The "Bogey Man" of St Andrews

One of the most colourful characters in 19th-century St Andrews has to be Dean of Guild William T. Linskill.  He was born in 1855, the son of Captain W.T. Linskill and the Hon.  Mrs Linskill, the daughter of Viscount Valentia, and was educated at Jesus College, Cambridge.


The young William Linskill came to St Andrews for holidays in his teens and was taught to lay golf by Young Tom Morris.  His enthusiasm for the game was such that he is credited as having introduced golf to Cambridge and founded the first golf club there.


Dean Linskill moved to St Andrews in 1877, two years after having been elected a member of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, and he was eventually elected Dean of Guild of St Andrews Town Council.


The Dean of Guild was a magistrate who had the authority and responsibility to supervise buildings within the town boundaries.  Dean Linskill had the romantic notion that a labyrinth of tunnels lay under the ancient town, possibly with treasure hidden in them.  He was overjoyed when he discovered a tunnel under the road near the Pends which led to the cathedral.

That this tunnel turned out to be the equivalent of a mediaeval monastic latrine did nothing to dissuade him from his conviction or to dampen his enthusiasm.  

Dean Linskill had a great sense of the dramatic, and he put this to good use producing  and acting in many plays and pantomimes in St Andrews, and he organised many concerts in aid of local charities.  His sense of the dramatic was also to the fore when he wrote two books concerning the supernatural in St Andrews, "The Haunted Tower" and "St Andrews Ghost Stories" some of which concerned established legends in the Royal Burgh, others springing from his fertile imagination.

Before I took over the persona of Alesoun Piersoun on the Original St Andrews Witches Tour I presented myself as Jessie Linskill, his wife.

Dean Linskill spent much of his time trying to discover ghosts but bewailed the fact that, try as much as he liked, he never did see one; a fact that never stopped him from telling a rattling good ghost story over a glass of whisky and a fat cigar. 

One story that he particularly enjoyed recounting was how he narrowly avoided  death on December 28th, 1879.  He was travelling from Edinburgh to St Andrews by train that night, and the cab which was supposed to meet him at Leuchars station and carry him to St Andrews was delayed because of the fierce storm that was raging.  Dean Linskill decided to carry on with the train to Dundee, but, just as the train was pulling out of the station, the stationmaster saw the cab arriving and called to the Dean.  Dean Linskill jumped out of the moving train, and, in doing so, saved his life.  The train he jumped from was the train which was lost into the icy waters of the River Tay when the central span of the first Tay Rail Bridge collapsed at 7.15 p.m..  None of the 75 passengers on the train survived.

Dean Linskill died on the 22nd of November 1929 leaving the town to regret the passing of a master storyteller.   

The Smothered Piper of St Andrews

Many years ago, a young man named Jock lived in the Argyle just outside St Andrews' West Port with his wife and widowed mother.  He was a cheerful and well-liked young man, and never happier than when he was playing his bagpipes.  He was regarded as one of the best pipers in Fife.

Young Jock the Piper was fascinated by a cave in the West Cliffs.  It was a particularly creepy and gloomy cave which ran deep into the cliff face then divided into two passages, a carved cross decorating the point where the ways diverged.  The townspeople regarded this cave with a degree of terror, and it had never fully been explored, but Jock wagered his friends that one Hogmanay he would take his pipes into the cave and explore it as far as he could, playing all the time.



His wife and mother were appalled by this idea, and begged Jock not to go.  Many of his friends did likewise, but Jock was not to be dissuaded.  On that New Year's Eve he took his pipes and set off into the cave playing merrily.  The people of the town could hear him playing underground as far as Market Street, but then the noise of his pipes suddenly stopped; they were never heard again.

Attempts were made to find Jock, but the townspeople were too afraid to fully explore the cave.  His body was never found.  Jock's wife sat for hours every day at the entrance to the cave, bewailing her lost love and, finally, on the following New Year's Eve she took her shawl off its peg and announced to her mother-in -law that she was going to her Jock.



Go to her Jock she did.  She never returned to her home in the Argyle, but on moonlit nights her shadowy figure could be seen at the entrance to the cave and her shrieks would mingle with the sounds of the wind and the waves on stormy nights.  St Andreans claimed that the spirit of the smothered piper roamed the clifftops, still playing his pipes, and that anyone who saw him or heard his pipes was destined to die within the year.

I got a little curious tonight, and, although the cave was supposed to have been sealed up, I wandered along the base of the cliffs to see if I could find it.  These are pictures of the cave I did find.

 

 I didn't go too far into the cliff because there were signs of  fresh rockfall.

I hope you like these pictures.  They may not be technically brilliant, but I took them to accompany this story.  I didn't hear the smothered piper or see his poor wife, but I did slip on the rocks twice; the first time feet first into a rock pool, the second time I ended up sitting in a shallow rock pool.  Not a good look for the walk back through the town... but a good story is worth the effort.

The Mystery of the Unknown Bairn

On the 23rd of May, 1971, a local postman, John Robertson, was walking on the beach at Tayport when he came across the body of a small child.  The child was a little boy, aged between two and four years old. There was nothing to suggest that the little boy had died of anything other than natural causes but, despite exhaustive police enquiries and widespread publicity given to those enquiries, the child's identity was never discovered.

He was buried on May the 27th in Tayport cemetery, and money poured in from all over Scotland to an appeal fund for a memorial marker for him.  The headstone was erected on July 5th, 1971 and its inscription reads "Erected in memory of the 'Unknown Bairn', a wee boy aged between two and four years, found on the beach at Tayport, May 23rd 1971.  'Suffer the little children to come unto me.'" 

This all happened almost 39 years ago but, although various theories have been put forward as to who he was and how he died, the mystery of who he was and what happened to him has not been solved, and probably never will be now.  However flowers and toys are still laid at the grave of the Unknwn Bairn , and each year Tayport Council lays flowers there as a sign that he is not forgotten.

The Ghosts of St Rule's

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The ruins in the foreground of this photograph are what remains of the Cathedral Church of St Andrews which was founded in 1160.  The square tower at the back is the tower of St Rule's Church, otherwise known as St Regulus's Tower, so named to celebrate the saint who was reputed to have brought the bones of St Andrews from Patras in Greece to Saint Andrews in Fife, Scotland. The tower is 108 feet high and affords clear views of Fife and Tayside on a sunny day once you recover your breath from the climb.

The Prior of St Andrews in 1394 was one Robert de Montrose.  His duties were to oversee the lands and property of the cathedral and lead the monastic community, leaving the bishop (Walter Trail at that time) to take care of the spiritual and political concerns of the see.

A monk called Thomas Platter was among the community at that time, but, according to accounts of the period, was totally unsuited to monastic life.  In contrast to the good and pious Prior Montrose, Thomas Platter was often absent from his duties in the cathedral and did not take his calling seriously.

Prior Montrose often had to reprimand the wayward monk and this may well have built up resentment in Thomas Platter.  Things came to a head, however, when the Earl Douglas and his wife visited the Cathedral to present it with a costly treasure.  One of the Lady Douglas's beautiful young attendants caught Thomas's roving eye, and he tried to seduce her.  Prior Robert made sure the amorous monk was punished for this deviation from his vows of chastity and that he did penance for a period of months, being kept apart from his brother monks.

The good Prior was in the habit of climbing St Rules Tower each night to meditate.  One night, under cover of darkness, Thomas Platter climbed the stairs behind him and when the good Prior reached the top, Thomas Platter rushed up the last few stairs and stabbed him.  Prior Montrose fell to his death from the top of St Rule's Tower and we are told that Thomas Platter ended his days starving to death in St Andrews Castle's bottle dungeon.

Since that night people have claimed to have seen the spirit of Thomas Platter both day and night in the cathedral grounds, although sightings seem to have become less frequent since his bones were reburied on the south side of St Rule's church in 1898 after they had been disturbed by an archeological dig.

The spirit of the Prior Montrose, on the other hand, has occasionally been seen within the cathedral precincts or looking down from the top of the tower, but anyone who sees his ghostly figure need not be alarmed because this phantom brings nothing but good health and good fortune to anyone who encounters him.  

It's amazing what you can see if you only raise your eyes

 

This house at 11, South Castle Street, St Andrews was home to Joan Clark, the last fishwife of St Andrews.  Joan lived upstairs in one room with her husband, Henry, and her son.  Downstairs was used to store fishing tackle and the barrow Joan pushed to sell her fish.

Unlike her Dublin counterpart, the more famous Molly Malone, Joan didn't "die of a fever and no-one could save her".  Nor does she still "wheel her wheelbarrow through the streets broad and narrow".  She lived a long and healthy life until her death in 1927 at the age of 75. 

Many years ago I met Mary Brown, Joan's niece, and she told me how she would bring meals to her elderly aunt.  Joan, like most women of that generation, was extremely houseproud, and Mary told me that her aunt's bed was like a drift of snow, so white were her sheets.  In later years, Joan enjoyed leaning out of her window and chatting with her neighbour in the house opposite.

Back to raising your eyes.  At some point in time, the pantiles of Joan's roof were decorated with a clay cat chasing a rat which was chasing a mouse.  The mouse was blown off in a storm, but the cat and the rat remain, eternally racing across the rooftop.

Synchronicity, or something

I collect legends, and I'm always struck by how similar legends can be in different parts of the country.  Scotland has a wealth of Green Ladies, White Ladies and Grey Ladies, and more Smothered Pipers than you could shake a set of bagpipes at.

An example of the kind of thing I mean is the legend that Alexander Lindsay, 4th Earl of Crawford, can be heard playing cards with the Devil just before midnight on New Year's Eve in Lordscairnie Castle, Fife.  There is a similar legend attached to Glamis Castle, and the Earls of Crawford had connections with both places, so that might explain the legends.

Alexander Lindsay was known as the "Tiger Earl"  or the "Beardie Earl".  He lived in a time when various factions of the Douglas family struggled to hold power during the minority of King James II and after 1439, when the king came of age.  The Earl was part of the Douglas Rebellion and was defeated at the Battle of Brechin on May 18th, 1452. 

Earl Douglas surrendered to the young King and died in September 1453.

 

The castle is now in ruins, but used to sit on a small island in a lake, evidence of which can be seen in the marshy ground that surrounds it.

 

 

Curious though I may be about the origins and truth of legends, I have better things to do on New Year's Eve than try to watch a game of poker.

Things that go "bump" in the night

I love my work.  I love taking people out around St Andrews, telling them some of the town's legends and folklore and making them jump with fright and shriek with laughter.  Sometimes, however, the tables are turned and people on the tour will try to startle me.  They very rarely succeed in that, but they nearly always succeed if they try to make me laugh.  I must be the world's worst giggler.

Like a child on the tour a couple of years ago.  She wore glasses and had her hair in pigtails.  She looked vaguely familiar, but, it wasn't until the second stop on the tour that I realised why.  Do you remember that Cadbury's ad with the children who wiggled their eyebrows in time to music?  Well this child looked like the girl in that advertisement, but there was worse to come.  Every single time I stopped to tell a story she positioned herself right in my eye-line and wiggled her eyebrows.  She was good at it, too;  she could keep those eyebrows going for three or four minutes at a stretch and by the last stop on the tour I was a basket case trying not to let her catch my eye.  I defy anyone to imagine how hard I had to concentrate on what I was doing.  I'm pretty sure that the people on that tour heard me collapse into gales of laughter as soon as they were out of sight.

Sometimes it's not the people on the tour who make me giggle.  A year or so after I started leading the tours I was striding along North Street at the head of a group of people and a little boy was standing in front of the A-frame advertising Ziggy's Restaurant.  It had a graphic of a guitar-playing rabbit that had obviously caught the boy's attention.  He was minding his own business, hopping from foot to foot in the way that small children do, when he looked up, caught sight of a woman in a black and red mediaeval outfit, and fell straight over backwards in horror.  Poor wee traumatised soul!  He'll be in his teens by now...

The biggest laugh I got, however, was a few years ago when I was taking some journalists out on a familiarisation visit to the town.  It was the second time that my then jumper-oot had worked on the tour.  He made his grand entrance as the Beast, did what he had to, and then ran off.  All well and good, but somehow he forgot that there was a dog-leg corner to the entrance to the area, and he ran straight into the wall.

Luckily, the mask he was wearing took the impact, but I heard him go "Oof" as he bounced back off the wall and I just couldn't hold in the laughter.  Okay.  That was an understatement.  I laughed so hard that I couldn't see.  I couldn't speak.  I couldn't breathe.  Then I realised that my jumper-oot had been out of sight of the tour when he head-butted the wall and I had to explain to these journalists why I was laughing like a loon and that made me laugh all the more.

Jamie turned out to be one of the best jumpers-oot I ever had, but that's one tour that neither of us will ever forget.

 

Kate Kennedy Procession

"Cath cinneachaid" is an old Gaelic term for the return of Spring, and in Pagan times this festival of Spring would be celebrated with rites that would provoke disapproval from the Christian church.  No, I don't know the details; I'm not THAT old.  What I do know is that the Church suppressed the celebrations of cath cinneachaid.

That is, until James Kennedy, who was Bishop of St Andrews from 1440 to 1465 arrived and installed his niece, Katherine Kennedy, as his chatelaine at St Andrews Castle.  The Bishop was deeply involved with the university.  He built St Salvator's Chapel in 1460, and one of the bells in the chapel is named Katherine after this girl who, it is said, was tall, fair, and beautiful.

The students of the university adored the bishop's niece, and the cath cinneachaid procession is said to have been revived in her honour and re-named the Kate Kennedy procession.

Students Have been the same throughout the ages, and, over time, the Kate Kennedy parade degenerated from a pageant to a parody where members of staff of the university were publicly parodied.   

The procession was banned by the university in 1881, but resurrected in 1926.

There have been times when its continuance has been in jeopardy, most recently because the Kate Kennedy Club which organises the procession is an all-male club and membership (which is limited to 60 students) is by invitation only.  The procession, however, is popular with the townsfolk and visitors.  It raises money for charity and historical figures in the town and the university are represented.

    This picture shows the Lady Katherine and her uncle passing the cathedral.  If the Lady Kate looks a little masculine, it is because she is traditionally represented by a male "bejant" or first-year student.

You may recognise this figure.  John Cleese is a former Rector of the university.  Other firures represented are as varied as Bobby Jones and Mary, Queen of Scots and, of course, St Andrew himself.

The Kate Kennedy Parade traditionally takes place on the Saturday nearest to April 17th each year.

My very first blog post

... so I'll make it about a post, or, rather a marker.  Many years ago, when I took a Foundation Arts course in Dundee College of Commerce, a guy in my English Lit. class claimed to be a descendant of Grissel Jaffray, the last witch to be burned in Dundee.

Grissel was burned on the 11th of November 1669, and my classmate insisted that she had been buried in the Howff Graveyard.  He took me there one lunchtime and showed me a stone that he insisted was her grave marker.

Fast forward a few years and I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is also a tour guide.  She had heard of the legend that a witch was buried in the Howff, but couldn't see how someone accused of witchcraft could be buried in consecrated ground.  Frankly, neither could I, but I offered to show her the marker.

So, last Tuesday, when we both had some free time, we went to the Howff Graveyard, an area of land granted to the city of Dundee by Mary, Queen of Scots, and searched for the marker.  It took a while to find (it had been quite a few years since I last visited and it's not near a pathway) but I did find it when I was almost ready to give up.

Calling my friend over triumphantly,  I pointed to the stone.  Then we both did a double-take as we saw the pile of coins balanced on the top.

 
I have no explanation for that, and neither does she.  It was close to Walpurgisnacht (April 30th/May 1st).

Was it some kind of offering to the dead witch?  Had somebody left a coin on top of the post and others simply followed suit?  Is the explanation as simple as a gardener cutting the grass putting coins he found there to save them fouling the mower's blades?

I simply have no idea...