The One With Jesuistes and Blackmail

Added on 10 March 2020

Sword or rosary? Edged weapons or prayers? Stark options for Catholics in 1560s Scotland. The Reformation Parliament of 1560 had finally, irrevocably broken with the Holy Father in Rome and was hell-bent on stuffing their religion down History's stank. Their queen, Mary Stuart, held her throne like ...

Whey? Whoa!

Added on 09 March 2020

You secure a rare 19 year lease on potentially profitable property close by the Great North Road: Yes! Payment terms are precise to the penny: Ok. Details of the acreage, buildings and boundaries are . . . decidedly vague: Oh . . .Kay? But the landlord has a thing about goats: Deal breaker? The year...

News from Mor thulach

Added on 06 March 2020

A remarkable academic paper begins in 1994 with someone looking for a huffy hut. And Lady Serendipity gets a name check . . . Gazetteers give the origin of Murthly as ‘mòrthulach’, Gaelic for a big mound or hillock. Yet the knoll on which the castle stands is not the highest herea...

'Dalpowie' Parsed at Last

Added on 01 November 2019

It was a lovely sunny day in Perth and with an hour or so to kill I naturally gravitated to the Local Studies section in the AK Bell Library. As you do. On the very first shelf I approached, front cover facing out and, as I later learned, freshly displayed, was Scottish Gaelic Place Names: The Colle...

Poor Shooting

Added on 14 September 2019

In February 1921 a Colonel Rutherford of Kiplin, near Darlington (and sometimes of Villa Albany, Cannes) responded to the sporting opportunities on Murthly estate circulated by PD Malloch of Perth. He would take the Murthly Castle Shooting and Fishings from August to November: for £2,750. The...

The Reluctant Birlayman

Added on 09 September 2019

Sir John had made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. Even while struggling to find where a flat demand ended, and the offer began... On Saturday 14th March 1789, Thomas Anderson, James and John Bruntfield, tenant farmers across the lands of Dalpowie, met to discuss just how they were going t...