Dance The Buchan Eightsome Reel 848

Buchan, an ancient province of Aberdeenshire, is the most easterly part of Scotland. An undulating plateau of ridges and hollows, swept by high wind, often nearly obliterated by mist, Buchan is very like the North Sea into which it thrusts itself like the back of a fist. Inland Buchan, after centuries of determined and back-breaking effort, has become an agricultural area that vies with the fishing industry of the coastal towns and villages.

Once a Celtic mormaerdom and, later, a feudal earldom, Buchan lies more or less between the River Ythan and the River Deveron. Its two principal burghs are Fraserburgh and Peterhead. Fraserburgh was begun by Alexander Fraser, 7th Laird of Philorth, about 1546, while Peterhead, some forty-four miles northeast of Aberdeen, was founded by George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal, in 1593. Both towns are deeply enmeshed with North Sea fishing. The chief inland communities are Turriff, Strichen, Ellon, New Dear, and New Pitsligo, some of them 18th and 19th century “new towns” that were created on the nearly treeless, once boggy land. Much credit is due James Ferguson of Pitfour (1734–1820) for his work in the development of Buchan by the planting of hedges to serve as wind-breaks and by the driving of turnpike roads through the land, thus opening up communities and commerce among the small, stone market towns.

Amidst all of this flatness rises Normond Hill, a positive eminence when viewed relatively, of 749 feet. A white horse that stands out in silhouette is carved on its southern slope and a stag on its eastern side. Buchan is a land rich in legends, but there is nothing mysterious about these crude designs. The horse was carved in 1700 and the stag about 1870.

As I gaed doon by Strichen toon,
I heard a fair maid mournin’,
And she was makin’ sair complaint,
For her true love ne’er returnin’.
It’s Mormond Braes where heather grows,
Where aft-times I’ve been cheery,
It’s Mormond Braes where heather grows,
And it’s there I’ve lost my dearie.
  Sae fare ye well, ye Mormond Braes,
  Where aft-times I’ve been cheery,
  Fare ye weel, ye Mormond Braes,
  For it’s there I’ve lost my dearie.

And to the southwest, like a backdrop to the plains of Buchan, are the six peaks of Bennachie.

O gin I were where Gaudie rins, where Gaudie rins, where Gaudie rins,
O gin I were where Gaudie rins, at the fit o’ Bennachie.
O I should ne’er come back again, come back again, come back again,
O I should ne’er come back again, your Lowland lads tae see.

At Longside, a few miles from Peterhead, lived the Episcopal priest, John Skinner of Linshart (1721–1807), the author of “Tullochgorum” and “The Ewie Wi’ the Crookit Horn”.

While there is much among the Howes of Buchan that is reminiscent of the southern Lowlands of Scotland, there is also much that is distinctly, uniquely Buchan. Here are the tall, strongly-built, broad-faced, hardy people who speak their own “Buchan Doric”, a dialect of Lowland Scots. As Boswell wrote during a visit to Buchan with Samuel Johnson in 1773: “It was curious to me to observe the Buchan men all showing their teeth and speaking with that strange sharp accent which distinguishes them. Mr Johnson was not sensible of the difference of pronounciation in the north of Scotland, which I wondered at.”

Johnson was particularly impressed by the “Bullars of Buchan”, near Cruden Bay, a huge “boiler” or cauldron cut by nature into the rocky cliff. It is two hundred feet deep and some fifty feet across and at the bottom the sea floods in. To quote Boswell again: “… a circular basin of large extent, surrounded with tremendous rocks. On the quarter to the sea there is a high arch in the rock which the force of the tempest has driven out. This place is called Buchan’s Buller, or the Buller of Buchan, and the country people call it the Pot. Mr Boyd said it was so called from the French bouilloire. It may be more simply traced from boiler in our own language. We walked around this monstrous cauldron. In some places the rock is very narrow, and on each side you have a sea deep enough for a man-of-war to ride in, so that it is somewhat horrid to move along … As the entry into the Buller is so narrow that oars cannot be used as you go in, the method taken is to row very hard when you come near to it, and give the boat such a rapidity of motion that she glides in. Mr Johnson observed what an effect this scene would have had were we entering into an unknown place. There are caves of considerable depth, I think one on each side. The boatmen had never entered either far enough to know the size. Mr Boyd told us that it was customary for the company at Peterhead Well to make parties and come and dine in one of the caves here.”

Buchan is the land of such clans as Gordon, Fraser, Comyn, Forbes, Hay, Fergusson and Leslie. And here they built their great castles and fortresses.

The most impressive, perhaps, is Haddo House, near Tarves, the home of the Gordons of Haddo, a Georgian mansion designed in the grand manner by William Adam in 1732 for the 2nd Earl of Aberdeen. It was the 3rd Earl, George Gordon, who succeeded in 1745, and whose activities earned him the title “The Wicked Earl”. Wicked or not, his efforts were amourous and superhuman in the extreme, for in addition to the Countess and her children at Haddo, he established three mistresses in three castles, two in Buchan an don ein England, and by each of them he produced three more thriving families. One mistress he settled at Ellon Castle on the Ythan River, near the twon made famous by its ballad “Ellon Market”. Originally built by the Comyns, the Earls of Buchan, this castle was sold to James Gordon, a bailie of Edinburgh. Bailie Gordon’s two sons were murdered by their tutor and the splendid property was purchased by the Earl of Aberdeen. A second mistress was moved into the castle at Cairnbulg, near Fraserburgh, and the third was established in Devonshire. Considering the commuting alone that was involved, it is remarkable that the Earl survived until 1801, outliving his eldest legitimate son. He was succeeded by his grandson, another George, an erudite statesman who became Prime Minister of the Coalition Governement in 1853 at the time of the Crimean War.

Buchan is teeming with castles:

Fyvie Castle, on the Ythan, where “lands lie broad and wide”, with its four towers named for their noble builders, Gordon, Meldrum, Preston and Seton. Fyvie Castle is the site of the ballad of “The Trumpeter of Fyvie” whose effigy is set into one of the towers from which he blew his trumpet. This exceedingly long ballad begins:

There springs a rose in Fyvie’s yard,
  And O but it springs bonny!
There’s a daisy in the middle of it,
  Its name is Andrew Lammie.

Gight, near Methlick, where the ancient, ruined tower was long the principal stronghold of the Marquess of Huntly. Once known as the “Bog o’ Gight” and famous for its huge numbers of herons, the last Gordon owner was the mother of Lord Byron, Catherine, who sold the estate in 1787 to pay her husband’s debts, thus fulfilling the prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer:

When the heron leaves the tree
The lairds of Gight sall landless be.

Slains, high on the cliff east of Cruden Bay, the ancestral home of the Hays, the Earls of Erroll, hereditary constables of Scotland, where Dr Johnson was an awe-struck guest.

Delgatie, another Hay castle close to Turriff, a town made famous by “The Trot of Turriff”, when a Royalist force was completely routed by a small band of Covenanters in 1639.

As I cam’ in tae Turra market,
Turra market for tae fee,
It’s I fell in wi’ a wealthy fairmer,
The Barnyards o’ Delgaty.
  Linten addie toorin addie,
  Linten addie toorin ae,
  Linten lowrin, lowrin, lowrin,
  The Barnyards o’ Delgaty.

Buchan is a rough land where the wind blows fiercely over the fields. Buchan is a land where the people live close to the stern earth and the even sterner sea. Great men have come from Buchan. Its castles are many and famous. Its people are the very stuff of life, spring, and singing, and dancing from the soil.