Dec 28, 2025

“I am that fond o ma fiddle I could sit inside o’t an look oot” Peter Milne, a Scottish maestro

“I am that fond o ma fiddle I could sit inside o’t an look oot”.1

The “I” in question was the highly skilled violinist or fiddler, Peter Milne. Peter’s life got off to an inauspicious start, the son of an Aboyne tailor and his wife born in 1824, the boy was put to herding cattle as a small child before an attempt by his father to train him in tailoring. But Peter would have none of it. He was obsessed with music and closely followed local fiddlers finger their bows as they entertained with lively renderings of strathspeys and reels.

“Our English neighbours, with that accurate and profound knowledge of Scotland for which they are famous . . . imagine that we on this side of the Border are so devoted to the bagpipes as to have neither time nor inclination for the study of any other instrument.”2

As popular as pipes have long been in Scotland it is the fiddle or violin that was commonly found occupying a corner in many a home both rich and poor throughout the nation. Aberdeenshire and Middle Deeside could boast exceptional players. You’ve probably heard of the ‘Strathspey King’ Scott Skinner – well, Peter Milne first taught Skinner. Over his lifetime he would mentor many talented musicians on what’s been described as the national instrument of Scotland. One commentator posing the question why eminent classical violinists never attempted playing strathspeys concluded “They cannot.” They are “made according to a certain pattern and must content themselves interpreting the works of Shovemoff, Dynamiti, and Her Von Blunderbuss.” 3

Young Peter absorbed the rhythms of fiddlers he heard around Tarland and when he was able to get his hands on an instrument he copied them and practised and practised, honing his technique and discovering he had a bent for it. His confidence grew and soon he was the one doing the entertaining. It was the incentive he needed to go out from his native Tarland but rather than running away to sea, Peter Milne made straight for Aberdeen’s theatres and linked up with blind Willie Grant, a fine pianist and vocalist. Peter was taken on as a violinist in the orchestra at the Theatre Royal in Marischal Street and quickly became its leader, employing the young Scott Skinner as a cello player. In 1862 Peter moved to Edinburgh, to lead orchestras at the capital’s Princess and Gaiety theatres. There were musical tours in England where he first tried laudanum to mask the pain of rheumatism in his hands and fingers. Soon he was addicted to the opiate. It may have been his opium addiction that led to him moving away from theatre work there again it may not have been but Milne next appears in an orchestra entertaining passengers on the Fife-Leith ferry crossing over the Forth. Perhaps it was hardship that forced the move for he did sell his favourite fiddle, the skate, to James Hardie, an Edinburgh violin maker around 1872 when Peter was staying in Leith. The skate had been made by Madrid luthier Joseph Contreras who learnt his trade in Italy and was known as the Spanish Stradivari – and one story led to another, as they do, that led to an assumption or a boast that the skate was a Strad. It was not but it was reputed to have had an exceptionally fine quality of tone and in Peter’s hands could produce a tune more eloquent than many bowing a Strad.

Ferries over the Forth had operated since at least the 12th century carrying passengers including monarchs, pilgrims and troops, travelling circuses with camels, elephants and tigers, caravans, newspapers and every type of thing between north and south until a bridge was opened in 1890. In Peter’s time iron-hulled paddle steamers serviced the crossing between Granton and Burntisland with Peter employed on the John Sterling (named after a senior director of the North British Railway that ran the steamer service). Nearly 1000 passengers could be accommodated on the boat that could take several hours to complete the journey depending on weather conditions. Scottish ferries and controversy go together and so it was then for there was anger when the ferry service was stopped by the rail company who monopolised Forth crossings. There was no help from the area’s MPs who were more familiar with London than the Firth. The rail bridge provided North British Railways with greater profit from the far faster route but the loss of ferries was detrimental to locals moving between Fife and Linlithgowshire and for the hundreds thrown out of work on the dozen or so steamers, Peter included after 23 years aboard.

Peter Milne left Leith and returned to the northeast, to Aberdeen, where he was employed at the city’s Alhambra in Exchange Street as well as earning a little teaching the violin. He went back to touring with Willie Grant and other northeast musicians often playing his own compositions such as John McNeill’s Reel, The Lass o’ Bon-Accord, the Muir o Gellan. He published music, his book on strathspeys and reels went to 5 editions, and he attempted a business as a music seller but the business failed yet the man’s reputation was solid and he remained well-respected.  In 1884 a musical competition held in Silver Street in Aberdeen featured the man from Tarland who was still being described as Peter Milne of Edinburgh because of the length of time he lived in the south. The event celebrated Scotland’s musical heritage the style of which was  “essentially a distinct expression of the art instinct of the people, which they have maintained and cultivated from the earliest times; and I believe it is a historical fact that Italy owes to Scotland the first germs of her modern opera, by the introduction there in the 15th or 16th century of the use which the Scottish musicians made of subdivision and accent in the intervals of time as well as of space in music…Scottish music, is expressive of the characteristics of our Scottish nation.” Peter was honoured for his “many qualities as a man and a musician of the old school, and as an exponent of Scotch music”.  4

Peter Milne eked out a rather poor existence toward the end of his days. His home was a humble room in a densely packed area of hovels that made up the closes and pends off Aberdeen’s Exchequer Row kent as Cheq’ra Wynd (once the site of the royal exchequer and mint) at 4 Exchequer Court. Aberdeen’s first model lodging house for the homeless was in Exchequer Court, perhaps this was Peter’s last home – well, not quite. While drinking in a nearby bar a friend thought it would be funny to pull Peter’s chair away when he was about to sit down. Peter was in his seventies and the damage that resulted to his body left him unable to walk and so he remained bed-ridden for a decade before he died, first at Aberdeen Hospital and then in the Oldmill Poorhouse. The man with so much talent, the entertainer and teacher who passed on a musical heritage to generations died alone in the poorhouse, just one other pauper interred into an unmarked grave in Nellfield cemetery.

But that is not the end of Peter Milne’s story. His reputation meant that he was not totally forgotten. I stumbled upon a stone that had been erected to his memory at Tarland in 1932. Ordinary members of the public raised funds for the fine granite gravestone. As Pipe Major Meldrum played Lochaber No More Lord Aberdeen unveiled the stone bearing a scroll and inscription

Dedicated to the memory of Peter Milne a famous violinist and composer of Scottish music 1824 – 1908 erected by a grateful public

Below is a carving of a violin and the words Riches denied, thy boon was purer joys. What wealth could never give nor take away, from a poem by Robert Burns, Sonnet on Hearing a Thrush Sing.

The crowd that gathered to pay homage to Peter heard Lord Aberdeen extoll the talents of the man who died in penury – to Peter’s and Scott Skinners’ contributions to Scottish music in reels and strathspeys “helping to exclude another type of music, so-called, generally known as jazz”. He praised Peter’s “rendering of many beautiful old melodies which were in danger of being forgotten”.  They sang O God of Bethel and a prayer was said.

There was an intention to include some preserved Scottish music collected by Peter in an international exhibition and conference on folk music, lore and costume proposed for Berne in Switzerland in 1934 but it is not clear this ever went ahead. However in the year the Tarland stone was erected a concert was held in aid of the Peter Milne Memorial Endowment Fund in the village hall that featured several local violinists and fiddlers.    

“Peter was never showy in his playing. But he was a fine player, accurate and clear in his notes”, said his pupil and lifelong friend Scott Skinner.5 It was Skinner’s opinion that few men had done more to keep up the best traditions of strathspey and reel playing in Scotland than Peter. Peter Milne the craftsman musician also described as “perhaps the very best interpreter of Highland Strathspey and reel Deeside could ever boast till the after days of the vastly popular Scott Skinner”. 6 While Skinner who knew Milne well insisted he was “one of the grandest Strathspey players that ever graced Scotland, and probably the finest native musician of any country in the world”. The master musician was a humble man who did not deserved his sad decline into infirmity and poverty.

“If you’re to write onything aboot me, be sure an’ pit doon that Peter Milne’s been a daft idiot!” 7 insisted the unassuming maestro. Peter Milne may well have been a daft idiot at times but one that made a good deal of his talents. His put-me-down was made in conversation with Aberdeenshire polymath, William McCombie Smith, in 1906. Well, we’re a’ daft idiots at times. Aberdeen could have done more to mark the passing of a great and important conserver of Scotland’s northeast heritage. But that’s Aberdeen for you. One of today’s eminent traditional fiddlers, Paul Anderson, involved with Aberdeen University’s Elphinstone Institute dug around, not literally, and found the spot of Peter’s unmarked interment at Nellfield. A stone has now been placed there in recognition of one of Scotland’s most talented sons. If you find yourself in Aberdeen or Tarland take yourself along to the cemetery and give the man a moment of your time.

1 J. Scott Skinner, From My Life and Adventures

2  The Peoples’ Friend 27 February 1899

3  Ibid.

4  Aberdeen Evening Gazette 29 December 1884

5 The Peoples’ Friend 7 December 1896

6  William Carnie, Reporting Reminiscences 1902

7  William McCombie Smith, the Peoples’ Friend 7 December 1896

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Nov 2, 2025

They came for Scotland: Westminster’s Robber Barons

Big boys bash smaller boys. That’s the reality of life’s unfairness. Big powers bash smaller powers. Because they can. Empires are created in this way.  Do this or else – it’s the language of the bully. It’s the language Trump uses against Palestinians and Ukrainians and Greenlanders. It’s always been the language of the tyrant, the oppressor.

Empires grow through economic exploitation of their colonies, possessions that they undermine in every way possible – denigrating and destroying indigenous culture, languages, laws – they wield political and social control. Sound familiar? It should. Welcome to the reality of life for Scots in the UK.

Power sits with the seat of government. In the UK this is in London. Decisions over Scotland’s resources; oil and gas, whisky, fishing, even the very air that powers our wind turbines and the Scottish water that powers our wave power is regulated in England. It is to England that tax revenues from our major industries disappear. Make or break decisions over the economy still lie with Westminster. Westminster made the choice to let Scotland’s last oil refinery shut down. Labour MPs fell over each other to insist this happened because Grangemouth was privately owned and there was nothing their government could do – then they fell silent when the same Westminster government stepped in to shore-up England-based Jaguar Land Rover to the tune of £1.5 billion despite being owned by the vast Indian-owned Tata Group that received an additional £500 million for its steel plant in Wales. Michael Shanks, a Scot in Starmer’s government, made a lot of noise about imminent government funding for Grangemouth. It is still to materialise. The Secretary of State for Scotland at Westminster, Douglas Alexander, has been crowing about £17.3million given to Scotland’s Energy Transition Zone in Aberdeen. Aberdeen where energy jobs are haemorrhaging quicker than Starmer’s popularity. £17.3 million as against £1.5 billion or even £500 million handed to Tata. And energy is an area of the economy under the direct control of Westminster. The same Westminster that refused to set up an oil wealth fund all those decades ago.

London has a long, long tradition of treating its colonies very badly, screwing everything it can from them and denying them the right to break free. Just this past week the UK government allocated its post-Brexit fishing fund allocating £28 million to Scotland and £304 million to England, £18 million to Wales and £10 million to Northern Ireland. When in the EU Scotland received 46% funding because its share of fishing was greater than England’s, with England taking just 36%. Under Westminster’s manipulation England gets the bulk – 84% of the fund and Scotland under 8% yet Scotland produces well over half of all catches in the UK. But this is what you get with the asymmetrical power relationship of the imperialist-minded union in the UK – the bully at Westminster wields the stick and holds the purse-strings.

It has become apparent to increasing numbers of Scots that the union is politically and economically oppressive to Scotland and does not provide fair representation of Scots in the UK parliament. Evidence that Scots would be far better off without being shackled to the union can be found by comparing Scotland with two very similar northern European nations – Norway and Denmark. Population sizes are near-identical and all three have been oil producers and in Scotland’s case her unique whisky export value amounts to some £4.249 billion (2023 – 24) – the bulk of which goes straight to the UK chancellor in London). Norway’s GDP is around $607billion (£1.1 trillion oil wealth fund). Denmark’s GDP is around $555 billion. Scotland’s GDP is around $298 billion (£223.4 billion) with Westminster deciding how much income Scotland can have annually, calculated this year at about £45.5 billion. Short-changed we are.

The vast £ trillion profits from what should have been Scotland’s oil and gas were drained off into private companies once Thatcher’s Tories sold off north-sea fields in 1982. £12 billion value was extracted between 1975 and 1985 and with fluctuations along the way the projection for 2021 to 2028 is £10.6 billion. No oil and gas money was spent in Aberdeen, the oil and gas capital of Europe for decades, while London and the southeast of England gained most with fortunes being poured into huge expensive infrastructure projects such as the Channel tunnel, Canary Wharf development, Docklands Light Railway, Crossrail, Thames Subway, London City Airport, Battersea Power Station development, Elizabeth Line and various commuter rail services across the southeast yet there is not even electrification of rail in Scotland north of the central belt.

For hundreds of years before the union England felt entitled to Scotland and battled hard to take the land. As a distinct political state Scotland is the elder; established in 843 with England following a century later in 927. By the 12th century Scotland’s political boundaries were much as they are today. But seniority was never a consideration and England has repeatedly and determinedly made attempts to subsume Scotland’s territory and resources.

13th century

Igitur de hac virtutis femina locturi quam caput Mulieris vir sicut viri Christus, ideo de viro suo tanquam de capite duximus aliquid praetermittendum, ut cius fuerit cordis quanti ne animi, unum opus eius hic exartum legentibus declaret. (Turgot: Dunfermline Vita)

English attacks and attempts to capture Scotland lead to the Wars of Independence.

14th century

A! fredome is a noble thing!

Fredome mays man to haiff liking;

Fredome all solace to man giffis:

He levys at es that frely levys.   (John Barbour: The Brus)

England attempts to annex Scotland, refuses to recognise Scotland’s separate monarchy.

15th century

The extraordinary consensus of opinion (in Scotland) against the English on the score of their greed, stupidity, their cruelty, their snobbery… arises from the fact that the English, like their cousins, the Germans…are intolerably arrogant and overbearing.   (Walter Bower: Scotichronicon)

English invasions lead to one of Scotland’s wealthiest towns, Berwick, becoming English.

Scota and Gaedel Glas from Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon

16th century

The pawkie auld carle came o’er the lea,

Wi’ mony gude e’ens and days to me,

Saying, Gudewife, for your courtesie,

Will you lodge a silly poor man?       (Anon [James V?]: The Gaburlunzie Man)

English invasions. The Treaty of Greenwich guaranteeing Scottish/English independence is followed by invasion. The English monarch’s Rough Wooing involves burning towns including Edinburgh with widespread rape, murder, devastation of land and food supplies and theft of ships. The Raid of the Redeswire marks the last battle between Scotland and England – fought in Northumberland over English thefts from Scotland. A small win for Scotland.

17th century

N cuals sibbse ‘n tionndagh duineil

Thug an camp bha ‘n Cill Chuimein?

‘S fada chaidh ainm air an iomairt

Thug iad as an naimhdean iomain.  (Iain Lom: La Inbhir Lochaidh)

English invasion of Scotland by Oliver Cromwell’s armies. Absorption of Scotland into the Commonwealth of England (1649-1660). Scotland was not consulted and the republic was proclaimed by London’s military governor of Scotland General Monck, Duke of Albermarle, an Englishman from Devon. This was the first version of union with England. Scotland retained its own parliament but, of course, Edinburgh was not consulted over the execution of Charles I and in defiance declared his son, Charles II. Twelve years later Charles II was recognised in England .

18th century

Wha for Scotland’s king and law

Freedom’s sword will strongly draw,

Freeman stand, or freeman fa’

Let him follow me!   (Robert Burns: Scots Wha Hae)

The English parliament legislated to bar Catholics from the monarchies of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. No consultation with Scotland (or Ireland). Scotland protested against England’s unilateral decision but attempted to play it as a bargaining chip towards agreement if England ceased its policy that prevented Scottish trade in England and the colonies. Westminster refused. Westminster then passed the Alien Act intended to destroy Scotland’s commerce and thrust the country into economic decline unless Scotland relinquished the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh and submitted to a joint parliament based at Westminster. The proposal was met with hostility in Scotland but enough parliamentarians were persuaded to accept bribes from London to assuage their consciences for selling out their country and the Treaty of Union was passed by 110 votes to 67.  

The jaws of the trap of union snapped shut at the completion of a sordid behind-the-scenes deal. England no longer needed an army to try to defeat Scotland – turncoat Scots with their mouths stuffed with English gold cravenly extinguished Scotland’s long status as a free nation. Resistance through two Jacobite uprisings were unsuccessful and Scots paid a heavy price for defiance – death, rape, torture and humiliation. A hostile army was stationed throughout the country to protect English interests. Westminster passed the Act of Proscription to punish Highland Scots and erode their culture; native dress and pipes were outlawed – not totally as they were adopted by the very army subjugating the people in an act of spite that underlined Scotland’s weakness and lack of autonomy in union.

19th century

Chuidich sud le neart nan Gaidheal,

Air taobh Thealaich Bhain gun mhearachd

Na sgeith an Courier de chlabar

‘S ann am fabhor ri Sir Coinneach.   ( Mairi Nic a’Phearsain: Brosnachadh nan Gaidheal)

The ethnic cleansing of Highlanders carried on apace – driven mainly by absentee landlords both Scottish and English who regarded London, not Edinburgh, as the centre of their universe. Westminster created the office of Secretary of State for Scotland to ensure more efficient adherence to Westminster laws in Scotland.

20th century

I’m a miner lad fra Mid-Calder Braes,

In a bog I’ the Laigh Countree

An’ I’m howkin here in a woman’s claes

Whaur I never aince thocht to be.   (J. Logie Robertson: The Lang Whang Road, A miner’s wail from Flanders, 1916)

Continuing resistance to Westminster’s jurisdiction in Scotland develops into political organisations aimed at reinstating the Scottish parliament. Hydro power that began in Scotland the previous century increases in volume and importance. In 1950 Sloy becomes the largest conventional hydro electrical power station in Great Britain. Others followed with Highland hydro feeding the national grid. Scottish Hydro electricity is supplied to the UK. It becomes privatised on the stock market and merged with Southern Electric.

21st century

The dead hand has too long hampered the freedom of the living. (James Robertson)

Scotland provides 85% of GB’s hydro-electricity but London controls energy. Feed-in tariffs for large-scale energy suppliers to the National Grid force Scottish sources to pay £millions while English suppliers receive payments from the NG. Electricity transmission charges are calculated to favour areas of greater demand not areas that produce the energy. This is a choice made in London where no energy is produced, to its advantage. Currently Scots in the north are charged 61 pence per day standing charge for electricity. In southern Scotland that’s 56.55 pence per day. In London it is 46.06 pence per day despite importing their power from other areas, notably Scotland whose customers subsidise them.

UK oil and gas production has mainly been in Scottish waters since the 1970s (Westminster did redraw north sea boundaries in favour of England, allocating itself a share of Scotland’s waters.) The £ billions taken in profits and tax from north-sea oil and gas over the past fifty years have not benefitted Scotland in the least. They have benefitted the southeast of England.

Whisky exports are counted as both Scottish and UK GDP. Whisky is a significant component of UK food and drink exports and exported whisky in 2022 provided £7.1 billion to the UK economy. It makes up around 77% Scottish and 26% of all UK food and drink exports.

At the time of union Scotland was a poor country but overseas trade, most notably with the Baltic and Scandinavia, was strong. Scotland’s merchant class was well-educated and even among the poorest Scots there was a good level of literacy. England was bigger and stronger with a strong navy that was sent to disrupt Scotland’s trade and commerce – less disrupt than destroy. Why would England push for union with a poor country that could become a burden? The same argument stands today with the independence debate. The reality then, as now, is that England wants certainty that its northern border is secure in the interests of England and its economic heft was/is used to control Scotland’s assets – as we have seen with hydro, gas and oil and now renewables. England/Westminster wants to retain control over Scotland to extract profit from Scotland, and Scots. The union was set up to administer Scotland and preserve her minor role set against the might of government at Westminster. Power and control. Westminster has always been a robber baron in terms of Scotland. In that respect nothing has changed since the 13th century. The union parliament at Westminster not only fails spectacularly to operate democratically across the UK (Scotland has just around 8% MPs making it all but voiceless) it is corrupt and bloated. Eight percent Scottish representation in the Commons, short of 8% funding for Scotland’s fishing fleets. There’s a symmetry to the exploitation. So typical of a robber baron.

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Oct 15, 2025

The Merciless Maiden

The sweetest maiden I ever kissed.

The laws of states alter over time. In 1631 Marion Astein of Burntisland was beheaded for adultery and 15 years later Margaret Thomson, wife of the minister of Balmaclellan, was also beheaded for adultery. Today in Scotland no-one is put to death by the state for adultery or any other crime but parliament changes and redefines crimes and determines their severity. I’m certain those living in the 17th century would raise an eyebrow at what constitutes dangerous opinion in 21st century Britain but still there is no danger of any cardboard sign holder being beheaded by the UK state now or in the near future – a form of punishment we regard as barbaric, which it is, but beheading by a machine was once considered to be less barbaric than other forms of beheading – by sword or axe which were notoriously difficult and messy. It was thought to be cruel and improper to hang women yet many women were hanged. One man whose punishment was as horrible as any woman’s was Major Thomas Weir who was tied to a stake and strangled, his body was then burnt for the crime of sexual deviant – he indulged in incest, bestiality and adultery (with what is not recorded). He was also a Covenanter which was possibly what did for him. Death by drowning was the awful fate of some women, also burning (so, too, were men) so hanging was the better option, the Maiden better still. The Maiden was an apparatus with a crossbar in which was set a blade that dropped when released by the executioner and sliced through the neck of its victim.

No doubt you have in your mind’s eye a vision of the French guillotine that did so much of the heavy lifting through the period of the French Revolution but la guillotine was late to the party and appeared two hundred years after Scotland’s Maiden was in active service. So it is a pity that the guillotine to be found in many an office in Scotland carries a French and not a Scottish name.

The Maiden was first constructed in the 1500s in Edinburgh as an instrument of state murder. All sorts of felons could be served by the Maiden from forgers to adulterers, as we have seen, but she was primarily used to execute high profile enemies of the state. The contraption was easel-shaped and about 10 feet high with uprights four inches broad and 12 inches apart from each other. The structure was held upright by brace and sole – the sole extended five feet at the back. The cross bar that held the blade was two feet long and braced by the side posts. A cavity in the bar housed a 75-pound lead weight and at the signal the executioner pushed down on a long lever allowing the heavy blade to drop. To keep the business of beheading as efficient as possible an adjustable iron bar was placed across the neck of the Maiden’s target to prevent the person pulling back their head at the last moment.

The Maiden; Halifax beheader; Continental beheader; Aberdeen Maiden

It used to be said by some that the Maiden was the first beheading machine – it wasn’t. Some claimed it was a copy of one used in Halifax in England – it probably wasn’t. Both the Maiden and the Halifax type did the same job but were quite different designs. The Halifax edition was fixed to a raised stone platform on which the victim lay down, the neck over a length of timber waiting for the drop of the blade that took its time for the executioner used a knife to cut through the rope securing it. Scotland’s Maiden was designed with a lever to release the axe head more quickly than slicing through tow and it was not fixed but a mobile unit, disassembled after use and stored away in the bowels of parliament.  

The Maiden also known as the Madin and Mayden was often taken out to dispatch the rich and connected because of its efficiency – albeit with long-lasting consequences. The poor rarely deserved a quick death. And some folk deserved a double death and were heided having previously been executed by other means so their heads might be displayed in public as a deterrence to others. Sir John Gordon of Findlater captured at the Battle of Corrichie in 1562 was beheaded by Aberdeen’s Maiden. His father would have suffered the same fate had he not dropped dead during the battle – his body was taken to Aberdeen, disembowelled, salted and pickled then loaded onto a ship bound for Edinburgh where the corpse was tried for treason before parliament. In Aberdeen public executions were carried out at the Mercat Cross or Heading Hill and here in September 1595 John Donalson was ‘hedit’ for the killing of Robert Scherar.  

Scotland perfected the art of a clean beheading with the invention of the Maiden. When the Covenanter Marquis of Argyll prepared for his execution in 1661 in Edinburgh for his part in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms he wrapped his arms around the timbers of the Maiden and uttered his final words, “This is the sweetest maiden I have ever kissed” before the blade separated his head from his shoulders. It was his good fortune that the steel-edged lead-weighted iron axe had been replaced the previous year by Alexander Davidson hired to maintain it for “all the dayis of his life”.

The aristocrat most associated with the Maiden was James Douglas, Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland 1572-1578 during the minority of James VI. He was a nasty piece of work involved in the murders of Mary Queen of Scots’ lover, David Rizzio, and her husband, Lord Darnley. A tenacious enemy of the Queen he was an inveterate traitor to his country who tried to ingratiate himself with the English court. Found guilty of the lethal plot against Darnley he was condemned to be hanged but James VI demanded leniency so the sentence was commuted to death by the Maiden. There is an apocryphal story that Morton was behind the Maiden, that he had the Halifax heading machine adapted in Edinburgh but this has been widely disputed. On one of his tours abroad Morton witnessed the Mannaia (great knife) in Italy – beheading machines were common enough on the Continent and there is a famous woodcut by the German artist, Lucas Cranach, from 1539 of one used in the martyrdom of the apostles. The Continental machine was more like Scotland’s. It may be that Morton promoted the construction of the Maiden but as for the tale he ‘first hanselled it” with his execution – that is nonsense. He was one in a line of executees. But under the blade he went and his head once removed was fixed to a prick (spike) and displayed on the north gable of Edinburgh’s tolbooth for 18 months. That’s some legacy. And true.

Nearly twenty years earlier in 1564 Edinburgh Town Council recorded “The Compte of the Heding Axe maid the tyme of the comptaris office, as efter follwis, at command of the Provost, Baillies, & Counsale”, listing what went into its assembly – timber, stone, tow and so on – and “Item to Mongo Hunter for thre bandis of yrne” and “naillis”, “sawing of jeists”, “twa stane & half of leid on the Aix & tempering of it and for his laubors” (Androw Gottersoun). Any machine with moving parts needs maintenance and so did the Maiden from time to time – fresh towis (rope), its blade sharpened and timbers replaced. This was the Maiden.

Executions of Marquis of Argyll and John Hamilton; 17thC Highland chief; Edinburgh tolbooth

The first recorded reference to the Maiden as her dates from 1608 – though that doesn’t mean it wasn’t referred to as her earlier. The first mention of the merciless Maiden’s use was in 1565 when Robert Aitkyne found guilty of the murder of John Robertson in Aberdeen was heided at Edinburgh’s Mercat Cross. James Adamson met the same fate for piracy in 1567; Peter Hamilton for incest and murder that same year; John Leyis for treason, theft and spulzie (theft or plunder) in 1569. Jean Livingstone from Warristoun went under the Maiden in July 1600 for the murder of her husband. The following year 16-year-old Laurence Man was beheaded for committing murder while gambling with cards and dice in a kirk. In 1618 the minister of Craigie, Thomas Ross, felt the sweet embrace of the Maiden for producing an ‘infamous’ pasquill (satire or lampoon). Ross was in England where he nailed a statement to the door of St Mary’s Church at Oxford University containing a furious diatribe against Scots describing them, though not himself, as parasites on England – there are several among Scotland’s current media personnel of similar opinion but the vice-chancellor of the university was of sounder mind and had Ross arrested then dispatched to Edinburgh for trial. The hand that created the pasquill was lopped off and hung up on Edinburgh’s west port and his head followed except it went to the Netherbow.  

While Aberdeen had its own Maiden not every community did and the Edinburgh Maiden was believed to have been transported to Dundee and St Andrews when required, such as in 1646 when the parliament granted a warrant to “transport the maiden from Dundee to St Androis” to execute royalists.

The Maiden’s last hurrah came in 1716 when John Hamilton was beheaded for murder. By the end of that century la guillotine was in constant demand during the days of revolution brought out to oust its corrupt and profligate monarchy and aristocracy. The machine de mort was ordered by the Legislative Assembly in 1792, built by a German living in Paris, a man called Schmitt. The construction was overseen by Dr Louis, Secretary of the Academy of Surgeons, and initially it was known as Louison or Luisette before the name guillotine was adopted, taken from Dr Joseph Guillotin, a French physician imprisoned during the reign of terror. The most striking difference between the guillotine and the Maiden lies in the blade – the Scottish one was horizontal and the French one slanting which made it still more efficient.

The abandoned Edinburgh Maiden was kept dismantled and in storage beneath parliament until claimed by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for their museum. The axe is all that remains of Aberdeen’s Maiden active from the 1500s to 1615. It is on display at the city’s Tolbooth museum. When I looked up the Maiden on Aberdeen City Council Galleries and Museums website up popped a page to register a death. Bizarre.

Posted in Aberdeen, Aberdeen City Council, Scotland, Scottish history, Uncategorized, Weird and Wonderful | Leave a Comment »

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Sep 21, 2025

The first Scots movie stars and the one who gave Homer Simpson his d’oh!

If there’s one place that’s associated with glamour it’s Hollywood. Glamour, a Scottish word meaning magic or enchantment, coined in the 1700s. But Scotland didn’t only provide the descriptive noun it provided the early motion picture industry with some of its most abiding faces.

Recently I happened to see an online publication called Far Out claim Deborah Kerr was Scotland’s first and biggest Hollywood star – she most certainly was not the first as the author of this piece would have discovered had he researched his topic and it’s doubtful she has been the biggest.

Hollywood movie-making stretches back to 1912 when film makers moved west to escape the New York’s strangle-hold on their industry by the Thomas Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company. Over in California it was Canadians who were behind the development of Hollywood, Tinseltown. Not just any Canadians but Canadians with Scotland running through their blood and in no time lots of Scots were arriving there fascinated by the idea of a career in film.

Aberdeen’s Margaret Mann was one of 10 children and put out to work as a child. Their poverty turned the family to become economic migrants in South Africa but after a few years Margaret migrated again, this time to the west coast of the USA. There Margaret found occasional work as an extra in the recently setup Universal and Triangle studios but by 1921 had secured the role of Mrs Blomefield in the silent version of Black Beauty.  In 1928 she took a lead role in John Ford’s magnificent and hugely successful silent film drama set in Germany at the outbreak of the Great War, Four Sons. Margaret was cast in the star role of Mother Bernle because of her impressive performance as Mother Machree in the 1927 movie of that name. Four Sons provided her with her first proper paid employment as a movie actress at the age of 60,

“Fancy drawing a regular pay check, even when one isn’t working! It is the first time in my life I was ever paid without earning it,” she said.

https://youtu.be/eiZweY4aK_A?si=Ehl8QkoS6q6KnvFh

Four Sons top billing

The take-home pay of an extra was unpredictable  – $5 or $7.50 per appearance and as she told reporters she worked as hard for that as she did in Four Sons. There were thousands like Margaret enrolled with the Central Casting Bureau looking for that breakthrough. Margaret’s lovely, kindly face and homely appearance tended to have her typecast in mother roles but it’s fair to say throughout her years in Hollywood she played a variety of characters for her filmography was vast. When Four Sons was released Margaret was showered with praise for the “masterpiece of naturalness” of her acting and she was described as Hollywood’s latest Cinderella. It was said she did not need a skilled makeup artist to create her old lady image as “Father Time was her makeup artist, etching in her face the lines of care, and the character and spirituality which can only come from an unembittered struggle of years.” At its premier on Broadway the audience rose to its feet, cheered and applauded the Scot who was presented with bouquets of flowers for her sterling performance. Described as a film masterpiece Margaret Mann earned international acclaim for her acting.

Margaret Mann

It’s an awful irony that while Margaret Mann epitomised the mother-type on the big screen none of her own children survived beyond birth. Her successes as an actress and the adulation that came to her must have been some little consolation. Her appearance plus that “delightful Scottish burr” led to directors noticing her. Four Sons won Photoplay’s Medal of Honor for best picture for 1928 but Hollywood’s love affair with elderly women was starting to decline and in that way older women struggled to retain their cinematic appeal (a plight that did not apply to men) roles grew scarcer.

William Gillespie

Another Aberdonian and pioneer of Hollywood silent movies was William Gillespie. He was just 44 when he died in 1938 but had appeared in 180 films, many uncredited bit parts. He was a regular comic actor in Hal Roach films most notably alongside Laurel and Hardy in many of their pictures such as Do You Love Your Wife in which he played the unfaithful husband. He was also in 60 Harold Lloyd movies and turned up in supporting roles for Charlie Chaplin and was often cast as a stuffy official or manager.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=764G3tcR5HA Do You Love Your Wife as the faithless husband

Mary Gordon

Glasgow dressmaker Mary Gordon was a young widow in her thirties with a daughter and mother in tow when she emigrated to the States after the Great War. In California she found work as a waitress in the Robertson-Cole a studio but then she began to secure bit parts in movies which led to her friendship with the director John Ford. She made seven films with him starting with Hangman’s House in 1928, a step-up from the silent short of 1925 The Dome Doctor. Mary is best remembered for her later work in maternal roles, for example, as Mrs Hudson in Sherlock Holmes’ movies but the role that became significant to her career was a nanny in The Little Minister (a James Barrie story) along with Katharine Hepburn. From the crowd of hopefuls hanging around the casting office Katherine Hepburn noticed Mary and went over to speak to her. She was so taken with Mary’s rich Glasgow accent the star persuaded director Richard Wallace to give her a screen test and played opposite her to demonstrate how well they could work together. Wallace signed up Gordon there and then for the role of Babbie the nanny for the 1924 film. Other parts came her way as a result of the film but as she got older it got harder to find work. In 1935 she read one evening that director Lloyd Bacon was struggling to fill the role of the mother, Ma O’Hara, in his movie The Irish in Us with James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland. Mary wrote him there and then and went out and posted the letter by special delivery. In the morning she phoned him and was invited to the studio, auditioned and secured the role. Mary Gordon had a strong reputation in Hollywood circles. In all she appeared in some 300 films that included Frankenstein, The Power and the Glory, Bonnie Scotland, Mutiny on the Bounty, Mary of Scotland, Mr Smith goes to Washington and Fort Apache. Her benefactor Katharine Hepburn had a little part in Mary Gordon’s success. Hepburn was a real Scottophile; proud of her Scottish name the down-to-earth film star spent many holidays in Scotland and raved about the country so much she persuaded her mother and sisters to visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgDl37dMB-0 The Irish In Us

James Finlayson

The man who put the Doh! into Homer Simpson’s mouth was James Finlayson. Jimmy Finlayson or Fin as he was known to his friends was a prolific screen actor familiar to audiences with his bald head, big fake moustache, his characteristic squint and outraged double takes followed by a slow burn. He was the third man in a host of Laurel and Hardy movies; their foil known for his D’ooooooh! The long D’oooooooh! was shortened to Doh! in the Simpsons.

Jimmy as the Sgt Major in Bonnie Scotland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yh7bxj92zU

Born in Larbert in Stirlingshire 1887 teenager Jimmy Finlayson began training as a tinsmith but abandoned that to go to Edinburgh University where he caught the acting bug. Still only 24 Jimmy crossed the Atlantic in 1911 and took to the Broadway stage, in The Great Game he played a teuchter detective but the developing California movie business called and by 1916 he was in Hollywood. He worked for a couple of small studios before transferring to the Max Sennett outfit becoming one of the original Keystone Cops, usually the comic villain being pursued by the police,before moving across to Hal Roach – director of Laurel and Hardy films where his reputation was made. Jimmy Finlayson had acted in several movies with young Stan Laurel before Laurel teamed up with Oliver Hardy and when he did Jimmy was there, too, appearing in 33 of their pictures as the duo’s comic foil – for instance he was Sgt. Major Finlayson in Bonnie Scotland (Mary Gordon was Mrs Bickerdike and David Torrence was Mr Miggs). In the earliest years it was Laurel, Hardy and Finlayson, a comedy trio, but Roach decided the duo pairing was slicker as an attraction. They three remained firm friends.

Finlayson’s film career stretched from 1920 to 1951, one of his last roles was as a cabby in Royal Wedding, a bit part that was uncredited, as so many of his later appearances were. All a bit sad for a man who really was an icon of early cinema. As with many of his fellow actors he died fairly young, at 66 in 1953. He was a proud Scot and a talented piper, playing for friends. There’s a nice wee story of how one time Jimmy was returning from a holiday in Scotland – he stepped off the train at Pasadena to be greeted by his good pals Stan and Ollie dressed in kilts. Behind them a band of bagpipers who played the three amigos out of the station, a scene that created wild excitement among travellers there. Jimmy Finlayson’s attracted the headline “‘Kop’ dies”. Among those attending his funeral service at Chapel of the Pines in Los Angeles was the old Keystone Kops gang, their director Mack Sennett and Jimmy’s long-time friend from home in Scotland, Andy Clyde.

Andy Clyde

It was Jimmy Finlayson who persuaded Andy Clyde to move to America. Clyde from Blairgowrie made his screen debut in 1921 as the surveyor’s helper in On a Summer Day and soon was a regular in a host of Mack Sennett films. His filmography over the next 40 years amounted to about 300 pictures plus much television; he was California Carlson, Hopalong Cassidy’s sidekick in the series as well as being in a host of other westerns and the Lassie films. On-screen he usually appeared with a scruffy beard and mismatched clothes that belied the suave star off-screen. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq72Rg7rWBE Hopalong Cassidy

Olaf Hytten

Olaf Hytten from Glasgow started out in British silent movies before moving to the States where he acted in hundreds of silents and talkies – 27 in 1934 alone. A bit typecast as a butler Olaf but his roles took in all kinds of characters. He loved the movie industry despite the erratic nature of employment of actors who weren’t major names but he was prepared to plug away and take work where he could. He was on the set of Sir Walter Raleigh for 20th Century Fox when he died, in 1955. His huge filmography includes many small uncredited appearances but he worked in some of the best movies of his day: Casablanca, A Study in Scarlet, Jane Eyre, What Every Woman Knows, The Last of the Mohicans, A Christmas Carol among his appearances in the thirties.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjXII9gq3Nw&list=PLi5s3-YiYzffNtKp0enduNMFZulIky-0n Fu Manchu

Alfred Bardo

One of the first of the Scots to break into Hollywood was Alfred Bardo from Troon in Ayrshire. Having become bored as a mariner Alfred joined the Klondike gold rush and when that didn’t turn out as he hoped he tried his hand as a trapper in America’s far northwest. Unsatisfied with that he took to the saddle as a cowboy for a time before heading to Los Angeles where he was persuaded by another Scot to try the movie business. Bardo was hardly in the first flush of youth by this time but with his distinctive bearded face the Scot secured roles from Highland crofter to Turkish admiral to Hindu priest and he loved it all. At long last having tried so many jobs he had found his forte. As with the others Alfred worked with the big stars of the day such as Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Lon Chaney with whom he remained friends. He played Dorothy Dalton’s gambler father in The Lady of Red Butte, a priest in Cecill B. DeMille’s epic story of Christ, King of Kings. His old life in the Klondike held him in good stead to play a prospector in the 1919 silent western Breed of Men for Paramount Pictures. A print of the film is preserved in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bardo arrived in Hollywood when it was rough countryside with only a few buildings serving as studios but when he retired to Scotland to his ‘ain folk’ in 1927 Hollywood was already expanding into the huge industry that would dominate film production.   

https://www.primevideo.com/detail/The-King-of-Kings/0QHQ3S60CL8WO6WOWXRKM4UHPK King of Kings

Spottiswoode Aitken

Also in at the beginning of Hollywood’s pre-talkie era was Frank Spottiswoode Aitken from Edinburgh. It was 1914 when Spottiswoode Aitken as he was known found himself one of a growing group of actors and actresses settling into the newly fledged movie community in Los Angeles. Maybe because the life didn’t offer much security Aitken took to buying land and orange groves around Los Angeles. His first film role came in a D. W. D. Griffith movie The Battle; a tale of the American Civil War. Griffith also cast him in the shamefully racist The Birth of a Nation, as Dr Cameron. Rightly condemned for its heroic portrayal of white supremacism the movie was nonetheless acclaimed for its technical innovations including its use of colour. It was the first motion picture screened in the White House. Spottiswoode’s final film appearance was as a sports writer in Frank Capra’s 1928 film The Power of the Press with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeMUMvHgaOg The Power of the Press

David Torrence

Another Edinburgh man, David Torrence, was one of 11 children. Born in 1864 his Hollywood debut didn’t come until he was about 40 but he was straight into a leading role as Michael, Duke of Strelsau in The Prisoner of Zenda in 1913. Like so many of his fellow Scots his film appearances were numerous in roles that went uncredited and paid by the day for films completed in a matter of weeks. A big man Torrence was a favourite in the role of a heavy nevertheless over the years he enjoyed a huge variety of parts such as Lord Hood in Mutiny on the Bounty with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable in 1935. David’s younger brother Ernest Torrence set out in showbusiness as a singer with the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company before accompanying David to the States before the First World War. They both took to the New York stage for a few short years until lured west to Hollywood. Ernest Torrence’s films included The Night Boat (1920) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney three years later. In the Buster Keaton classic silent movie Steamboat Bill (1928) Ernest was Buster Keaton’s pipe-smoking father. Ernest Torrence died at 54, in 1933, of complications during surgery for gallstones shortly after playing Moriarty in the 1932 movie Sherlock Holmes. Brother David lived until he was 87 and died in Los Angeles in 1951.

Ernest Torrence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJbYuFdMB3U Steamboat Bill, Jr

All things Scottish appealed to the Hollywood set. Los Angeles’ oldest restaurant the Tam o’ Shanter Inn and drive-in on Los Feliz Boulevard where waitresses dressed in tartan and Tam o’ Shanters was immensely popular with Hollywood’s elite who queued up in their fancy limousines for hamburgers (the Edinburgher) with the trimmings – onions and sauce – served in huge buns or for restaurant meals with a Scottish twist such as Scotch broth. It was at the Tam (opened in 1922) they turned out to celebrate Burns Nights to dine on haggis and drink toasts to the Immortal Memory while nibbling on shortbread flown in specially from Scotland.

The Tam o’Shanter

Hogmanay was celebrated usually by driving from one star-filled mansion to another. Katherine Hepburn made a point of visiting her friend the Scottish actor Alec Craig whose wife’s ‘delicious’ scones were her favourites. As well as the Craig scone fame Mr Craig, Alexander, was a favourite with screen audiences, sometimes typecast as a Scotsman but not entirely. Craig was Mccoy in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Donal in John Ford’s Mary of Scotland in which his friend Katharine Hepburn took the title role and Angus McBain in Northern Pursuit (1943). As a jobbing actor many of Alec Craig’s appearances went uncredited such as when he was Speaker in the great film Mr Smith goes to Washington.  Much like Jimmy Finlayson he often adopted a wizened expression on screen and his bald head was instantly recognisable in movie after movie. Alec Craig was a pioneer of film noir playing a defence attorney in Stranger on the Third Floor. Born in Dunfermline in 1884 Alec Craig died in 1944 and was buried near his home at Grand View Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Alec Craig

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmveQVTNd8A Northern Pursuit trailer

Donald Meek

Six years older than Alec Craig was Donald Meek a Glaswegian who died in Los Angeles two years after Alec. Meek was another Scot who did a lot of work for Frank Capra including You Can’t Take it With You (1938), Stagecoach (1939) where he appeared as the diminutive whisky salesman, Samuel Peacock, and the very early Broken Dishes that featured a young Bette Davis (1929). As well as through his film roles Donald Meek left his mark in Hollowood’s Walk of Fame. He ended up in California via Canada after his parents emigrated there from Scotland. Donald lost his hair as a consequence of contracting yellow fever. His final movie was Magic Town starring James Stewart and Jane Wyman and during its filming Donald Meek died from leukaemia. A splendid and talented character actor he entertained in more than 800 stage and film roles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE-VWDsdkwM Whisky salesman in Stagecoach

Joe Yule

Of a similar age to Donald was Joseph Ninnian Yule, born in Glasgow his parents emigrated to America when he was three months old. Yule became a burlesque and vaudeville actor under the name Joe Yule. You may have heard of his son, Ninnian Joseph Yule, whose stage name was Mickey Rooney. Yule senior was another jobbing actor who appeared in a host of uncredited character roles – The Great Ziegfeld (1936), the Thin Man series, For Me and My Gal starring Judy Garland and as Milton in the 1941 movie Billy the Kid and many more.

Someone who was slap bang in the middle of Hollywood’s motion picture phenomenon was Nora Low from Strichen in Aberdeenshire better known by the name Lorna Moon. Nora’s messy and complex life found her in Hollywood at the invitation of director Cecil B. DeMille following her candid appraisal of his silent movie starring Gloria Swanson, a society romance called Male and Female. Instead of ignoring her DeMille challenged her to write a better script for a film. She duly arrived in 1921 and was taken on to learn the craft of scripting and screenwriting at the studio that would become Paramount Pictures. Lorna took to the life like a duck to water. She enjoyed great success with screenplays for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1920s that earned the studio big bucks for movies such as the adaption of Anna Karenina in the 1927 movie, Love, starring Greta Garbo.  

Lorna Moon aka Nora Low

Lorna, having abandoned her two children on her travels, had a third child with Cecil B. DeMille’s brother William, also a movie director. The child, a boy called Richard, was brought up by Cecil and his wife as their adopted son. Lorna was a talented writer and her screen credits include Gloria Swanson’s early silent movie The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and Norma Shearer’s Upstage (1926).

Often in poor health Lorna died of tuberculosis. Her ashes were brought to Scotland and scattered on Mormond Hill near the town whose inhabitants she drew from for her series of short stories Doorways in Drumorty – a work that was banned from its local library for its biting satire of the local community. The film rights to her book Dark Star earned Lorna a great deal of money for the stories that formed the basis of the hugely successful comedy drama series Min and Bill, an early talkie, that was pre-code (Hay’s censorship code) and so more explicit than later movies were allowed to be and earned MGM a staggering $2million ($38,000,000 today) when premiered in 1930, the year Lorna died at the age of 43.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWLeqAafUjk Min and Bill preview

There are many more stories about Scots in at the beginning of the age of Hollywood but for now – that’s all folks!

Posted in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, Scottish history, Uncategorized, Weird and Wonderful | 5 Comments »

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Aug 16, 2025

The Doric v Wordsworth: a sad tale of a student who sued his university professor

In March 1928 the Court of Session at Edinburgh rejected v appeal against a decision at Aberdeen Sheriff Court to dismiss a student’s claim for damages against his university professor. Lewis Coutts was the student and the academic at the centre of the storm was Adolphus Jack, Professor of English Literature at Aberdeen University. The living experiences of the two men could hardly have been greater; Jack a formidable and conservative don from an esteemed family of academics and Coutts son of an Aberdeenshire sanitary inspector with an ambition to write. Coutts was bristly and uncompromising in his insistence he write in his local vernacular, the Doric – a dialect rooted in culture with a strong literary heritage.  But Wordsworth didn’t write in the Doric and the Professor would have none of it.

Jack and Coutts had a spectacular falling out in the early 1920s during Coutts’ time at university. Coutts suffered four years of hell, a Gordon Highlander in the Great War he was badly wounded when the trench he was in was blown up. Later in the war his brother, William, was killed. The Professor had avoided service in the war but no doubt had heard of it.

Charge!

“Old Corky’s down and dying!

Did you hear the splinter flying

It’s blown away the side of his face

And most of his jaw below …”








(Scotch Hotch Potch; Lewis Coutts, 1923)





When Lewis (Loo-ey) Coutts was prevented from taking the senior Honours year in 1923-24 he sued Professor Adolphus Jack for £5,500 damages for the ban and alleged slander – declaring Jack called him “mad, ignorant, and silly” as justification for banning him from the course and so damaging his prospects of becoming a teacher or journalist. Jack denied every accusation against him.  





The Professor had a team of expensive solicitors to fight his case. Coutts defended himself. He had no money for legal fees but despite his confidence in his case he was not a match for a professional legal team or the conservatism of the bench. It should be said Coutts was not in the best state of mind for the demanding impact of what turned out to be a protracted legal battle. His mental state was fragile as a result of his war experiences, the loss of his brother and then in 1923 the sudden death of both parents.   





War – Springtime 1917





Evening





The sun set terrible, bathed in blood,





Guns growled for their human fodder,





…





For death had sown the land with dead –





To reap a hell upon earth.”










The Dead





Two deaders lay clasped like frightened kids,





One face grinned neath a rakish helmet,





In grotesque hilarity at war;





another stared in terror …”





(Lyrics, Ballads, and Satires; Lewis Coutts, 1926)





Turning up late to a lecture as the roll was called Coutts heard when his name was called Professor Jack say, “Oh, yes, he is not coming back” – later denied by Jack – at which point Coutts walked away. He later challenged Jack and words were exchanged. In court it emerged that the Professor regarded Coutts’ work as “too downright” – that Coutts was very outspoken and critical of many established poets, including the Bard himself, Rabbie Burns, and he had no time for Wordsworth which shocked and infuriated the English department. Then, again, Lord Byron also had no time for Wordsworth whom he referred to as Turdsworth. Other department staff supported the Professor’s remarks about Coutts being difficult and resistant to undertake work he thought unworthy of him. As for Coutts he maintained some students such as other ex-servicemen were offered preferential treatment and permitted to sit Honours with six out of seven subjects but when he requested the same special dispensation he was told he was too late by almost two weeks. The university refused to reveal if this was true which it surely was for then it was said each case for sitting the degree was judged on its merits. Throughout the initial Sheriff Court case and then at the Court of Session Jack’s team of solicitors did their best to belittle and ridicule Coutts, to the amusement of the public.  





The local man had made himself unpopular with the English Department by refusing to conform to its orthodoxy. For a working-class man suffering the grief of his lost family and trying to cope with the unfamiliar environment of university life – and it should be said, a man with challenging opinions – the inevitable happened and he suffered a mental breakdown that resulted in a period in a mental hospital in 1923; throughout his life he would be in and out of these institutions. University life did not start out too badly; some of his course writing impressed the Professor who described how it “blazed up like a fire” but with Coutts’ persistent questioning and dismissal of the department’s canon of poetry’s hierarchy such as calling Wordsworth “merely a stick-in-the-mud” a red flag was raised and not one supported by the socialist Coutts. Soon relations between the two men broke down entirely.





It emerged in Coutts’ evidence the university tried to silence him by offering him money but when asked about this not one of the Senate members could remember such an arrangement. Which all sounds like institutional circling of the wagons and collusion among university staff.












The ‘intemperate’ language Coutts used in his work was brought up as evidence he didn’t belong in the Honours class but when it was pointed out he had used the same language in his early years at university and that work passed it was argued that was because an exception was made for him as an ex-serviceman with disabilities. Coutts had been twentieth out of one hundred and sixty students in his first year but the Professor claimed his work deteriorated after this which is possible given Coutts’ mental breakdown. The court heard Coutts questioned his lecturers’ ability to judge his writing. Lewis Coutts was on a hiding to nothing against the formidable united strength of the university hierarchy. There is no doubt he was testy but there is little doubt his questioning of the academic establishment antagonised it.





Professor Adolphus Jack was the quintessential absent-minded professor whose existence was more ethereal than that of the majority of mere earth-bound mortals. Bumping into one of his students he asked what books he had with him. “Oh, you wouldn’t be interested, Professor. They’re just rubbish. I bought them at Woolworth’s,” replied the student.  “Woolworth’s,” pondered the Professor, “I haven’t heard of that bookshop.”





A larger-than-life figure with wild ginger hair under a tatty black bowler and dressed in a long-caped ulster coat Jack occasionally appeared in three waistcoats, having lost count while dressing. He was a familiar sight on the trams that carried him between his home in Aberdeen’s west end to the  university four times daily.  One time when asked by the tram inspector for his ticket he pulled about 150 of them crumpled up out of a pocket and told him, “It must be one of these.” He didn’t drive and travel to his holiday home in Perthshire was by taxi from Aberdeen – two taxis, actually – one for the man and his wife, Lucy, and the other for their luggage, a cook and housemaid.





Jack was admired by many of his students several of whom went on to have successful writing careers. They called him Dolphie, though probably not to his face. Agnes Mure Mackenzie was nervous about forwarding her latest book on English Renaissance Drama to Jack for comment – “Dare I send A.A.J. a copy?” she asks her friend the novelist and poet and former fellow-student of Jack’s, Nan Shepherd, in 1926.  Mackenzie added – “I said what was gie’d me about Ford & Co and he [Jack] will probably faint in coils + put the book in the ashes.” She and Jack held different opinions on English literature, his being “à la Dolphy”, but when it came to Coutts’ trial her sympathies lay with the Professor – “Poor old Dolphin! . . . who is financing Coutts?” 1.





Lewis Coutts lost his case against Professor Jack and Aberdeen University. He published a handful of books of poetry and wrote plays that were performed locally but in the end his living was earned as a market gardener in Ellon. Some of his poetry is very good, some drifts into doggerel. He was described as “the great Scots poet of to-day” in the Motherwell Times in 1927.  It picked out his “facility for rhyming, a rather gloomy outlook at times, but ever a fighter and one determined to be master of his fate in spite of anyone or anything.”  The piece cites his book Lyrics, Ballads, and Satires as “full of fine poetry – finer than the Jacob [Violet Jacob] . . . and on a par with Robert Burns.” That opinion was not widely shared. Coutts’ forthright language continued to give offence to some – so, too, did his antipathy to religion –





“The psalmist snivels, silly ass!”





And to authority –





“Rank is jist an empty blaw,





Wealth taks wings and flees away”.





(Scotch Hotch Potch)





Four years at university but Coutts left without a degree in the end. His intransigence and the intransigence of the university department – both unbending traditionalists in their own ways maintained their differences to the end. Coutts refused to pull his punches and the university of Aberdeen was a citadel that could absorb his hits. The series of court cases eventually ended, in 1929. The Lords of the Court of Session came down on the side of the Professor. Coutts was criticised for refusing to accept the standards of teaching at the university – “tuition would be reduced to a farce if everyone assumed that attitude…a university might as well close its doors”.





Coutts, the country loon (lad) who never lost his passion for the land, for nature and for humanity was not always raging. His eye was keen and his emotions charged. He wrote the most tender verse –





The Lass o’ Logie





O, cushie, crooin’ love se sweet,





An’ gently flowin’ bogie,





O, gie me o’ yir magic meet





Te woo the Lass o’ Logie





…





(Lyrics, Ballads, and Satires)





Heartfelt words probably written for his wife. They married in 1927 and she was dead by 1934, of childbed fever, tragedy that set off another bout of terrible depression that led to his confinement in Kingseat Mental Hospital. Just one month before his incarceration his region was lauded as the new literary centre of Scotland because of the northeast’s bounty of talented authors – Charles Murray, Violet Jacob, Marion Angus, Helen Cruickshank, Agnes Mure Mackenzie, Nan Shepherd, Willa Muir, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Neil Gunn, Lewis Coutts and on and on in appreciation of the literary pre-eminence of the vernacular and Gaelic.





Coutts’ love and understanding of his native Buchan is never in doubt – its folk “orra loons” and “kitchie deems” and “yalla troots” fished out the river. His critics appreciated his ability to capture the romance of poetry but ranted at his audacity to poke through life’s seedy undercurrents what was referred to as “the stench of the gutters”. One contributor to the Perthshire Advertiser dismissed Coutts’ sombre and edgy lines as “drivel” because “youth’s rightful place is the mountain-top, not the farmyard”. The critic also sneered at Coutts’ Doric – native to Coutts but probably not to the man in Perth. Coutts knew them both –





July





I’ll meet ye on the Logie Hill





Afore the bloom is aff the whin,





Faur curlews are aye cryin shrill





An harebells ring in ilka win.”





(Lyrics, Ballads, and Satires)





Despite his concerns that university had wrecked his career prospects, Lewis Coutts did write and did publish and he did become a journalist. In the end it was his fragile mental health that derailed his ambitions in that direction.





Adolphus Jack died an old man. Lewis Coutts died at only 57 years; hardship and tragedy his closest companions.





“Dust I am!





…





Life’s not the snare religions screech!





Life is the joy the pagans preach!”





(Scotch Hotch Potch)





1.Nan Shepherd’s Correspondence 1920 – 1980, Edited by Kerri Andrews, 2024.
















	


	

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Jun 19, 2025

	

		
			The Accidental Death of an Anarchist		
	

		

		

A short foreign-looking young man in a brown coat and hat appeared preoccupied as he ascended the steep path to Greenwich Royal Observatory on the afternoon of 15th February 1894.  He had been observed making his way across London, passing over Westminster Bridge, purchasing a tram ticket for the Observatory. The tram passed the Observatory but the man didn’t get off. At the terminus he seemed preoccupied and edgy asking the tram conductor for directions back to Greenwich Park.  





A park-keeper noticed him and joked he should have a porter carry the heavy package wrapped in brown paper he carried so awkwardly. A group of schoolboys making their way through the park noticed the solitary figure. Someone reported seeing him unwrapping the package and pouring liquid from a small glass bottle onto the object in his hand. Some reported seeing him trip over tree roots. Some said he was in a state of panic and hesitated in his actions.  The true chain of events will never be known but what did happen was the device exploded blowing off his left hand and blasting over three pounds of shattered glass and fragments of metal into his body, shredding his organs. Incredibly he didn’t die immediately but attempted to get away despite bleeding badly. After just a few strides he dropped to his knees. He was like that when the schoolboys found him – conscious, urging them to fetch him a cab and pleading, “Take me home, take me home.” The park keeper, Patrick Sullivan, was on the scene by now but on asking where his home was the man was unable to speak. Sullivan raised the alarm and a doctor quickly arrived armed with brandy which was offered but the young man refused it. Swiftly he was transferred to nearby Seaman’s Hospital though it was clear nothing could be done to save his life for his injuries were catastrophic and he died at 5.40 pm without uttering another word.  The police were now at the scene gathering up body parts and pieces of the explosive. 










The bomber and victim was identified as twenty-six-year-old Martial Bourdin by his brother and a cabinet-maker called Ernest Delebecque, like the bomber and his brother a refugee from France. All three were anarchists.  





Why would anyone want to blow-up England’s Royal Observatory? A decade before in 1884 Greenwich prime meridian – a geographical reference line passing through the Observatory – was accepted as the prime meridian for the whole world – a geographic coordination on longitude that divided Earth into two hemispheres and established a global standard for timekeeping and navigation that enabled international capitalism to flourish.





Across Europe anarchist groups were resisting brutal unaccountable authorities and unscrupulous exploitation of workers with their own versions of violence. The attempted bombing of the Observatory was immediately suspected as being an anarchist act which shouldn’t have been too difficult to establish given Scotland Yard and Special Branch were well-acquainted with British anarchists and foreign anarchists who sought sanctuary in the UK. In Martial Bourdin’s jacket pocket was his membership card for the anarchist Club Autonomie in London but then the police were possibly well-aware who he was without this little piece of evidence.





Whatever the police knew from the beginning did not stop speculation and conspiracy theories over the actions of Bourdin by the press and individuals – the bombing was a statement about international capitalism; it was a police ploy to justify increasing police powers; he did not intend the Observatory to be his target but was about to leave the UK for France with the explosive when he realised he was being tailed by Special Branch and panicked. He was carrying more than enough money to travel home to France (money never returned to the family by the police). However, that explanation sounds ridiculous especially given what later emerged.





The inquest into Bourdin’s death identified him as a ladies’ tailor from France living in Tottenham with his brother-in-law, H. B. Samuels. It concluded Bourdin was not on his way to Paris but intended bombing the Observatory having boarded a tram for Greenwich at Westminster Bridge in the company of another man. Between Westminster and Greenwich his companion had melted away leaving Bourdin alone. It was noted how nervous Bourdin was while speaking to the tram conductor which strongly suggested his intentions. The inquest jury heard how he carefully unwrapped the explosive device and poured sulphuric acid out of a small glass bottle onto the fuse causing the bomb to detonate, blowing off his left hand and sending shards of metal and glass into his body, killing him. Given that Boudin was carrying an explosive into Greenwich Park it was concluded his aim was to damage the Observatory. The inquest heard from Colonel Majendie, Chief Inspector of Explosives, a pioneer of bomb disposal and the ultimate cool head in scary situations, argue that the device could not have gone off as the result of a fall but due to Bourdin’s bungling or miscalculation causing it to explode prematurely. The jury returned a verdict of felo de se – that the act was suicide (illegal then) and consequently Bourdin should be buried in unconsecrated ground with no or few mourners present.





Although anarchism is mainly associated with the nineteenth-century some of its basic beliefs stretch back to the middle-ages – rejection of established authority and religious and political hierarchies while championing individualism and collective action. The movement of the 1800s in the UK was  influenced by Edmund Burke (Whig MP), philosopher journalist, William Godwin (husband of the 18th century feminist Mary Wollstonecraft), and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon from France, the first man to describe himself as an anarchist and whose writings shaped much of the modern anarchist movement. He defined anarchy as “the absence of a master, of a sovereign”. A child of post-revolutionary France Proudhon argued that authority is always a usurper of freedom and a tyrant.





So active were France’s anarchist bombing campaigns in Paris a special vehicle was constructed to removed bombs to the nearest police station. The wheeled wagon was lozenge-shaped with open sides and drawn by ‘an old ambling horse’ and driven by a coachman accompanied by his wee dog Nip on the box seat. Chemical bombs such as the one Bourdin made were feared most for their unpredictability and often left in position for hours before being carted away, very slowly, through the quietest streets.





A boost to the British movement came with an influx of refugees escaping social and political persecution across Europe in the 1870s and 1880s that included many French tailors active in anarchism who had formed an association known as The Needles. Once in London they gravitated to the anarchist Club Autonomie of which Bourdin was a member. Of the Club’s 80 or so members several were suspected police spies.





Tensions were high in London on the day of Bourdin’s funeral, the previous day the windows of the Club Autonomie had been smashed. Tens of thousands of spectators lined the streets, the vast majority hostile with shouts of “Down with bomb throwers”, hissing and booing as the two-vehicle procession rushed by. Only a handful of people were permitted to participate and any red and black anarchist flags were quickly confiscated and their owners dragged away. With emotions boiling over police struggled to prevent the funeral car being overwhelmed, the coffin stolen and Bourdin’s corpse torn to pieces. Once at the Finchley Road cemetery the polished elm coffin inscribed Martial Bourdin – Died Feb 15, 1894 – Aged 26 years was swiftly lowered into a fairly shallow grave under an ash tree in unconsecrated ground at the edge of the graveyard. A comrade of Bourdin’s, the Christian-anarchist Carl Quinn, attempted to give an oration but got as far as “Friends, anarchists…” when he was shouted down by police Inspector Pearne’s order, “No speaking here!” The crowd gathering around pushed and shoved and there were shouts of “hang him”. Quinn was led away by police for his own safety; the greatest threats to the funeral party came from a large group of medical students.





Those of Bourdin’s family and friends permitted to attend travelled in a single coach. They included his two sisters-in-law; brother Henri; Scottish anarchist and Socialist League member, Thomas Fauset MacDonald; Carl Quinn; a Monsieur Alber; H. B. Samuels, Martial’s brother-in-law, looking the part in red necktie. Another brother-in-law carried a wreath with a card that read, “With deepest sympathy from Fanny”.





“Buried like a dog”, snarled the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail.





It transpired the man accompanying Bourdin across London on the fateful afternoon was Samuels who openly admitted giving the young Frenchman materials for the bomb but despite this he was never even interviewed by the police. Samuels was described by the anarchist, Louise Bevington, as “about the most rubishy character possible”; vain, vindictive and the keeper of a stock of sulphuric acid that he encouraged others to take to make bombs. It was widely reported following the bombing, mainly out of the mouth of Samuels himself, that he had persuaded his brother-in-law to accept the bottle of sulphuric acid to construct and make a test bomb. Martial Bourdin agreed but wanted to explode it safely in Epping Forest but was urged by Samuels to go to the Observatory. The loud-mouthed Yorkshireman Samuels was suspected by fellow anarchists of being a police mole for the police never went near him while other anarchists and their families were frequently subjected to police raids, arrests and imprisonment with hard-labour. Just two days after being given bomb-making materials by Samuels one French anarchist’s home was again raided but so certain were the police of finding something they ripped up his floorboards. In the immediate aftermath of the Observatory bombing there was no police urgency to investigate allowing evidence to be destroyed . No explosives were found at the tailoring shop of Martial and his brother, Henri, and threats by outsiders to blow up the property proved unfounded. When, eventually Club Autonomie was raided police Inspector Melville was said to have gained entry by giving the ‘secret knock’.  





Samuels was at the time editor of The Commonweal, an anarchist periodical. The Commonweal had been setup by the Socialist League and backed by the League’s founder the socialist artist William Morris to disseminate socialist ideas across the UK. It ceased publication in the wake of the bombing in May 1894 following a series of police raids and arrests – though not of Samuels.





Suspicions over Samuels’ role in the movement led to editorship of the journal reverting to David Nicholl once he was released from a spell in jail. Nicholl was convinced Samuels was a police spy. When Samuels was the paper’s editor it plainly promoted political violence. Yet Samuels led a charmed life never attracting police attention which seemed to support the suspicion he worked for Special Branch who used him as an agent-provocateur.  That was Nicholl’s theory and he said as much in a pamphlet he wrote called The Greenwich Mystery: Letters from the Dead. The pamphlet motivated Joseph Conrad to write The Secret Agent, a novel that explores political violence and terrorism, the murky links between authority and political activism and consequences of a chain of terrible events. As a result of the novel Conrad was criticised for the ‘moral squalor’ of his story which is now regarded as a classic. The author’s Polish background lent him an understanding of the tribulations of the foreigner given refuge in a country riddled with class prejudice and xenophobia.  





What Martial Bourdin’s bombing succeeded in doing was to shatter the anarchist movement in the UK. His brother-in-law Samuels’ involvement – his advocacy of violence against people and property irrespective of innocent casualties did him no harm at all. The year after he gave young Bourdin the sulphuric acid that blew him to pieces Samuels turned his back on anarchism and joined the Independent Labour Party.















 






	


	

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May 25, 2025

	

		
			The Woman in Red: a red menace		
	

		

		





“Woman in Red” gets nine months









For a few short months back in 1921 in Aberdeen the city’s most notorious criminal was a diminutive twenty-five-year-old woman. Dressed in a brick-red coat and red torque pull-on hat she might have stood out more had red not been quite so popular with the women of Aberdeen in the early twenties. However, she was sufficiently conspicuous for her appearance to be mentioned as someone of interest seen in areas where tenants suffered thefts from their tenement flats.





The Woman in Red was an opportunist thief. Until the 1960s it was unusual for folk in Scotland to lock their outside doors partly because people tended to live within the same communities for generations so trusted their neighbours and partly because they had little in their homes to steal. Aberdeen was a city of tenements; anyone could walk in the front door, along the lobby and upstairs to any flat. This is precisely what the woman dressed in red did. She knocked at doors on each landing making on she was looking for a Mrs Ross. If an actual Mrs Ross ever did answer her knock she would claim it wasn’t her but I don’t think any did. When a householder explained no-one of that name stayed there the young woman ‘apologised profusely for the trouble she had given’ and turned away. Turned away but did not always leave the multi-tenanted block of tiny apartments instead she tried each of the remaining flats hoping that no-one was at home and a door unlocked. When this happened in she would go searching through pockets of coats and jackets that hung in the lobby stealthily venturing into rooms that she would ransack, learning from experience where people tended to hide money, watches and the like. Occasionally after speaking to a tenant who was at home and fancying they might have something worth stealing she would appear to leave the premises but go into the toilet on the stair landing (some tenements had a lavatory on each floor shared by the tenants living on that floor – other tenements had outside toilets). There in the lavatory she waited hoping for the tenant to leave on an errand so she could slip into their home.  On at least one occasion she discovered a housekey under the doormat and let herself in which amounted to housebreaking as opposed to gaining entry through an unsecured door.












This was happening early in the 1920s and just a few years since the Great War of 1914-18 during which the woman had worked for a time in a munitions factory at Gretna Green and had become accustomed to having ‘good wages’. At the end of the war she left with a certificate of good character and unemployment benefit of 25 shillings. She returned to Aberdeen, to Woodside, where she lived with her grandparents in two rooms at 1 Bridge Street; the 3-roomed property was shared with a young couple and their child. These people were poor. The woman struggled to find work in Aberdeen so went south to Dundee and found a job in a jute mill. Soon, however, the mill struggled for contracts so put its employees on short time; pay was halved and she found herself with just 18 shillings a week plus 6 shillings unemployment benefit. Cutting her losses she returned to Aberdeen and to thieving in an audacious spree of badness that lasted three months during which time she gained notoriety in the city. She was poor but the people she stole from were also poor, some very poor. When eventually caught she showed her victims no compassion whatsoever – these were folk who had survived a truly awful war, invariably having lost loved ones to it.  





When brought to justice the Woman in Red pleaded guilty to 18 charges of thieving. It was pointed out in court she carefully selected the streets to target and went for many of the most impoverished of folk who couldn’t afford to lose money. She was the menace who caused anxiety among the city’s working folk for she robbed them of their small earnings, any savings and family possessions.





At widow Mary Simpson’s home in Bedford Road the sneak thief in red stole a purse. There was less than £3 in it. Nearby on George Street she let herself into the home of another widow, Barbara Ellison, and took her gold bangle, ring, a silver watch and six shillings. Police constable Alexander Barron lived in Holland Street. In his flat she found £6. At James MacKenzie’s home in Hutcheon Street she took all he had there – 8 shillings and his pair of gloves. She relieved John Bruce a baker on Lilybank Place of his silver watch while gardener, George Sherriffs had 15 shillings and 9 pence pinched from his home in Great Northern Road – didn’t even leave him the 9 pence. In Alexander Duncan’s home she found he had less than £2 – which she helped herself to – he was a labourer earning very little.  





Those victims lived fairly close to her grandparents’ home at Woodside but the red menace spread her wings. Making her way across town to Torry’s Grampian Road she walked into the home of marine engine driver Alexander Keith making off with two purses containing a small sum of money. She moved back over town to slightly wealthier working-class areas targeting tenants in Willowbank Place and Union Grove and over to Rosemount where she found cash and postage stamps in a house in Mount Street. At Henry Pirie’s tenement flat in Wallfield Crescent she scooped the huge sum of £17. Discovering his loss must have been a heart-stopping moment for him for this was his entire savings worth about £700 in current value. Back towards Woodside she walked into the flat rented by warehouseman James Gordon in Lamond Place and hurriedly left with £10 belonging to him. Labourer John Benzie’s home must have been a disappointment by comparison for she only gathered up 2 shillings and 6 pence there. The following day another poor labourer became her victim when she stole £3 belonging to him.  





Newspapers warned that a sneak thief was operating in the city and was thought to be a young woman dressed in a brick-red coat and red pull-on hat – distinctive you might imagine had not that shade been the vogue with women in Aberdeen so apprehending her was as difficult as searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. A picture of the suspected robber came from one of her victims a housewife who had nipped out to the front door to polish the brass bell. She was able to provide the police with a description of a young woman in a red coat and bonnet who came downstairs and walked past her without speaking which was unusual enough but on returning to her apartment the housewife discovered her handbag had been opened and its contents taken.












The bold thief was eventually spotted by police chief-inspector Gordon who followed her back to 1 Bridge Street, Woodside where he recovered £20 – £17 of which had been recently stolen from ‘a poor woman who had sold her entire household furniture in order to go abroad’. The robber had already spent £3 of that £20 so all that was gathered was £17 plus £3 that remained from her other thefts.  





As a result of the find two women at the property were arrested on suspicion of a string of thefts and remanded in custody for further inquiries but the first court appearance cleared the older woman, Ann Anderson the young woman’s granny, and she was released.





The trial of the Woman in Red was the speak of the town. A large crowd of mostly women gathered trying to get into the courthouse but so many turned up several were turned away as there was insufficient capacity in the courtroom to seat them all. When the charged emerged she appeared very nervous, her head bent down, she cried and bit on her nails throughout proceedings. There was the usual defence story – previously good character and ‘the only explanation was that she was short of cash’ – er, yes. Then, again, I don’t suppose the widows and labourers she stole from were exactly flush with it either.





The Woman in Red’s haul for three months effort amounted to more than £60 in cash along with jewellery and various items taken from her victims valued at over £18 amounting to a grand total just shy of £80 – £3000 in today’s money – all from poor folk who had scarcely two pennies to rub together. Okay, so you have to feel sorry for her, she was struggling, too, but the people she took from were no better off than she was and were easy targets – the sort of people had she asked would have been sympathetic and even inclined to give her a few pennies but she didn’t and it was reported that all she did with their hard-earned money was to squander it. Certainly, there was no mention of her helping out her grandmother with whom she was living instead her behaviour led to her 70-year-old granny spending time locked up in a police cell.  





The sheriff expressed sympathy for the accused because of her youth and having never been in trouble before but he pointed out he had a duty to protect the public and she was ‘a menace’ that created anxiety among the city’s poor targeting their savings and hard-gotten gains. He rejected a suggestion from friends of the woman that she be put into a Catholic Home in Glasgow instead of jail for he told them her wrongdoings were such that only a hard person could carry them out so she should pay a penalty for her crimes. He sentenced her to nine months in prison.  The ‘accused left the dock weeping.’





No longer the Woman in Red having ditched her smart clothing for prison garb she became simply convicted thief Helen Morgan. There was another Morgan girl living at 1 Bridge Street with the Andersons – Ann and her husband John aged 72 a retired metal breaker with Aberdeen Corporation roads department – that is he broke stones for building roads – 16-year-old Annie Morgan, presumably Helen’s sister.  Annie worked in the storeroom of Crombie wool mill near their home. The episode must have been a truly disturbing time for them. As for the public and the press they revelled in the episode of the Woman in Red once the perpetrator was safely behind bars. One journalist wag thought the affair merited a novel à la Wilkie Collins, author of The Woman in White along the lines of







    

  • Part 1: mysterious house visits and thefts by the woman in a ‘brick-red’ coat.
    • 




  • Part 2: the detective hunt and arrest
    • 




  • Part 3: court proceedings
    • 




  • Part 4: The Woman in Red’s fate
    • 








In the end it didn’t and you’ll have to be satisfied with my humble blog instead.






	


	

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May 6, 2025

	

		
			Hospitalfield in Arbroath with echoes of the Declaration of Scotland’s sovereignty		
	

		

		






Aberbrothok (Aberbrothock) became Arbroath in the mid-19th century, adopting its locally popular name that was less of a mouthful. This, of course, means that that most significant of Scottish documents, the Declaration of Arbroath was originally the Declaration of Aberbrothok. But that’s all by the by. Well, not quite.





The Declaration was made at the Abbey in Aberbrothok in 1320. At a time when Scotland was under constant attacks from an aggressive England intent on appropriating her the 1320 letter from Scots barons and freeholders to Pope John XXII sought his acknowledgement of Scotland as an independent and sovereign nation, and Robert the Bruce as King of Scots. Robert’s chancellor, Abbot Bernard of Aberbrothok, was its most likely author and the man who included the words –







“It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”







The Benedictine Abbey from where these words emerged was founded by King William I the Lion of Scotland in 1178 and completed early into the 1200s. William the Lion was buried at the high alter in 1214. The Abbey at Aberbrothok complex was large and included an infirmarium for its monks and a hospitium – a sort of hotel – for visiting pilgrims. Aberbrothok proved to be a popular destination for 13th century pilgrims but with increasing numbers of the devout travelling there from far and near came greater risks of them also bringing those terrible diseases that were rife in the outside community such as plague and leprosy. With this in mind additional overnight accommodation was built about a mile distant from the Abbey at a site that became known as Hospitalfield where the visiting masses could be accommodated with bed and food and where they could worship at its chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist without becoming intrusive on the monks at the Abbey.





Feeding both monks and visitors required the lands around the Abbey to be farmed and granaries built to store grain that would be used in making bread. With the Abbey thriving and pressure of visitors the humble guesthouse of Hospitalfield became reserved for more eminent ecclesiastics and its surroundings were enhanced with flower gardens and fruit orchards. The complex flourished for centuries until the Reformation.  





The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century dealt the illustrious Abbey its deathblow and Aberbrothok’s existence as an important Christian centre ceased. The fine red sandstone buildings were partly demolished and the stone carted away for building elsewhere.





David Beaton, later Cardinal and a principal statesman during the reign of James V was for a time Scotland’s ambassador in France. But more relevant for us he was the last Abbot of Aberbrothok and as Lord Abbot of the Abbey he had a seat in the Scottish Parliament also serving as Lord Privy Seal – a role that provided its holder access to considerable power and money. Beaton was a spendthrift, perhaps appropriate for the son of Isobel Monypenny.  His lavish lifestyle attracted criticism from some of his contemporaries comparing it to the excesses of the Borgias and Medici. Perhaps he did not go as far as them in some ways but he was corrupt and immoral, One of his several mistresses was Mariota Ogilvy, daughter of the first Lord Ogilvy of Airlie, and mother of his eight children. Beaton rewarded her fecundity by handing over to her properties belonging to the Abbey, including the Hospital and in the 1560s she found herself proprietrix of desirable Hospitalfield.





By the turn of the seventeenth century the Abbey had lost its religious status entirely; its buildings, lands and possessions passing into secular hands and with these emerged the title Lord Aberbrothock. A century later during the 1715 Jacobite uprising the estate was forfeited to the British crown but bought back fifty or so years later by which time a James Fraser had arrived in the area to take on the ministry of Strathmartine. Not short of cash he bought up property including a large chunk of the Hospitalfield grounds and its former Hospital now a mansion to which he later retired to enjoy his rather lovely earthly estate. Walter Scott was so taken with the house that he based Monkbarns on it – the home of his leading character Oldbuck in The Antiquary.





A descendant of Reverend Fraser was Major John Fraser whose sole child, a daughter called Elizabeth, inherited the Hospitalfield estate. Several years following, in 1843, she married a local artist, Patrick Allan of Arbroath – Aberbrothok was pretty well confined to antiquity by now. In 1851 he attached his wife’s name to his own which wasn’t unusual in the case of men marrying heiresses. Allan-Fraser began to play about with the mansion house, expanding and altering it to incorporate architectural styles he admired on his travels across Europe and England. And in the family home he established an art school. 





As an aside – Elizabeth’s father, Major Fraser, raised a regiment during the French Revolutionary Wars – the Angus Fencibles. The Fencibles were in Dumfries when the great bard Robert Burns died in 1796 and men from the regiment formed part of the guard at his funeral at the end of which Major Fraser was given the honour of being first to drop earth onto the poet’s coffin.





The mansion that stands today is the upshot of Allan-Fraser’s adaptations. The area’s distinctive red sandstone is familiar and what is in a sense a Scottish Baronial building is also familiar but Hospitalfield House goes further than most in that it is a curious melange – a veritable fusion cuisine of architectural styles with turrets and niches and all manner of additions and ornamentation. That’s what strikes visitors – its sheer variety of features. Fragments of the old Abbey hospital walls and several doors remain of the medieval building but overall it has been hugely changed over the centuries, most recently by Allan-Fraser.   





The old doorway of the ancient Hospitium apparently stands as the entrance to Allan-Fraser’s extensive building of picture galleries, dining room, drawing room, saloon, library, bedrooms, balconied alcoves and the broad staircase lit from the roof. Two talbots stood guarding the main doorway. There are two hounds there now which I took for black labradors. Maybe they are. There are dog heads all around the exterior walls. Since the early 19th century Hospitalfield House has been a place for artists to study and learn, initially dedicated to the Arts and Crafts movement. Allan-Fraser’s works are displayed here along with many by illustrious artists some of whom were his friends in a London-based artistic circle called the Clique. The Clique broke up in 1843 when one of its members, Richard Dadd, was imprisoned for the murder of his father. The Aberdeen artist John Phillip was a member and close friend of Allan-Fraser. There are paintings of his here, too, and work by the sculptor William Calder Marshall among many British and overseas artists. At Allan-Fraser’s  death in 1890 Hospitalfield was left in trust to support artists, a role that continues to this day. In 1902 Hospitalfield issued invitations to young men with ambition to master the forms of art taught there but 







‘…not having sufficient means of their own, who shall be desirous of following out one or more of the professions of painting, sculpture, carving in wood, architecture and engraving.’







In an echo of the ancient tradition of the hospitium of 700 years earlier the art school was also a temporary home for those artists, one encouraging them to look outward to art across the world.





You don’t have to be involved in the arts business to visit Hospitalfield. It is a place that can be enjoyed by all. There’s its 800-year-old garden that currently displays an elaborate bronze sculpture by Paolozzi on loan from the Hunterian. There is Allan-Fraser’s tiny fernery originally designed by him for his collection of New Zealand tree ferns that has been completely restored having fallen into ruin through neglect. Next to it is a popular café with an excellent selection of food available inside and out. Tours of the Hospitalfield House are also on offer but you have to book these in advance.





If you are on your own pilgrimage to the source of the Declaration of Arbroath take a dander across town to Hospitalfield for a fine piece and a peek at this quite unusual but attractive building.






	


	

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Apr 27, 2025

	

		
			Jacobites v Hanoverians – a scouting adventure in 1924 or the Battle of Tullos Hill		
	

		

		






Scout Week in 1924 in Aberdeen turned into something quite thrilling. For their special field day venture it was decided to put on a re-enactment, in a sense, of the Battle of Culloden. On an evening in June about 500 boy scouts made the long march out of the city to Kincorth and Tullos. Though not as long as the trek from Nairn to Culloden the scouts hike took them uphill.





The scene was set. Sides were selected: Jacobite and Hanoverian. Jacobites proved the more popular with the scouts but somebody had to fight on the side of Butcher Cumberland whose numbers ended up only slightly fewer than their opponents. To ensure the game did not descend into a rammy tactics were explained to the warring sides – by the Jacobite commander Lt. Col. Robert Bruce DSO, MD acting as Lord George Murray and Mr Arthur Buck who picked the short straw as the Hanoverian prince, ‘Bloody’ Cumberland the Butcher of Culloden. Great care was taken to ensure no intelligence leaked out over tactics from either side prior to the event. Points were at stake, for captures and ‘killings’ to determine winners. Loons (boys in the local Doric) were urged to employ scouting prowess and use the cover of trees and bushes on the hillsides to hide from and ambush the enemy.  





The competition was split into three parts: Defence and attack of a fantasy Jacobite stronghold, Castle Nonesuch at Baron’s Cairn on Tullos Hill; Hanoverians search for hidden Jacobite documents; the capture and death of Bonnie Prince Charlie and his two aids-de-camp. Instead of uniforms differentiating the sides Hanoverian loons simply rolled up their sleeves while Jacobites wore theirs long. Neckerchiefs were wound around their heads and any scout whose neckerchief was snatched off him was designated ‘killed’ – gaining points for the assailant and losing points for the ‘dead’.





Aberdeen scouts in the 1920s and 1932. Lt Col Robert Bruce is 2nd officer from left beside Kemnay memorial for war dead





By 7pm Jacobites kicked off the evening hiding documents in glass lemonade bottles among the heather on Kincorth Hill – they were not allowed to hide them up trees or in quarries or bury them. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s men also got into position to defend their stronghold on the hill. Half-an-hour later the Hanoverians were let loose.





The event attracted hundreds of townsfolk to witness boys getting stuck into one another and soon battle ensued with young warriors rampaging across the hills of Kincorth and Tullos. At their Castle Nonesuch on Baron’s Craig Jacobites dug in among the whins and heather defending three of its vulnerable sides – the fourth being a cornfield it was out of bounds. Hanoverian attackers were astonished to discover not a single Jacobite sentry standing up in its defence. But they had underestimated the cunning of the Jacobites. First came some skirmishing then an uncanny hush settled over the hill when out of nowhere – well, over the crest of the Bay of Nigg side of the hill, a contingent of ‘dead men’ of both sides poured in. The Hanoverians used the chaos to relaunch its attack on the castle and five of them succeeded in breaking through with four retreating. Loons were scrapping in every direction while streams of ‘dead’ trudged up to Baron’s Craig where an officer took their names and side. Fifty-five Hanoverians succeeded in breaking through Jacobite defences at the expense of 124 ‘dead’ while Jacobites losses were 117. 





Hanoverian troops searching for the secreted ‘documents’ fanned out scouring the hillside. Every document found was worth 10 points. However, they were ambushed by Jacobites leaping out from their hiding places resulting in pitched battles that nearly annihilated the Jacobites force but despite their success in ‘killing’ many of their enemy the Hanoverians failed to discover a single hidden document. 





The third and final event was worth bigger points, the hunting down and killing of Bonnie Prince Charlie played by scoutmaster R. B. Williamson and worth a potential 50 points to the Hanoverians. For slaughtering each of the Prince’s two aide-de-camps, played by patrol leaders J. Stewart and D. Marr, 25 points per man were up for grabs. The same points were available to the Jacobite leaders for their survival at the end of the game. The Prince and his aids left the Bridge of Dee at 7.15pm leading the enemy on a merry dance around the area and successfully evading detection for one-and-a-half hours. With only ten minutes of the allotted time remaining the trio made their way towards the coast to wait on their unsuccessful pursuers.  





At 9pm two rockets were fired from the grounds of Nigg Kirk marking the end of combat operations. At Culloden the battle last little more than half-an-hour. On Tullos and Kincorth hills it lasted one-and-a-half hours. Combatants gathered at the church to hear the results of the skirmishes from Scout Commissioner Norrie. The Jacobites were awarded 100 points for holding Castle Nonesuch, another 100 points for keeping the secret documents from being discovered by the enemy and a third 100 points for Prince Charlie and his aids eluding capture. They lost 252 points for ‘dead’ men. Hanoverian dead numbered 251. At the end of a fairly easy calculation the Jacobites were declared winners with a mighty 299 points in total from plus 48 points over the whole campaign to the Hanoverians’ minus 251 points making them the evening’s sad losers. The Jacobite’s victory went down well with spectators.





Addressing the boys Lt. Col. Bruce1 explained the intention of the exercise was not to make soldiers out of them for he hoped there would never be such a thing as another war and for that reason they should all believe in the League of Nations. But this was in 1924 and in a few short years many of those Aberdeen loons would be marched off to war – and unlike the battles on Tullos and Kincorth some would never return home or would suffer injuries that would shorten their lives. But that was in their future. On that summer evening in Aberdeen cheers rang out for the victors, the vanquished and everyone involved and the boys did march back to the city and to their homes and families. 





1. Lt. Col. Bruce was a family doctor at Cults outside Aberdeen after the Great War in which he was wounded in France in 1915 and suffered from shell-shock. Following recuperation he returned to the front, to some of the fiercest fighting of the war and was given command of the 7th Gordon Highlanders. In 1917 he was transferred to the R.A.M.C.. He retired from his medical practice to Braemar for the last three years of his life, dying in 1949 in Cults.  I know nothing of Arthur Buck other than his wife gave birth to a baby at the start of 1924.

	


	

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Mar 28, 2025

	

		
			The Russian Celt		
	

		

		






His life was like a game of two halves. The first half a plot from a John Buchan novel, the second something ethereal and Celtic.












Heinrich Cyril Dieckhoff was born in Moscow in Russia where his father was a Lutheran preacher. The boy’s parent’s marriage appears to have been unhappy and pregnant with her third child his mother left Russia taking with her two-year-old Heinrich and his sister. They went to live with Heinrich’s mother’s German family in Berlin. Despite pressure from her husband she refused to return to Tsarist Russia so the children were brought up and educated in Germany; Heinrich studied natural science at Berlin University.





Following his mother’s conversion to Catholicism, Heinrich also converted, in 1881, when he was twenty-one; his father having refused permission for him to do so before then. Even after so many years relations within the family remained strained. Russian-born Heinrich was still a Russian citizen and subsequently he was called up to the Russian army and ordered to present himself at the Russian Embassy in Berlin which he did but the day he did so was on a Russian holiday and the Embassy was closed. He had no desire to return to Russia or serve in its army but it was apparent that the Russian authorities were keeping close tabs on the youth. Heinrich’s German family recognised his danger and urged him to leave Germany immediately. It was arranged that Heinrich should go to Britain and so he arrived in London where he stayed for a brief time. He didn’t enjoy living there sensing an undercurrent of violent threat in the city so he travelled north to Scotland, to Edinburgh. It was there his father again tracked him down.  





Following parental pressure Heinrich agreed to return to Russia for a visit. This was in 1891. He booked passage from Leith but the ship’s boiler exploded before it set sail and his journey was delayed for repairs. Heinrich’s mother had in the meantime discovered her husband’s ploy so wrote to her son warning him that once he stepped foot back in Russia his father would not allow him to leave. Alarmed, Heinrich decided against the trip but having tracked down to Edinburgh he no longer felt safe there – and in the meantime he had a large quantity of Prussian bonds worth 48,000 German marks stolen from him. He fled once more. This time he headed west, to the Isle of Bute.





During his time on Bute Heinrich came across references to a Benedictine Abbey recently established at Fort Augustus on the mainland. Fort Augustus was originally a London government barracks set up during Jacobite times to subdue the Highlands; its name coming from one of several belonging to Butcher Cumberland, slayer of Highlanders. It was proposed that the small town that grew up to service the military fort would be named Wadesburgh after General Wade, a government military commander in Scotland. It wasn’t but Augustus is as bad – like being named Here’s Another Slap in the Face, Jock.





What Dieckhoff thought of these past political events is unknown, to me. He may have been sympathetic to the impact government actions had on the area for he found himself in the Gàidhealtachd, a Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland where English was rarely used. Here the young Russian had to learn the local language or be estranged from its people, so he did. In fact, he took to it like a duck to water for he was a capable linguist already proficient in Russian, German, French, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, Danish, English and Spanish. Very quickly he found himself in tune with all things Highland, its language especially – and its monsters. I suppose Butcher Cumberland could be described as the most notorious and dangerous Loch Ness monster. I digress.





Dieckhoff’s sister Maria followed him to Fort Augustus, taking the name Sister Agnes. She died there at the age of 33 years, in 1904. At the same time Heinrich came to be called by his second name, Cyril. He was still a Russian citizen so his alien status created difficulties for him during the Great War when he was again served papers by the Russian military and only through an intervention by the Abbot at Augustus was he stopped from being drafted into the Tsarist army. At the end of the war he became a British subject.






The Abbey at Fort Augustus






A duty that fell to Father Cyril was supervising the Abbey’s hydro-electric plant. The Abbey and as a consequence the town of Fort Augustus were the first to have electric light in the Highlands (the Abbey’s electric organ was hydro-powered). The power came from Loch Ness on whose banks the fort is situated. In addition to overseeing electricity generation Cyril Dieckhoff spent much of his time among the local people, assisting them and preaching in their native Gaelic. He grew to love the language which he described as one of the loveliest in Europe. As with probably all languages there are local variations and Gaelic is no different. Cyril concentrated on the Gaelic spoken in the vicinity. He had been taught it at Mingarry in Moidart. His ear for language was clearly highly attuned and he picked up subtle modulations in its dialects – he would listen closely to older Gaelic speakers and record the sounds that came out of their mouths preserving and accumulating all this information. Eventually he compiled it into his Pronouncing Dictionary of Gaelic of the dialect of Glengarry which he embarked on in 1911 and saw published in 1932. Among its 9000 entries not one was a new introduction (from later than the middle of the 19th century) in order to preserve the integrity of a language that was native and sometimes the only language the people of Glengarry spoke.





Dieckhoff appreciated the abundance of culture that was at the heart of Gaelic – centuries of oral tradition, literature, poetry, songs, place names, traditions, habits and values. He shared his enthusiasm broadcasting in Gaelic, writing press articles, teaching it to adults and communicating with Gaels whose first language was the Gaelic. It was by his pressing that an Act of parliament was passed in 1918 ensuring there was Gaelic provision from primary through to secondary school in Gaelic-speaking areas to ensure meaningful continuity for pupils between their Gaelic-speaking home and their English language state school.   





Dieckhoff recognised and valued what successive UK governments have not – that Scottish Gaelic is important – was and still is – integral to the heritage of Scotland – a country without a language is a country without a soul. When in the 1960s an appeal to Westminster (before Holyrood) for a modest amount of money to fund the compilation of an English-Gaelic dictionary in recognition of the Gaelic language within the United Kingdom the Secretary of State for Scotland, Michael Noble, rejected it out of hand. Broadcaster, Magnus Magnusson, criticised the decision as relegating the language to a slow death but Noble muttered some nonsense about no provision in the Education Scotland Act of 1962 for monies to be spent on a Gaelic dictionary. Pure nonsense but in line with unionist politics and the Anglicisation of Scotland. Magnusson pointed to how language was preserved in small Scandinavian countries and the government’s attitude was blinkered but it didn’t make a scrap of difference. In Scandinavia there was no arrogant and elitist Westminster setup to smother their identity. Eton and Oxford educated Secretary of State for Scotland (sic) had no time for pandering to Scottish interests although he did set aside time to travel to Aberdeen to oversee the last execution in Scotland, the hanging of Henry John Burnett at Craiginches Prison on 15 August 1963. Noble wasn’t totally uninterested in the Gaelic. In the Lords where all dreadful politicians go to further leech off the state he joked he had some Gaelic – Glenmorangie, Bruichcladdich and Laphroaig – all slipped off the tongue. Often, I imagine.





It was not only Scotland’s language that captivated the Russian who also immersed himself in the nation’s folklore – folk tales and stories from the past that included monsters in many a Highland loch. Myths and legends of sprites and monsters dwelling in watery places are not confined to Scotland but are a world-wide phenomenon not least in Dieckhoff’s homeland. Despite having left Russia at the age of two he retained a fascination with its folklore and the many legends that shared common themes with his adoptive home of Scotland. Celtic mythical beings he enjoyed discovering included the caoineag [ˈkʰɯːɲak] a female spirit who haunted lochs and burns and waterfalls and foretold deaths of clansmen in battle. Also associated with watery places was the bean-nighe [pɛˈɲi.ə] who used the water around her to wash blood from the clothes of those in advance of their dying. The bean-nighe were believed to be the spirits of women who died in childbirth and who were destined to wash the linen of those about to die until their days on earth (had they lived) would have ended naturally. The glaistig, usually beautiful females or else half-woman and half-goat, could be considerate or malicious and when not protecting cattle lured men to their deaths and drank their blood. The cailleach [ˈkʰaʎəx ], again female, was most definitely cruel. She was associated with storms and winter and such hazards for safety but she also built mountains as a sideline. Living most of his life at Loch Ness, Dieckhoff had ample opportunity to immerse himself in stories of its monster, just one of many loch monsters for Highland Scotland is rich with tales of water beasts in lochs up and down the country – uisge or kelpie – creatures that drew young women and children into the otherworld.





Not all his stories involved myths, or perhaps they did. He wrote in The Cairngorm Club Journal of John Michie, a Glengairn shepherd, who had one withered hand and the other unusually large and powerful. One night while asleep in a barn at Braemar he was roused by something running over him. He reached out and caught the culprit, a rat, that he squeezed to death in his one good hand. 





The Cairngorm Club Journal was one of several publications that used Dieckhoff contributions. Unsurprisingly he contributed to An Gaidheal the monthly magazine of an Comunn Gaidheal. In December 1932 it published his Parallels in Gaelic and Russian Folk-Poetry – the topic of his lecture in which he drew comparisons between the two cultures that highlighted intricacies of language and their possible common roots. He claimed that ‘northern parts of Great Britain and Russia happen to be the only countries in Europe where ancient epic poetry was recited and sung among the people down to our own days, with the exception of the Faroe Islands…’  the reason he put down to the ‘remoteness and comparative inaccessibility of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland on the one hand, and the natural barrier of the immense forests and swamps of northern Russia on the other.’





He mentioned a Russian folk song collector Peter N. Rybnikov who risked life and limb in wintry Russian conditions on the trail of one balladeer, a transitory tailor, noting that until recently (1930s) in the Scottish Highland tailors were also itinerant. He found him by serendipity, an old man with ’a great white beard, bright eyes, and a kindly expression of countenance.’  The old man sang several ballads including the famous Sadko, the merchant of Novgorod, a medieval epic poem about an adventurer, merchant and musician; a tale that influenced authors of the 19th and 20th centuries such as Tolstoy and Arthur Ransome and is the subject of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, Sadko. I think Dieckhoff stretches comparisons a bit too far but his writings are fascinating nonetheless. One area he recognises as being very different between the two cultures is that Gaelic epic poetry emerged far earlier than anything Russian which, according to him, appeared in the middle ages and lack the structure and rhyme of the Gaelic which were the product of men skilled in ‘language, phonetics and metres.’





Heinrich Cyril Dieckhoff is a fascinating individual. A Russian on the run who found sanctuary and contentment in Scotland during his long years at the Abbey in Fort Augustus that provided him with time to foster relationships with his local community and through his respect for it and their heritage he was able to repay their welcome with scholarly works that demonstrated his veneration of the Gael. A kind and sociable man he will be remembered for his erudite work on the Gaelic language but perhaps not remembered quite enough.






	


	

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