THE STORY OF FYVIE CASTLE.*

Otago Witness, Issue 2240, 4 February 1897, Page 49

THE STORY OF FYVIE CASTLE.*

Fyvie remains intact, the m6st wonderful specimen of old Scots baronial architecture, the centre of many legends, the home of many a romance. Bacon, discoursing on building, is believed to have referred to it. In any case its story takes you right back to the days of the Bruce, who made it one of his royal residences. At that time Fyvie was a place of importance, a burgh under direcb royal patronage. Eight hundred years ago a noble priory reared its head there under the paternal care of the. Abbot of Aberbrothock, whom Southey immortalised. Edward I of England put up in the fortress of Fyvie when he made his great progress to the north exactly 600 years ago, and the leading points in its long history occur, curiously enough, at times separated almost exactly by a century or two. The castle afterwards came into the hands of the Lindsays, who were related to the Bruces. In 1395 Lady Lindsay, left alone in the keep, was most ungallantly attacked by a force headed by her nephew. But she managed to hold him at bay, and he was defeated completely by her husband. From the Lindsays it passed into the hands of the Preßtonß (for bravery on the field of Otterburn), and then to the Meldrums, who held it for two centuries till 1596, when Alexander Seton, Chancellor of Scotland, oame into I possession. He was a remarkable man, and came of an ancient family, now represented by the Earl of Eglinton, while his sister became the mother of the founder of the Duke of Abercorn'B house. Baton himself was tutor to Cbarles I, and had honours heaped on him by the Crown. The King first made him Lord Fyvie and then Earl of Dnnfermline; and his devotion to the Stuarts became bo exaggerated in his family as to bring them ultimately to ruin. It made his son Charles give shelter in 1644 to the daredevil Marquis of Montrose, who left the castle to fight a battle with the Covenanting general, the Marquis of Argyle, hard by. Happily for Lord Fyvie "King Campbell," as leal loyalists still nickname the Argyle, was ignominiouslv beaten. Then the fourth and last Lord Fyvie espoused the cause of the Pretender, and fought at Killieorankie. The only thanks he got was sentence of outlawry and the forfeiture of his title, so that there is no Earl of Dunfermline to-day. He died 200 years Bgo (1694), like so many other Royalists, at St. Germains. The Crown Beized bis estates, selling them 30 years later to the Earl of Aberdeen, who had married the grandniece of Lady Fyvie, and who bestowed the estate on bis bod, the Scots lawyer, Lord Rockville. Even then, however, Fyvie had not got rid of its Jacobitism, for Lord Rockville's mother was the eister of the farfamed Lord Lewis Gordon, as she proudly told the Duke of Cumberland when hiß Grace passed through the woods of Fyvie to crush Prince Charlie at Culloden. Bnt Fyvie Castle ib enshrined in the popular imagination not by reason of its stately dames and daring knights, but on account of a lovelorn serviDg-man and a miller's daughter. Tennyson had an eye for the poetic possibilities of millers' daughters, but he was anticipated long, long ago by the bard who piped the melancholy story of this maiden in the patbatic ballad "Millo'Tifty'a Annie." Everybody in the north country knows her sad story. Mothers tell it to tbeir little children, and the children never forget it; nay, some of them oan reel it off from memory, althoueh it numbers more thau 200 lines. It would make the kernel of a capital novel, but almoßt the only person who has made use of it in fiction was a local play-actor, who turned it into a very mediocre melodrama. Andrew Lammie was trumpeter to the third Lord Fyvie, the brother of him who died at St. Germains. His manly form thrilled the bosoms of all the vil'age maidens, among them Mill o' Tifty's Annie. Her teal name was quite unromantic, merely Agnes Smith; bnt her father, the miller, could trace his ancestry to a bold bailie of the town of Aberdeen, and the hauleur which is the essential of all true bailies sank into his soul, and he grew exceeding wroth when he heard about this troubadour of a trumpeter who " had the airt to gain the bairt o' Mill o' Tifty's Annie." At last Ad drew had to go to Edinburgh town, and he bade her a fond farewell at the trystiDg place on the Bridge of Skeugh. It was a melancholy parting. The trumpeter whispered in her ear as they clasped each other heart to heart on the crazy old bridge: It's true and constant I will be, As I am Andrew Lammie; I'll never kiss a woman's mou' Till I come back to Fyvie. But the maiden was not to be comforted; shs bad a forebodine of evils

For ever, noo, I bid adieu To thee, my Andrew Lammte { Ere ye come back I will be laid In the green kirkyard o' Fyvie. She feared her father, and with good cause, for when Andrew mounted the castle wall — where you still sco him carved in stone — and blew his blast, the maiden was taunted by her family and bid to listen to the lowing of her cow. Nay, more— Her cruel father atraik her sair, As also did her mither ; Her sisters mocked her late and ear*, But wae be to her brither 1 Her brither straik her wondrous sore, Baith cruel strokes and many, And brak her back at the ha' door For likin' Andrew Lammie. And so " her tender bairt wi' grief did brak ; she died for Andrew Laramie," and all the village fell weeping, while Lord Fyvie himKeif " wrung his hands," and swore that love had cat down the fairest maid that ever bloomed in Fyvie. The hapless Lammie was in a terrible state when he returned from Edinburgh town. He hied him to her grave and wept bitterly; and tradition hath it that he never gob over the blow, though it was years before he followed bis Annie. But the villagers marked the grave with a atone, which has more than once been renewed, whereon you read, above a melancholy array of skull, croßsbonof, mattocks, and boorglass — «• * Heir Lyes Aon bs Smith who, Depaiitit the 19 op Janvabi 1673. Tn 1869 an lonic orcss was raided by public subscription to mark the spot whore she lies in the beautiful greeo.klrkyaird. But uhs had not. lived in vain, for perhaps many a, father has taken to heart the- moral of the ballad which ends thus — Ye parents grave wha children have, In guidin' them he canny ; Tak' kindly tent lest yo repent — Remember Tifty's Annie t Fyvie has not been very happy in its love affair?, for another serving-maD, the footman of the exiled Lord Fyvie, returned after his master's death, and by means of a weird love philtre — to wit, " the .tempting cheese of Fyvie " — got a lady of rank to run off with him, and then brought her to beggary. Tradition and legendary lore, in faot, invest Fyvie with a touch of dcom. A famous prophecy, for instance, tells that a male heir will never be born inside the castle until three stones are found. Only two have been got, and one of these weeps perpetually, bo much so that its tears fill a bowl sometimes. This curse was pronounced because the atones had been part of church lands rifled by the Reformers. , Strange to say, no male heir has been born in the castle for centuries. The curse might have been expected to bo lifted in view of the fact that the last laird, Sir Maurice Duff Gordon, was a pious Papist. — From '• A Corner of the Kailyard," in the Christmas number of the English Illustrated Magazine.