of Gicht worked out, when one man was drowned in the Ythan, Lord Haddo killed by a fall from his horse, and the incredulous mason employed on the house while the lands were being laid down in grass illustrated the truth of the saying at which he scoffed

'Three men on Ythanside a violent death shall dee,

An' then the lands o' Gicht shall lie in lea.'

No less accurate was the prophecy

"When the heron leaves the tree,

The Lairds o' Gicht shall landless be;'

or the other, unrivalled in its quaint obliquity—

Twa men sat down on Ythan brae:

The ane did to the ither say,

"An' what sic men may the Gordons o' Gight hae been "?

or the similar pronouncement about Inverugie —

'As lang 's this stane stands on this craft,

The name of Keith shall be alaft;

But whan this stane begins to fa',

The name of Keith shall wear awa'.

The parish of Slains is said to owe its name to the Gaelic word for health,' and perhaps it required no great supernatural qualification, in its near neighbourhood with the sea-breezes blowing on the bents of Cruden, to certify—

'St. Olave's well low by the sea,

Where pest or plague shall never be.'

But it was an evil hour that kept the Rhymer waiting in the pelting storm outside the 'yetts' of Fyvie till he had pronounced the malediction

'Fyvie's riggs and towers,

Hapless shall your mesdames be

When ye shall hae within your methes,
Frae harryit kirklands stanis three:

Ane in Preston's tower,

Ane in my lady's bower,

And ane below the water-yett,

And it ye shall never get.'

Similar was the 'freit' about Towie, fulfilled by the fact that no proprietor ever saw his eldest son come of

age

Tollie Barclay of the Glen,
Happie to the maids but never to the men.'

2D 2

It

It is well to part with one of a more encouraging character, whether it refer to surviving the male line of the old house of Gordon, or the whole Gordon clan, or another race also noted for combative qualities:

'When there's ne'er a Cock o' the North,

There'll be a Fraser in Philorth.'

For more than three hundred years the Abbey founded by the Comyns in the locality associated with St. Columba flourished. The Abbot of the little grey monastery, with its mullioned windows of red sandstone, appears as taking part in many important transactions; and though in 1267 Dene Adam of Smalham demitted office, choosing rather to enjoy sweet converse with the saints of Melrose than to govern an unworthy flock under the low roofs of Deer,' the Abbot Michael sat in the Parliament at Cambuskenneth soon after the glorious day of Bannockburn. The first shadow of impending change is discerned when the Abbot of Kinloss who died in 1526 was appointed Visitor of his Order throughout Scotland, and more than once used the authority of his office in restoring the fallen discipline of the monastery of Deer.' The Reformation found Robert Keith, second son of the Earl Marischal, in possession. He had probably succeeded his uncle as Abbot, but is better known as the Commendator. At first he seems to have been no friend to the new Order; for when he petitioned for relief from certain payments due to preachers at the Abbey's churches, the General Assembly declared that the kirk can in no wise remitt the thing that pertains to the poor ministers,' especially to such a one as 'My Lord of Deir, who debursed his money to the enemies of God, to prosecute his servants and banish them out of the realm.' But the Commendator was not the man to be personally overwhelmed in the wreck of any system. In the year 1587, the Manor Place of Deir, of auld callit the Abbey of Deir,' and the whole temporal possessions of the monastery, were erected into a barony, to be called the Lordship of Altrie in all time coming,' destined to the Commendator and the Earl Marischal. On his death the Abbey was seized and held for six weeks by Robert Keith of Benholm, till he was dislodged by Marischal and Lord Altrie and their company.' Henceforward the lands of the Abbey formed part of the Marischal estates; and devout men traced from that moment, when it stood at the pinnacle of its power, the decline of that ancient house. The vision in which the Earl's wife saw the stately crag of Dunottar demolished by the penknives of the silly religious monks,' re-echoed the popular voice, and

was

was haughtily responded to by the defiant inscription on the tower which the Earl built on the Abbey lands, on his lodging in Peterhead, and on the college he founded in Aberdeen: 'Thay haif said: quhat said thay lat thame say.'

With the exception of the chastisement which fell with comparative forbearance on the Earl of Erroll, after his share in the defeat of Argyll's Highlandmen at Glenlivat, the struggles between Queen's and King's men, in which Gordons and Forbeses fought so fiercely, seem to have little affected the people of Buchan. When the Armada was driven round the northern coasts, the 'St. Catherine' found her fate in a deep pool near Collieston, from which some of her guns have been recovered. The unfortunate Queen Mary's name is associated only with the erection of the little village of Rattray into a Royal burgh, as a compromise between the rival claims of Slains and Inverugie, but her son is found at the Craig of Inverugie at the Laird's daughter's marriage.' Fyvie, under the shade of an erewhile Royal Castle, was the only other Royal burgh of which there is any indication in the province, and it had sunk to a burgh of barony in the seventeenth century; but towards the end of the sixteenth century the enlightened chiefs of the Keiths and the Frasers founded the burghs of barony of Peterhead and Fraserburgh, which have expanded into flourishing towns. The Earl Marischal planted his University in Aberdeen; but Sir Alexander Fraser, with more local patriotism, boldly endeavoured to raise a seat of learning in the utmost corner of the land. The burgh of Turriff flourished under the superiority of the Hays, but the harvest of the sea was wanting to its prosperity, and it was left for an Earl of Erroll of the nineteenth century to found Port Erroll on the Bay of Cruden. Rosehearty was fostered by the first Lord Pitsligo, and from its manse in the early years of the Covenanting struggle went forth the notable Mr. Andrew Cant, whose church, with its fine belfry brought from Holland by Lord Pitsligo, is still known as "Cant's Kirk,' and whose name remains one of the most familiar nouns in the English language. The White Kirk of Buchan' at Tyrie had been a favourite place of pilgrimage in olden days, but for some time after the Reformation the religious needs of the district were very scantily supplied. Indeed, in 1570, Gilbert Chisholm officiated as Minister of Old Deer, Foveran, Peterugie, and Langley, for the stipend of 407. a year.

The region was fortunate in escaping the fiercer devastations of the civil war, which fell with special force on other parts of Aberdeenshire. Yet it was within the bounds of Buchan that the first blood was shed, that hostile forces first defied each

other,

other, and that the first fight was fought. The Earl Marischal, a young man, was one of the steadiest supporters of the Covenant. The Earl of Erroll was a minor, but the old alliance of his house with the Gordons had been broken, and the Frasers and Forbeses were at one with the Keiths,-though in the case of the two latter houses the bond was described as a 'new scarce well-cemented association,'-in hostility to the house of Huntly, who represented the Royal cause, and one of whose most active partisans was Gordon of Gicht.

The Gordon baronage and others of the Garioch and Mar formed the strength of the Cavalier party; and though in Buchan they had their sympathisers in Irvine of Fedderate, Buchan of Auchmacoy, Forbes of Blackton, and others, in the earlier stages of the war at any rate, the leading lords and proprietors were strong Covenanters. Spalding records that the deputation of 1638 went down through the presbitreis of Buchan, and gat mony subscriptions of ministeris and laickis to their covenant.' On their return to Aberdeen 'multitudes resortit to thaym besydds out of Buchane.' On the 21st of September, 1640, the outstanding minister' of Slains 'recantit, repentit, and preached a penitential sermon.' Turriff, belonging to Lord Erroll, was a favourite meeting-place for the Covenanting Committee. There occurred the First Raid of Turriff,' when Montrose dashed across the Mount' to support the northern Covenanters, who, consisting largely of the men tennendis and seruandis of Buchan,' of the Earl Marischal and Lord Erroll, 'buskit very advantageouslie thair muskattis round about the dykis of the kirk yaird,' and watched Lord Huntly's '2,000 brave euill horsit gentilmen and brave foot men' draw up in order of battle, and, in deference to the king's order not to make the first attack, march peaceably past, without ony kind of offence or injurious word.' Gordon of Rothiemay quaintly observes that Fame made this incident pass in Paris 'under no less notion than the seidge and tacking of the Great Town of Turriff in Scotland by the Marquis of Huntly; whom Fraunce knew better than they knew Turriff.' The first life was sacrificed three months later when Urquhart of Cromartie, Gordon of Gicht, and others sought to recover from the Castle of Towie some arms which had been seized from Balquholly by the Covenanting lairds of Delgaty and Towie. Lord Fraser and the Master of Forbes manned the castle and beat off the attack, a servant of Gicht being killed. These Cavalier barons had also made a demonstration in Ellon, where they vainly urged the Laird of Kermuck to forsake the Covenant; but the first actual encounter of large bodies was the skirmish known to

history

history as the Trot of Turriff, when the Cavalier barons attacked a large body of Covenanters early in the morning, and though inferior in numbers put them to flight.

The Earl Marischal commanded along with Montrose at the battle of the bridge of Dee, and his Buchan men frequently joined the southern forces at the Covenanting musters in Aberdeen. When the Marquis of Huntly rose in 1644, and the Covenanting barons took to the strengths, Spalding notes, "The Lord Fraser goes to Caiirbulg. . . the Laird of Watertown takis in Watertown; the Laird of Kermuckis keipis his house of Kermuckis; the Tutor of Pitsligo keipis Pitsligo; the Laird of Philorth keipis Philorth.' A little later, when the star of the Royalists waned, Gicht was taken by the Marquis of Argyll, but the young Laird being well horsit lap the park dykis and saifly wan away.' Six months later the gallant Montrose, now leading the Scottish Royalists, beat off the attacks of Argyll at Fyvie, resting his right upon the Ythan, and won one of his most creditable though lesser victories in an action full of picturesque incidents. In his later campaigns. and even on the scaffold his most constant companion was the Laird of Delgaty, who like him had been a 'prime Covenanter' in the earlier stages of the troubles, and who with Gordon of Gicht covered his difficult retreat at Inverness.

In 1644 troopers of the Covenant were quartered over the presbyteries of Ellon and Deer, and they were succeeded by Cromwell's English soldiers, who 'threw down the place of publick repentance' at Ellon, which a little earlier had been occupied by Patrick Ferguson, railer against the Covenant,' who had entered to his repentance in sackcloth,' for the indiscreet observation, during the tym of James Graham's being in Orkney,' that he hoped to see a black day upon Covenant and Ministers bothe.' A glimpse into another phase of opinion. and social conditions is afforded by an incident which occurred to Father Blackhall, an adventurous Roman Catholic priest who used to visit three houses in Buchan. He mentions that at one time the Lairds of Waterton and Kermuck, his connections, their zeal being stronger than the natural love which should be among blood friends,' did 'ride to take him living or dead,' but went on a false scent after Captain Hebron, who was going to Inverugie to salute the Earl Marischal, and to ask from his lordship such men as were in his lands misdoers or unprofitable to the country, to disburthen the countrie of them by taking them to the wars.' Hebron, who was doubtless that famous soldier of fortune of the Royal Scots, Sir John Hepburn, got four men, and thoroughly enjoyed the humour of being

taken