WE are down to the last three in this series on ancient towns of Scotland. Today, I will concentrate on Forfar, with Kilwinning next week and Irvine…
An engraving of Forfar as it looked around 1700. King Charles II had confirmed it as a royal burgh in 1665
Regular readers will know I am writing about towns whose history has been thoroughly researched as mere history writers like myself depend on real historians for our facts. For today’s subject I have relied on the Forfarshire section of the book the New Statistical Account Of Scotland compiled for the Church of Scotland by the Committee for the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy, published by Blackwood of Edinburgh in 1845.
Angus was one of the heartlands of the Picts, and Forfar may well have developed at first as a Pictish settlement. Pictish stones have been found in the area, the most important being those at Aberlemno just a few miles from Forfar.The Picts converted to Christianity and there is evidence of a possible church or other religious institution at the site which later housed Restenneth Priory.
King Malcolm III and his second wife Queen Margaret took a close interest in the area. The king held a parliament there and the queen – who eventually became a saint – is said to have had a small chapel, similar to that which stands in Edinburgh Castle, on an island in Forfar Loch. Forfar was at the centre of a horrific incident at the end of the rising by the MacWilliam family against the royal house of Canmore. After Gille Escoib MacWilliam’s defeat and death ended their revolt in 1229, his infant daughter or granddaughter, the last of the family, met her end in Forfar.
One part of Forfar’s history that cannot be ignored is the town’s horrendous encounter with witchcraft. I am indebted to Keith Coleman of the Angus folklore website for illuminating the tragic events that took place against the background of the Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661-63 in which 660 people, mostly women, across Scotland were accused of witchcraft, with perhaps 300 executed.
Shyrie confessed to killing Bailie George Wood with poison made from a witch’s recipe. She was executed 20 days later, strangled in public and then burned in a barrel of tar.
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