Robert III hated himself and his reign. He told his wife: “So that my soul may be saved in the day of the lord, bury me, I beg you, in a midden, and write for my epitaph: Here lies the worst of kings and the most wretched of men.”
He got Paisley Abbey.
Whit’s in a name?
Across all Scotland:
Between 1855 and 1955, 24 children were named after Napoleon Bonaparte and 18 were named for General Garibaldi.
Between 1936 and 1945, at least 10 children were given “Josef Stalin” as first names.
In 1955, the British Empire expanded for the last time when the UK annexed Rockall.
Caithness councillor John Abrach MacKay wanted it back as his father, Murdoch, had claimed it for Clan MacKay in 1846.
I demand the admiralty hand it back, it’s no theirs’
J. Abrach MacKay
In 1437, James I might’ve escaped assassination if he didn’t love tennis so much.
He tried escaping down the sewer but he had ordered it blocked up 3 days earlier because “when he played at the [Tennis], the balls he played with often ran into that foul hole”
In September 1630, Alexander Blair, a tailor from Currie married his third wife, Catherine Windrahame, the daughter of his first wife’s half-brother. He was sentenced to be beheaded for incest. At the time cousins were no big deal.
In August 1626, Lanarkshire man, William Hamilton was put on trial for incest after he married the widow of his step-grandmother’s brother.
Worse yet, in June 1643, Janet Imrie lost her head for being the lover of two brothers, thus having caused them to have committed incest with each other.
The two brothers went unpunished.
If they’d been cousins, Janet probably would’ve been fine.
Twa Camels in Edinburgh:
In January 1659 a dromedary camel was brought to the Canongate in Edinburgh. Crowds paid 3 pence a head to see the “heich great beast callit ane Drummodary”. Probably the 1st camel in Scotland outside royal menageries of old.
Charles I had a camel his menagerie in Edinburgh in 1633. John Grahame got it on a 6 month lease “to carie said camel throughout the Kingdome an show the people by towcke of drum or sound of trumpet” but not “upon the Sabboth day”.
In 1560, Parliament set 1st punishments for the “filthie vice o fornication”:
Strike 1: £50 fine + 8 days prison + 2hrs pillory
Strike 2: £66 fine + 2hr pillory + head-shaving
Strike 3: £100 + “thrice ducking in the foulest pool in the parish” + banishment
John Erskine, Earl of Mar (d.1634) banned anyone else hunting his land and was very harsh on poachers. He died after his favourite hound tripped him and broke his legs. At his funeral his chamberlain broke his neck after a hare spooked his horse.
In 1500, at Glenconie, Hugh Fraser (Hutcheon Friseal) shot a beast “mair nor twa eln o length, without feet, having ane mickle fin on ilk side, ane tail, an ane terrible head”.
It “brint all to the eird, as it had been muirburn”.
“they callit it ane DRAGON”
(c. 1900):
rats = bad luck, enemies
eggs = arguments, fights
laundry = moving house
loss of teeth or fingers = death
scissors = heartache
and wake up with an itchy nose someone you know will die today!
