HISTORY

John Blaw of Castlehill, Culcross: John Blaw (born c.1692) has gone down in history both for being a Jacobite in the 1745 rebellion, but also for taking part in a murder for which he was hanged. Blaw killed William Cairns a farmer in a Lamina inn on 4 September 1767. In the winter of 1745 (February) Blaw was sent by the Duke of Perth, on a secret mission to Paris to meet Prince Charles Edward Stuart. On his return to Scotland, Blaw was arrested and placed in the Tollbooth of Edinburgh as a prisoner. Subsequently taken to London for questioning, Blaw was eventually released under the Act of Indemnity of 1747. Not much else is known about Blaw's role as a Jacobite. As for the murder the popular press of the time reported it in detail. On the 4th of September 1767, John Blaw came to Clackmannan for the Bartholomew's Fair. At that time Blaw aged about 70 was down on his financial luck. Whilst drinking with William Cairns and that farmer's son a quarrel arose. Blaw, taking hold of a very small penknife he carried, stabbed the farmer's son; a fight then broke out between Blaw and William Cairns. This resulted in another stabbing, this time William Cairns. He died some time later from the wound. John Blaw was apprehended and taken to Stirling Castle. He was executed in Broad Street, Stirling on 30 October 1767.

John Brown of Priesthill and John Brown: A devout Covenanter from Priesthill in Ayrshire who held illegal services at Priesthill; he was known as the Christian Carrier. In May 1685 John Graham of Claverhouse (Bonnie Dundee) with several troops came to the home of John Brown demanding of him an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Brown refused the order and was shot dead; he is buried near to where he was murdered (aged 58). Another John Brown (a descendent of the John Brown of Priesthill) was Minister of the Kirk O' Muir Secession Church (Kinclaven) - 1902 - (the oldest United Presbyterian Church in Scotland - built in 1744 as an original secession church; repaired in 1830).

"The grave of John Brown lies in a remote and desolate spot, a mile or so from the farm of Priesthill not far from Muirkirk near Cumnock. There is a sign just outside Muirkirk on the Muirkirk - Strathaven road that indicates where the grave is.From there you follow the road to Priesthill farm then a path of sorts leads to the actual site.The terrain is not too difficult and the walk from the farm to the grave is probably less than a mile.The main inscription on the graveslab shown in the photograph reads as follows,

Charles Bruce: Colonial Governor and Imperialist born of a family the Bruces of Blairhall, Kinross and Arnot; Charles Bruce was born in Roncally in Bengal 13 October 1836.. As such he saw colonial service between 1868 and 1903 as follows:

East Mauritius and Ceylon - Rector of the Royal College, Mauritius (1868)

British Guiana

Windward Islands

Bruce was also a scholar and translated poetry from Sanskrit into English. he married Clara Lucas and together they had a son Charles maurice Dundas (born 4 June 1869).

After retirement, Charles Bruce came to Kinross where he was appointed Deputy-Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace.

He died in 1903.

James Crichton: A child prodigy born in 1560 who became known as the Admirable Crichton. He was born in Cluny, Perthshire to the Scottish Lord Advocate and schooled at Perth Grammar School. From there he attended St. Andrews University under George Buchanan, the noted scholar and humanist. Graduating in 1575 with a reputation as a scholar, poet, linguist and swordsman, James Crichton travelled to France where he joined the army. Noted for his orations, Crichton took part in scholarly debates at Genoa (1579), Venice (1580) and Padua (1581). After taking up service for the Duke of Mantua, James Crichton died fighting the Duke’s son in a drunken brawl. His exploits are fictionalised in The Discoveryie of A Most Exquisite Jewel (1652) by Thomas Urquhart. D. M. Barrie uses the title The Admirable Crichton for his 1902 novel of the same name about the perfect butler. The term Admirable Crichton has become synonymous with the all-rounder.

Gavin Douglas: Scottish poet and prelate born around 1474 at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian. This 3rd son of Archibald, 5th Earl of Angus was educated at Perth Grammar School. After a time at St. Andrews University, Douglas studied for the priesthood in abroad (most likely Paris). Between 1501 and 1514 he was dean (or provost) of the Collegiate Church of St. Giles in Edinburgh. After the Battle of Flodden (1513) the death of King James IV led to a rise in Gavin Douglas's star. His nephew the 6th Earl of Angus married Margaret Tudor, the widow of James IV and eldest daughter of Henry VII. Family connections thus allowed Douglas to secure the bishopric of Dunkeld (January 1515). However, the consecration was delayed for a year whilst Douglas served a prison sentence for receiving papal bulls. With the fall of his nephew in 1521, Douglas fled to England intending to seek assistance from Henry VII. he died of plague before any intrigue became realised (1522). Amongst his written works are:

The Palice of Honour (1501)

A Translation of the Aeneid (1513)

King Hart (alleged)

The translation of Virgil's Aeneid is thought to be the first ever English translation of Latin poetry.

James Eric Drummond: James Eric Drummond was born 17 August 1876. He became the 7th Earl of Perth (he was half-brother to the 6th Earl) and during his lifetime was a peer, diplomat and the first General Secretary of the League of Nations. He died on 15 December 1951. James Drummond was born in North Yorkshire and educated at Eton. In 1900 he was employed by the Foreign Office and by 1906 was private secretary to Lord Edmund Petty-FitzMaurice, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Subsequently he worked with Sir Edward Grey, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs ( as a précis writer) - 1908 and 1910-11.

When the League of Nations was founded in 1919, Drummond was appointed its General Secretary; he stayed in post until 1933. After that date, Drummond became the British ambassador to Italy. After elevation to the feudal position of 7th Earl of Perth in 1937 (his half-brother having passed away), James Drummond took up his non-elected position in the British Parliament (House of Lords) as a Scottish Representative Peer. During the Second World War, he worked within the Ministry of Information as Chief Advisor on Foreign Affairs. From 1947 until his death in 1951 he was deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

Neil Forsyth: Manager of Covent Garden Opera House who hailed from Kinross.

Lord George Murray: Jacobite soldier and son of the Duke of Atholl, born around 1700. Educated at Perth Grammar School, George Murray went on to take part in the Jacobite risings of 1715, 1719 and 1745. After the failure of 1715 and 1719, he fled to France. Pardoned in 1726, George Murray returned to Scotland. In 1745 he supported the Young Pretender, Prince Charles Edward Stuart (the Bonnie Prince) as a general in the rebel army. Murray is deemed responsible for the victory at Prestonpans (21 September 1745) and the effective retreat from Derby. Another success was that at Falkirk on 17 January 1746. Murray was against the decision to fight at Culloden (16 April 1746), but nevertheless willingly commanded the right wing at that battle. After Culloden he resigned his commission and escaped abroad once again. George Murray died in Holland in 1760.

William, 1st Earl of Gowrie: Born around 1541, this nobleman became the first Earl of Gowrie in 1581. He was involved in the murder of David Rizzo (1566) and was later the custodian of Mary Queen of Scots during her captivity at Loch Leven Castle (1567-68). In 1582 he kidnapped the boy King James VI, to Castle Ruthven near Perth, for which he was pardoned but then exiled. Despite this he was beheaded in 1584 at Stirling for his part in the conspiracy at Stirling Castle.

John Logie Robertson: Poet - "City, no son of yours am I - Who brings from boyhood down - The memory of the open sky - And words and valleys I own."

Thomas Ross: Architect born 1839 in Errol the son of a tenant farmer, he was apprenticed at the Glasgow office of architects Alexander Kirklord and Charles Wilson. Subsequently, he joined the firm of David MacGibbon in Edinburgh in1862. By 1872 he was a partner in that firm. Much of his important work was restoration projects. A founder member of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, to which the later part of his life was devoted. He died in 1930.

Patrick Ruthven: Ruthven was a mercenary soldier that saw service in Gustavus Adolphus’s Swedish Service as a Captain (1606). He is described in many texts as one of Adolphus’s most capable commanders. He had been born in around 1573, the eldest son of William Ruthven of Ballendean in Perthshire. In 1638, he left the Swedish Service having attained the rank of Major-General and returned to Scotland where he was appointed Muster-Master-General of Edinburgh Castle. During the (English) Civil War he fought for Charles I and was badly wounded at the Battle of Newbury in 1644. Surviving his wounds, Patrick Ruthven was exiled to Sweden, although he eventually returned to Scotland during the Restoration. He died in 1651.

John Stalker: This theologian was born in Crieff in 1848. He was educated at Edinburgh and Berlin thereafter a Minister at Kirkcaldy, then Glasgow. Between 1902 and 1924 John Stalker was Professor of Church History at the United Free Church College in Aberdeen. A prolific writer amongst which are his:

Life of Jesus - 1879
Life of Paul - 1884
Imago Christi: The Example of Jesus - 1889
The Preacher and His Models - 1891

He died in 1927.

David Stewart of Garth: A soldier and historian born in Perthshire in 1772. He served with the 42nd, 77th, 78th Highlanders and with the 90th Perthshire Light Infantry. David Stewart saw operational service in the imperialist venture in the West Indies (1794) and in the Napoleonic Wars (Egypt and the Peninsula). In 1814 after retiring on half-pay, he wrote a history of the Scottish regiments and clan system - Sketches of the Character, manner and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland (1822). The book is widely regarded as having authenticity and objectivity, but at the time was attacked for Jacobite sympathy. David Stewart resumed his career as a soldier in 1825 and by 1829 was appointed Governor-General of St. Lucia. Within a few months of arrival on the small Caribbean island he was dead (1829).

Daniel Stewart: Born to a family of crofters in Logierait, Strathtay, Perthshire in 1740 or 1741, Daniel Stewart spent his early life as a herd boy. After an apprenticeship with a wig-maker in Edinburgh he traveled to India as valet to a client of that wig-maker. Upon his employer's death he came into £11,000; from this fortune he amassed even greater wealth by speculating in property. Now wealthy he found himself appointed as Master of the Court of Exchequer. Daniel Stewart is the subject of a portrait by Henry Raeburn in the style of Joshua Reynolds. Daniel Stewart never married but lived alone at Windmill Street in Edinburgh form 1786. He died in 1814 an left his fortune in trust to care for a dependent and then for several charities. Part of the money went to found a domicile for healthy indigent boys in 1859 - but within eleven years of establishment the school became a commercial enterprise.

R. L. Stevenson: There is a plaque to this author at Kinnaird Cottage in Pitlochry. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote three stories whilst staying at Pitlochry: Thrawn Janet; The Merry Men; and, The Bodysnatcher. To acknowledge this and his stay at the cottage in Kinnaird Road, a plaque was raised: consisting of a bronze plaque set in a large stone with the inscription – “Robert Louis Stevenson lived in this house from the 7th June to the 2nd of August 1881.” The plaque was unveiled on September 6th 1928 by Professor Blyth Webster of St. Andrews. In a letter to Sydney Colvin a friend, Robert Louis Stevenson described his time at the cottage: “We have a lovely spot here: a little green glen with a burn … Behind, great purple moorlands reaching to Ben Vrackie … Sweet spot, sweet spot.” During his stay at the cottage, Stevenson unsuccessfully applied for the post of Professor of Constitutional Law and History at Edinburgh University. Many visitors came to the cottage to see the author – and noted the untidiness of the residence; dishes were piled up high whist Stevenson and his wife Fanny were “sweetly oblivious, writing hard at their stories.” Newspaper reports of the time talk of the romantic figure of Stevenson striding into Pitlochry along the High Road dressed in velvet coat, sash and boots. At the end of his stay “he left the cottage at Kinnaird on 2 August 1881, and drove over to Strathardle and so up to Braemar where he tossed off chapter after chapter of Treasure Island.” In a later novel, The Master of Ballantrae, Stevenson employed the moorland of Pitlochry as the backdrop of a fight scene.

"Scottish essayist, poet, and author of fiction and travel books, known especially for his novels of adventure. Stevenson's characters often prefer unknown hazards to everyday life of the Victorian society. His most famous study of the abysmal depths of personality is THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1886). Many of Stevenson's stories are set in colorful locations, they have also horror and supernatural elements. Arguing against realism, Stevenson underlined the "nameless longings of the reader", the desire for experience.

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson was born in Edinburgh. He was the only son of Thomas Stevenson, a prosperous joint-engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses, and Margaret Balfour, daughter of a Scottish clergyman. Thomas Stevenson invented, among others, the marine dynamometer, which measures the force of waves. Thomas's grandfather was Britain's greatest builder of lighthouses.

Stevenson was largely raised by his nanny, Alison Cunningham, whom he devoted A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES (1885). Cunningham had strong Calvinist convictions and praying became part of Stevenson's early life, reflected in the poem 'A Thought': "It is very nice to think / The world is full of meat and drink, / With little children saying grace / In every Christian kind of place."

Since his childhood, Stevenson suffered from tuberculosis. During his early years, he spent much of his time in bed, composing stories before he had learned to read. At the age of sixteen he produced a short historical tale. As an adult, there were times when Stevenson could not wear a jacket for fear of bringing on a haemorrhage of the lung. In 1867 he entered Edinburgh University to study engineering. Due to his ill health, he had to abandon his plans to follow in his father's footsteps. Stevenson changed to law and in 1875 he was called to the Scottish bar. By then he had already started to write travel sketches, essays, and short stories for magazines. His first articles were published in The Edinburgh University Magazine (1871) and The Portfolio (1873).

In a attempt to improve his health, Stevenson travelled on the Continent and in the Scottish Highland. However, traveling on boats was not always easy for him. In letter, written on his journey across the Atlantic in 1879, he complained: "I have a strange, rather horrible, sense of the sea before me, and can see no further into future. I can say honestly I have at this moment neither a regret, a hope, a fear or an inclination; except a mild one for a bottle of good wine which I resist". Later Stevenson spent much time in warmer countries. These experiences provided much material for his writings.

Among Stevenson's own early favorite books, which influenced his imagination and thinking, were Shakespeare's Hamlet, Dumas's adventure tale of the elderly D'Artagan, Vicomte de Bragelone, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, "a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and having thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong foundation of all the original and manly virtues." (from Reading in Bed, ed. by Steven Gilbar, 1995) Also Montaigne's Essais and the Gospel according to St. Matthew were very important for him.

An account of Stevenson's canoe tour of France and Belgium was published in 1878 as AN INLAND VOYAGE. It was followed by TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY IN THE CERVENNES, based on his walking trip in France. "I travel for travel's sake," Stevenson wrote. "The great affair is to move." With his friend William Ernest Henley he wrote several plays. While in France Stevenson met Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, a married woman with two children, Belle and Lloyd. Fanny was 10 years older than Stevenson, who viewed her as an "exotic goddess". She returned to the United States to get a divorce. In 1879 Stevenson followed her to California where they married in 1880. After a brief stay at Calistoga, which was recorded in THE SILVERADO SQUATTERS (1883), they returned to Scotland, and then moved often in search of better climates.

Stevenson gained first fame with the romantic adventure story TREASURE ISLAND, which appeared first serialized in Young Folks 1881-82. Before it was published in book form Stevenson revised the text. The central character is Jim Hawkins, whose mother keeps an inn near the coast in the West Country. Jim meets an old pirate, Billy Bones, who has in his possession a map showing the location of Captain Flint's treasure. Bones dies after a second visit of his enemies. Jim, his mother, and a blind man named Pew open Bones's sea chest and finds an oilskin packet, which contains the map. Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, Jim, and a small crew with Captain Smollett sail for Treasure Island. Jim discovers that the crew of the Hispaniola includes pirates, led by a personable one-legged man named Long John Silver, the cook of the ship. On a journey to the island interior, Jim encounters Ben Gunn, former shipmate of the pirates. After several adventures the pirates are defeated, Jim befriends with Long John, and the treasure is found. Jim and his friends sail back to England. Long John Silver manages to escape, taking as much gold as he can carry. The famous poem from the novel ("Fifteen men on the dead man's chest / Yo-ho-ho, and the bottle of rum!/ Drink and the devil had done for the rest - Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!) could have originally been "Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest... referring to a Caribbean Island Dead Chest. According to a tale, the notorious pirate Edward Teach left fifteen men on the island of Dead Man's Chest, with a bottle of rum and a sword.

A Child's Garden of Verses was a success - its poems have also become popular as songs. Among Stevenson's other works from the 1880s are KIDNAPPED (1886), the story of David Balfour, his distant ancestor, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, based on a dream and written and printed in 10 weeks, THE BLACK ARROW (1888), set in the era of the War of the Roses, and MASTER OF BALLANTRAE (1889). He also contributed to various periodicals, including The Cornhill Magazine and Longman's Magazine, where his best-known article 'A Humble Remonstrance' was published in 1884. It was a replay to Henry James's 'The Art of Fiction' and started a lifelong friendship between the two authors. Stevenson saw that the novel is a selection of and reorganization of certain aspects of life - "life is monstrous, infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and emasculate."

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, published in January of 1886, sold 40,000 copies in six months in Britain. Stevenson said later that its plot was revealed to him in a dream. The mystery of Jekyll and Hyde is gradually revealed through the narratives of Mr Enfield, Mr Utterson, Dr Lanyon, and Jekyll's butler Poole. Utterson, Jekyll's lawyer, discovers that the nasty Mr. Edward Hyde is the heir of Dr. Jekyll's fortune. Hyde is suspected of a murder. Utterson and Poole break into Jekyll's laboratory and find the lifeless Hyde. Two documents explain the mystery: Jekyll's old friend, the late Dr. Lanyon, tells that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person. In his own account Jekyll tells that to separate the good and evil aspects of his nature, he invented a transforming drug. His evil self takes the form of the repulsive Mr Hyde. Jekyll's supplies of drugs run out and he finds himself slipping involuntarily into being Hyde. Jekyll kills himself, but the last words of the confession are written by his alter ego: "Here then, as I lay down the pen and proceed to seal up my confession, I bring the life of that unhappy Dr. Jekyll to an end."

The story has been considered an criticism of Victorian double morality, but it can be read as a comment on Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species - Dr. Jekyll turns in his experiment the evolution backwards and reveals the primitive background of a cultured human being. Henry James admired Stevenson's "genuine feeling for the perpetual moral question, a fresh sense of the difficulty of being good and the brutishness of being bad". ('Robert Louis Stevenson' by Henry James in Century Magazine 35, April 1888) Modern readers have set the story against Freudian sexual theories and the split in man's psyche between ego and instinct, although the "split" takes the form of a physical change, rather than inner dissociation. The conflict between Jekyll and Hyde reveals also era's class phobias. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has become an icon of popular culture and adapted among others into screen over 20 times. The story of double personality and metamorphosis appealed strongly to Victorian readers. The novel was partly based on Stevenson's and W.E. Henley's play DEACON BRODIA (1880), where an Edinburgh councilor is publicly respectable person but privately a thief and rakehell. The basic theme of true identity have attracted such writers as Mary Shelley (Frankenstein, 1818), Hans Christian Andersen ('The Ugly Duckling', 1845), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Crime and Punishment, 1866), Bram Stoker (Dracula, 1897), Franz Kafka ('Metamorphosis', 1915).

Stevenson's father died in 1887. From the late 1880s Stevenson lived with his family in the South Seas, where he had purchased an estate in Vailima, Samoa. During this Stevenson enjoyed a period of comparative good health. With his stepson Lloyd Osbourne he wrote THE WRONG BOX (1889) and other works. He had nearly 20 servants and was known as 'Tusitala' or 'Teller of the Tales'. The writer himself translated it 'Chief White Information.' Fanny was called 'Flying Cloud' - perhaps referring to her restlessness. She had also suffered a mental breakdown in 1893.

In his short story 'The Bottle Imp', set on the island of Hawaii, Stevenson asked the question, does a sudden luck of fortune wipe out one's problems. Keawe, a poor man, buy's a bottle, tempered in the flames of hell. An imp lives inside it and is at the buyer's command fulfilling all desires. "'Here am I now upon my high place,' he said to himself. 'Life may be no better; this is the mountain top; and all shelves about me toward the worse. For the first time I will light up the chambers, and bathe in my fine bath with the hot water and the cold, and sleep above in the bed of my bridal chamber.'" Fascinated by the Polynesian culture, Stevenson wrote several letters to The Times on the islanders' behalf and published novels ISLAND NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS (1893), which contains his famous story 'The Beach of Falesá', and THE EBB-TIDE (1894), which condemned the European colonial exploitation.

Stevenson died of a brain haemorrhage on December 3, 1894, in Vailima. Fanny Stevenson died in 1914 in California. Her ashes were taken to Samoa and buried alongside her husband, on the summit of Mount Vaea. Stevenson's last work, WEIR OF HERMISTON (1896), was left unfinished, but is considered his masterpiece. Stevenson's best-known work of horror, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has since his death inspired several sequels by other hands, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes by Loren D. Estelman (1979), Jekyll, Alias Hyde: A Variation by Donald Thomas (1988), The Jekyll Legacy by Robert Bloch and Andre Norton (1990) and Mary Reilly by Valrie Matin (1990).

Selected bibliography:

The Genesis of Ballantrae:

Alexander Stewart: A shoemaker and Gaelic scholar. He wrote the book A Highland Parish about the parish of Fortingall (includes Glen Lyon and Rannoch). He wrote one of the first Scots Gaelic Grammar texts: Elements of Gaelic Grammar.