Crofton Scottish History Without the Boring Bits

A Chronicle of the Curious, the Eccentric, the Atrocious and the Unlikely
1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-0-85790-862-9
Verlag: Birlinn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

This is the story of Scotland as it's never been told before. From the 4th millennium BC, when the first Scot was expelled from Eden, right up to the 21st century, when US intelligence identified a distillery on Islay as a possible threat to world peace, Ian Crofton presents a host of little-known tales that you won't find in conventional history books. Packed with fascinating facts and extraordinary events, Scottish History Without the Boring Bits also includes some remarkable personalities, such as the duke who ate his own fingers, the poet who sought inspiration from a tooth, the vampire-hunting children of the Gorbals, and the MP accused of stealing his ex-mistress's knickers. 

Ian Crofton's books exploring the interplay of landscape, nature and history include Walking the Border: A Journey between Scotland and England, rated by both The Guardian and Trail magazine as 'excellent'. His Fringed with Mud and Pearls: An English Island Odyssey was described by the BBC's Countryfile as 'really engaging', and by Coast magazine as 'a fascinating study about what it means to exist on the fringes'; it was selected by the Telegraph as one of their top twenty travel books of 2021. Upland: A Journey Through Time and the Hills was published in May 2025.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Crofton, Ian

Leseproben

The DARK and MIDDLE Ages

3948 BC

SCOTS EXPELLED FROM PARADISE

According to Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, the year 3948 BC was the date that God created ‘of red earth’ Urquhart’s own ancestor Adam, by whom he claimed to be descended 143rd ‘by line’, and 153rd ‘by succession’. Urquhart published his conclusions in 1652 in his Panto-chronachanon, subtitled A Peculiar Promptuary of Time. He initially follows the Old Testament genealogies (Enoch, Methuselah, Noah, Japhet, etc.), but by the late 3rd millennium BC wanders off into mythologies of his own creation. The year 2139 BC, he states, was the date of birth of Esormon, sovereign prince of Achaia: ‘For his fortune in the wars, and affability in conversation, his subjects and familiars surnamed him OUROCHARTOS, that is to say, fortunate and well beloved. After which time, his posterity ever since hath acknowledged him the father of all that carry the name of URQUHART.’ Fortune in war and affability in conversation were qualities that Sir Thomas prized above all in himself: a dashing Cavalier, he fought for the Royalist side in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and published a succession of mock-scholarly works in which he floated a range of improbable notions, unfeasible inventions and even a new universal language (see 1653).

circa who knows when? BC

THE ORIGINS OF THE SCOTS IN SCYTHIA (OR GREECE, OR EGYPT, OR SPAIN)

According to some of the medieval chroniclers, the Scots had their origins in Scythia, the area of steppes north of the Black Sea whose nomadic, pastoral inhabitants were described by the ancient Greeks. The supposed peregrinations of these proto-Scots is described in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320):

From the chronicles and books of the ancients we find that among other famous nations our own, the Scots, have been graced with widespread renown. They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous. Thence they came, twelve hundred years after the people of Israel crossed the Red Sea, to their home in the west where they still live today.

The earliest version of the story appears to be an 11th-century Irish manuscript, which relates that the Gaels were descended from the Scythian prince Fénius Farsaid, one of the 72 princes who supposedly had a hand in the construction of the Tower of Babel. Fénius’s son Nél married an Egyptian princess called Scota (hence ‘Scotia’, ‘Scotland’, etc.), and they begot Goídel Glas (Latinised as Gathelus), who was credited with creating the Gaelic language when God ‘confounded the language of all the Earth’. In the version concocted by the Scottish chronicler John of Fordun in the 14th century, Goídel Glas becomes Gaythelos, a Greek prince who was exiled to Egypt, where he married the pharaoh’s daughter, Scota. They appear to have left Egypt for Spain at the time of the biblical plagues, and the subsequent death of the pharaoh and his army pursuing Moses and the Israelites across the Red Sea. Neither of these accounts is now generally accepted by historians.

AD 26

PONTIUS PILATE WAS A PERTHSHIRE LAD

Pontius Pilate became prefect of the Roman province of Judaea. There is a longstanding tradition that he was born in Fortingall in Perthshire, his father supposedly having been a Roman ambassador and his mother a local Menzies or a MacLaren. Whatever the truth of this, Fortingall has a more secure claim to fame in the form of the ancient Fortingall Yew, thought to be between 3,000 and 5,000 years old.

circa 380

CANNIBALISTIC CALEDONIANS

St Jerome, visiting Gaul, ‘learned that the Attacotti, the people of the country now called Scotland, when hunting in the woods, preferred the shepherd to his flocks, and chose only the most fleshy and delicate parts for eating’.

548

ST COLUMBA BURIES FELLOW SAINT ALIVE

Death of St Oran on Iona. Legend has it that as his companion St Columba tried to build a chapel on the island, every night the demons of the place demolished it. In order to propitiate the genus loci, St Oran agreed to be buried alive. After three days Columba ordered that his friend be dug up. To the horror of all present, Oran ‘declared that there was neither a God, a judgement nor a future state’. Such views being entirely unacceptable, Columba ordered that Oran be forthwith buried alive for a second time, this time on a permanent basis.

circa 561

WINNING BY A FINGER

The Irish missionaries St Moluag and St Mulhac eyed up the island of Lismore north of Oban with the idea of founding a monastery there. Legend recounts how the two rivals agreed to a rowing race across Loch Linnhe to the island, with the winner becoming the founder of the monastery. As his rival pulled ahead towards the end of the race, St Moluag resorted to a desperate measure: he cut off one of his own fingers and flung it to the shore, so winning the race. He went on to establish his monastery at the place called Kilmoluaig, meaning ‘Moluag’s church’.

583

THE SILENCE OF THE RAMS

Death of St Serf. Among his many miracles, the following is probably the most remarkable. The saint had a favourite ram, which would follow him wherever he went. But one day the ram was stolen. Suspicion fell upon a certain man, who was brought before the saint. The man flatly denied he had anything to do with the ram’s disappearance. But then a bleating was heard coming from the man’s stomach. The ram – which he had killed, cooked and devoured – thus confirmed the man’s guilt.

617

EXTERMINATIONS ON EIGG

St Donan, who had established a monastery on the island of Eigg, was burnt alive along with 150 of his monks by a band of wild warrior women under the command of a pagan Pictish queen. A 17th-century Irish chronicler gives an alternative account of St Donan’s demise:

And there came robbers of the sea on a certain time to the island when he was celebrating mass. He requested of them not to kill him until he should have the mass said, and they gave him this respite; and he was afterwards beheaded and fifty-two of his monks along with him.

Many years later, in 1577, the island witnessed another massacre, inflicted by a raiding party of MacLeods from Skye on the native MacDonalds. On a previous visit, a band of MacLeods, intent on ravishing the maidenhood of Eigg, had been castrated by the outraged MacDonalds; alternatively, they had been bound hand and foot and set adrift, but were rescued by their fellow clansmen. The MacLeods returned in force, obliging the MacDonalds to hide in a cave. The raiders discovered them, lit a fire at the entrance and wafted the smoke into the dark interior, where 200 of the fugitives were asphyxiated. Visiting the ‘Massacre Cave’ in 1814, Sir Walter Scott reported that he found ‘numerous specimens of mortality’. The remains remained unburied for some decades after his visit.

The vendetta was by no means at an end. The year after the massacre at the cave, a band of MacDonalds landed on Skye at Trumpan, herded the local MacLeods into a church, barred the door, and set it alight. Only one person escaped alive, a young girl, who fled to Dunvegan. A strong force of MacLeods went forth and slaughtered the invaders, lined up their bodies under a turf wall and toppled the wall over to bury them.

circa 650

THE SAINT WHO NEARLY WASN’T

Loth or Lleuddun, Chief of the Votadani and King of the Lothians, was furious when he discovered his daughter Teneu was pregnant. In his wrath he ordered that she be thrown down the cliffs on the south side of Traprain Law, former capital of the Votadani. As she fell, Teneu prayed for forgiveness, and came to earth unharmed. Loth, however, concluded from this that she was a witch, and had her cast into the sea near the Isle of May. Again she survived, this time by clinging onto the rock still known as Maiden Hair Rock. From here she was swept up the Firth of Forth, eventually coming ashore at Culross, where she gave birth to the boy who was to become St Kentigern (or Mungo), who built the first church in what is now Glasgow.

687

COFFIN USED TO WATER COWS

(20 March) Death of St Cuthbert. Many stories are told about the fate of his body after his death. One legend recounts how it was enclosed in a stone coffin at Melrose, from where it sailed down the Tweed until coming ashore at the mouth of the River Till (where St Cuthbert’s Chapel now stands). Cuthbert’s body was then taken on to Durham, but the stone coffin stayed by the chapel for some centuries. When a local farmer began to use the coffin to water his cattle, the saint’s angry spirit smashed it to pieces. (This last part of the story appears to have been confected by the Revd Lambe, a vicar of Norham.)

circa 720

EYELESS IN ORKNEY

On a visit to Papa Westray in Orkney, King Nechtan of the Picts was smitten by the beautiful eyes of a local girl, one Triduana or Trollhaena. She, however, did not reciprocate his feelings, and rather than giving him her body, she plucked out her eyes and gave him those instead. Triduana subsequently became abbess of a convent at Restalrig (now part of Edinburgh), and was later canonised as St Tredwell. A chapel dedicated to her still stands on Papa Westray, beside St Tredwell’s Loch, and was long a destination for those suffering from eye problems.

ONE SAINTLY HAND IS WORTH A HUNDRED CANDLES

Also around this time flourished St Fillan, a saint of Irish...