Counties as local government areas were abolished in Scotland in Search for maps and plans of Banff county. Civil registration of birth, marriage and death in Scotland began in Search the statutory registers for registration districts in Banff county.
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Memories Overview Gallery People Find. Sign in Create Account. In we find Cameron of Lochiel apologising to the laird of Grant for having carried off cattle from the tenant of Moyness, and giving the reasons that he ' knew not that Moyness was ane Graunt, but thocht that he was ane Moray man,' and that the spoilers did not intend to hurt the laird of Grant's friends but to take booty from ' Morray land quhare all men take their prey.
Nearly all the interest of Moray as a province, and often all the associations of the name are connected with its lowlands in the N. These have long been famed for mildness and dryness of climate, though the rivers that wind through them, having their sources among mountains high enough to arrest the moisture brought in from the Atlantic by the south-west winds, are sometimes liable to sudden freshets.
Probably no part of Scotland, not even East Lothian, can compete with Moray in regard to the number of spontaneous testimonies which have been borne to the richness of its soil. An old and common saying asserts that Moray has, according to some versions, 15, according to others, 40 days more of summer than most other parts of Scotland.
Holinshed practically an Anglicised form of Bellenden's translation of Boece's Chronicle says, ' In Murrey land also is not onelie great plentie of wheat, barlie, otes, and suchlike graine, besides nuts and apples, but likewise of all kinds of fish, and especially of salmon. The air is so temperate, that when all around is bound up in the rigour of winter, there are neither lasting snows nor such frosts as damage fruits or trees.
There is no product of this kingdom which does not thrive there perfectly, or, if any fail, it is to be attributed to the sloth of the inhabitants, not to the fault of the soil or climate. Corn, the earth pours forth in wonderful and never-failing abundance. Fruits of all sorts, herbs, flowers, pulse are in the greatest plenty, and all early.
While harvest has scarcely begun in surrounding districts, there all is ripe and cut down, and carried into open barnyards, as is the custom of the country; and, in comparison with other districts, winter is hardly felt. The earth is almost always open, the sea navigable, and the roads never stopped. So much of the soil is occupied by crops of corn, however, that pasture is scarce; for this whole district is devoted to corn and tillage. But pasture is found at no great distance, and is abundant in the upland country, and a few miles inland; and thither the oxen are sent to graze in summer when the labour of the season is over.
Nowhere is there better meat nor cheaper corn, not from scarcity of money but from the abundance of the soil. During the summer of , the dear year, ' so memorable all over Scotland, thousands of the people of Moray wandered among the fields devouring sorrel, the leaves and stems of unfilled pulse, and whatever could mitigate the pangs of hunger, while many died of actual starvation or diseases brought on by want of food. Even so late as , the noted year of the ' frosty har'st, ' or harvest, the province suffered severely from famine.
When the era of agricultural improvement set in, and many districts, becoming aware of their poverty, made a sudden an d strenuous movement towards wealth, Moray was content to live on its fame, and so soon lost its pre-eminence, which it has, however, since regained, as may be seen from the notices of the agricultural condition of the counties of Elgin, Nairn, and Inverness.
Some portions were long rendered barren by a curious layer known as ' Moray Coast ' or ' Pan. It at the same time occurs at the distance of about a foot from the surface, and offers unconquerable resistance to the attempts of trees or shrubs to penetrate it with their roots. The only method of de ling with it is to lay it bare, break it up with a pickaxe, and expose the fragments to the slow influence of the weather.
The physical characteristics and present condition of the province are discussed in the articles on the counties of Inverness, Elgin, Nairn, and Banff, and it remains here to notice historical details connected rather with the district as a whole than with the individual counties into which it has been broken up.
At the beginning of the Christian era we find the eastern part of Moray inhabited by the Vacomagi, to the W of whom were the Caledonii with, according to Ptolemy, a town called Banatia, on the E side of the river Ness; another called Ptoroton, on the promontory where Burghead now stands; and a third called Tuessis, on the bank of the Spey; and subsequently we find the district included in Northern Pictavia, of which the capital was situated somewhere near Inverness.
The Pictish nation seems to have been formed by a union of various Celtic tribes or tuaths which united to form mortuaths or confederations, and these mortuaths again to form a larger confederation embracing the whole realm.
The mortuaths were governed by Mormaers, and seem to have corresponded to the districts that afterwards became the provinces governed by the original great territorial Earls of Scotland. That the country N of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was, during the Celtic period of its history, divided into seven- provinces is certain, and there are, in the older records, accounts of them by name.
One dating from the 12th century tells us that the region formerly known as Alban, was divided by seven brothers into seven parts. The second part was Adtheodhle and Gouerin. The third Strathdeern and Meneted. The fourth Fif and Fothreve. The fifth Mar and Buchen. The sixth Muref and Ros.
The seventh Cathanesia Cismontane and Ultramontane. The tuaths themselves seem to have corresponded with the smaller divisions that appear as thanages, and so we may identify the localities of some of them by the thanedoms of Dyke, Brodie, Moyness, and Cawdor, along the shore of the Moray Firth between the river Nairn and the Burn of Lethen; the great district of Moravia proper between the Lethen and the Lossie; and along the Lossie farther E was Kilmalemnock, the greater part of which now forms the parish of St Andrews-Lhanbryd and Essy.
Cromdale and Rothiemurchus seem also to have been thanedoms. The Mormaers were also styled Ri or King, and one, termed the Ardri, always held a loose sway over all. The succession was tanistic, that is, hereditary in a family but elective as to the person, the senior male capable of ruling being chosen in preference to the direct descendant; and it seems even to have been regulated by that particular form where the supreme power passed alternately from one to the other of two branches of a family.
It will be seen from what has been said already, that at this early date Moray and Ross were united and formed but one province. The oldest form of the name seems Moreb or Muireb, and Morovia and Moravia also occur.
Though the tenure of the Jarldom was conditional on his suppression of Viking plundering, this ruler seems to have had somewhat elastic notions as to how far this was binding in the case of raids made on other countries than Norway, and consequently we find him invading Scotland, and making himself master of a considerable portion of the North.
According to one account, he held ' all Caithness and much more of Scotland- Maerhaefui Moray and Ross-and he built a burg on the southern border of Maerhaefui. According to the Landnamabok, Thorstein conquered the whole of the north, and forced more than half of Scotland to acknowledge him as king, but his conquest, if ever firm, must have been of but short duration. The people of Moray were, however, only relieved from attack on the N to have to meet it from the S. The kings of Alban had begun to dream of a united Scotland under one ruler, and in the beginning of the 10th century Donald II.
His son, Malcolm I. The locality was very fatal to the family, for Duff, Malcolm's son and successor, is also said to have been killed at Forres by the governor of the castle in His body was concealed in a deep pool under a bridge near at hand, and till it was found the sun did not shine on the spot.
Towards the end of the century, however, matters once more changed as regarded the Norse. Both leaders were slain, but Liotr's party triumphed. That ruler was in succeeded by his nephew, Sigurd the Stout, who, either from a desire to avenge his kinsman's death, or from wish for greater power, proceeded vigorously to assert the old rights, and, after a severe struggle, succeeded in wresting the province from ' Findlaec, son of Ruadri, Mormaer Moreb, ' brother of the Melbrigda just mentioned, and the Finnleikr Jarl of the Sagas.
Sigurd fell in at the battle of Cluantarbh or Clontarf, fighting against Brian Boroime, King of Munster, and after his death, Findlaec once more became ruler of Moray, and reigned till , when it is recorded that he was slain by the sons of his brother Melbrigda, one of whom, Malcolm, succeeded to power and ruled till his death. As both he and Findlaec are, in the Ulster Annals and in Tighernac, designated as Ri Albain, their dominion probably extended at this time beyond the limits of Moray proper, a supposition which is confirmed by the Book of Deer, in which it is recorded that this Malcolm gave to the clerics of Deer lands, situated, probably, in the neighbourhood of their monastery, and so in a district usually under the rule of the Kings of Alban.
Malcolm was succeeded by his brother Gilcomgan, who was burned in his rath in , probably by Maelbaethe, who is better known to us as Macbeth. From a notice in the Saxon Chronicle the province was then quite independent, and the Mormaer had the power of a Ri or King. It is there stated that King Cnut in invaded Scotland, and received the submission not only of the King of Scots but also of two other Kings, Maelbaethe and Iehmarc; and as Drumalban and the river Spey formed the boundaries of Scotland proper these two rulers would represent the districts lying beyond.
What was the real cause of the great contest that arose on the death of Malcolm ii. A daughter of Malcolm was the second wife of Sigurd the Stout, and the mother of his youngest son Thorfinn, who was, at his father's death in , a boy of five years old.
His grandfather created him Earl of Caithness, and by he held considerable power in the Orkneys besides. When Malcolm died, Duncan, who was the son of his eldest daughter, claimed the kingdom, and his claim was admitted by the southern part of the realm, but Thorfinn disputed his right to any part of the north. According to the sagas, Duncan, who there figures as Karl Hundason, desired to exact tribute and homage from Thorfinn, and on his refusal to render either, bestowed the title of Earl of Caithness on his nephew, or one of his leading supporters called Moddan, and about sent him northward with a large army to take possession of the region.
Thorfinn, supported by Thorkel Fostri his foster-father and by his Norsemen, defeated Moddan, and driving him back beyond the Moray Firth, made war ' far and wide in Scotland.
He sent far and near to chieftains for men, and brought all this army against Earl Thorfinn. A young ruler was the cause. This happened on a Monday. In this congress south of Eckial, The thin [well-sharpened] swords sung, When the valiant prince fought Against the ruler of Skotland.
The Irish division was defeated almost at once; and a long and fierce contest between the Norwegians and the Scots, headed by Duncan himself, ended in the victory of Thorfinn and the flight of the Scottish king. What the fate of the latter was the writer of the saga does not seem to have known, for he adds doubtfully, ' some say he was slain, ' but by other writers it is recorded that he died at or near Elgin, and some of them even fix the place at Bothgouanan, which Dr Skene identifies with Pitgaveny.
Be that as it may, Macbeth, who as Mormaer of Moray fought on the side of Duncan against the old enemies of his lands, at once after his defeat passed over to the side of the conqueror; and the new allies overran the kingdom as far S as the Firth of Forth, whereby Macbeth became able to style himself King of Moravia and of Scotland.
When Malcolm Ceannmor, the son of Duncan, came to his own again, Macbeth was slain in or , and Lulag, son of the Gilcomgan already mentioned, succeeded as Mormaer of Moray, and for a short time maintained a claim to be styled King of Scotland. He does not seem to have been able to hold the lowlands against Malcolm, but to have retired to the mountain fastnesses of Lochaber, to a stronghold on Loch Deabhra, the glen leading to which is still known as Glen-Ri, near which he was slain in He was succeeded by his son Maelsnechtan or Maelsnechtai, who still maintained the independence of his native district, and who appears in again opposing Malcolm, who after the death of the great Thorfinn in seems to have made another powerful effort to gain a firm hold of the north.
According to the Ulster Annals, and contrary to the usual fate of his race, Maelsnechtan died ' in peace ' in or in During the troubles that took place between the death of Ceannmor and the accession of Alexander I. The death of Alexander and the accession of David I. This Angus was the son of a daughter of Lulag, who succeeded Macbeth, and therefore a nephew of the Maelsnechtan already mentioned, but, in accordance with the new feudal system, then slowly developing, he appears as Earl of Moray, so that Maelsnechtan was the last of the Mormaers.
The leaders probably relied somewhat for success on the fact that, at the time , David was in England, and that therefore much might be accomplished before he had time to oppose them; but in this they were deceived, for David's cousin, Edward, son of Siward, Earl of Mercia, raising a force, met and defeated them in the parish of Stracathro in Forfarshire, on the SW bank of the West Water, a little above its junction with the South Esk, and, following up his success, entered Moray and obtained possession of the whole district.
Angus was slain in the battle, and with him became extinct the line of the old Celtic Mormaers. From his title of earl, and the fact that the Saxon Chronicle, in noticing the event and recording his death, declares that ' there was God's right wrought upon him, for that he was all forsworn, ' it may be inferred that he had previously sworn allegiance to David.
The hold thus acquired David vigorously confirmed by the erection of royal castles and the creation of king's burghs, while an equally powerful agent in the work of civilisation and pacification was brought into play by the establishment of the Priory of Urquhart and of the Abbey of Kinloss. He seems also to have resided in the district at different times, and to have been successful in personally winning the favour and allegiance of his turbulent northern subjects, for at the Battle of the Standard in , the rearguard, led by the king himself, consisted of Scots and Moray men.
The death of David was the signal for fresh troubles, and on the accession of his grandson, Malcolm IV. Somerled was, however, compelled to make peace in , and in Malcolm entered Moray and inflicted signal punishment on the rebels.
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