Dance The Moray Reel 4663

The county of Moray flows north from the Cromdale hills to the shores of the Moray Firth like a gentle wave. The ancient province of Moray was formerly much larger and was made up of the modern counties of Moray and Nairn with parts of Inverness and Banff included.

The lovely old county town of Elgin in the Laigh of Moray was cerated a Royal Burgh by Alexander I and chartered by Alexander II in 1234. Occupied by Edward I and his English army in 1296 and again in 1303, half-burnt by Alexander Seton-Gordon, 1st Earl of Huntly, in 1452, plundered by James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, in 1645, the present-day façade of Elgin belies the violence of former centuries – until the ravished cathedral looms against the sky.

Elgin Cathedral, the “Lantern of the North”, was once one of the finest churches in Scotland. The Cathedral Church of Moray, earlier the Church of the Holy Trinity, was founded in 1224 by Bishop Andrew de Moravia. In 1390 the cathedral was nearly destroyed by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the younger son of Robert II, known as the “Wolf of Badenoch”, who swooped down from his stronghold at Lochindorb and visited his paranoiac wrath to town and cathedral for having been excommunicated for wife desertion by Bishop Alexander Bur.

The cathedral was desecrated on New Years Day, 1555, when the feud between the Innes and Dunbar families flared into a clash of arms of nearly two hundred men within the cathedral itself, an outrage known as the “Bloody Vespers”. By 1538 the cathedral had been completely rebuilt. Since it remained untouched during the Reformation, a notably bad time for Roman church establishments, it would doubtless be still standing today in its full glory had not the roof been stripped off in 1567 at the order of the Regent, the Earl of Moray, the lead to be sold to pay the royal army. Roofless, the cathedral became a victim of the northern elements of rain and strong winds and on Easter morning, 1711, the great central tower fell. After that final disaster, the building became a quarry for local citizens in need of dressed stone and by the beginning of the 19th century the cathedral was reduced to the status of a rubbish dumping-ground. National interest was awakened about 1825 by a local cobbler, John Shanks, whose joy it had long been to labour among the refuse- and weed-choked ruins, tidying up after the awful incursions of history. Shanks was appointed keeper and within a short time work began in earnest to rescue and preserve what remained of the once-proud “Lantern of the North”.

Pluscarden Priory, on the outskirts of Elgin, fared better. Founded in 1230 by Alexander II as a Cistercian abbey, it was taken over by the Benedictines in the middle of the 15th century. Although the abbey church had been burned by the Wolf of Badenoch in his vengeful action, the building was soon restored. It survivied the Reformation and in 1897 the abbey, which nature and man had left in reasonably good condition, was partially renovated by John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute. The Benedictine Order completed the restoration and is now in residence once more.

Just west of Lossiemouth, a fishing port and holiday resort, the birthplace in 1866 of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, and the site of the Royal Naval Air Station, H.M.S. Fulmar (since 1972, RAF Lossiemouth), is Gordonstoun, the school attended by both the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales (now King Charles III).

The former Earldom of Moray had its beginnings in the early Mormaers of Moray, the most prominent being Macbeth, later King of Scotland.

Sir Thomas Randolph (d. 1332), a nephew of Robert Bruce, who captured Edinburgh Castle from the English in 1313 by scaling the rocky west rampart and who led a division at the battle of Bannockburn (See “New Park”) was created Earl of Moray. He was Regent of Scotland after the death of Robert I and guardian of the young David I. Thomas, 2nd Earl of Moray, died at the battle of Dupplin Moor and was succeeded by his brother John. The third earl defeated the son of “Toom Tabard”, Edward Balliol, at Annan and was killed at the battle of Neville’s Cross in 1346.

The next Earls of Moray were Stewarts. James (1499–1544) was the natural son of James IV by Lady Janet Kennedy. He became the guardian of his half-brother James V after their father’s death at Flodden.

James Stewart (1531–1570), the son of James V by his mistress, Lady Margaret Erskine, was half-brother to Queen Mary and became Regent of Scotland after the queen’s abdication at Lochleven Castle where she was the captive of the same Lady Margaret, by then the widow of Robert Douglas, and of her son Sir William.

The last Stewart Earl of Moray was James Stewart of Doune, the “Bonny Earl o’ Moray”, husband of the Regent Moray’s daughter and heiress Elizabeth. In 1592 the earl was slain by George Gordon, 6th Earl of Huntly. Moray’s arrest had been at the order of James VI and the resultant death of Moray was very possibly the planned outcome of the royal warrant, either on the part of Huntly or the king himself.

Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,
  O where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray,
  And hae laid him on the green.

Now wae be to thee, Huntly!
  And whairfore did ye sae!
I bade you bring him wi’ you,
  But forbade you him to slay.

He was a Braw gallant,
  And he rid at the ring;
And the bonny Earl o’ Moray,
  O he might hae been a king!

He was a braw gallant,
  And he play’d at the ba’;
And the bonny Earl o’ Moray
  Was the flower amang them a’!

He was a braw gallant,
  And he played at the gluve;
And the bonny Earl o’ Moray
  O he was the Queen’s luve!

O lang will his Lady
  Look owre the Castle Doune,
Ere she see the Earl o’ Moray
  Come sounding through the toun!

The “Queen” was Anne of Denmark, wife of James VI.