afterwards King of England, which landed in Buchan, where Malcolm II. encountered them near the Bay of Ardendraucht— where the Danes then had a castle'-in the parish since known as Cruden. A day of fierce conflict took place, but when the sun rose on the slain both armies were so exhausted that 'the priests and religious, whom by reason of their character both nations respected, had an opportunity of mediating a peace.' The Danes agreed to withdraw from Scotland and evacuate those places they had in Moray and Buchan, and on the field of battle there was erected a church dedicated to St. Olave. The name of the parish is said to be derived from the words Croch Dain, or slaughter of the Danes, and the vicinity bears evidence of having been the scene of a bloody conflict. Early in the century a neck chain of jet and amber, and a battle-axe of black flint, were found on a neighbouring farm. Probably the Danes had held the seaboard districts for some time on a more or less permanent tenure, for there is undoubtedly a large Scandinavian strain in the population. Occasionally you meet with a man of fair beard and bright blue eyes, who might stand for a typical Viking; and the dialect, and especially words used among the fishing population, speak plainly of a large Norse or Danish element, and probably a Frisian strain in the ancestry. One village on the northern coast (Rosehearty in Pitsligo) has a tradition of its own accounting for the Norse strain. Early in the fourteenth century it is said that a party of shipwrecked Danes took up their residence among the natives. On the eastern coast there are also indications of a Dutch strain, but the Teutonic blood all round the coast is stronger than can be accounted for by occasional infusions; and dates, no doubt, in large degree from substantial settlements of the Norsemen. In view of their settlements in the west, it could hardly be otherwise than that they should have obtained a strong foothold on Scottish soil where it most nearly approached their native land, even though the coast of Buchan offered little shelter to their galleys. If the coast parishes bear the footprints of the Norsemen, there are similar vestiges in the inland district of Monquhitter, which tradition associates with civil war. In the vicissitudes of the strife that followed the death of Malcolm Canmore, Donald Bane, who had beleaguered Edinburgh Castle when the sainted Queen Margaret was on her death-bed, is believed to have waged a three days' fight at Lendrum with the Mormaer of Buchan, who adhered to the royal cause. The site of the battle was known as Donald's Field, and such is the effect of superstition, and the tendency of prophecies to accomplish the object object foretold, that a prediction that corn growing on the bloody butts of Lendrum should never be reaped without bloodshed or strife among the reapers is said to have been literally fulfilled from time immemorial.' With the expulsion of the Danes, and the settlement on the Scottish throne of the children of Malcolm Canmore, Buchan seems to have entered on a period of peace and prosperity which lasted till the convulsions of the war of succession. The era was one of general prosperity throughout Scotland, which she was never to see again till the union of the Crowns gave peace, only too soon broken by the civil wars. It is in Buchan associated with the great name of Comyn. The head of that mighty house, the type of all that was boldest, most polished, most sagacious, and most unscrupulous in the Norman race, married Marjory, daughter of Fergus, the last Celtic Earl of Buchan, The right of their son to succeed, through his mother, was in conformity with Pictish ideas of succession and the past history of the Mormaership as disclosed in the Book of Deir.' It was also undoubted, as heir of both father and mother, under the new feudal law. There could have been no easier and more appropriate transition from an old order to a new than circumstances thus rendered possible in Buchan, and the relentless devastation with which the Earldom was visited by the Bruce indicates the strong position of the Comyns in their northern territories, and the necessity for ruthless measures directed against the sources of that strength. The country must then have combined forest and field, and, with a more equable climate, yielded little, if anything, in productiveness to more southern regions. The Pictish element certainly remained large, especially in the agricultural labouring population; but with this were blended the Norse strain and a constantly increasing Norman and Saxon infusion. The process by which the old tongue was superseded by the most marked variety of the Aberdeenshire Doric, known as 'Broad Buchans,' cannot be traced, but it was probably the same as in the rest of the Celtic kingdom of Malcolm Canmore north of the Forth. The power and policy of the Comyns are best illustrated by the remains of the great castles they built and their care for the religious welfare and civilization of the people. Most remarkable, perhaps, are the great strengths' they planted on bold rocks all around the wild coast: Cairnbulg, Dundargue, Old Slains, Rattray, and Inverallochy-occupied by a younger son of the house, and bearing the inscription, I Jurdan Cumyn, indwaller here, Gat this house and lands for biggin the Abbey of Deer.' Fedderate, in the centre of the district as we know it, was theirs also, but their principal family seat seems to have been KinEdar or King-Edward, on the margin of a deep ravine through which a burn flows down to the Deveron. At Rattray they had a strong castle on the site of an old Pictish rath, near which are the ruins of a church. "Tis said that a son of Cumine, Earl of Buchan, was drowned accidentally in a well here, whereupon this chappell was founded for his soul.' The decadence of the old Celtic Church was accompanied by a large secularization of its property, and in Buchan much of this, no doubt, was at the disposal of its Lords. But the lands of the Church did not, in the expressive words of the Irish chronicler, long remain 'dead' in the hands of the Comyns. In January 1219, William Comyn founded the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary of Deer, on a sheltered haugh by the banks of the Ugie, where it flows between the hills of Saplin Brae and Aiky Brae. He conferred upon the Cistercians broad lands, including probably the older possessions of the Celtic monastery, and others beyond the bounds of Buchan. But the central house of Deer, though the largest, was not the only agency for Christian work in the region that owed much to the Comyns. The Priory of Fyvie, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, and the churches of Turriff and Rathen, were given by them to the Benedictine house of Arbroath. Alexander, Earl of Buchan, Justiciary of Scotland, founded a hospital at Turriff, called after the patron saint, St. Congan, for a master, six chaplains, and thirteen poor husbandmen of Buchan. Earl Alexander also, for the benefit of his soul and that of the Countess Isabelle, his spouse,' gave certain lands to six poor prebendaries dwelling at Newburgh in Buchan.' This foundation, known as the 'Rood kirk of Buchan,' was subject to the Abbey of Deer. John, the grandson of the founder, gave to the Abbey the patronage of the church of Kin-Edar, 'the last gift which the brethren of St. Mary were fated to receive from his race and lineage.' The founder is said to have chosen the abbey as the place of his sepulture, and another weird tradition associates the locality with a tragic episode in the history of his house. 'On Aiky Brae (according to the View of the Diocese of Aberdeen) are certain stones called the Cummin's Craig, where 'tis said one of the Cummins, Earl of Buchan, by a fall from his horse at hunting, dashed out his brains. The prediction goes that this Earl, who lived under King Alexander III., had called Thomas the Rhymer by the name of Thomas the Lyar, to show how much he slighted his predictions; whereupon that famous fortune-teller denounced his impending fate fate to him in these words, which, 'tis added, were all fulfilled literally : "Though Thomas the Lyar thou callest me, A sooth tale I shall tell to thee: It is said that some years ago, when excavations were being made in the ruins of the abbey, a stone was found bearing the arms of the Comyns, and below it some bones and the remains of a leathern belt. If Deer was the ecclesiastical, the village of Ellon, on the banks of the Ythan, was the civil centre of those old days. The vale of the Ythan was known as 'the rich rig of Scotland,' from the pearls found in its waters, one of which adorns the Scottish crown; and till comparatively recent times the remains of the Moot Hill, or Earl's Hill, at which the Earls of Buchan held their court, were traceable beside the river. In one of their extant charters the grantee is bound to afford the free services of an archer and to give three attendances in the year at my Court of Ellon.' And long after the titular Earls of Buchan had little connexion with the district, a link with this historic locality was retained. The Earl's Hill was included in the charter of the Earldom, and in 1615 Mary Douglas was enfeoffed in the earldom of Buchan and Earl's Hill. The rapid rise and widespread ascendancy of the Comyns were only paralleled by their sudden and irrevocable fall. Their policy throughout the various stages of the war of independence is difficult to appreciate; now acting as Guardians of the kingdom and aiding to defeat the English at Roslin, and again swearing fealty to King Edward and resisting the arms of Bruce. They had a subsidiary claim to the throne, of which that of their kinsman Balliol took precedence, but the blood of the old Celtic kings also flowed in their veins through Hexetilda, the daughter of Donald Bane. They had no reason to view with satisfaction the succession of a Bruce, and the dagger that slew the Red Comyn in the church of Dumfries made the struggle between their house and the hand that wielded it one in which there could be no peace and no mercy for the vanquished. A ' revolution which placed the Earl of Carrick on the Scottish throne' could never be accepted by the Lords of Buchan and Badenoch. In the spring of 1308 the hour struck for the Comyns. Defeated by King Robert at Inverurie, they were Vol. 179.-No. 358. 2 D pursued pursued into their own territories by the fiery Edward, launched by his brother on their rear. Strangely enough, it was on the heights of Aiky Brae, overlooking the monastery which testified to their piety, that the final conflict took place. The forces of the Earldom were broken and defeated with great slaughter, and the victors devastated the territory with fire and sword. For fifty years after men spoke with terror of the harrying of Buchan,' and so relentless was King Robert's proscription of the hated race, that of a name which numbered at one time three earls and more than thirty belted knights there was no memorial left in the land, save the orisons of the monks of Deir.' Indeed the only branch of their house that kept a scanty foothold in the province so closely associated with their power, was the family of Buchan of Auchmacoy, 'the first of them having been a son of Cummin, Earl of Buchan, who had got this small estate from his father, and did, notwithstanding the almost general rebellion of his whole clan against King Robert I., adhere so faithfully to that Prince that he was allowed to retain his estate upon the condition of his taking a new name, whereupon he chose that of Buchan.' Many generations afterwards the name of Cumine became again well known among the Buchan proprietary, but the families of Pittulie (now of Rattray), Auchry, Kininmonth, and Birness, all traced their descent through the Badenoch branch of the ancient house. From the settlement that followed the victory of Bruce down to the Reformation and the civil wars of the seventeenth century, the history of Buchan offers little to attract the annalist. It lay out of the line of direct history, though its baronage nobly bore their part in national events, the Earl of Erroll with eighty-seven of his clan falling with King James at Flodden. There is a touch of pathos in the discharge by the young Earl of Erroll to the heir of Walter Hay, of Carmuk, 'because the said Walter remanit with my lord my fader to the deid.' Two sons of the Earl Marischal were also left on the same fatal field; but no prominent local event serves as a landmark, and the existence or the ruins of many a strong castle are the only relics which can be assigned to this era. With these ancient piles many strange legends and many a quaint prophetic distich attributed to Thomas the Rhymer are associated. Historical facts sometimes either dislodge the prophet or intensify his prophetic insight; but whoever be their author, the predictions are always quaint, and their fulfilment sometimes strangely dramatic. The doom pronounced on the haughty Earl of Buchan was soon exacted; but it was left for the last century to see the weird of |