Small but mighty – the stories of Scotland's villages

I will get to the cities eventually, though my next series will be on the ancient kingdoms of Scotland, and you will learn how Alex Salmond was something of an expert on the subject.

During my recent series on the ancient towns of Scotland, a reader emailed me to suggest I look at villages which were once important, and mentioned a location she knew well: Fettercairn in Aberdeenshire.

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That got me thinking, and then last week I made one of those “deliberate” mistakes of which I am all too capable, and mentioned West Linton in the Scottish Borders and then forgot to write about it – apologies to the good folk of the village where I lived for a decade.

That mistake turned out to be fortuitous because now I have the chance to write about Scottish villages for the next three weeks and I’ll start with West Linton.

My criteria for choosing my top 15 villages are as follows: They need not be ancient – ie, pre-Reformation – but must have been extant for a couple of centuries at least.

They should have some claim to fame in Scotland’s history, and there must have been some historical research about them – as I always say, I am a writer about history who depends on proper historians to do the hard labour of digging out the facts.

In my entirely unscientific choice of villages, they have to be places I have visited, and sadly I am still planning my first visit to Orkney and Shetland so they are ruled out.

For this trilogy, the villages will be West Linton, Fettercairn, Luss, Falkland, Muir of Ord, Tarbert, Glencoe, Culross, Lamlash, Wanlockhead, Kilmartin, Dunbeath, Castlebay, John o’Groats, and Crail. If you think your village meets my criteria, why not contact me on nationalhamish@gmail.com and I will see if I can include it.

So to West Linton, which lies in the north of the Scottish Borders. Just 16 miles from Edinburgh city centre, this Conservation Village has a history going back nearly 2000 years when it was first bypassed by the Romans who constructed a road to the west of the village which can still be followed to this day.

Its strategic location on the Lyne Water, a tributary of the River Tweed, can be seen in the name, which means fortress or dwellings on the Lyne. The “West” part was not added until centuries later, when it was attached in order to distinguish the village from East Linton, in East Lothian.

The village was originally known as Lintoun Roderick, named after a local chief, or perhaps King Ryderch of Strathclyde. There was a church on the site as early as the 12th century and it first appears in written history in a charter granting that early kirk to monks from Kelso Abbey.

For hundreds of years it was thought that the village was the birthplace of Bernard de Linton, who was supposedly the author of the Declaration of Arbroath of 1320, but it is now accepted that this was a different Bernard.

From early days, the two large green areas in the village, Upper and Lower Green, were stopping-off places for cattle being driven to and from the Borders. In 1631, West Linton formally became a burgh of regality as chartered by the local aristocrat, John Stewart, the Baron and later the 1st Earl of Traquair.

The right to hold fairs and markets was the making of West Linton which gradually became the most important market for Blackface sheep in Scotland.

Indeed, the breed was known as Linton sheep for many decades until the market moved to Lanark in 1857.

In 1803, young men of the village formed a mutual assistance group and began the Whipman Play. It is one of the oldest Common Ridings in the Scottish Borders, centring on the Whipman and his Lass who spend a year in office presiding over local festivities and representing the village at other Ridings and festivals.

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Once a centre for limestone, silver and lead mining, West Linton’s haphazard development over the centuries is shown by the street pattern and housing around the village. It is unique and well worth a visit.

A long way north of West Linton is the village of Fettercairn – which is now in Aberdeenshire but formerly lay in the old county of Kincardineshire – is one of the more ancient villages on my list.

Regular readers will know I try always to acknowledge my sources and I don’t think anyone could write about Fettercairn without consulting The History Of Fettercairn written by Archibald Cowie Cameron and published in 1899 – thanks again to electricscotland.com for putting it on their excellent website.

Beautifully situated in the Howe of the Mearns with the Grampians to the north, the name of the village is one of those linguistic peculiarities that occur across much of Scotland, a mix of the Gaelic “fothair”, meaning slope or ridge, and “carden”, a Pictish word meaning wood or thicket.

That derivation alone displays the antiquity of Fettercairn. It was first recorded as Fotherkern in the 10th century, having been a Pictish settlement for centuries, and which was undoubtedly visited by the Romans during their march north to the River Dee in the 2nd century CE.

Fettercairn features in an old story, probably mythical, about the death of Kenneth II (below), King of Scots, which as far as anyone can establish took place in the village in 995.

The tale goes that a local noblewoman, Finella (or Fingualla), lost her only son who was killed in a battle with Kenneth. She nevertheless welcomed the king into her house at Fettercairn – where she assassinated him with a device that shot arrows into his body.

She then either killed herself by throwing herself off a waterfall or escaped to Ireland, while Kenneth II’s body was buried on Iona. That Kenneth died at Fettercairn is pretty certain, but as always with Scottish history of that period, there is no contemporary account to verify what happened.

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Very much associated with nearby Kincardine, Fettercairn was undoubtedly visited by the Scottish and English armies during the Wars of Independence. As with so many of our ancient settlements, royal patronage played a considerable part in the development of Fettercairn.

According to Cowie Cameron, King David II gave the village and surrounding land to his sister Margaret when she married the Earl of Sutherland in 1341.

King James IV approved the designation of Fettercairn as a burgh in 1504, which allowed the village to hold markets and have a Mercat Cross, and its prosperity dated from then. The Mercat Cross that stands in the village today is less ancient, dating from 1670 and transferred from Kincardine, though part of it may date from the original cross.

Prior to that, Fettercairn suffered badly during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, firstly from the Marquis of Montrose’s rampages through the area in 1645, and then when Oliver Cromwell’s forces occupied the area during his conquest and occupation of Scotland in the 1650s.

Within the village there is a curiosity: a Royal Arch which commemorates a visit by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in September 1861.

In her journal, Victoria records: “At a quarter-past seven o’clock we reached the small, quiet town, or rather village of Fettercairn, for it was very small, not a creature stirring, and we got out at the quiet little inn, ‘Ramsay Arms’, quite unobserved, and went at once upstairs. There was a very nice drawing-room, and next to it a dining-room, both very clean and tidy – then to the left, our bedroom, which was excessively small, but also very clean and neat.”

One of Victoria’s attendants at Fettercairn was none other than John Brown who, according to the Queen, was not that experienced as a waiter.

Even more ancient than Fettercairn is Luss, on the west side of Loch Lomond. Now famous as the fictional Glendarroch in Take The High Road, Luss has been a regular award-winner as one of the prettiest villages in Scotland and it has more listed buildings than any other Scottish village.

In terms of population it is one of the smallest villages in Scotland, but tourists flock to it every year and have done so since William and Dorothy Wordsworth extolled its virtues after they visited it in 1803.

Dorothy wrote in her published account of their journey: “The village looked exceedingly beautiful this morning from the garret windows – the stream glittering near it, while it flowed under trees through the level fields to the lake. After breakfast, William and I went down to the water-side. The roads were as dry as if no drop of rain had fallen, which added to the pure cheerfulness of the appearance of the village.”

There was a settlement at the site dating back to the ancient Brythonic period, the Britons of the Kingdom of Strathclyde having their capital at nearby Dumbarton. Originally known as Clachan Dhu (“dark village”),the name Luss, which means “herb” or “herbal”, came to the village when an Irish missionary, St Kessog, converted the locals in the land of Lennox in the 6th century.

Some of the natives were very much against his mission and he was martyred at Bandry Bay just south of Luss on Loch Lomondside. His body was embalmed in herbs and buried in Luss, with the herbs then growing above his grave, hence the name.

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The beautiful church in the village is named after Kessog, who at one time was acclaimed as patron saint of Scotland.

That church’s grounds contain several relics of the mediaeval era, with one slab said to date to the 8th century. There are also the remains of a Viking “hogback” grave dating to the 11th century – the Norse invaders sailed to Loch Long and then crossed to Loch Lomond by portage and seem to have enjoyed the area as they stayed for decades.

Further proof of the antiquity of Luss is the fact that the area – consisting of the estates of Colquhoun, Auchentorily and Dumbuck – was given to Umphredus de Kilpatrick by Malduin, the Earl of Lennox, in the early 13th century. Umphredus, who took the name Colquhoun, had his stronghold at Dunglass Castle near Dumbarton.

Luss has strong links to Robert the Bruce. He and his men arrived there after his defeat at the Battle of Methven in 1306, and were given succour by the local laird, John of Luss. In gratitude the King later declared that the area around Luss’s church should have a “girth of sanctuary” dedicated to “God and the blessed Kessog”. Sanctuary in those days meant a place of refuge where people could be safe from persecution.

In 1368, clan chief Sir Robert Colquhoun married the daughter of the Lord of Luss and became the laird in turn, and the family and the village have been linked ever since, with Rossdhu, north of the village, being the family seat for centuries.

According to the Clan Colquhoun website, Sir John Colquhoun, 11th laird of Luss “had his lands erected into the free barony of Luss by King James II in 1457, with the right of ‘pit and gallows’ which meant a local jurisdiction including the powers of life and death (held by the Colquhoun chiefs until 1747)”.

It was a raid on Luss by Clan Gregor in 1602 which led to the following year’s Battle of Glen Fruin in which more than 100 members of the Colquhoun clan were massacred, leading King James VI & I to outlaw the MacGregors.

Come back next week for more village histories.