parish there is a bell heard to ring in the churchyard, though no such thing is to be seen there. This I heard from ear-witnesses."--(Willox.) From Mintlaw to Longside the line passes through a succession of small farms or crofts. As we approach Longside we skirt on our left the woods of the Ardlawhill, and close to the line a prettily-situated house, the residence of Dr. Lawrence. It is called Bridgend of Auchlee. 73. Longside. 3 miles from Mintlaw. 29 38" Dyce. Aberdeen It is The village lies about half a mile to the right of the station. The latter is on the north bank of the Ugie, while the village is on the south bank. well situated on a rising ground, the central point being occupied by the parish church, a huge square ungainly building. The old parish church, now disused, stands beside it. The belfry of red sandstone on the old church is well worth looking at. There is an interesting porch at the entrance to the churchyard opposite the west door of the old church. It is arched in stone, and corresponds to the Lychgate of English churches. Here they used to rest the coffin at funerals before entering the graveyard. On a knoll to the north stands the Free Church, with a modest tower and spire. On the east of the village is the Episcopal Chapel, an imitation of early Scottish architecture. Skinner, the author of "Tullochgorum," was Episcopal minister at Longside, and lived at Linshart close by. He is buried in the parish churchyard, close to the grave of the Rev. John Brown, who was his contemporary as parish minister. "I would like to be buried," said Skinner, "beside old John Brown; we were good neighbours in this world, and I don't want a better companion in the next.' Mr. Skinner was the author of many popular poems. We have already enriched our pages with his "Tullochgorum," and we venture to extract the following allusions to him from John Skelton's Crookit Meg, a Tale of the Year One دو : "A sweet and venerable man was old John Skinner, genial and easy-tempered, as a singer of songs should be, yet with a quiet tenacity of purpose and conviction that could have nerved him to die, had it been required of him, for what he deemed to be the truth of God. The evil persecuting days, when he had been dragged from his bed to jail for venturing to minister to the scattered remnant, had passed away like a bad dream; and now, loved and honoured by gentle and simple, he saw his children's children at his knee, and peace in Israel. He had been a poet of the people before Robert Burns was born; and now 'puir Robbie' was dead, and the old man mourned for him as for a brother. "The Doctortells me, John Skinner, that ye are leavin' us for gude and a'. That maunna be; the bishop's a worthy man and a gude son: but it wud be a sin to tak' you from your auld freens.' "Indeed, Miss Sherry, I'm beginning to break, and the lasses are a' forisfamiliate, and in spite of the gude book and a bit sang at times, the house feels lonely, tho' Kirsty is a cantie and couthie lass.' "And the Pharos o' Linshart,' said the Doctor, 'will be darkened ! Have you considered how the Longside lads will wun thro' the Longgate bogs on mirk nights?' "We are unaccountable beings,' replied the old man softly. 'Will you believe me, Miss Sherry, that I canna thole the notion o' extinguishin' that poor little Pharos, as our reverend freen ca's it? It has burned there for fifty years as steady as the polar star. I was tellin' the laird that he maun execute a mortification on its behalf; but he says that in that case the auld man maun bide to see that it burns fairly. Indeed, Pitfour has a kind heart, and I sent him a bit rhyming letter o' thanks for a' the gude he has dune to me and mine.' "You maun gie me a copy, John Skinner,' says Miss Sherry. "I dearly love your verses-yours and Robbie's, tho' the Doctor there is a' for Pop, and Swift, and Addison feckless 666 "Mr. Skinner,' Mark shouts from the bottom of the table, 'I hear Sandy Scott tunin' his fiddle. They'll be waitin' for us in the barn. But we maunna part till you sing us the Ewie.' Mark,' said the old man, 'I've never sung the Ewie since my dear Grisel left me. But there's a wheen verses to the tune o' 'Auld Langsyne' that might not come amiss at this time.' "And then he sang in a remarkably pure and clear voice for a man of eighty, to the air that goes direct to every Scotsman's heart, a verse or two from the 'Auld Minister's Sang.' Sae well's I min' upo' the days 'Though ye live on the banks o' Doon, Ye well might ride to Faulkland town, And at that place where Scotland's king We cannot resist the temptation to add "The Ewie wi' the crookit horn.” O were I able to rehearse, My ewie's praise in proper verse, Hereabouts or far awa. She neither needed tar nor keel, To ken her by amang them a'. Was never sweir to lead nor ca'. A better nor a thriftier beast, To hae ilk year a lamb or twa. Of mair than thretty head and twa. They're fain to sleep on hay or straw. Forth aneath a wreath o' snaw. But teesed about the barn wa'. I lookit aye at even for her, Yet, last ouk, for a' my keeping, I socht her sair upon the morn, And down aneath a bush o' thorn, There I fand her crookit horn, But my ewie was awa'. But gin I had the loon that did it, I never met wi' sic a turn; At e'en I had baith ewe and horn, A' the claes that we hae worn, Had fair-strae death ta'en her awa. Sae sair a heart to ane an' a'. But thus, poor thing, to lose her life, O all ye bards benorth Kinghorn, Frae us stown, and fell'd and a'. From W. Anderson's "Howes o' Buchan " we extract the following notice of a once locally celebrated character: "In connection with the churchyard we have to notice Jamie Fleeman, the Laird of Udny's fool.' Jamie was born at Braeside of Ludquharn in 1713. His father appears to have been a farmservant, or to have followed some labouring employment there; and in the registration books of Longside we have fished out the following registry of his baptism :-'Fleming, James, son to James Fleming in Ludquharn. 7th April 1713.' Of his father but little is known; but his mother, it is said, drowned herself in the Burn of Cairngall, at the spot known as Fleming's Pot. Jamie's many adventures are as patent to the world, in their own way, as those of much more pretentious men. Indeed, if one half of the bon-mots, etc., ascribed to Jamie be true, it would take a very clever man to make another of the laird of Udny's fool! "After many weary wanderings, Jamie at last succumbed to the King of Terrors, in his sister's house at Kin I mundy in 1778, in the 65th year of his age. When he was about his last, some friends of his sister's were around the bed reasoning together on the propriety of speaking to him on the subject of the future state. Some one of them had remarked: 'Oh, he's a fool; what can he know of such things?' when Jamie, looking him in the face, said that he never heard that God sought what He did not give.' Then, looking at another who stood near, he uttered his last words: 'I'm a Christian, dinna bury me like a beast.' Jamie was buried in the churchyard, near the north wall, adjoining the new church. As near as is known to his grave, a handsome polished granite obelisk has been erected, bearing the following inscription: ERECTED IN 1861, TO INDICATE THE GRAVE OF JAMIE FLEEMAN, IN ANSWER TO HIS PRAYER, 'DINNA BURY ME LIKE A BEAST. Dr. Pratt tells us, "The village of Longside belongs to the present century. Previous to 1801, the farm-house of Kirkton, which stood nearly opposite the kirk-style,' and the 'alehouse' of Sandhole, close to the north wall of the churchyard, were the only dwellings on the site of the village. In that year, Mr. Ferguson of Pitfour, the proprietor of the estate, cut off about 100 acres from the farm of Longside. These, with the 'rigs of Kirkton,' were laid off as feu crofts, and leases of fifty-seven years' duration were granted to those who chose to build. In the first quarter of the century the village increased rapidly; since that time, till lately, under the encouraging auspices of Mr. Bruce, the present proprietor, it was all but stationary. It is built on an eminence gently sloping on all sides." The houses are rather irregularly put down, but this adds to the quaint and picturesque appearance of the village. Inverquhomery, the residence of the proprietor, is about two miles to the west. The small but comfortable-looking house on the rising ground to the south is the mansion-house of Cairngall (Hutchison). A little beyond the station the two branches of the Ugie unite. "Muckle Ugie said to little Ugie 'When shall we twa meet?' 'Doon i' the Haughs o' Rora, When a' men are asleep."" The north Ugie rises in the Den of Glasslaw, Aberdour, there known as the Gonar. It flows into the water of Strichen and becomes the North Ugie or Blackwater. The South Ugie rises in Bonnykelly, New Deer. passes Brucklay Castle, Old Deer, etc., receiving many little streams. Both are good trout streams, and below Longside there is good salmon and sea-trout fishing. It we A little beyond the station we pass Milbank, and looking to the left " get a passing glimpse of the ruins of the once eminent cloth manufactory at Milbank, on the brink of the north fork of the Ugie. This manufactory was celebrated for the quality of the cloth made at it. It was erected by the Messrs. Kilgour, but owing to adverse circumstances it was stopped in 1828. A great many hands found remunerative work at it, and we believe its erection was, to a certain extent, the primary cause of the extension of the village of Longside. The once broad, but now almost dried, Loch of Auchlee is between Milbank and the farm of Auchlee. Near Milbank the two Ugies meet and mingle." The river is crossed a little below this by a skew girder bridge of three spans of 31 feet each. Castle of Ravenscraig, says Sir A. H. Hay, stands on a rocky eminence immediately on the southern bank of the river Ugie, and tradition dates its original construction as far back as the 13th century; whether this is correct or not, it is undoubtedly a building of great antiquity, and must have been an important stronghold. It was originally the property and residence of the Cheynes, a family of Anglo-Norman descent that settled in Scotland in the earlier part of the 13th century." The last male representative died about herited the estates. Mariot, the senior, 1350, leaving two daughters who inmarried Sir John Douglas, by whom de Keith, the second son of Edward she had no family; and secondly John de Keith, the Marischal of Scotland, by whom she had a son Andrew, who passed into the family of Keith. Mary, the other daughter, married Nicol, the second son of Kenneth Earl of Sutherland, who obtained with her the barony of Duffus (which had to the Cheynes by marriage with Mary, eldest daughter and co-heiress of Freskyn de Moray); from this marriage Lord Duffus. Thus ended the male is descended the family of Sutherland, line of the chief family of the Cheynes of Ravenscraig-the castle and estates now becoming, by female descent, the property of the Keiths. succeeded to her estates, which thus come All that remains of the castle is the first story, a square keep. The river flows close to the northern base of the rock on which it is built, and there are traces of a moat by which a branch of the stream had been carried round the south. The walls are of runwork and extremely thick. It had been a place of great strength. It forms now a most picturesque and impressive ruin. A Around it and Inverugie there are a number of charming residences. local poet has thus celebrated this lovely spot- O Ugie, tho' nae classic stream, In hearts aft lichted by a gleam Inverugie is the last station before reaching Peterhead, from which it is distant 2 miles. It is the station for a number of suburban villas. The chief interest it has for the tourist is the ruined castle of Inverugie, with its Gallowhill on the rising ground behind. The ruins are situated about a quarter of a mile above the turnpike road bridge on the north bank of the river, which winds round the castle on three sides. According to historians it was founded in 1380 by Sir John de Keith, who married Mariot Cheyne. It is clear, however, that portions of it are of an earlier date. One portion is called The Cheynes' Tower, and that part was probably built at the later date; the greater part of what now exists is supposed to have been erected about the close of the 16th century by George, Earl Marischal, the founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen. There are many curiously sculptured stones still to be seen about the ruins and garden walls. Next to Dun- "As lang's this stane stands on this craft, The stone was removed in 1763; the last Earl Marischal sold the lands in 1766, and died in 1788. There is another prophecy, Anderson tells us, by the same bard about Inverugie Castle; but it is a mistake to suppose that it was uttered with regard to this Inverugie. It refers to an old castle-all traces of which have now almost disappeared-near the mouth of the river Ugie, which had been inhabited by the Cheynes; the prophecy runs thus: "Ugie, Ugie, by the sea, Lairdless shall thy lands be; And beneath thy ha' hearth stane, "There is another Inverugie prophecy (one which refers to the present Inverugie), that a white hind should come from afar and give three roars at the gate, when the keystone should fall from its socket and break the threshold in three. Whether or not the white hind ever appeared, we are not informed; but one thing is certain, that the threshold was broken in three, and that the keystone has been out of its place." Of this family, which dates from 1005, Hervei, who took the surname of Keith, held the office of Marischal of Scotland under Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. They had then extensive estates in East Lothian and elsewhere. They were one of the foremost families in Scotland; they closed their career of greatness after the memorable struggle of 1715, when the estates were forfeited to the Crown. They were partly repurchased by the last Earl in 1761. This Earl resided for some time |
