Historical Tales and Legends of Ayrshire
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES HISTORICAL TALES AND LEGENDS OF AYRSHIRE HISTOKICAL TALES AND LEGENDS OF AYRSHIEE BY WILLIAM ROBERTSON Author " of The Kennedys: Kings of Carriole" etc., etc. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO GLASGOW : THOMAS D. MORISON 1889 PREFACE. THE County of Ayr is rich in Story and Tradition. And no wonder. Before the days of the Romans it was inhabited and from the time that these ; early progenitors in the march of civilization left these shores never to return, a succession of races have either dwelt on its plains or in its towns, and by its river mouths, or have left unmistakable traces of their and and Briton Danish presence. Pict, Scot, ; rover and Scandinavian Viking; English invader from beyond the Tweed, coming and going at intervals 724875 6 PREFACE, down to the days when Oliver Cromwell was in the Fort of Ayr, and stabled his steeds under the shadow of St. John's all have been here in turn. The Roman has left his roads and his camps, the Pict his dykes, the Celtic lake-dweller his crannogs, the Briton his tumuli, to tell the tale of a hardly recoverable past. Great national movements have inwrought them- selves with the history of the Shire. On the streets of the county town and in the country surrounding, Sir William Wallace first seriously measured strength with the invader. Robert the Bruce was Earl of Carrick. He stormed Turnberry, the home of his youth, and he wrought wondrously among the hills of Dailly, on the uplands of Cumnock and of Dalmel- lington, and by the base of Loudoun hill. And in a less degree, down to the days of the Revolution, Ayrshire men were prominent in the wars and in PREFACE. 7 the counsels of the period. It was to Ayrshire the Lollards came, with the leaven of a new faith. And the Reformation found many of its most ardent promoters among the gentry, as well as among the peasantry, of Kyle, Cuninghame, and Carrick. In the centuries when feudal strife was rampant the great families of Kennedy, of Cuninghame, of Craufurd, of Montgomerie, of Campbell, of Boyd, maintained ceaseless activity in their warrings with one another. Their horsemen scoured the country- side; their yeomen went down in the encounter; their castles blazed intermittently from the borders of Renfrew in the north, to the waters of Stinchar in Southern Carrick, and from the moorlands adjacent to the march of Lanark to the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Their intrigues, their plots, their raids, their wiles, their machinations are they not written on the creation of the existing social life of Ayrshire ? 8 PREFACE. My main purpose has been to endeavour to present a series of historical pictures of the national and feudal history of the Shire. It will remain with the reader to say how far I have succeeded. I have not thought fit to give chapter and verse for all the historical facts recorded, but the reader may rest assured that these have been amply and care- fully verified. The chapters dealing with the social conditions are founded on the data of the periods treated ; and the traditions recorded are those which, a hundred years ago and more, were universally accepted in the districts where they had their birth. CONTENTS. PAGE THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN AND EGLINTON, ------- 13 THE ROASTING OF THE COMMENDATOR OF CROSSRAGUEL IN THE BLACK VA ULT OF DUNURE, 30 KING HACO'S BATTLE WITH THE SCOTS AT LARGS, - 45 THE PRE-HISTORIC SIRES OF AYRSHIRE, (52 THE TETHERING OF THE SOW ON THE LANDS OF KERSE, - - 72 io CONTENTS. PAGE THE RAID OF LOUDOUN, - - 83 THE BURNING OF THE AYR AND THE DALRY WITCHES, - 93 THE DEATH OF OLD KING COIL, 111 THE STORY OF THE TOWER OF ST. JOHN'S IN AYR, - 123 HOW THE LAIRD OF CHANGUE THRASHED THE DEIL, - - 140 KING ROBERT THE BRUCE HIS UPS AND DOWNS IN AYRSHIRE, - - 147 THE ROVER'S DOOM ON THE CARRICK SHORE,- - .-- 165 KING ALPIN SLAIN IN THE GLEN OF DUNASKIN, . 177 CONTENTS. ii PAGE THE TRIAL OF THE FEUDALISTS AT AYR IN 1507, - - 185 THE RAID OF BARBIESTON GLEN, - - 194. JOHNNY FAA AND THE EARL OF CASSILLIS' LADY, - 201 THE STORY OF KYLE AND CARR1CK FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO, - - 216 HOW A SHEEP'S HEAD BEGAT STRIFE BETWEEN AUOHINLECK AND OGHIL- TREE, - - 232 THE WRAITH OF LORD LYNE, - 239 THE KIRK OF AYR RULING THE PEOPLE, 247 A DAUGHTER OF THE HOUSE OF DUN- DONALD, - 261 THE LADY OF HESSILHEAD OUTRAGED, AND GABRIEL MONTGOMERIE OF THIRDPART SLAIN, 273 12 CONTENTS. PAGE A FOUL FIEND RECLAIMS A CUNINGHAME DRUNKARD, 287 SIR ROBERT B07D OF DEAN CASTLE AND HIS LAST COMBAT WITH STEWART OF DARNLEY, - - 295 THE BLOOD TEST; OR, MURDER ON THE CARRICK SHORE REVEALED, 306 THE EARL OF EGLINTON'S ENCOUNTER NEAR ARDROSSAN,- - 324 "THE TERROR OF THE WHIGS" EXORCISES THE BEANSCROFT DE1L,- 332 THE FAITHLESS BRIDE OF AIKET, - 340 AND OF AYRSHIRE. THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN AND EOLINTON. THE district of Cuningname was long the chosen battle ground of the rival families of Glencairn and Eglinton. Both were of high renown, both eminent in the service of their country, both produced men who gave their lives to the national cause, and both, at crises in the history of Scotland, came nobly to her aid. But for many long years in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there ran through their own personal history a deadly and a bitter and a relentless feud a feud which sent the flames curling from the roof-tree of Eglinton Castle itself, which fired many a homestead and hall besides, and in which scores, if not hundreds, of brave men went down before the exigencies cf family rivalry and pride. 14 HISTORICAL TALES OF AYRSHIRE. The Montgomeries of Eglinton held court at their castle on the banks of the Lugton. The castellated mansion of to-day, sitting quietly in the midst of a beautiful and exten- sive park, is built upon the spot occupied by at least two of its predecessors that which was fired by the followers of the Earl of Glencairn in 1528, and to which Sir Hugh de Eglinton bore the pennon of Henry Hotspur from the field of Otterburn, and that which was demolished in the closing years of the eighteenth century to make room for the noble building which now dominates a scene of great beauty and refined taste, but which in the days of three or four centuries agone was too frequently a veritable Aceldama. The Cuninghames hailed from the parish of Kilmaurs, to which in the latter half of the fifteenth century, Sir William had brought home the co-heiress of many fair lands in Renfrew, Dumbarton, and Midlothian, as well as Glencairn in Dumfries, from which the title to the Earldom was acquired. With growing power came a corresponding growth of rivalry, until the jealousy and mistrust culminated in the series of tragedies which make memorable the story of northern Ayrshire throughout the long years in which they transpired. Both houses were possessed of numerous vassals and retainers, who espoused the rival causes with the intensity invariably begotten of the feud, and no Corsican vendetta was ever more inexorable in its decrees than were the Cuninghames and the Montgomeries in their work of extir- pation. The feud passed on from man to man and from generation to generation, and it rolled, practically unchecked, until the power of the Scottish Crown was sufficiently con- solidated to check the outrages of the rude lords who were a law unto themselves. To follow the feud in all its devious windings would be an impossibility within anything like compact limits. Let us therefore rather select one or two of its outstanding incidents and endeavour to recall the actors to the scenes in THE FEUD OF GLENCAIRN. 15 which they played their part. And suffice it to say by way of explanation that it was because the hereditary Bailieship of Cunninghame was transferred from the Glen- cairn family to that of Eglinton that the strife which had long been intermittent or smouldering, broke out into active and persistent hostility. Kerelaw Castle is a picturesque ruin in the parish of Stevenston, massive in its decay, ivy mantled, stoutly standing up against the inroads of Time and of the elemen- tary warfare which rages around its walls. As long ago as 1488 it stood in all its pride and glory. It was a stronghold of the Cuninghames, and behind its defences its lord could afford to look out with some complacency upon the broad lands and the strengths of the Montgomeries. Eglinton Castle was but a few miles distant in the one direction, and in the other, within easy ken, was the keep of Ardrossan, with its heavy battlements and its solid masonry. Kerelaw, have resisted a and had its walls strongly held, might siege ; been tenanted -by the men of Glencairn when the retainers of Egliuton came down upon it, it might have laughed their efforts to scorn. But chose their own time for they coming ; and descending upon it when it was at their mercy, they set fire to it and went their way. Up into the blue sky rose the smoke of the and when the came burning pile ; night the clouds were reddened with its glare. The fire was slow to take hold, for the floors were oaken and so were the beams and the furniture. But the quaint old wainscotting caught up the conflagration and hastened on the doom of the castle.