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More on Fife: Falkland

And of neighbouring Collessie too

It is because of its Palace, of course, that Falkland gives the name to a royal officer of arms. Volume X of The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland A.D. 1488-1496, edited by Lord Lyon George Burnett (1887), page 487, is famous for giving from the 1495 accounts for Fife the first record of distilling in Scotland (see the National Records of Scotland here). But it is the volume’s page 449, referring to the previous year’s accounts for Fife, that is of special relevance: it is the first record of Falkland Pursuivant.

A reading of the Genealogies of Macphersons, completed by Sir Aeneas Macpherson shortly before his death in 1705, discovers this connection between the Highland clan and the elegant renaissance palace of the royal Stuarts: a great grandson of Donald Oig Macpherson of Cluny married the daughter of ‘James Kinnimouth Chamberland to the King in Falkland in Fife’. The king was Charles I, as is confirmed by a charter of 1631 in favour of ‘Jacobo Kynnynmouth camerario deputato de Fyffe’. Probably it was he who was the chamberlain who readied the palace for Charles I’s visit in 1633, when the king spent five nights in residence.

My humble crofting family’s Fife connection, however, is with one John Macpherson (born at Lurg, within the Morayshire part of the united parishes of Abernethy and Kincardine in 1817). He was a railway labourer. In 1849, some four miles from Falkland Palace, and within Collessie parish (from the royal lands therein, in ancient times, heralds and even Lyon kings of arms drew their salaries), John Macpherson was married in the new railway village of Ladybank. ‘Ladybank’ the station was called, and the village followed that name too. It sounded better than Ladybog, the old name. That was derived from Our Lady’s Bog: the monks who had the right to cut their peats there were of the Abbey of Our Lady and Saint Andrew at Lindores. Among the monks of Lindores was Friar John Cor, named in the Fife accounts of 1495. By order of the king (this was James IV, and no doubt then at Falkland), the monk was granted eight bolls of malt ‘ad faciendum aquavite’ – which might mean making whisky.

Returning to heraldry, the supporters of the arms of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal commemorate the great Canadian railway fame of the 1st Lord. This is the blazon of the sinister supporter: ‘a navvy standing on a railway sleeper, chained and railed all Proper’. John Macpherson, the railway navvy, and the 1st Baron Strathcona were third cousins – as you can see in this Genealogical Table, if you are interested.

The title Falkland Pursuivant was revived, for an officer in ordinary in 1927, in the person of Colonel Balfour Paul (son of the Lord Lyon who admitted Mr Rutherford as a messenger-at-arms in 1899). The first extraordinary appointment was in 1951, to Captain Iain Moncreiffe of Easter Moncreiffe – who became the renowned herald, Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk. That superb book, Simple Heraldry, Cheerfully Illustrated, by Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger, was written and first published (February 1953) while the future Sir Iain held the office of Falkland Pursuivant Extraordinary. I succeeded Sheriff George Way of Plean, Carrick Pursuivant, my immediate predecessor as Falkland Pursuivant Extraordinary. In September 2021 I was succeeded by Colin Russell.

Background

The facade of Falkland Palace displays these two shields: the royal arms of Scotland (right) and the arms of Macduff, Earl of Fife (left) - the latter differenced from the former only in its lacking the double tressure.
Ladybank Station