in the Den of Airlie it meant a death in the family.  There is no story explaining this.  Another portend was when a certain stone in the river South Esk, near Cortachy kirk, was submerged under water; again this signified an Ogilvy fatality.  When an Ogilvy baby was due its sex could be determined by observing which was the water flowed around this oracular stone.  The stone is said to have come from the top of Tulloch Hill (where there is now a monument to the 9th Earl of Airlie).  Here the Devil once stood and flung a boulder at the minister of Cortachy kirk, who was slandering him too volubly.  The stone fell short and landed in the river. 
   The Den of Airlie is haunted ground.  a nameless 'thing' prowls the banks of the Melgam Water here at a certain time of night, always sensed and never seen.  Here also is an odd, crooked tree which no animal will ever approach.  It has saw marks upon it, but whoever decided to attack it changed his mind halfway through or was made to do so.

Melgund Castle

Melgund Castle, near Aberlemno, was for a long time a roofless ruin, but was happily restored in the latter part of the 20th century.  Although it is a 16th century building, tradition says it was home in the mid 15th century to Sir David Lindsay.  One night in the year 1450 a castle watchman on the battlements was astonished to see a hearse draw up to the castle gates.  It was drawn by four coal black horses and behind it followed a procession of armoured knights and vassals.  At the moment this apparition appeared, Sir David became suddenly ill within the castle.  Knowing he was dying, he called for a priest, which surprised his wife and daughter because he had always mocked religion.  But a priest was summoned and heard the knight's confession.

   Sir David admitted that he had led a wastrel's life after his father died.  His greatest sin was killing his mistress Isadora and their young daughter fifty years before.  More recently he had been visited by Isadora's ghost.  After relating this, Sir David died.  Meanwhile the watchman reported his vision to his wife.  She told him of an unusual dream she had.  A lady and a new born child came into a room.  She drank from a cup and fell down dead.  Behind her stood a knight, whose face lit up with a fiendish smile of triumph.  Six day's later, when Lindsay's corpse was taken to the family vault at Finavon castle for burial, the cortege was identical with the vision seen by the watchman.

   Melgund was actually built around 1560 by David Bethune, a kinsman of Cardinal Beaton.  It was said that the castle was originally going to be sited on Angus Hill, north-west of the present building.  But the walls of this original construction were demolished each night by an unseen force.  When a watch was kept a strange voice was heard:

                                    Build it in a bog,
                                    whare 'twill neither shake nor shog.

   The castle was therefore moved to its present site.  The same theme of fairy warning is attached to Glamis Castle and also to Finavon Castle, where the first, aborted construction is really a hill-fort.

   Melgund Castle collapsed internally several centuries ago, probably due to neglect, but legend gives the building a more sinister end.  Local story (probably first reported by Robert Chambers in his Picture of Scotland (1827) ) says that Melgund - like the castles of Vayne and Edzell - was mysteriously abandoned one winter night.  The lights were left blazing,  all the fires were lit, and a full dinner was spread out on the dining table.  The last laird was named Murray and it was said he vanished because of his gambling debts.  He led his family into a cave beneath the building and they were never seen again.  One reckless Aberlemno man investigated this cave and said that it contained unbelievable wonders, but he never divulged what they were and the cave collapsed soon afterwards.  Happily the castle  is now being peacefully occupied again.

                                                 

Holy Wells in Angus

Corryvannoch Well, on the lower slopes of Mount Keen was once the most renowned healing well in Angus.  Sick children were frequently brought here to drink the water, even in the middle of the night.  In gratitude for their cure patients would leave a scrap of cloth on the bushes beside the well.  At the feast of Beltane locals would visit the place and light great fires to protect their cattle during the coming year.
   St Sinavy's (or Sunny Vie) Well was near Mains Castle, just north of Dundee.  Its name contradicted its reputation, because it was said that the sun never shone here.  This tradition may be linked to the lore attached to other wells which were reputed to be so icily cold that anyone daring to drink from them would immediately die of shock.  The identity of Sinavy is a mystery, though the name may be a garbled form, possibly a corruption of St Ninian.  There are other wells which still exist, having being rediscovered, in some cases lost more than once, whose original characteristics and dedications are long forgotten.  One such well exists in Balmossie Den, near Broughty Ferry. It is known as a 'holy well', but holy to whom?  The well here was revamped in the mid-19th century. Among the wells which have entirely vanished is the Carlin Well, which was in a field near Craigton of Airlie.

   Benvie, in the far south west of the county, was once haunted by a White Lady.  She was the ghost of a local woman who died of the plague and she could not rest in peace because she was buried in un-consecrated ground.  Her form was often seen gliding slowly alongside the Fowlis Burn, weeping as she proceeded.  Her appearances unsettled the Benvie villagers so much that they asked the minister to get rid of her.  Armed with a bible the holy man boldly approached the spirit one night, demanding to know why she haunted the place.  The White Lady told the priest her story and vowed to quit the district if her body was reburied in a corner of the kirkyard.  If this happened she promised that a spring would rise up in the spot of her first burial place.  She was re-interred and the spring did appear; its water cured many people of the plague, as the White Lady said it would.  Her form was never seen again.
   White Ladies are thought by some to date back to Diana, the Great White Goddess.  Other Angus White Ladies haunted the castles of Glamis, Ethie, Careston, and Claypotts, plus the woods of Leuchat in Glen Lethnot.

   Another famous healing well was the Medicine Well in Montrose, which became a fashionable spa in the 18th century.  A well in the churchyard of Logie-Pert was used to treat sores, while a well in nearby Martin's Den was efficacious for scurvy. Kirkden parish had a well which helped reduce swelling in the feet and legs.  In 1652 Auchterhouse kirk session prosecuted a woman for carrying her sick child to a healing well at Beltane.  This well was probably St Anthony's Well, south of Henderson Hill in the Sidlaw Hills.

   Non-healing wells in the county include Queen's Well in Glen Mark, named after a visit by Queen Victoria.  It was originally Tobar na clachan gualaich, the Well of the White Stone. Arbroath had its Silver Well, so called from the proliferation of coins dropped into it.  To the west was the even more exotically named Wormie Hills Well.

   St Bride's Well is on the lands of Templeton, near the border of the parishes of Newtyle and Nevay.  Templeton signifies ownership at one time by the military Knights Templar, but the Celtic dedication to St Bride and the root of the place-name Nevay point to an ancient place of worship.  The parish boundary here was at once time marked by an old, hollow and worm eaten tree called the Templar Tree.  It may be the latter was the later survival of a pagan sacred grove.  Nevay comes from Nemeton, meaning (pre-Christian) 'sacred place'.
                                                      

                                  
                                                              Queen's Well, Glen Mark

Place Rivalries (Part Two) - Kirriemuir V. Forfar

Forfar and Kirriemuir were at loggerheads for may years in a dispute over the ownership of a useless piece of land, Muir Moss, near Ballinshoe.  In the plague year 1645 the poet and historian William Drummond of Hawthornden came to Forfar one evening, but he was refused lodging for fear of the disease.  He travelled on to Kirriemuir and received a warm welcome, despite the lateness of his arrival.  Hearing about the feud with Forfar, he wrote to the latter's provost.  The provost wrongly thought the letter was a judgement on the ownership of Muir Moss sent by the Commission of Estates, so he summoned the whole council and the minister.  Solemnly opening the letter, he found Drummond's message:

                                    The Kirriemurians and the Forfarians
                                    met at Muir Moss,
                                    the Kirriemurians beat the Forfarians
                                    back to the Cross;
                                    sutors ye are, and sutors ye'll be,
                                    fye upon Forfar,
                                    Kirriemuir bears the gree.

   This poem, which seems rather obscure now, recalls a legendary fight between the two towns.  J. M. Barrie included a version of this tulzie in his Auld Licht Idylls (1888), calling it the Battle of Cabbylatch (after the name of a piece of ground near Glamis).  A Kirriemuir man named Tammas Lunan had the misfortune to die in Forfar.  His body was carried to the parish boundary by Forfar men who refused to venture into enemy territory.  A Kirriemuir party came to collect the corpse, but the two sides argued about the precise location of the border.  A battle ensued, the Forfar folk fled and Kirriemuir won the day.

   The towns' quarrel seems to have impoverished Ballinshoe (pronounced Benshie), as this traditional local rhyme demonstrates:

                                     The beggars o Benshie,
                                      the cairds o Lour,
                                      the sutors o Forfar,
                                      the weavers o Kirriemuir.


                                      

                                              J. M. Barrie