admin

Dargie church at Invergowrie has long been associated with the early Christian church, in fact the original site is said to have been a royal point of embarkation at which Alexander I planned to build his palace. situated in Station Road near the Invergowrie Burn, the the ancient Church ruins have been photographed since the birth of photography, built upon a man made mound one can only speculate to the treasures an archealogical dig could uncover about its history.

Dargie Church and The Devil

It seems that Satan had a persistent ill-will to the inhabitants of Invergowrie, local legend tells he was once desirous of coming from Kirkcaldy to the Carse of Gowrie. and carried a lapful of stones, which he meant to use as stepping-stones across the Tay.

As he was stepping over Benarty Hill in Kinross, he stumbled and dropped the boulders that can seen today over in Fife, enraged by the accident the threw three boulders across the river in an attempt to destroy the fledgling church being erected in the Carse of Gowrie, two landed short and fell into the River Tay (The Yowes O’ Gowrie) and one overshot it’s mark and landed in the grounds of the Swallow Hotel.

Darge Church and Bonifacius Queretinus

There are many legends surrounding this ruined church, one story is that it was founded by a pope named Bonifacius Queretinus who was reputedly descended from the sister of St. Andrew and St. Peter, and born at Bethesda, the location of the ruins in Boniface Road seem to reflect a certain truth to this local myth.

Bonifacius Queretinus also seems to be associated with the Christmas legend, it states that Bonifacius encountered a number of Bavarian Druids about to sacrifice a young boy near a sacred Oak tree. When Bonifacius chopped down the tree a tiny evergreen was seen growing behind it. The gathered Druids immediately fell to their knees and hung their lanterns upon it.

The Yowes O’Gowrie

The famous Scottish sage Thomas the Rhymer is credited with having uttered the following prophesy. “When the Yowes O’Gowrie come to land, the day O’ Judgement’s near at hand”.

This is thought to be inspired by the tale of Nechtan, King of Picts who asked a saint to build the church at Invergowrie.
The devil threw 2 boulders at the site which missed the target and landed in the river tay. 

General Monck invaded Dundee in September 1651, during one of the most unsettled periods of British history, the walled city of Dundee remained a stronghold of royalism. Whilst civil war ravaged England and Scotland and allegiance fluctuated like sand in the ocean, Dundee remained true to its royalist loyalties, a move which would lead to one of the darkest pages in its long history.

By the early 1650s, Scotland was in chaos. Oliver Cromwell, having successfully led the Parliamentarian forces against King Charles I, was determined to extinguish any lingering royalist resistance. After Charles I’s execution in 1649, Scotland declared his son Charles II king, and Dundee became a stronghold for the royalist cause. The reputation for safety and political stability in the city meant it was the ideal location in which to store the treasures of Scotland’s rich and powerful—among them, the wealth of the Viscount of Newburgh, the Earls of Buccleuch and Tweeddale, and even the gold coffers of Edinburgh itself.

General Monck: The Man behind the massacre

The man tasked with delivering Cromwell’s vengeance was General George Monck, a tough and efficient warrior. As commander of Cromwell’s forces in Scotland, Monck well understood the symbolic and strategic value of Dundee. It wasn’t just a military target—it was a message. Monck wanted to break the backbone of royalist resistance in one brutal stroke.

In September 1651, Monck invaded Dundee. The city’s governor, Robert Lumsden, refused to surrender, determined to preserve Dundee’s royalist loyalty. His intransigence was rewarded with calamitous consequences.

General Monck’s troops breached the walls of the city, overwhelmed its defenders, and proceeded to commit one of Scotland’s most appalling sackings. Over a period of two days, the garrison was massacred, and the city was treated to unbridled pillage. Around 2,000 men, women, and children were murdered. The bloodshed was so brutal that even General Monck himself was said to have been shaken. One account tells of a woman found dead with her infant still sucking at her breast—a scene which, it is claimed, led General Monck to order an end to the massacre and instead burn the city.

The Death of the Governor and a City in Ruins

Governor Robert Lumsden was captured, beheaded, and his head placed on a spike atop the Auld Steeple, a grim warning to any other Scottish burgh that dared think of resistance. The Auld Steeple, one of Dundee’s most symbolically renowned landmarks, still stands today—a mute witness to the horrors of 1651. The violence didn’t stop at murder. Dundee’s homes were badly damaged. The oldest surviving house in the city, Gardyne’s Land, still bears the scars of the siege. It is without one of its storeys, which must have been lost in the bombardment and occupation.

It was not only loss of life and property that followed but also the plundering of wealth on a massive scale. General Monck’s army captured more than 60 ships from Dundee harbour. These vessels were loaded with plunder, estimated at £2.5 million (in today’s money, perhaps billions) in cash, religious items, and decorative gold and silver plates, much of which had been stolen from Scottish churches, abbeys, and noble mansions. Dundee, the most secure city in Scotland, was now a ghost town—its wealth stripped and its people devastated.

The Treasure Fleet and the Storm

As the city burned behind them, General Monck’s men sailed off with their looted treasure, intending to take it to England. But fate had another surprise waiting for them.

When the convoy of 60 ships made its way out into the Tay Estuary, a raging tempest descended on the region. The tightly clustered convoy was ill-prepared for the treacherous waters. In the chaos, all 60 ships were lost, pushed onto one of the Tay’s notorious sandbanks. The gold and artefacts were heavy enough to seal their doom in the dark depths.

The actual horror of the disaster can never be told—never did anyone ever count up the number of drowned sailors or soldiers. But General Monck himself emerged alive, a hapless observer as his loot from the viciousness of his campaign went down with the ships.

His chaplain, Dr. Thomas Gumble, said:

“The ships were cast away within sight of the town, the great wealth perished.”

The Lost Gold of Dundee

To this day, historians and treasure hunters have conjectured on the lost Dundee gold. It is generally agreed that the treasure ships went down between the Tayport Lighthouse and Broughty Ferry Castle, but because so many have hunted for so many centuries, no discovery has ever been proven. The shifting sands and murky currents of the Tay are safe keepers of secrets.

The fall of Dundee’s prosperity was not just an economic loss—it was a symbolic loss. The city’s politics and military strength were shattered, and it would take centuries before Dundee was able to weather the trauma of 1651.

But General Monck’s lost treasure remains Scotland’s most poignant myth. It is a story of man’s greed and war’s savagery, but more than anything of nature’s uncanny justice obliterating blood-money before it had a moment ever to be spent.

Even now, the idea that unlimited riches lie hidden in the silty bed of the River Tay is a stimulus to dreamers and explorers. Someday, the river may produce its dead—and along with them, the buried treasure of a city lost.

Image by Dean Moriarty from Pixabay

The Haunted Chamber deep within the ancient stone walls of Glamis Castle is steeped in legend and tragedy In contrast to the fanciful haunting of most other castles, the chamber’s dark reputation stems not from fantasy, but from an account of intentional cruelty and unfathomable suffering.

The Haunted Chamber

The story is located during the turbulent late 15th century, in those bleak days of Scottish clan bloodshed. In 1486, the Ogilvy Clan, their lives in danger, took flight for asylum in the walls of Glamis Castle, escaping a lethal vendetta with the powerful Lindsay Clan. By cover of night and desperation, the Ogilvys arrived at the stronghold, seeking safety from their enemies. The Earl of Strathmore’s castle seemed their only hope.

But the Earl, from motives of loyalty to the Lindsays or disdain for the Ogilvys, had no intention of giving them a refuge in safety.

A Sinister Betrayal

Sparing them the formality of asylum, the Earl ushered the Ogilvys and led them through the castle’s serpentine passageways to a hidden room tucked deep within an unventilated wing of the building. Once the last of the clan had been admitted, the great door was slammed shut behind them. Without ceremony or remorse, the Earl ordered it sealed, imprisoning the Ogilvys alive.

There they remained—forgotten or willfully overlooked—as days became weeks. Starving, dying, with no food, no water, and no means of exit, one by one they perished.

It was not an act of war, but one of wickedness, this cruel deed. The chamber continued to be one of Scotland’s darkest symbols of betrayal.

Discovery of the Horror

Generations passed and went. The secret of the sealed room was forgotten in whispers and scraps of tales. But legend accrued over time. Guests and servants as well began to hear things in the empty, unused parts of Glamis Castle—whispers, groans, and footsteps creaking down the castle corridors at midnight.

Not able to ignore the mounting reports, one of the following Lords of Strathmore decided to investigate the reason for the unrest. With trusted friends in tow, he ventured into the little-used wing of the castle. After thorough searching, a hidden door was found, tightly closed and covered in dust and cobwebs.

When the room was finally opened, the air that escaped was thick with rot and centuries of captivity. What was observed inside the room is reported to have made one of the men faint in horror.

Inside the room was a horrific and infernal scene. Piles of skeletons, their bones contorted into unnatural positions, filled the room. Remnants of the Ogilvy Clan were present—frozen in their final moments of despair. They were clustered, as if crowded together for defense. Others lay out alone, with shattered limbs or gnawed upon. One ghastly report described at least one individual having died in the process of trying to consume the flesh from their own arm—an unsacred deed driven by starvation and insanity.

The ghastly discovery confirmed what was but rumor: the Ogilvys had not merely vanished. They were interred alive beneath the castle walls.

The Source of the Ghostly Chamber Myth

It was never used thereafter. From there on, it was referred to as The Haunted Chamber and it was closed once more—but this time with fear rather than indifference. The souls of the dead, though, seemed to be far from peaceful.

Rumors circulated that the room was still haunted by the spirits of the starved Ogilvys. Servants and visitors have heard phantom screams and knocking noises on the walls, as if the victims were still crying out to be let go. Some have seen phantom apparitions wandering through the west wing of the castle, and others have experienced cold spots or bouts of dizziness in front of the door to the room.

Several visitors to the castle over the centuries have awoken in the middle of the night to see skeletal apparitions at the foot of their beds, or to hear disembodied voices calling for help. Others even left the castle altogether, claiming they were stalked by the presence long after they’d left the premises.

Echoes Through the Ages

Glamis Castle, once no more than a noble castle, had developed into a focus of legend and terror. Even Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mother, born of the Bowes-Lyon family who reside at Glamis, is said to have avoided certain corridors within the castle following terrifying experiences in her early life.

Even today, The Haunted Chamber remains one of the castle’s darkest secrets. Its precise location is never revealed—only the family and a select few historians are believed to be aware of where it is. The room’s secrecy only serves to add to its legend, stoking rumors that its bloody history has never actually passed on.

For those privileged enough to visit Glamis Castle, it is hard to shake the atmosphere of ancient tragedy that pervades the corridors. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the tragic history of the Ogilvy Clan is inextricably linked with the walls of the building itself. The Haunted Chamber is more than a ghost story—it’s a morbid reminder of the way power, revenge, and treachery once affected the lives (and the deaths) of Scotland’s clans.

Image by Eliane Meyer from Pixabay

Right across Scotland, in farthest corners of countryside and cloister, runs one tradition over and over again—namely, that of the Nine Maidens. Not only in the consecrated stones of ancient churches and chapels is their memory impressed, but in wells and springs, also, and in local tradition, also. Of all the most poignant histories of their tale is that of the Nine Maidens of Pitempten, whose past is traced back to the Glen of Ogilvy at Glamis in Forfarshire, and whose tradition strikes at the sacred heart of medieval Scottish religion.

A Holy Household

The Nine Maidens are believed to have been alive during the eighth century, when Scotland comprised a knot of Pictish kingdoms and Christianity was merely beginning to make its way into the land via monastic communities and traveling hermits. Their father, St. Donivald (also known as Donivald or Donald), a devout man of faith, is believed to have constructed a hermitage in the Glen of Ogilvy after the death of his wife. There, in shelter of field and forest, he and his nine daughters lived a monastic existence of simplicity, solitude, and daily labor.

Only the names of three daughters have survived in tradition: St. Fincana (St. Fink), St. Findoca, and St. Mayota (or Maik). They and their sisters lived a life of radical asceticism—plowing the earth by hand, eating nothing but barley bread and water, and praying on a daily basis in the wooden hermitage made of boughs, turfs, and pine.

Their father, St. Donivald, was their ecclesiastical chief. Under his guidance, the family hermitage was a model of early Scottish Christian devotion. In a world still shrouded by pagan superstition and between-clan strife, their isolated sanctuary was a haven of peace and holy purpose.

Canonisation and Pilgrimage

As St. Donivald died, the sisters left their beloved glen and were greeted by King Garnard of the Picts, who gave them shelter and the privilege of the use of an oratory in a monastery at Abernethy—one built by Saints Darlugdach and Brigid. Abernethy was the ecclesiastical capital of Pictland at the time, and the Nine Maidens soon acquired a reputation for purity and devotion.

In due course, the nine sisters were made saints. They were buried under a large oak tree in Abernethy and a shrine—the Abernethy Allon-bacuth—was raised on top of their burial mound. Prior to the Reformation, this became a highly visited shrine of pilgrimage, where pilgrims prayed, made offerings, and kissed the roots of the holy tree that shaded their graves.

The Nine Maidens were remembered as a group on a feast day in the Catholic calendar, their legend passed down orally, religious texts, and poetry.

Dedications Across Scotland

The Nine Maidens made their presence felt in Scotland’s religious landscape. They have churches and holy wells across the country—from Strathmartine near Dundee, via Oathlaw, Old Aberdeen, and Pitsligo, to as far away as Mid-Calder in the area around Edinburgh and Newburgh in Fife.

One of these churches at Strathmartine has close association with the “Nine Maidens of Pitempten,” whose name is presumed to describe some local form of the general legend. There, too, is a Nine Maidens Well, continuing an old tradition of saint-associated holy springs.

At Finhaven, near Brechin, there is another fountain—Nine-well—said to commemorate either St. Ninian or the Nine Maidens, illustrating how readily local devotion to early Christian saints became intermingled with sacred landscape features.

Chapels dedicated to them still stand at Pitsligo and Tough, both in Aberdeenshire, silently attesting to the reverence once given to these mysterious women.

The Ballad of the Maidens

The Nine Maidens of Glen Ogilvy have also seen their memory preserved in a lyric ballad which idealises and memorialises their simple but godly lives. In graphic fashion, it explains how:

“Barbaric darkness shadowing O’er,
Among the Picts in days of yore,
St. Donivald, devoid of lore,
Lived in the Glen of Ogilvy.”

It tells of how the sisters, who were “silver-skinned, bright golden-haired”, toiled with their father in pain and devotion. Their chapel at Glamis was a sanctuary of thanksgiving, where the sound of psalms echoed across the Glen. And when their father passed away, the sisters departed the glen, seeking the holy earth of Abernethy, where they were eventually laid to rest.

“Nine maidens fair in life were they,
Nine fair maidens in death’s last struggle,
Nine fair maidens in fame forever,
The maids of Glen of Ogilvy.

The ballad concludes with an image of mourning pilgrims journeying from distant lands to kiss the branches of the oak tree still swaying over the sisters’ grave—a poetic affirmation of their holiness and the enduring emotional impact of their story.

The Nine Maidens: Saints, Sisters, Symbols

What sets the Nine Maidens apart in Scottish hagiology is their sisterliness. While other saints are maintained as solitary saintly men and women, the Maidens are a group—a family devoted to faith and mission. The collective sanctity of the Maidens bears witness to an ideal of spiritual comradery unknown in early Christian Scotland.

Their legend, though gold-embroidered with myth, reveals the ideals dear to medieval Scots: humility, service, piety toward spirit, and kin. Today, while their chapels stand in ruin and their wells are forgotten by so many, the Nine Maidens remain Scotland’s sacred lore—a soft, lingering glow from the hills and glens of a bygone, more primitive time.

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

In the middle of Dundee, among its ancient streets and old buildings, the spirit of Grissel Jaffray continues to cast a long, dark shadow. in November 1669 she was tried, convicted, and executed for the supposed crime of witchcraft. Her death was one of the darkest moments in the city’s history, and her story—though all but erased from the records—has survived through legend, folklore, and a growing contemporary recognition of the injustice that was perpetrated upon her.

The Trial of Grissel Jaffray

It was on 11 November 1669 that the Privy Council of Scotland took a foreboding decision. It had been brought to their attention that Grissel Jaffray, a citizen of Dundee, was imprisoned in the Tolbooth—a grim, stone-built jail that stood at the corner of High Street and the Overgate. She had been accused of “the horrid crime of witchcraft,” a crime that in those days almost certainly meant a sentence of death.

The mandate of the Council, impersonal and detached, set the process for determining her fate. If it could be proved—without torture or coercion being used—that she had renounced her baptism, entered into a pact with the devil, or had caused harm through supernatural means, then and only then could the sentence of death be legally carried out.

That clause did little to save the accused from the machinery of terror and superstition that had taken hold of 17th-century Scotland. The witch persecutions, driven by religious hysteria, misogyny, and social scapegoating, killed thousands of women (and some men) as victims of torture and execution across the country. Dundee, for all its civic pride and prosperity, was no different.

Guilty and Condemned

We can only speculate as to what evidence was presented at Grissel Jaffray’s trial. Her supposed crimes, like those of so many accused witches, are lost to the ages—if they were ever really recorded in the first place. What is certain is that she was found guilty and sentenced to strangulation and burning at the stake.

Death by fire was the ultimate penalty for witchcraft, one not only designed to kill but also to purify the supposed evil through flame. In this, Grissel Jaffray joined countless unfortunate women across Europe for whom her suffering served as a warning, a spectacle of fear, and an example to others.

The sentence was carried out in the Seagate, a very old part of the city, close to the site of Horse Water Wynd, near the site of Dundee’s old Market Cross. The spot that had formerly rung with commerce and community was turned into a site of savage justice, its stones scorched by the fires of persecution.

The Ministers Behind the Sentence

There are three names that particularly stand out in the record of Grissel’s trial—Harry Scrymsour of St Mary’s, John Guthrie of the South Church, and William Rait of St Paul’s. These Dundee Presbytery ministers were instrumental in denouncing her. As much as one would like to paint them as villains, one must remember that during their era, witchcraft was not only commonplace belief but institutional. Ministers, magistrates, and citizens were similar in their fear of the supernatural and their belief in the devil’s role in everyday tragedies.

However, the legacy of these men remains a stark reminder of the destruction that religious zeal and unchecked power can wreak on innocent lives.

A Son’s Sorrow

One of the most touching legends connected with the story of Grissel Jaffray is that of her son, a sailor who had been away at sea during the period of her arrest and trial. On the morning of her execution, he is said to have sailed into Dundee, bringing his vessel into harbour. Seeing smoke rising over the Seagate, he asked the reason of the commotion, to be informed of the terrible fact—that it was his mother’s funeral pyre.

Devastated, the story goes, he sailed away without ever making landfall, and never returned to his hometown again.

Fact or hyperbole, the tale serves to humanise the woman behind the legend. Grissel Jaffray was not just an accused witch—she was a mother, maybe a wife, a neighbour, a human being caught in the gears of history’s injustice.

The Witches’ Stone and a Forgotten Legacy

A curious footnote in the history of Dundee is the Witches’ Stone, which stands in The Howff, Dundee’s old graveyard. In 1581, it was the location where an agreement was signed uniting the city’s Nine Incorporated Trades. The stone, one of the largest in the graveyard, is perhaps linked—some believe—with the memory of Dundee witches who were put to death.

There is a tradition that continues that the authorities at some point tried to erase the names of the women executed for witchcraft, perhaps even that of Grissel Jaffray herself. If so, it is a tribute to the overwhelming shame that later generations felt for the acts of horror committed in the name of justice.

Is the Witches’ Stone Grissel Jaffray’s monument? Does it stand over the grave of a woman burned by her neighbours, anonymous among the dead? We can never know. But people’s interest in discovering—and remembering the forgotten victims of witch trials—increases.

In memory of Grissel Jaffray

Grissel Jaffray is today a symbol of injustice, her name revived by those who wish to remember the women who were victims of fear, ignorance, and zealotry. Her memory is respected in public remembrance in Dundee, her story retold in books such as Haunted Dundee by A.H. Miller, and in whispered words on guided tours, in the silence of the Howff, and in the questions of those who wonder how such a fate could be inflicted on one of their own.

Long since quenched, the flames which consumed her body have caused her memory, Grissel Jaffray, to burn more brightly than ever—a macabre reminder that the pursuit of justice must ever be tempered by compassion, reason, and truth.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay