Monastic Settlement in Coupar Angus and Strathmore and "Coupar Justice"

Coupar:  Angus or Perthshire?  The Meaning of the Name

Coupar Angus is not the sort of place which looks like it has a split personality, being to all appearances like a pleasant, douce town sitting in central Strathmore.  Now firmly ensconced in eastern Perthshire, it was not always so.  Until the late 19^th century the parish was split between the ‘Fair land of Gowrie’ in Perthshire and neighbouring Angus.  The county border formerly ran right through the town, marked by a minor waterway. (Since the 1890s it has been wholly contained within Perthshire.)  The Cistercian abbey of Coupar was built on the Angus side of the divide.  These days barely anything now survives of the fabric of this great building which once must have been the most spectacular edifice in the whole broad valley of Strathmore.

   The mysteries of the place are not immense in the scale of things, but quietly intriguing.  First is the meaning of the place-name itself.  We can probably dismiss the suggestion that Coupar's name derives from ‘Coo byre’, as suggested by the Rev Charles Roberts, and his alternative theory that the name could be a corruption of St Cuthbert also seems unlikely.  Also doubtful, to my mind at least, is the suggestion that the name comes from ‘copar’, a Flemish word signifying someone who traded commodities.  Victorian historians Andrew Jervise and Alexander Warden  took the name as being derived from Cul-Bharr, or rear-of-the-ridge.  Yet another suggestion is that the name comes from Gaelic cobhair, meaning sanctuary, and suggesting that there was some kind of religious settlement nearby.

The Early Abbey

  Coupar Angus was a daughter-house of Melrose and the fifth Cistercians house in Scotland, all in the 12^th century. The saintly uncle of the king, Waltheof, the abbot of Melrose Malcolm IV, is reckoned to have been the person who lay behind the decision to erect a new monastery at Coupar Angus.  Although the abbey was founded by King Malcolm the Maiden in 1164 as a house of the Cistercians, could there be a much earlier Christian foundation nearby.  Cistercians often founded their houses in desert places (Novalia, or unbroken ground, as enshrined in the statutes of the order) which was not the case here. The monarchy had a royal manor here. There is also a repeated suggestion that there was a Roman marching camp on the site of the later abbey, but this has never been conclusively proven.

 More interesting if the proximity of the site to the border of the counties of Perthshire (Gowrie district) and Angus – which may well represent the border between ancient Pictish provinces – possibly points towards an earlier Christian settlement.  Borders between kingdoms and regions were sometimes chosen as Christian sites to install spiritual buffer zones between semi-antagonistic neighbours.  More than that, borders were liminal areas where there were fault lines in supernatural as well as temporal power which could be used by religion.  Meigle, to the north east of Coupar is one such place.  I would very tentatively suggest that Kettins to the south-east of Coupar is another.

   King Malcolm granted the White Monks his lands at Coupar. In a charter he later granted the monks coal, and privileges in the royal forests in Glenisla and elsewhere.  Malcolm’s brother King William at a later date extended the abbey’s land ownership in the area, bestowing lands of Aberbothrie and Keitheck, plus two ploughgates of land in the district of Rethrife (Rattray), and the marsh of Blair (Blairgowrie). Later benefactors of land to the abbey included the powerful Hay family, based in the Carse of Gowrie and successive Earls of Atholl. 

   At the start of the 14^th century the abbey controlled more than 8,000 acres.  There was a setback to the material wellbeing of the abbey when King Edward I confiscated the furniture and silver of the institution and possibly also imposed English monks into the settlement.  In the beginning the Cistercians farmed the land themselves, in conjunction with lay brothers who oversaw agricultural work at the abbey’s granges.  But in the 1300s the number of lay brothers ceased and the practice of leasing lands to secular tenants began.  The last record to lay brothers in the records of Coupar Angus is in the year 1305.

      During the previous century there is a record of a lower class of un-free labour tied to the land.  A document of King Alexander II signed on 17 February 1248 empowers the monks of Coupar Angus to recover their fugitive neyfs in Glenisla.  These neyfs or native were natives of any given area who could be bought and sold with the land they lived on, though they were not actually slaves. Their status may have included a poorer class of tenants who leased land.

Kettins

   To the south-east of Coupar, Kettins stands out as a place of some importance, certainly in Pictish times.  There is an inscribed Pictish symbol stone here, now on the north wall of the kirkyard, having been rescued in 1865 from centuries of misuse as a footbridge over the Kettins Burn.  Its citing points to the place being of some importance as a place of secular power in the early medieval era. Clues as to the significance and relatively early date of church activity at Kettins can also be found in the term abthen, which refers to land given over to churches.  There is not an abundant record of these places, but there is a significant number in Angus.  There was the Kirkland of Inverlunan, ‘commonly called abthan’, and also the Kirkland of Old Montrose which had the term attached to it.  In some instances the religious ruler of a territory is designated as ab, so there was Nicholas ab of Monifieth, Maurice ab of Arbirlot. 

   Keittins' ancient church stood on a mound and was designated to St Bridget, both signs (though not infallible signs) that the church was ancient.   The foundation was re-dedicated by David de Bernham, Bishop of St Andrews in 1249.  Half a century earlier there is a charter witness mentioned named Ferbard, capellano de Ketenes.  It was one of six chapels on the area which became subordinate to the Abbey of St Mary at Coupar Angus.  In a charter of about 1292-3, Hugh of Over, Lord of Ketenes, granted ‘his well in his lands and Abthenage of Ketenes, called Bradwell, with its

aqueduct bounded, and servitude of watergage’ to the Abbey of Cupar. Bradwell is a corruption of [St] Bride’s Well.  Malcolm de Ketenes appears in a number of charters around 1270 or 1271.

The Three Brothers of Kettins

   Also in the thirteenth century the place was home to three brothers, one of whom was an eminent churchman.  There are records of three brothers John, Robert and Ingram of Kettins who were present in the University of Paris in the 1340s.  The last named brother is identical with the priest who is commemorated in a monument in Tealing, not far to the east of Kettins, in the shadow of the Sidlaws.  Contemporary with the Paris record there is another mention of Ingram when, on 25 January 1345, Pope Clement VI authorized the abbots of Cupar and Scone, and the prior of St Andrews, to grant Ingram de Kethenis ‘the church of Blaar’, evidently Blairgowrie.  The siblings were nephews of John de Pilmore, Bishop of Moray.  Through the recommendation of the king and queen, Ingram was granted a benefice at Aberdeen, and further church positions were attained, culminating in the archdeanery of Dunkeld.  Ingram ended his days in the church of Tealing, north of Dundee.  His monument is set into the north wall of the church there and is thought to be one of the earliest monuments in the English language north of the Forth. 

Hier : lyis : Ingram : of : Kethenys : prist. :

Maystr : l : arit : ercdene : of ; dukeldy : made :

I : hys : XXXII : yhere : prayis : for : hym : yat :

Deyt :hafand : LX : yherys : of : eyld : in :

The : yher : of : Cryet : MoCCC : Lxxx

‘Here lies Ingram of Kettins, priest, Master of Arts. Made Archdeacon of Dunkeld in his 32^nd year. Pray for him that died having sixty years of age in the year of Christ 1380’.

   At an early period the Hospital or Domus Dei of Berwick held the revenues of the church at Kettins. By the end of the 14^th century the living of Kettins was granted to the Kirk of the Red Friars in Dundee, and in the following century was transferred to the Red Friars Cross Kirk at Peebles. 

Coupar Justice.  Proverbs and Punishment

   Long after the abbey of Coupar literally vanished from the face of the earth, ‘Coupar Justice’ became a byword for the stern treatment of offenders in the area. In this way, Coupar became as infamous as Jedburgh in the borders, where ‘Jethart Justice’ was another name for harsh treatment by the law.  But 'our' Coupar vies with Cupar in Fife for being the fulcrum of these traditions.It is difficult to see exactly which place was the inspiration for this tradition. 

 
 At Coupar-Angus there were several layers of legal administration. A self-elected jury of local men, The Court of Burlaw, met every week to regulate mundane disputes.  On the next level was the Baron-Bailie Court whose official was appointed by the district baron.  The Court of Regality and Justiciary once occupied the site on present-day Queen Street in the town, though earlier it seems to have  dispensed its justice outdoors, at Beechwood to the north of the burgh, in the early days of the Abbey.  The Court of Regality was presided over by the abbot, though it was delegated at times to a bailie-depute (a role which eventually became hereditary).

  Tales of the actual harshness of local law-giving are scarce. Alexander Warden, the historian of Angus, gives one example, worth repeating, albeit with the caution that it represents its Gaelic protagonist in a semi-comical racist way.  Warden says that a certain Baillie John was strolling around Beechwood when he encountered a Highlander and engaged him in conversation.  Without revealing his own identity Baillie John found out the man was due up before him for some crime that day.  He asked the man whether he was actually guilty of the crime he was accused of.

   ‘Oh, aye, she’s guilty,’ the Gael said happily.  ‘But there’s nae proof.’   Did he mean to lie to court that afternoon?  Of course he did, the man said, because ‘there's mercy wi' God Almighty, but there's nane wi' Bailie Shon’.   Fast forward to that afternoon, when the ashen faced Highlander faced Baillie John for real.   ‘Will you swear now that you are not guilty?’  the judge asked the accused.   The man thought for a minute and then tried to brazen it out.   ‘Yes,’ she’ll swore,’ asserted the Highlander.   This ploy evidently nonplussed the dispenser of justice, since instead of sentencing the man he declared,
   ‘Go home, you rascal, and never let me see your face again; and tell your friends in Kirkmichael that there is some mercy in Bailie John as well as in God Almighty!’ [Warden, Angus or Forfarshire, vol. 3,134-5.]

   Several writers another tale of harsh judgement.  According to this, in 1699 the hereditary bailie of Coupar, John Ogilvy, was told that a notorious thief named John McCoul was in the town:  ‘ane person of bad fame and open bruit a thiefadder’.  He was ordered to be arrested and hanged straight away.  The man’s friends were outraged by this act and demanded reconsideration.  So the body was ordered to be exhumed and the court was convened, on 25 August 1699.  There the dead man was formally sentenced to death and ordered to be executed the following Thursday.  Whether the earlier monks were quite as hard-line in their judgements as the laymen who succeeded them is unknown. The story was repeated in the Dundee Chronicle, written by a correspondent from Coupar Angus who stated that he had the record of the case lying before him as he wrote.  [Ancient Things in Angus, 101-2, Rambles in Forfarshire, 203, Dundee Chronicle, March 1836].

  Confirmation that the association with harsh judgement is century old is  given byJohn Jamiesion, in volume one of the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808), who favoured the Strathmore town as being the original place of harsh judicial treatment.  Jamieson quotes the 17th century soldier poet William Cleland (1661-1689):

Yet let the present swearing trustees
Know they give conscience Cowper Justice,
And by subscribing it in gross
Renounce every solid gloss.-
And if my judgement be not scant, Some lybel will be relevant,
And all the process firm and fast,
Ti give the Counsel Jedburgh cast.

Ogilvy Bailies

   The Ogilvy family, in the person of James, Lord Ogilvy,a great secular power in the area, were granted the role as secular bailies of Coupar Abbey by Abbot Donald Campbell in 1539 and they held this role until heritable jurisdictions were formally abolished in 1747. As early as 1460, however, Patrick Ogilvy of Pearsie was appointed bailie-depute of the monastery.  For the loss of the privilege John, 4^th Earl of Airlie, was awarded £800 in compensation.  The Ogilvys also gained the role as porters of gate-keepers to the abbey.  At an earlier period another family served in this hereditary function and took their surname, Porter, from their employment.  The Ogilvys gained this lucrative office as late as 1589, when on 12 March a contract was agreed between William Ogilvy of Easter Keilor and John Faryar, porter of the abbey and adopted son of Robert Porter.  On 26 May 1590 the charter of the office was confirmed by Faryar and Porter, to William and Archibald Ogilvy life-rent and fee.

Baffling Proverbs on Coupar

   Coupar also features in other local proverbs, whose meaning and origins now seem rather opaque.  It was locally said of stubborn people who would not be diverted from their chosen, foolish path: 

 He that will [gae] to Coupar maun [gae] to Coupar. 

But why should someone resolutely doomed to failure go particularly to Coupar Angus? Nobody knows.

  Another, arcane twist on the saying runs: 

He that will to Coupar maun to Coupar, though Killiemuir [Kirriemuir] had sworn't.

   And why did Coupar particularly get a local reputation for being a draconian centre of punishment?  Perhaps it derives from the strict measures which the institution enforced on its tenants, from runaway serfs to tenants reluctant to keep their land in order, ingrained into the Strathmore psyche over the course of several centuries? Another possibility is that the speedy justice and sometimes summary execution which followed in the area was a necessary mode of law enforcement which operated in the area and was designed to meet the lawlessness which filtered into the area from the north, when Highland caterans raided Strathmore for cattle and spoils.  But does something darker linger in the collective memory here?

Massacre in the New Church

  

   In the year 1186, when the church of the abbey was not yet fully completed, there was a sacrilegious event which violated the abbey.  On 17 November that year, the Chronicle of Holyrood related that:

the peace of the holy church was outraged at Coupar, by the violence of Malcolm, earl of Athole; because Adam (surnamed also Donald’s son), who was the king’s outlaw, was seized, and one of his associates – a nephew – was beheaded, before the altar; and the rest, fifty-eight in number, were burned and killed in the abbot’s dwelling.

   The exact circumstances of this mass killing are unclear.  Adam McDonald was a representative of one of the kin-groups who were rebelling against the established monarchy.  He and his men had probably sought sanctuary in the newly established Cistercian precincts, but were ruthlessly extinguished by the king’s representative, Malcolm son of Madach, the second Earl of Atholl.  The assassinated man may have been a son of the rebel contingents of the MacWilliam family from Moray who were in rebellion and attempting to claim the throne, but there is no firm certainty he came from this family. Donald MacWilliam certainly rose against the crown in Ross the following year.

   This early massacre was undoubtedly the worst bloodshed the abbey was to witness, but there were other outbreaks of violent anarchy in later centuries.  In 1479 the resident monks were attacked (two actually held captive for a time) by a gang sponsored by Alexander Lindsay, son of David, Earl of Crawford. The event involved ‘spulzeing of thair horses parking at thair place, and chusing of thair servandis’ and damage to property.  Lindsay was warded in Blackness Castle and some of his henchmen were warded elsewhere, while eight other followers, such as Lindsay of Baikie and Shangy, were summoned to appear before the Sheriff of Forfar.  The decline of the social structure of the abbey went hand in hand with a diminishing respect of those in the area, particularly powerful men who saw the undefended monks as easy prey.   Around the time of Lindsay’s was there was another attack led by Robert Hay, son of the laird of Tullymet.  He carried off a hundred head of cattle and oxen and four horses from the abbey’s land of Pert.  He was heavily fined for his depredations.

Decline of the Abbey, Last Years under Abbot Donald Campbell

     The abbot at this time was Donald Campbell, fourth son of Archibald, second

Earl of Argyll, and he supervised the final decline of the institution, from 1526 to 1562.   (One of his brothers, incidentally, was Alexander Campbell who married the widowed Lady Glamis.  He died trying to escape from Edinburgh Castle.  His wife was burned to death as a witch.) Campbell played an important role on the wider national stage, being part of the secret council of the Earl of Arran.  His later appointment to the See of Brechin was deferred because of suspicions about his religious loyalties.  Until as late as 1553 Campbell seemed to be intent on regulating the declining monastery in accordance with orthodox Catholic procedures.  He and the fifteen remaining monks in the institution signed a solemn bond in which they promised that, ‘God being their guide [they would] lead a regular life, and...order their manner according to the reformers of the Cistercian order...’  But by the end of that decade Campbell had literally abandoned his habit – ‘put on secular weed’ – and was attending the Protestant Convention of Estates.  Furthermore, he alienated the church lands he administered and gave outright gifts of abbey lands to each and every one of his five bastard sons:  the properties of Balgersho for his eldest son, Keithic for the second son, Denhead for the third son, Cro(o)nan for the fourth, and Arthurstone .  He had earlier granted part of the monastery’s lands at Lundie to his cousin John Campbell of Lundie.  Two of the last abbot’s sons were interred at Bendochy: Nicol Campbell, who died in 1587 aged seventy, and David Campbell, who died three years earlier.

Protestant Violence?

   The most fatal violence done to the abbey was its physical destruction, possibly commenced in the Reformation, when the mob which tore down the Carthusian monastery and other Catholic churches in Perth likely did the same at Coupar.  The exact process and sequence of destruction at Coupar Angus Abbey is not clear and was likely piecemeal and certainly assisted to a large extent by locals looting the valuable building stones of the abbey over a long course of time.  Much of the older part of the town of Coupar Angus, as well as some building work in nearby places such as Arthurstone, likely included masonry from the abbey buildings.  An account of the Chamberlain in 1563 mentions the fact that remedial building work had been undertaken at the abbey, which suggests there had been some sort of attack leading to damage.

   The extent to which Coupar Angus Abbey suffered physically when the reforming storm fully hit Scotland is difficult to determine.  The seething religious foment of the nation is captured in the following lengthy quote by Lord Herries, which captures one contemporary view of what was happening in this region in 1559:

Now aryses tumults upon tumults, killing of priests, sacking and pulling doune of churches, ruining of statlie Abbacies, and other glorious buildings, dissolving hospitals; all in confusion.  in a word, these antient buildings and brave fabricks, monuments of antiquitie, and marks of pietie, which for many hundred years have been a building, shall, in few months, be destroyed and rased to the ground!  The ornaments and riches of the Churches fell to the share of the commone rable; the estats and lands were divyded amongst the great men, by themselves, without right or law; which they resolve to maintain by the sword!
   The first storme fell upon Saint Jhonstoune [Perth], in this same month of May.  John Knox…was the occasione; whoe, by a seditious sermon, sturred up the people to furie and madnes; who encouradged them to pull doun the Churches…Wherupon they run out in confusion, killed the priests, broake doune altars, and destroyed all the images and ornaments.  From that they fall upon the Relligious Houses and Monasteries; those two goodlie Abbayes of Franciscans and Dominicans…were pulled dounde and made levell with the ground in two dayes; and all there riches made a prey to the people!  But the Abbau of Charters monks stod longer, by one day.  The next storme fell upon Couper.  Thos people, upon notice of this busines at Perth, fell lykwayes upon there Church; which they spoyled and ransackt, and chased away the priests.’ [Memoirs, 37-38.]

   But did Coupar Angus Abbey actually suffer the same extremist tsunami as nearby Perth?  A document found in the charters of the Dukes of Argyll suggests that Abbot Duncan cannily came to terms with the lords at the head of the Reforming juggernaut, or that he was forced to do so.  This is the unique document that the abbot signed:

Thir ar the pointes that the congregatioune desyris of my lord of Cowper.   Imprimis that he incontinent reforme his place of Cowper Putting down and birnyng oppinlie all Idolis and Imagis and tubernaculis thairin destroying and putting away the altaris.  And that na mess be thaire done gereaftir nowther privilie nor opinly.  And that the superstitiouse habit of his monkis with their ordour ceremoneis and service as you call it be removit.  And that na prayeris be usit in the kirk bot in the inglishe toung.  And thai according to the scriptouris of God.   Item that my lord with all his freindis and folkis at his hale powar assist and mayntein in counsales conventionis and parliament als wele as uther wyse the furth settin of the evangell of cryst and meynteinyng the congregatioyne in thair leberte and to the doune putting of all ydolatre abhominationes and papistre.  And that his folkis at this present and at all utheris tymis being requirit pass fordwart with thair congregatioune to the forth-setting of the glorie of god.  And alswa that my lord in all placis of his dominioune sall endewoyr himself to the forthsattin and executione of the premissis.   Item that ane wryting contenyng the heids abufwrittin as thai ar heir contenit subscrivit with my lordis hand be send incontinent to the congregatioune togidder with the same tollaratione.                                                                        (Signed)          D.  Abbot of Cup^r

   The historian Jane Dawson has drawn attention to the uniqueness of the arrangement between abbot and reformers at Coupar.  There was a chance, after that pacts, that the abbey buildings might have survived more or less intact.  But it was not to be.

   Following Campbell’s reign of transition, various secular individuals gained control over the valuable earthly possessions of Coupar Abbey.  By an Act of Parliament in December 1607, King James VI sought to ‘suppress and extinguish the memories of the Abbacie’.  He erected the abbacy into a temporal lordship in favour of James Elphinstone, son of the secretary, Lord Balmerino, and enobled him with the title Lord Coupar.  A painting by Balmerino of Coupar in 1607 shows a remaining tower within the abbey precinct. It is stated that Coupar himself was ‘a weak man of mean capacity, who went by the epigrammatic cognomen of “that howlit Cowper”.’ [Strathmore, Past and Present, McPherson, 41.]

   The remaining structures in the abbey precinct appear to have been further damaged in April 1645, in an onslaught by an Irish royalist force of 200 men led by Montrose’s lieutenant Alexander Macdonald.  Their damage and plunder was an act of revenge and intimidation against Lord Coupar because of his Covenanting views.  During this raid the parish minister Robert Lindsay was slain and a defending party of cavalry under Lord Balcarres was routed. 

 Lord Coupar died without issue in 1669.  He was buried in Coupar without any religious ceremony whatever and the property eventually devolved on his nephew, John , 3^rd Baron Balmerino.  The latter took legal action against his uncle’s widow to repair damage to the rotting remains of the abbey buildings, but this was not undertaken, because John Ochterlony of the Guynd, wrote in the Account of the Shire of Forfar, circa 1682, wrote that the abbey was in a sweet spot but nothing remained of the buildings but rubbish.

Remaining Mysteries, or the Mystery of Remains?

   Much of the later building work in Coupar Angus sensibly utilised the available stone from the former abbey.  The town steeple was built in 1769 on the site of the old prison of the Court of

Regality.  Its lower floor was used to confine of prisoners.  Coupar’s kirk was rebuilt in 1878-9 on  the site of the abbey. John Carrie wrote in 1881 about the scant remains of the abbey and its last occupant over forty years previously:

What now remains of the Abbey...consists of a single vaulted apartment, with one or two slender, but finely pointed arches.  It was visited in 1838 by a person of antiquarian tastes, who found it then occupied as a workshop by an humble sculptor and painter.  His productions, however, possessed considerable merit...About the year 1830 some vaults, probably sepulchral ones, were accidentally discovered, but the authorities soon afterwards shut them up again. [Ancient Things in Angus, 102.]

A Secret Tunnel? 

   A more elaborate, though possibly related tradition was recounted by James Cargill Guthrie. He stated that an old Coupar man informed him there was a secret tunnel or passageway leading from this last remaining fragment of the abbey and the south-western Sidlaw Hills.  It was found by workers excavating a very deep drain.  One of the men, more brave than the others, volunteered to explore the passageway to the north.  From his point of entry he traced it to the remains of the abbey and returned to tell his fellows.  But for his second foray he re-entered the tunnel and ventured south.  He never returned from this second adventure.  His friends waited days for his reappearance, but when all hope was gone they sadly sealed up the entrance to stop anyone else following him to their fate.  

   A variant states that the poor, lost original explorer was a woman, not a workman. Was this story inspired by the discovery of weems or souterrains at Pitcur nearby, although the latter places lies several miles south-east of Coupar?  It is said that in 1982 a local mason actually found the underground connection between Pitcur and Coupar Angus. The mason told the tale to Martha Jane Sievewright, who told it in The Abbey of Coupar Angus (1983), and re-told by Maurice Fleming.  Tunnels, real and imagined, crop up regularly in folk tales and the association with a human unwise enough to enter the Underworld and paying the price links the story directly to a legendary source.

Folklore Afterword:  The Ghost of Dron

  Those who prefer their history unpolluted by folklore can safely disregard this last piece. It concerns an ancient track named the Priest's Road which runs south from Tullybaccart on the main Coupar to Dundee road, road across the Sidlaw Hills.  It is a lonely route, though it may once have been used by the monks of Coupar going down to the fertile coastal plain of the Carse of Gowrie where they held lands, or indeed across the River Tay to the abbey of Balmerino where their brother Cistercians.  The pathway crosses the current Angus-Perth border very close to a chapel at Dron.  The chapel is little more than a graceful arch standing alone amid scanty, lesser masonry.  It is an evocative place, but perhaps not entirely as bereft of company as one might imagine.  Between here and Tullybaccart, on the Angus stretch of the ancient Priest's Road, there is sometimes seen a solitary traveller dressed all in white.  He may be a bee-keeper, as some have thought, though there are no hives nearby.  Or he may be someone else.

Some Sources

Campbell, N., ‘Two Papers from the Argyll Charter Chest,’ the Scottish Historical Review, vol. 21, No. 82 (Jan. 1924), pp. 140-3.

Carrie, John, Ancient Things in Angus (Arbroath, 1881).

Dawson, Jane E. A.., The Politics of Religion in the Age of Mary, Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 2002).

Dowden, Rev. John, ‘Note on Ingram of Kethenys, with observations on his monument in the parish church of Tealing,’ Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 37 (1903), 245-51.

Fleming, Maurice, The Ghost O’ Mause and Other Tales and Traditions of East Perthshire (Edinburgh, 1995).

Gibson, Colin, 'Nature Diary' [article on Dron Chapel], The Courier, July 1994.

Guthrie, James Cargill, The Vale of Strathmore, Its Scenes and Legends (Edinburgh, 1875).

Herries, Lord [John Maxwell], Historical Memoirs of the Reign of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1836).

Hutcheson, Alexander, ‘Notice of an early inscribed mural monument and of an undescribed sculptured stone in the parish church of Tealing, Forfarshire,’ Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 30 (1895–96), pp. 41–8. 

Laing, Margaret, The Cistercian Abbey of Coupar Angus and its Place in Scottish History, N. D.

McPherson, J. G., Strathmore, Past and Present, Perth, 1885.

Myles, James, Rambles in Forfarshire (Dundee, 1850).

O’Sullivan, Jerry, ‘Abbey, market and cemetery: topographical notes on Coupar Angus in Perthshire, with a description of archaeological excavations on glebe land by the

parish church,’ Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scot., 125 (1995), 1045-1068.

Rogers, Rev. Charles (ed.), Rental Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Cupar Angus, 2 vols. (London, 1879).

Warden, Alexander, Angus or Forfarshire, 5 vols. (Dundee, 1880-1885).

The Dwindling and Extinction of Gaelic in Angus

   The date at which Gaelic ceased to be a living, spoken language in Angus possibly presents more of an enigma than when it started to be spoken in the area, despite the thousand or more years which separate these two events. In the beginning we can imagine piecemeal Gaelic infiltration, whether peaceful, warlike, or both, brought in by small groups. There are the possible personal and tribal names behind places:  Brachan in Brechin, possibly Daig behind Dundee, Angus itself of course, plus maybe Gabran, the father of Aedan of Dal Riada, whose name may lurk behind the name of Gowrie, the region just west of modern Angus. We don't have any solid information about when or exactly how Pictish died out, though possibly the tenth century would be a good guess. The situation is complex and comparable to other regions of Scotland, such as Galloway where Gaelic overtook Brythonic in the Middle Ages. 

   The heyday of Gaelic in Angus must have been between the middle of the ninth century and the middle or end of the twelfth century. The onset of  English speech came from the south and was certainly not imported through military adventurism.  There were also settlers from the Low Countries who have left traces of their identity in a scatter of places across Scotland. In the Angus parish of Kettins there was a place called Flemings-land, plus a Flemington in Aberlemno. The latter was gifted in the 13th century by King Alexander II to a Flemish knight named Bartholemew who later settled in Aberdeenshire. But it was in the major coastal towns, like Montrose and Dundee where English may have taken a decisive, early foothold, though immigrants from England and Flanders.

The burghs may have succumbed to outside languages more than rural areas. In Arbroath in the 1180s none of the burgesses had a Gaelic name, though there may have been Gaelic speakers locally. Other clues to ethnicity, if not to language spoken, can be found in personal names. In the early 14th century the scribes at Arbroath Abbey copied a record of a local perambulation of their lands at Kinblethmont which  happened on 23 September 1219. Such events, undertaken by representatives of landowners and other local people of importance, were performed to clarify the boundaries of specific estates and areas of land.  In this case the task to determine the boundaries between Kinblethmont, Arbroath and Athinglas was performed by walkers whose names evoke Gaelic ancestry:

Gilpatrick mac Ewen, Duncan son of Gilpatrick, Malcolm brother of the thane of Idvies, Gilchrist son of Ewen, Gilchrist man of the earl of Angus, Kerald brother of Adam the judex, Matthew son of Matthew son of Dubsíd of Conon.  (Other officials present were Hugh of Cameron, sheriff of Forfar, Angus son of Earl Gilbert of Angus, Robert of Inverkeilor, W. de Mowat, Adam of Nevay, Donald son of Macbeth Mac Ivarr, John (or Eoin), abbot of Brechin, Morgann his son, Adam de Bonville, Robert of Rossie, Duncan of Fernevel, Adam the steward of Arbroath, Thomas son of Robert son of Adam Garmund, Gilise thane of Idvies, Nicholas brewer of the king, Roger, mair of the bishop of Brechin, Walter de Balliol.) 

 But even those with demonstrable Celtic names recorded here may not all have used Gaelic as their first language.  

Kinblethmont

  Another record, dated 17 January 1227,  recognises a perambulation made by the Abbot and convent of Arbroath and Gwarin of Cupar relating again to the boundaries of Kinblethmont. The ‘good men at Angus’ present at the king’s court at Forfar swore an oath about the precise extent of the territory.  The list of witnesses contained an ethic cross section of part of society: 

Kerald(us) Judex de Anegus, Adam Judex domini Regis, Angus filius comitis [Angus son of Earl Gillebride of Angus], W de Monte Alto [William Mowat], Duncanus de fernevell, Gilandr’ mac leod [son of Donald, Abbot of Brechin], Ricardus flandrensis, Gilescop mac camby, Patric fothe seriens domini episcopis sancti Andree, David senescallus de Rostynoth [the steward of Restenneth].

   John Bannerman has pointed out the importance of the role of iudex. Also known as  brithem, this was the 'lawmaker', a highly respected functionary in Gaelic society.  The role was hereditary, and was probably a very significant component of traditional government in the kingdom of Alba. The fact that Kerald is described as the iudex of Angus shows that there was a fully functioning Gaelic government infrastructure in the region in the 13th century. His brother being the iudex of the king demonstrates how significant this family must have been.  Apart from this tantalising evidence there is little other material concerning the Gaelic society these men moved within. 

  Bannerman also points out that Kerald represents a Latinised version of the native name Cairell, a common Gaelic name in Ireland but apparently not in Scotland. The family's continuance in the role is highlighted by the existence of another iudex named Keraldus in the 14th century. The first judge named Cairell may have given his name to Careston, the parish west of Brechin. (Later antiquarians tried, typically, to link the place-name to a Danish chieftain named Carald.)

  Around this time there is a record of one of the earliest known English place-names in the region, the evocative but unflattering Stinchenhavene, recorded in the records of Coupar Angus Abbey in 1214.  Local landowner Philip de Valonges of Panmure (d. 1215) granted the clerics an acre of his land in the port, for a toft to build on (which was perambulated in his presence by Adam of Banevyn – Benvie - and ‘other worthy men’), along with a toll on the fishing. These rights were renewed periodically until the end of the 15th century. Then as in many centuries afterwards this place was a fishing port, now known as East Haven, in the parish of Panbride. Arrangements for the procurement of fish between the coastal traders and the Cistercian monks, who would certainly not have had many Gaelic speakers in their midst, would probably have been  conducted in the English language.  Not far up the coast from Panbride was the abbey of Arbroath, another focal point and driving engine for the spread of the new tongue of English.  Those who lived and traded on the coast may have been susceptible to the need to learn English if they were not in fact incomers themselves.  In later centuries coastal dwellers were regarded by others as being a race apart, with the implication that their society was insular and backwards.  But they may in fact have been among the first communities to shift languages to take advantage of trade.

   David Murison noted a spread of English names in the county in the early thirteenth century, including  a place called Reidfurde (1214), and four years later there is a recorded crop of English names surprisingly emerging in remote parts of Glen Isla:  Strype, Staneycroft, Muirford, Corncairn, Stobstane.  He notes that, ‘These names could only have been given by people who could speak English, that is, by land-stewards of the barons, ground-officers or the like, or by incoming tenants.’ There must have been some bilingualism between Pictish and Gaelic in the late Pictish period (the 9th and perhaps 10th centuries), and there is evidence in dual place-names of a later phase of bilingualism of English and Gaelic in certain places. A writ dated 1256 from Arbroath Abbey records a place in the parish of Kingoldrum with the Gaelic name of Hachethunethouer, with an equivalent English name Midefeld; and a certain marsh is referred to as called in English Moynebuche. Slightly later names around Dunnichen are Fishersgate and Greystone. Another set of rarer place-name elements has been pointed out by G. W. S. Barrow as indication places particularly associated with Gaelic speakers by those whose own native tongue was Scots/English. These are places which use the descriptive term Scottish.  In Kingoldrum, Angus, there were examples of a 'Scottish [road] way', vie Scoticane, and elsewhere in the county there was a 'Scottish mill'.

   Kingoldrum crops up again in Arbroath Abbey records under the year 1456 when Abbot Malcolm Brydy (abbot from 1456 to 1470) records a number of names in that parish which possessed dual names, evidently showing that there were both Gaelic and English speaking inhabitants there. The description of the marches of the abbey lands there included the following places:  Myllaschangly (Scottismyll),  a stream called Athyncroith (Gallowburne), Tybyrnoquhyg (Blind Well), Monboy (Yallowpule), Carnofotyr (Punderis Carne), the burn of Haldyrischanna (Gled Bwrne). 

   The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries must have seen further wide scale displacement of Gaelic in Angus and it would seem reasonable to assume that it was retained longer in the northerly glens. In the 1580s Timothy Pont in the 1580s  records Whytemyre in Glen Clova, while Edward’s map of Angus (1678) shows many Scots/English places in north Angus.  David Dorward suggests that Gaelic survived longer in the western glens of Isla, Prosen and Clova than in the eastern ones of Lethnot and Esk.  He cited evidence of the comparable Gaelic and English geographical terms of sron and shank, noting that the Gaelic term sron had over twelve examples in westerly glens, while the Scots or English shank was common in the east. 

   An interesting complication is provided by the movement, of possible movement of Gaelic speaking people, from outside the area into Angus.  One example is the settlement of the McCombie family who migrated from eastern Perthshire into Glen Isla in the mid seventeenth century, though they only inhabited the area for several generations.  A more contentious piece of evidence is provided by the English poet and traveller John Taylor (the ‘Water Poet’, 1578-1653) who journeyed through the area in 1618.  Passing north from Brechin, and thoroughly alarmed by the steepness of the terrain, Taylor was relieved to arrive at a certain place in Glen Esk:

At night I came to a lodging in the Laird of Eggels [Edzell’s] land, where I lay at an Irish house, the folkes not being able to speake scarce any English, but I supped and went to bed, where I had not laine long, but I was enforced to rise; I was so stung with Irish musketoes, a creature that hath sixe legs, and lives like a monster altogether upon mans flesh; they doe inhabite and breed most upon sluttish houses, and this house was none of the cleanest...had not this Highland Irish house helped me at a pinch, I should have sworn that all Scotland had not been so kind as to have bestowed a louse upon me;  but with a shift that I had, I shifted off my cannibals, and was never more troubled with them.

   Beyond the evidence that Gaelic was spoken in the glen at this date there are other points of interest.  It is assumed that Taylor slept at a traveller’s inn or lodging house, though this is by no means clear in his writing, as Taylor's expressed intention of his Scottish expedition was to travel without the inconvenience of paying for either his quarters or his food.  If the place was an inn, it would suggest that its common customers in Glen Esk would also habitually speak Gaelic. It has been suggested that this ‘Erse inn’ was an anomaly established by Gaelic speaking incomers who arrived from the north, though this is doubtful.  The survival of Gaelic at such a relatively late date here would also  contradict the suggestion that the language had been quickly decimated in the locality by the usage of English as the language of administration by the Lindsay landowners from the 1380s onwards.

Where the last Angus Gaels spoke?  The River Isla near Forter.

   In the records of the Presbytery of Brechin (on 15th April 1729, noted by Jessop, Education in Angus, 84), there is active discouragement given to 'Students and Preachers having Irish,' as they thought that 'it were much better, that Language were worn out by Degrees,' and that individuals who were taught to read 'the Irish Bibles and Catechisms' were at the same time taught to read English by the schoolmasters of the Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, and others like them.  This provides very strong supporting evidence that the existence of Gaelic was a fact, if a disagreeable one, within the presbytery bounds at that time.  In the first volume of Lives of the Lindsays, published in 1849, Lord Lindsay states that his friend Bishop Low informed him that Gaelic was still spoken in Glen Esk until roughly a century before. 

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century Glen Isla was possibly still strongly Gaelic. We can note a record referencing two places in Perthshire, neighbouring Angus. The Presbytery of Meigle noted in its minutes on 12th December, 1705, that 'the Highland librarie appointed by the Synod [of Angus and Mearns] to be keep'd at Alith [Alyth] is brought to Dundie,' from which it was to be recovered. There were some Gaelic speakers in Glen Isla in the late eighteenth century and indeed later. The New Statistical Account of Glen Isla (1842) notes, 'A few of the families, originally from Kirkmichael parish [Perthshire], usually converse together in the Gaelic tongue; but the language generally spoken is the dialect peculiar to Angus-shire, with a slight approach, in the upper district, to the Gaelic accent.'

 Neighbouring Glen Shee in Perthshire still had sufficient Gaelic natives in 1683 to necessitate the minister preaching to them in their own tongue on Sunday afternoons (presumably he gave an English service to others on Sunday mornings). Charles Withers notes, ' In... Glenshee and Strathardle,a Gaelic-speaking minister was employed for the benefit of the people there, and in Lethnot and Navar and Lochlee parishes, Gaelic was also spoken. [Withers, 2021, 38.]

  Pinning down the precise area where a language held out or identifying the last speaker is an imprecise art. Gaelic must have lingered in the Scots idiom, an element in the everyday speech, albeit minimally, for a number of people in west Angus, perhaps for several generations. The German cartographer and geographer Ernst Georg Ravenstein (1834-1913) stated the following in an article in 1879:

In Forfarshire Gaelic is spoken only in a very small district, namely in Blacklunans, which to the south of Mount Blair projects into Perthshire, and geographically belongs to Glenshee.  The names of many people, no less than the geographical nomenclature, point to a great extent of Gaelic in a former age, but Gaelic preaching has been discontinued for generations, except at Dundee, where services are held for the convenience of immigrant highlanders. *

      Blacklunans, due to boundary changes, is now firmly in Perthshire. He identified the precise linguistic boundary in this district:  '[it] begins at Bald Head on the Forfarshire boundary, runs west to the junction of Glenshee with Strath Ardle, intersects Cluny forest, crosses the Tay to the north of Dunkeld...'

   However, this evidence is starkly contradicted by John Ochterlony's Account of Angus is 1678.  Speaking of Glenisla and surrounding districts, Ochterlony specifically mentions Blacklunans and observes that its people do not differ from Highlanders in other places, except for one important respect:

the Irish is not their native language, for none speak Irish there except strangers that come from other parts; notwithstanding, that in Glenshie and Strathairdle, their next neighbours, the minister always preaches in the afternoon in the Irish tongue.

   As we have seen above, migration could sometimes reintroduce Gaelic as a living language in to these linguistic border areas for a period of time, going against the tide of Gaelic shrinkage.  Whether this is the case at Blacklunans, we cannot be absolutely sure.

Map from Ravenstein's article, the black area denoting extent of spoken Gaelic.

   According to information from the 1891 census (collated online by Kurt Dawe (http://www.linguae-celticae.org/GLS_english.htm) there were eighteen bilingual Gaelic-English speakers resident in Glen Isla, all of whom were incomers, apart from one individual.  This sole exception was a 53 year old man who was living at Fodla post office, who Dawe states may well have learned Gaelic as an adult. In contrast, native Gaelic speakers in the nearby Perthshire areas of Spittal of Glenshee and Dalmunzie comprised one third of the population.    

  
* A number of Highland families founded a Gaelic chapel in Dundee in Long Wynd in 1791.  It prospered well into the 19th century and eventually amalgamated with a Free Church congregation.

Sources

Bannerman, John, 'The King's Poet and the Inauguration of Alexander III,' The Scottish Historical Review, LXVIII, 2 (October 1989), pp. 120-49.
Barrow, G. W. S., Kingship and Unity, Scotland 1000-1306, Edinburgh 1989.
Barrow, G. W. S., Scotland and its Neighbours in the Early Middle Ages, London, 1992. 

Black, David G., The Hae’ens o Panbride, Brechin, 1990.

Cartulary of Arbroath Abbey, Liber S. Thome de Aberbrothoc, Bannatyne Club, Edinburgh, 1848-6.

Dorward, David, The Glens of Angus, Names, Places, People, Balgavies, 2001.

Eberlin, Amy, ‘The Flemish in Dundee and Surrounding Areas,’ https://flemish.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2014/02/21/the-flemish-in-dundee-and-surrounding-areas/

French, Morvern, ‘Place-name as a Clue to the Flemish Presence in Scotland,’ https://flemish.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2014/03/07/place-names-as-a-clue-to-the-flemish-presence-in-scotland/

Hammond, Matthew H., A Prosopographical Analysis of Society in East Central Scotland, circa 1100 to 1260, with special reference to ethnicity, Unpublished Phd thesis, Glasgow, 2005.

Hume Brown, Peter, Early Travellers in Scotland, Edinburgh, 1891.
Jessop, J. C., Education in Angus, London, 1931.

Miller, David,  Arbroath and its Abbey, Edinburgh, 1860.

Murison, David, ‘Linguistic Relationships in Medieval Scotland,’ in The Scottish Tradition:  Essays in Honour of Ronald Gordon Cant, ed. G. W. S. Barrow, 71-83, Edinburgh, 1974.
Ravenstein, , E.G. (1879). On the Celtic Languages in the British Isles; and Statistical Survey, the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. 42, no. 3 (September), pp. 579-643.

Rogers, Charles, ed., The Rental Book of the Cistercian Abbey of Cupar-Angus, vol 2, London, 1880.

Taylor, John, The Pennylesse Pilgrimage; or, the Moneylesse Perambulation of John Taylor, London, 1618.

Warden, A. J., Angus or Forfarshire the Land and People, vol 2, 1881.

Withers, Charles W. J.. Gaelic in Scotland, 1698-1981, The Geographical History of A Language, Edinburgh, 1984. E book edition, 2021. 

Woolf, Alex, From Pictland to Alba, Edinburgh, 2007.

http://www.linguae-celticae.org/GLS_english.htm

www.scotslanguage.com/Scots_Dialects/Northern/East_Angus_and_Kincardine_

The Battle of Stracathro and A Chilling Extinction

Stracathro is a quiet place which does not deserve notoriety.  Its claim to fame, historically, is the humiliating resignation of King John Balliol.  Nearby there was another, larger scale event, which took place in the year 1130, which marked the culmination of a power struggle between the Scottish crown and the rulers of Moray in the north who believed they had a legitimate right to rule. As some modern writers have asserted, what happened here was the end of the de facto situation whereby there were two functioning and rival kingdoms in the north: Scotia and Moray.

   The encounter took place on 16th April, 1130, beside the River Esk, at a place in that river which gave an alternative name to the battle, Inchbare ('island of the headland').  In the northern forces there were 5,000 men under the mormaer of Moray, Angus, and his brother Malcolm. The northerners had filtered down Glen Esk and were met by a large army coming from the south, which included a large number of cavalry and Norman knights.


 The royal forces meeting them were commanded by Edward, Constable of Scotland, representing King David I.  According to the English historian Orderic Vitalis, it was a resounding royal victory.  Some 4,000 of the northerners were slaughtered in the field, including Malcolm (although this may be an exaggerated number). Angus, 'king' or Moray, was slain. On the royalist side, the earls of Dunbar and Fife were slain too.

   Place-name students were certainly wrong several centuries ago when they interpreted the meaning of Stracathro as 'valley where the king fought'.  A more accurate name perhaps is Auchenreoch, 300 metres south of the North Water Bridge, which can be interpreted as 'field of great sorrow', remembering the encounter.

The North Esk at the North Water Bridge

Shadow Warriors of the North

   The men of the far north who fought the forces of the crown at Stracathro were representing a cause which had been in existence for a long period of time, although the identity of the groups they mustered under, and the lineage of their leaders was not always clear cut.  From the late 12th to the mid 13th century, two northern groups active in Ross and Moray - the MacWilliams and the MacHeths - strove to take the kingship of Scotland. One notable participant at Stracathro was Angus's ally Malcolm Macheth, son of King Alexander I of Scotland.  He survived the carnage, but was imprisoned four years later. 

   Historians have traditionally identified the MacWilliams as descendants of William, son of King Duncan II of Scotland (who died in 1094), though this is not certain.  The historian G. W. S. Barrow suggested that this William's first wife was a cousin or sister of the Angus of Moray. Whoever he may have been, between 1179 and 1186, Donald Bán MacWilliam probably invaded Scotland on three different occasions, making him an exceptionally persistent and powerful enemy of the state.


   Guthred MacWilliam raised men and support from the north of Ireland, but when he came back to Scotland for another campaign he was defeated by a royal army in 1211 and defeated.  He was betrayed by some of his own, captured and beheaded.  But that was not the end of the unrest. Further incusions were dealt with in the 1220s.  In 1223 Gillescop MacWilliam and his sons were on the rampage in the far north. A few years later Iverness was burnt and the king's lands plundered.  Gillescop perished in the year 1229. One final, exceptionally brutal act remained to be done and it took place in Angus exactly a century after the Battle of Stracathro.

MacWilliam Line Extinguished in Angus

   The English Chronicle of Lanercost reports the end game of the Scottish regime which played out conclusively in a cold blooded act which took place in the centre of Angus in the year 1230:

In this year there arose in Scotland certain wicked men of the race of Mac-William; and his son; and one Roderic.  They raised up treachery in the remotest terriories of Scotland; and wished to obtain the kingdom by force, by allying with themselves a great number of wicked men of that ralm.  But by the vengeance of God, they and their accomplices were betrayed.  And after the enemy had been successfully overcome, a somewhat too cruel vengeance was taken for the blood of the slain:- the same MacWilliam's daughter, who had not long left her mother's womb, innocent as she was, was put to death, in the burgh of Forfar, in view of the market-place, after a proclamation by the public crier: her head was struck against the column of the market cross, and her brains dashed out.  Yet God says to the contrary effect, Sons shall not be slain for their fathers [Deuteronomy, XXIV, 16]; and so on...

   We will never know the background detail of how this infact was captured and what happened to its mother.  The poor infant may have been the daughter of either Donald Bán MacWilliam or Gillescop; we shall never know now. Unknown also is why this dreadful state execution took place in the heart of Strathmore, so far from the heartland of these 'rebels' in the far north.  Stracathro was a century-old memory.  Old men in Angus and neighbouring Gowrie might just have remembered the last major incursion of the northern hordes, when sixty of the MacWilliams, led by one Adam son of Donald, were hemmed up in the abbot's house at Coupar Angus Abbey and burned to death by Earl Malcolm of Atholl in December 1186, despite having claimed sanctuary. (The story can be revisited in my earlier post here.) 

From the north came enemies.  Forfar and the Angus mountains from Balmashanner Hill

The Secret Tunnel of Lintrose: A Pictish Mystery? Secret Tunnel? Writer's Folly?

Lintrose House, also known as Todderance, stands a few miles away from Coupar Angus.  Although it has been incorporated into Perthshire from the late 19th century it was historically part of the county of Angus (in the parish of Kettins).  The property belonged to the Halyburton family.

Lintrose House

   In the 1870s a remarkable underground architectural feature was discovered here.  This is the description given by the author Elliott O' Donnell in his book Rooms of Mystery (London, 1931), where he describes the feature as a cave, though it may in fact have been a tunnel:

It was fifty feet long, and its sides were bricked and its floor neatly paved.  there were two antique fireplaces in it, and there is no doubt but that it was once used by some person or persons as a hiding-place.  Some thought Rob Roy had hidden there; some, Sawney Beane; others believed that it was intended for the use of Covenanters; and others, again, for the unfortunate Jacobites.
   The place was searched for hidden treasure, but without success, nothing of any value being found there.  Of course, the story that it was haunted got into circulation, but, as far as I can ascertain, there was nothing to warrant it. [Rooms of Mystery, pp. 23-24.]

     All that I can say, knowing nothing else, is that the associations with Rob Roy and Sawney Beane are very wide of the mark geographically; neither had historical associations with Strathmore (and Sawney was not even a real person).  Could the cave/tunnel in fact have been a reconditioned Pictish souterrain (or weem)?  Has folklore interfered with actual historical memory?  Warden in Angus or Forfarshire (Dundee, 1880, vol. I, p. 55) says:

Some years ago a weem was discovered on the highest part of a field east of Lintrose House.  It was about fifty feet long, about seven to eight feet wide, and about five feet high.  At the entrance it was only about three feet in width.  The floor was paved, and the walls formed in large courses...There had been two fireplaces, in which pieces of charcoal were found, and human bones were lying on the bottom.  This cave was built with lime, an art acquired from the Romans when in the country, so it cannot be of the great age of the weems of the primeval races.

O'Donnell

   Was O'Donnell here the person who - possibly purposely - became confused?  Difficult to say.  There have been a number of souterrains discovered in this vicinity around Pitcur and Kettins.  Interestingly, nearby Coupar Angus Abbey has a tradition of a secret tunnel (O'Donnell includes a section about it in his book.) One could perhaps have been discovered and re-used as a secret chamber.  Then again, the writer Elliott was himself occasionally accused of re-imagining things to make them seem more interesting or mysterious.   

Armour, Clocks and Weaponry

Is manufacturing a thing of the past in some parts of the country?  Sadly, the imminent closure of Michelin in Dundee is yet another severe blow to heavy industry in the city.  Smaller scale manufacturing has always been a factor in Dundee and Angus, as elsewhere, and this post looks at the production of guns, armour, plus timepieces.

The Moncur Family Armourers

   For several generations in the 15th century the Moncur (also spelled Muncur) family supplied what must have been exceptionally high quality armour to the top tier of society, including the monarchy.  Entries in the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland record repeated payments to the family, over many years.  The first entry specifically naming the family appears to be in 1444 (in the reign of James II) and in the following year the entry mentions one Johanni de Moncure, who is also named in the same source ten years later.  In 1460, 1466 and 1471 Willelmo de Muncur is the recipient of payment for armour and in 1473 the family's named representative was another John, styled Johanni Muncur.

   The entries mentioning this clan of craftsmen continues right to the end of the century and it is apparent that the king then, James IV, esteemed their goods very highly.  The following records occur:

1495. - Item, gevin to Muncur of Dundee for leg splentis and a pare of arme splentis.....iiij li.

1496.-  Nov. 1st, Item, to a man to ryde to Dundee for to ger mak arm splentis to the King.....ij s.

          1496. - Nov. 19th, Item, to Moncur of Dundee, for a pare of splentis to the King.....xls. 

1497. - Nov. Item to Thome Foret to pass to Dundee to ger mak ane par of splentis to the King.....iis.

    It would be reasonable to ask where the Moncurs came from and where indeed in Dundee their master foundry and workshop was and what happened to them from the start of the 16th century onward, but most of these things are unknown.  It has been surmised that David, Earl of Huntingdon, who promoted Dundee as a burgh in the 12th century, instituted armoury along with many other trades in the town, but there is no definite proof of this.

   A later prominent Dundonian with the name was Alexander Hay Moncur(1830-1905), provost of the burgh from 1880 to 1883.  Moncur Crescent in the city is named after him.


   According to the Lockit Book of the Hammermen Trade in Dundee, in the year 1587 there were 8 gunmakers in Dundee and 5 sword-slippers.  Between that year and 1650 there were 5 active armourers lists, along with 21 gunmakers and 10 sword-slippers. From 1651 to 1750 there were 2 armourers, 5 gunmakers, and 2 sword-slippers, after which these designations cease.  The author Fergus Cannan, in Scottish Arms and Armour (2009), states that Dundee pistol manufacturers favours wooden stocks from the early days of the industry and that they later used Brazil wood, since there was a stead imported supply of this, as it was used by other artisans to extract red dye.  James Low of Dundee later made guns entirely of brass, again in response to the use of that material in other processes within the burgh.

McKenzie, the Gunsmith of Dundee

   There appear to be very few identifiable surviving examples of weapons manufactured in Dundee.  Local historian A.H. Millar identified on example (published in 'Notice of a Steel Pistol with the Dundee Mark, and of the Armourers of Dundee,' Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 22. 1887-7, pp. 276-80.  This was an 18th century pistol which was inscribed with the heraldic sign of Dundee, the pots and lilies.  This weapon also bears the name of its maker, David M'Kenzie, which allowed Millar to trace its origins.

   In the Council Minutes for 18th September 1712, the following entry appears:

The sd day anent ane Petition given in be David M'Kenzie, gunsmith, shewing that where he had payed ffiftie merks for his freedome to the town for his own life, and the Petitioner is content to dress the whole armes belonging to the town for the other half of his burgiship, and therefor craving that the Councill would give him a burgiss tickitt in common forme. Which Petition being considered by the Councill they granted the desire of the sd petition, and appoints the Clerk to give him a burgess tickitt according to the said Act.
                                            HENRIE GUTHRIE, Bailie.

   The record of the gunsmith being admitted as a burgess of the burgh also survives:

23rd Sep. 1712.—David M'Kenzie, Hammerman, was admitted Burgess and
Guild Brother for pay of fyfty merks to John Ballingall, late Treasurer, and
for dressing of the Tounes Armes conforme to ane Act of Council dated 18
Sept, instant.

   City records also record David's wife in the year 1725, named Elizabeth Marshall or M'Kenzie.  In April of that year she acquired property on the north side of 'the Fleukargait alias Nethergait,' beside the Church of St Mary of Dundee.The couple's daughter was Agnes M'Kenzie, who is noticed in 1743, at which time her father is signified in documents as deceased.

   The Hammermen Trade was one of the Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee and its members included armourers, clockmakers and gunsmiths.  According the the official website of the guild (found here): 'In the 16th and 17th Century Dundee guns were famous all over Europe and were much sought after. A high proportion of the Trade between 1587 and 1620 were gunmakers with the Ramsay and Alison families featuring prominently.'

Dundee's  Steeple Clock

                     

    Clock-making has had a long history in Dundee, judging from the records. One of the most intriguing, yet shadowy associations with the trade may have been David Ramsay, clockmaker to King James VI. He latterly operated in London and seems to have been a member of the family of that trade who were long active in Dundee. He will be fully considered in a future article.

    The main church in Dundee now has a conspicuous clock in its Old Steeple, but it was not built to house a clock originally.  However, the clock was still installed at an early date, at the end of the 14th century.  By 1540 it had become so decrepit and unreliable and the town council awarded a contract to the Edinburgh burgess William Purves to provide:

ane sufficient and substantious knok with all instruments of iron work necessary and pertaining thereto, justly ganging, to strike hour and half hour complete and justly, the twenty-four hours day and night, with three warnings to contain six score and ninestraiks (strokes), the first at four hours in the morning, the next at twelve hours at noon, and the third at nine hours at even upon the five bells of the steeple, for the sum of seven score and seventeen pounds, ten shillings; the weight to be four score of stanes or thereby, and gif it happens the knok to weigh ten stone more or less, what she weighs mair to be payed to William, and what she weighs less to be defaulted to him.

   The large 'knok' was duly built and installed on Palm Sunday in 1543, but there was a prolonged dispute over the cost. Purves pursued legal action against the Dundee authorities which resulted in him being awarded £197 15s. His clock only lasted for ten years, being destroyed by fire. The next steeple clock was commissioned by another Edinburgh maker, David Kay. The clock was apparently not as good as the previous model and frequently went wrong. The parish clerk, Sir James Kinloch, was given responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the clock, and when Sir James died in 1558 his brother William and his young son seems to have been granted the duties which included that they should:

cause the bells to be rung at times convenient and used, until his son be able and qualified to serve in the office. And the treasurer was instructed to deliver to William yearly, to be given to the keeper of the knok, ane stand of claiths.

   The Ramsay family (who we will deal with in the future) were responsible for the burgh clock from the 1580s until the middle of the 17th century, at which time there are notices of the clock again, at times, falling into disrepair, under the wardenship of Andrew Tailor.

   

The Illustrious Ivory Family

   In the burgh records of Dundee there is the following entry, dated 22nd September 1767:

Which day James Ivory, watchmaker in Dundee, was admitted burgess for having paid 50 merks Scots to James Dick, sometime treasurer, and having just now paid other 50 merks to Henry Geekie, present acting treasurer, in full of his freedom.

   

James Ivory quickly gained prominence in Dundee, being adept at his trade and business. He was actually born in Edinburgh in 1729 and worked as an apprentice in London, where he met and married his wife Jane Brown. Towards the end of 1762 he moved to Dundee, and here his son, James, was born. A second son, Thomas, followed his father's trade. James senior was commissioned to craft and install a clock for the steeple of St Andrew's kirk in the Cowgate. It is still in use today. He served as a burgh councillor between the years 1768 and 1789. His eldest son taught in the town's schools and was later knighted, following a successful career as a mathematician. Thomas's son became a respected judge. (Thomas died in 1825 and his father some time before 1795. Sir James Ivory lived from 1765 to 1842)

   The timepieces made by James in London are rarest and sold at high value, a testament to his skill and their high quality. Part of this is due, we are told, to his insistence in maintaining the high decorative skill of his profession at a time when others were allowing their products to decline significantly.  What prompted him to give up the lucrative trade in London and relocate to Scotland, I do not know.

The Mysterious Mr Cathro

   Another thing I do not know is the personal history of Mr Cathro who, in 1823, was amply rewarded by the Admiralty for devising a remarkable chronometer.  The following details are from  Glasgow Mechanics' Magazine, 1826, vol. ii., page 145:

The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty having advertised a premium of 300 for the best chronometer which should be kept at Greenwich for one year, thirty-six were sent thither by the principal chronometer makers in London and were kept in 1823. It was announced that if any chronometer varied six seconds it could not obtain a prize. At the end of the year the second best chronometer, of which the variation was about five seconds, was made by Mr Cathro, a native of Dundee. Such perfection was never before attained, and it justly excited the astonishment of all astronomers and of the Board of Admiralty.

List of Watch and Clock Makers of Old Angus

Most of the information in the following list is derived from Old Scottish Clockmakers from 1453 to 1850 by John Smith (2nd edition, Edinburgh, 1921). The entries marked * were included in the Dundee Directory, 1853.  Further details of Dundonian clockmakers can be found in an article by the Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee (here).

ADAMSON, CHARLES. High Street, Montrose, 1820-37.

ALISON, JOHN. High Street, Montrose, 1798-1822.

ALSTON, WILLIAM, 7 High Street, Dundee, 1853.*

AUSTEN, JOHN. Dundee, 1836.

BAIN, GEORGE. Upper Wynd, Brechin, 1837.

BALL, THOMAS. Dundee, 1819.

BARCLAY, DAVID. Montrose, about 1830.

BARCLAY, THOMAS. High Street, Montrose, 1811-22.

BATCHELOR, WILLIAM. Dundee, 1816.

BISSET, WILLIAM. Dundee, 1781.

BROWN, GEORGE. West Port, Arbroath, 1834.

CAITHNESS, DAVID. Dundee, 1787.

CAMERON, JAMES. 85 Murraygate, Dundee, 1828-50. (or 88 Murraygate.*)

CARNEGIE,- . Arbroath, 1850.

CONSTABLE, ALEXANDER. Dundee, 1838.

CONSTABLE, WILLIAM. Dundee, 1806.

CONSTABLE, WILLIAM. 7 High Street, Dundee, 1812-28.

CRAW, JAMES. High Street, Forfar, 1837.

CRIGHTON, JOHN. Dundee, 1795.

DAVIDSON, CHARLES. Forfar, 1798-1815.

DICKSON, CHARLES. Dundee, 1722.

DOUGLAS, JAMES. Dundee, 1794.

DRUMMOND, JOHN. Brechin, 1789.

Maker of the new clock in the Town Hall there.

FARQUHARSON, CHARLES. Dundee, 1733-42.

FARQUHARSON, ROBERT. 15 High Street, Dundee,

1847. (Possibly same man as R. W. Farquharson, 1 Castle Street, 1853.*)

FEREN, - . Reform Street, Dundee, 1843.

FERGUSON, ALEXANDER. Dundee, 1777.

FOLEY, WILLIAM, 73 Overgate, Dundee.*

GILRUTH BROTHERS, 52 High St, Dundee.*

GORDON, ALEXANDER. Dundee, 1729.

Maker of the first clock in Brechin Town Hall.

KAY, DAVID. Dundee, 1553-76.

KELT, ALEX, 83 Princes St, Dundee.*

LEIGHTON, WALTER. Montrose, 1830.

LIVINGSTONE, EDWARD. Dundee, 1790.

LOW, THOMAS. 204 Overgate, Dundee, 1828.

LOW, THOMAS, 7 Overgate.*

LOWE, - . Arbroath, 1784.

LUNDIE, JOHN. High Street, Dundee, 1809-37. (Possibly same man, or his son, at 37 High St., Dundee in 1853.*)

MCKENZIE, JOHN, 37 High St., Dundee.*

MANSON, DAVID. Dundee, 1806.

MENZIES, ROBERT. Coupar Angus, 1801.

MICHIE, JAMES. High Street, Brechin, 1837.

MILLER, ALEXANDER. Montrose, 1798; died 26th

September 1808.

MILNE, ROBERT. 50 High Street, Montrose, 1837.

MYLNE, J. A. Montrose, 1740.

NEVAY, WILLIAM. Castle Street, Forfar, 1837.

NICOL, JOSEPH. Coupar Angus, 1801-37.

PETERS, DAVID. 84 High Street, Arbroath, 1837.

RAMSAY, PATRICK, JOHN, AND SILVESTER. Dundee,

1599-1646.

RATTRAY, JAMES, 44 High St., Dundee.*

REED, WILLIAM. Native of Montrose ; died at Whitehaven,

1815.

REID, THOMAS. Montrose, 1788.

RENNIE, ALEXANDER DAVID. 65 High Street, Arbroath,

1837.

RITCHIE, JOHN. Coupar Angus, 1847.

RITCHIE, SAMUEL. Forfar, 1800-37.

ROBB, WILLIAM. Montrose, 1776.

ROBERTSON, CHARLES. Coupar Angus, 1814-37.

ROBERTSON, GEORGE. Dundee, 1806.

ROBERTSON, JAMES. Dundee, 1785.

ROBERTSON, JAMES. High Street, Dundee, 1811-28.

ROSS, CHARLES. Broughty-Ferry, 1828.

ROUGH, DAVID. Hill Town, Dundee, 1820.

SALMON, COLIN. Dundee, 1811.

SCOTT, ANDREW. Dundee, 1776.

SCOTT, DAVID. 73 High Street, Dundee, 1850.(At 69 Wellgate in 1853*).

SCOTT, FREDERICK. 3 Overgate, Dundee, 1837.

SCOTT, WILLIAM. 69 Overgate, Dundee, 1820.

SMALL, THOMAS. Dundee, 1722.

SMITH, ALEXANDER. Dundee, 1718-42.

SMITH, A. P. Reform Street, Dundee, 1850.

SMITH, JAMES. Dundee, 1742.

SMITH, WILLIAM. Dundee, 1668.

SPEED, GEORGE. Dundee, 1749.

STEWART, FRANCIS. High Street, Brechin, 1837.

STRAITON, DAVID. Montrose, 1820-37.

STURROCK, JAMES, 32 Wellgate, Dundee.

WALKER, JAMES. High Street, Montrose, 1820-37.

WALLACE, ROBERT. Forfar, 1798.

WATSON, DAVID. Dundee, 1748.

WEBSTER, THOMAS. Dundee, 1689.

WEHRLE, D, 106 Murraygate, Dundee.*

WHYTOCK, PETER. Overgate, Dundee, 1844. (At 46 High Street and 183 Overgate in 1853.*)

WILD, F. J. Murraygate, Dundee, 1844. (At  36 Union Street in 1853.*)

WILLIAMSON, JAMES. Dundee, 1824.

YOUNG, ARCHIBALD. Murraygate, Dundee, 1828.

YOUNG, J. S.  76 High Street, Dundee.*

YOUNG, JAMES. Wellgate, Dundee, 1828. (Possibly same man at 28 Wellgate in 1853.*)

YOUNG, JOHN G. Murraygate, Dundee, 1850.

YOUNG, PATRICK. Forfar; died 18th January 1811.

YOUNG, THOMAS. Wellgate, Dundee, 1850.

YOUNG, WILLIAM. High Street, Dundee, 1805-43.