The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen E-Book

Geoff Holder

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 386

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Aberdeen is full of mysteries, marvels and strangeness, and this book is a comprehensive guide to them all. Here you will encounter magic, witchcraft, folklore and superstitions; contemporary urban legends; gargoyles and graveyards; graverobbers and murderers; stone circles and prehistoric burial sites; UFOs and freak weather; and tales of horror, madness, humour – and dangerous porridge. Many forgotten aspects of the city's strange history are here, from the disturbing (spontaneous human combustion, William Wallace's dismembered limbs, the man who died of fright after a mock execution, and the bodysnatching professors) to the downright bizarre (a talking statue, a wedding celebration which was mistaken for an alien invasion fleet, and golf with giant skulls). The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen is the tenth in Geoff Holder's acclaimed series. As with the previous volumes, it is profusely illustrated with over 100 photographs and draws on both ancient and modern sources. Full access and location details are given for both driver and walker alike, making this the indispensable companion for anyone exploring the Granite City.

Leseprobe

THE GUIDE TO

MYSTERIOUS ABERDEEN

THE GUIDE TO

MYSTERIOUS ABERDEEN

GEOFF HOLDER

Frontispiece: Aberdeen. (Jenni Wilson)

To the terrible two, Slick and Shade, companions of the highest order.

First published 2010

Reprinted 2012

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2014

All rights reserved

© Geoff Holder, 2010, 2014

The right of Geoff Holder to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5988 9

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements and Photo Credits

Introduction

1.

The City Centre – The Castlegate Area

Interlude: Witchcraft in Aberdeen

2.

The City Centre – North of Union Street

3.

The City Centre – South of Union Street

4.

The City Centre – North-West of Union Street

5.

East and North-East of the Centre

6.

South of the Dee

7.

The Southern Suburbs and Deeside

8.

The West End

9.

The Northern and Western Suburbs

10.

North by North-West

11.

Old Aberdeen

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND PHOTO CREDITS

Many fine individuals and institutions have helped in the research for this book. I would particularly like to thank: Albert Thomson, First Master, Aberdeen Shoemakers’ Incorporation; Andy Stewart, Store Manager, Primark Stores on Union Street; Judith Stones, Keeper of Archaeology, and Chris Croly, Assistant Keeper (Research), both of Education, Culture and Sport, Aberdeen City Council; Dr Arthur Winfield of the Mither Kirk Development Project at the Kirk of St Nicholas; Norman Adams, author; Dr Jennifer Downes, Curator (Science Collections) at the University of Aberdeen; Neil Curtis, Senior Curator, Marischal Museum; the ever-helpful staff at the Local Studies section of A.K. Bell Library, Perth, and the Reference Library of Aberdeen Central Library; Rachael Hayward and Al Hayes of East of Scotland Paranormal; the team at The History Press; Paul Revell at www.revellution.co.uk for website design; and, of course, the luminous Ségolène Dupuy for digital photography, driving, putting up with the cold and rain, and translating the relevant sections of a French book on UFOs.

The opinions and interpretations expressed in the book are of course my own.

The maps were splendidly produced by Jenni Wilson; the image of the victim of spontaneous human combustion on page 111 is courtesy of the Fortean Picture Library. Most of the other images are either by Ségolène Dupuy or the author, or from the author’s collection, as indicated in the captions. The photographs on pages 141 and 142 are included by kind permission of the Deacon Convener of the Seven Incorporated Trades of Aberdeen.

All efforts have been made to trace the copyright owners of the images used. If anyone has knowledge of copyright on any of the images, please contact the publisher.

This book is part of an ongoing series of similar titles. If you would like to share any stories of the weird and wonderful, or wish to find more information, please visit www.geoffholder.co.uk.

INTRODUCTION

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as t’was said to me.

Inscription on Downie’s Cairn, Old Aberdeen

The man who died of fright … the witch who never was … a Pictish god standing in the reception of a council foyer … alleged secret tunnels under ancient sites … a talking statue … giant frog submersibles … wedding celebrations mistaken for an alien invasion fleet … the lions that became a stone circle … legends of William Wallace’s dismembered limbs … spontaneous human combustion … sightings of river monsters and mermaids … bodysnatching professors … golf with giant skulls …

Aberdeen is full of mysteries, marvels and strangeness, and this book is a comprehensive guide to them all. Within, you will encounter magic, witchcraft, folklore and superstitions; contemporary urban legends; gargoyles and graveyards; graverobbers and murderers; stone circles and prehistoric burial sites; UFOs and freak weather; and tales of horror, madness and dangerous porridge.

The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeen is organised geographically, with everything paranormal and odd described on a street-by-street or suburb-by-suburb pattern, ideal for exploration. The individual sections set out all the history, legends and associations of a particular place, along with descriptions of what can be seen now. A few stories do not fit into the geographical framework so are collected in this introduction, while witchcraft is such a major topic in Aberdeen it has its own interlude. Cross-references between locations are shown in SMALL CAPS. There is an emphasis on locations that can be visited, such as museums, cathedrals and public buildings. The degree of wheelchair access for these locations is described, along with opening hours and other visitor information. A good streetmap is recommended. Aberdeen traffic is notorious. If you can, take buses (day and weekly passes are available) or walk. With the exception of the link to Dyce there are now no suburban railways.

The book covers the entire area of the City of Aberdeen; exploring the arc of rural areas on the western fringe is best accomplished using the 1:25000 Ordnance Survey Explorer maps 406 and 421. National Grid References are given for hard-to-find sites. The county of Aberdeenshire is covered in my companion volume The Guide to Mysterious Aberdeenshire, published in 2009. Tales of ghosts and poltergeists are gathered together in another of my books, Haunted Aberdeen (2010).

A few words of caution. Aberdeen has the same problems as most major cities. Parts of the city centre (especially the ‘underground city’) are best explored in daylight, while the most advantageous time for visiting some cemeteries is in the morning, before the arrival of the alchoholically-enhanced.

THE TOP TEN

If you want to skip to the ten top ‘mysterious’ sights to visit, I would recommend:

1.St Nicholas Kirk and Kirkyard, and St Mary’s Chapel (pages 65-76)

2.The Masonic Temple (pages 84-90)

3.St Machar’s Cathedral and Graveyard (pages 172-7)

4.St Mary’s Cathedral (pages 102-4)

5.Tyrebagger Stone Circle (page 163)

6.The Zoology Museum (pages 170-1)

7.St John’s Church (pages 91-2)

8.The Tolbooth (pages 32-5)

9.The Winter Gardens at Duthie Park (pages 129-31)

10.Provost Skene’s House (pages 49-54)

Two very different pairs of angels. St John’s Church in St John’s Place (above left) … and the Masonic Temple in Crown Street (above right). (Both Ségolène Dupuy)

USEFUL CONCEPTS FOR THE EXPLORER OF THE WEIRD

Apotropaic – ‘That which protects against evil.’ Apotropaic actions and items are scattered throughout this book, from a cat buried beneath a hearth, to grave goods at ST NICHOLAS CHURCH, and the words spoken in various ‘charms’.

Liminality – ‘That which is betwixt and between,’ a transition between one thing and another. Liminal times and places are crucial to magic – Hallowe’en, Midsummer and Rood Day all feature in the witchcraft episodes, as do doorways, thresholds and field boundaries – while liminal events such as the launching of a ship have their own special customs. In some ways the ‘underground city’ beneath Union Street is a liminal zone.

Water-spouting gargoyle in the Winter Gardens at Duthie Park. (Ségolène Dupuy)

Magical Thinking – If you are buried close to the altar in a church, you will get to Heaven quicker (seeST NICHOLAS KIRK). If you drink water in which charmed bones have been washed, or that comes from a holy well blessed by a saint, the power of the bones or saint will transfer into the water and cure your illness (see the witch ISOBEL STRACHAN and the well at CHAPEL OF STONEYWOOD). If you point a ‘killing bone’ at someone, they will die (seeMARISCHAL MUSEUM). Magical thinking is central to witchcraft, folk magic, superstition, and a great deal of ostensibly Christian practices.

Tradition and Truth – Who invents urban myths? Who first comes up with a notion that eventually transforms into a tradition, its origin apparently lost in the mists of time? Who mutates rumour into legend and – when enough time has passed – into history? Who makes all this stuff up? Who believes it? The answer is … me. And you. And everyone you know, and everyone you don’t. We’re all in this together. Some traditions are true. Some ‘truths’ are lies. This book might help you discriminate between fact, fiction, fable and folklore. Well, that’s the rumour anyway.

PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

(Most of the following paragraph appeared in my 2008 book The Guide to Mysterious Glasgow; as it applies equally to Aberdeen, I have included it here, with just a few changes to localise the description.) There are as many definitions of psychogeography as there are psychogeographers. For myself, it’s about the way the physical environment has an unexpected, even spooky, effect on the mind. It’s something about the ways the power of place – of specific places – seeps into the parts of our brains that conjure fear, imagination, wonder, curiosity and the sense of the uncanny. It’s about why certain places are haunted, and others are haunting. It’s about memory and surprises. It’s about seeking out places where extraordinary events once happened. It’s about walking the streets of the city and accidentally spotting a winged monster on a metal drainpipe or finding a tree decorated with drinking mugs. It’s about the surprising, the hidden, the obscure and the ignored – and the weird. It’s about what this whole book is all about.

TIMELINE OF SIGNIFICANT EVENTS

11th century –

Earliest known church on site of St Nicholas Kirk.

1165 –

Completion of first cathedral (later St Machar’s).

1179 –

Aberdeen becomes a Royal burgh, that is, an independent town with trading rights.

13th century –

Dominicans, Trinitarians and Carmelites set up friaries.

1308 –

Aberdeen Castle is destroyed.

1319 –

Robert the Bruce leases the Forest of Stocket to Aberdeen, a business deal that benefits both parties.

1320 –

The Brig o’Balgownie is built over the River Don.

1336 –

The forces of Edward III defeat the Scots at a battle by The Green. Death and destruction follow.

1411 –

The Battle of Harlaw; Aberdeen citizens join in the repulse of a Highland Army.

1489 –

‘Old Aberdeen’ becomes a burgh, independent of ‘New Aberdeen’.

1495 –

King’s College, Aberdeen’s first university, is founded.

1527 –

The Bridge of Dee is built over the River Dee.

1529, 1538-9, 1545 –

Deadly epidemics, including plague.

1559-1560 –

The Reformation. Four monasteries and other buildings are ransacked but St Nicholas Kirk and St Machar’s Cathedral survive.

1571 –

The Battle of Craibstone, a conflict between the Gordon and Forbes clans.

1593 –

Marischal College is founded.

1597 –

The principal year of the witchhunt.

1638 –

A sandbar blocks the harbour.

1639 –

A Covenanting army under the Marquis of Montrose defeat the Royalist defenders.

1644 –

The Battle of Justice Mills. A Royalist army under the Marquis of Montrose (the same one) defeat the Covenanting defenders. Death and destruction follow.

1650s –

Aberdeen is occupied by troops of Cromwell’s army.

1671 –

An epidemic kills 1,700, a quarter of the population.

1740s –

Hundreds of children are kidnapped and sold as slaves in America.

1780-1832 –

Period of the bodysnatchers.

1801 –

Union Street is constructed, changing the face of the city.

1870s –

New harbour is constructed, creating a large and reliable port.

1891 –

Old Aberdeen becomes part of the City of Aberdeen.

1960s –

Oil is discovered in the North Sea.

2222 –

Montgomery Scott is born in Aberdeen (see page 98)

THE CONTEXT – ARCHAEOLOGY AND HISTORY

1. THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Aberdeen today is a triumph of engineering in transforming the environment. Up until the eighteenth century the River Dee and its estuary flowed much further north than it does now. The railway station, Market Street, Union Square, not to mention most of the dockland area, was beneath a vast sheet of water. The town’s geography was dominated by Castle Hill, St Katherine’s Hill and the Gallowgate Hill, and limited by the ravine of the Denburn to the west and a loch to the north. The western approaches were beset with marshes and moors.

Then the Denburn was bridged and culverted, St Katherine’s Hill was removed to make way for the Union Street thoroughfare, the river was tamed, the estuary reconfigured, the docks built, and large tracts of land drained. These days the modern road pattern obscures the topography, but beneath Union Street you can still see how the ground level slopes southward to the sea. The city to the east is bounded by an extensive beach facing onto the North Sea, and the River Don forms the northern physical boundary. Both the Dee and the Don are crucial in Aberdeen’s story.

2. FROM PREHISTORY TO THE DARK AGES

In the Neolithic period (from around 3800 BC onwards) and the Bronze Age (from about 2500 BC onwards) farming communities constructed burial cairns (such as the ones near KINGSWELLS and TULLOS) and stone circles (for example, at MILLTIMBER and KIRKHILL FOREST). Many – but not all – of the single standing stones dotted around the city date from this era as well. The Romans left only one significant trace, at PETERCULTER. Little is known of Dark Age Aberdeen, although it would have been Christianised at some point, possibly even as early as the sixth century AD (seeST MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL).

3. THE MIDDLE AGES

Certain knowledge of the early medieval period is hard to come by, but we know that the town was ravaged in 1153 by a Viking named Eysteinn. There was a castle on CASTLEHILL (although some think an earlier version may have stood on St Katherine’s Hill) and a community around THE GREEN and CASTLEGATE. Four monastic institutions (Trinitarians, Carmelites, Dominicans and the Grey Friars) set up shop, and ST MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL and ST NICHOLAS KIRK rose to greatness. The citizens supported Robert the Bruce in his wars and leased valuable Stockethill lands from him. King’s College was founded, the third University in Scotland. Plagues and epidemics ravaged the land. In 1411 the townspeople joined in the defence of Aberdeen at the bloody Battle of Harlaw, checking an army from the Highlands and Islands. This was seen as the definitive moment in the ongoing conflict between the warlords of Gaeldom and the Scots-speaking Lowlanders of prosperous Aberdeenshire.

4. THE REFORMATION

So much of Aberdeen’s later history, and the various associated strange religious beliefs and actions, can only be understood by knowledge of the Reformation. By 1559 the Catholic Church, the former universal religion, was tottering in Scotland. A mob of ‘Reformers’ swept into Aberdeen from the south, destroying the monastic buildings and sweeping away ‘idolatrous’ images (not to mention pocketing some valuables during the looting). The following year Protestantism became the state religion, and Catholicism outlawed. The Reformation was not strong in the hearts of many Aberdonians, so wonderful buildings such as St Nicholas Kirk, St Machar’s Cathedral and KING’S COLLEGE survived without too much damage, although their function and use had to change. MARISCHAL COLLEGE was founded as an explicitly Protestant alternative to King’s, and Catholics were discriminated against. Catholic images were destroyed or mutilated, hence any survival from pre-Reformation times is historically rare and valuable.

The enmity between Catholics and Protestants has left traces in places such as PROVOST SKENE’S HOUSE and SNOW KIRK. Further religious conflict broke out in the seventeenth century, with the Episcopalians (supporters of a Church governed by king-appointed bishops, not surprisingly popular with troubled monarchs such as Charles I and II) warring with the Covenanters (extreme Presbyterians who denied the role of bishops and favoured ‘bottom up’ Church organisation). Aberdeen suffered badly in these conflicts, particularly at the BATTLE OF JUSTICE MILLS in 1644. Further religious persecution was meted out in the seventeenth century to the pacifistic Quakers, who were regarded as a dangerous alternative sect.

The Catholic Church had tolerated and encouraged many practices which the Reformed Church later regarded as ‘superstitious’, even occult. These included making pilgrimages to holy wells (such as the one at CHAPEL OF STONEYWOOD) to seek healing. The tolling of a hand-bell at funerals had several purposes, informing the populace that a coffin was passing by, and to show respect, and also to keep away evil spirits. In 1643 Aberdeen Council passed an edict prohibiting the ringing of bells because it was one of the ‘superstitious rites used at funerals’.

5. THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

In 1661 Aberdeen had a population of about 5,000 stretched over some sixteen streets. A century later its footprint was still essentially the same, but its population had expanded enormously, creating a squalid, overcrowded urban rookery. Eventually the city fathers and the engineers broke the bounds of the convoluted medieval town, laying out straight roads, erecting bridges and viaducts, building new suburbs, and by 1800 had dragged Aberdeen kicking and screaming into the modern world. Union Street, a true marvel of civil engineering, cut straight as a die through history and topography. Local granite became the stone of choice for the neo-Classical architecture of the revitalised economy, creating the distinctive look of the Granite City. The railway came, as did a new harbour and new industries. The population boomed. Old Aberdeen, a separate town since the Middle Ages, finally amalgamated with its brasher neighbour in 1891.

Aberdeen in 1661. St Katherine’s Hill, lapped by the river, dominates the area where Union Street is now. The Denburn valley forms the boundary west of St Nicholas Kirk (‘Great Church’). (Author’s Collection)

The centre of Aberdeen, today. (Jenni Wilson)

THE DEEP

Strange things come from the North Sea, or are seen in its waters. In early 2002 a giant squid was washed ashore – and speedily conveyed to the National Maritime Aquarium in Plymouth, whose Kelvin Boot delightedly commented, ‘I never believed I would see one in my lifetime. They really are the stuff of mythology’ (Independent, 7 August 2002). A Great White Shark was seen in August 2008 (Sun, 9 September 2008). And, most bizarre of all, a boat fishing 32 miles (51.5km) offshore in early April 1982 found the floating carcass of an elephant (Janet and Colin Bord, Modern Mysteries of Britain).

In November 2000 a seabed scan 95 miles (153km) north-east of Aberdeen discovered an unidentified trawler 450ft (137m) below the surface. It was built between 1890 and 1930 and its hull was lying horizontally, indicating it had sunk ‘flat’. The area, known as the Witch’s Hole, was a ‘pockmark’, a piece of rugged terrain unlike the surrounding smooth seabed. All this led marine geologist Dr Alan Judd of Sunderland University to conclude that the ship had been sunk by a giant bubble of methane.

The science of this rare and macabre phenomenon, as demonstrated experimentally in the laboratory, is that methane gas reduces the density of water; this means that ships can no longer float. The trawler would have sunk like a stone, possibly with no time to send a distress message. In addition, anyone jumping overboard in lifejackets would sink too. Judd had spoken to crews who had survived smaller gas emissions – their ships had temporarily lost some buoyancy and dropped a few feet in the water. Methane blow-outs from below the seabed were also thought to have sunk dozens of floating oil platforms. It was speculated that the phenomenon may be responsible for other shipping losses, such as those reported in the Bermuda Triangle. If the gas blow-outs reached the surface, they may even have taken out any aircraft flying above. The initial report was in New Scientist, quickly picked up by many newspapers, such as the Daily Telegraph on 30 November 2000. Dr Judd returned to the site in 2002 to make a documentary for the Savage Planet television series.

More extreme marine conditions hit a helicopter on 28 February 2002. The aircraft was severely buffeted by winds caused by a waterspout, the oceanic equivalent of a tornado, with a vortex of water reaching from the clouds down to the surface of the sea. The Super Puma helicopter was damaged but the pilots managed to regain control, and none of the eighteen offshore workers onboard were hurt. The case was reported in the Herald on 7 August 2003, when the Air Accidents Investigation Branch released its analysis of the incident.

A different kind of strangeness can be found in the cases of ‘mystery coastal flares’. There have been several examples along the east coast of Britain of sightings of what seem to be distress flares, but when the search teams or lifeboatmen reach the area, nothing is found. These reports go back to the nineteenth century, and are so similar in form they may suggest some kind of rare aerial/marine phenomenon (perhaps the ignition of methane bubbles?). A typical example occurred on 20 November 1963. The coal-ship Thrift left Aberdeen bound for Blyth, Northumberland and was opposite Girdleness at 6 p.m. when the captain and three crew saw a pulsing red light around 15-30ft (4.5-9m) in the air, about a mile out to sea. When it was around three miles (4.8km) behind them the light suddenly went out. The Thrift turned back and searched the area for two hours, but found nothing. (The report is in The Taming of the Thunderbolts by Maxwell Cade and Delphine Davis.) On 20 March 1989 the Aberdeen coastguard put to sea after reports of red flares, but again there was no obvious source; the lights may have been caused by satellite debris falling that night, as there were many reports of lights, flashes and smoke trails along the north-east coast (Press & Journal, 21 March 1989).

UFOS AND STRANGE THINGS IN THE SKY

The mystery flares may be related to other aerial phenomena reported around Aberdeen, then again, they may not. UFO-spotting is something of a local pastime, possibly inadvertently encouraged by the large numbers of helicopters flying to and from the rigs and the proximity of Aberdeen airport and RAF bases, and definitely influenced by the current fondness for releasing small armadas of aerial fire lanterns at celebrations. The various online UFO forums are clogged with reports of silent orange lights floating in groups above the city. Great excitement is caused when the lights suddenly go out or appear to disintegrate. The lanterns are fragile paper spheres that rise because the flame at their centre heats the enclosed air. Sometimes they catch fire and fall apart, but usually the fuel simply runs out and the lanterns ‘wink out’ and fall to the ground. They are beautiful, but they are not mysterious. Reports of them are so common that one of the UK’s most respected UFO organisations has simply stopped logging sightings of them. That being said, some genuinely odd things have been seen.

On 19 March 1719 the people of Aberdeen witnessed:

… a great Lightning amongst the Clouds, which were of divers Colours, as Red, Yellow, Green, &c. And there was great Fire amongst the Clouds, which issued out from them like Sheets enfolding one another. The People thought that the Cloud touched the Earth, and Came down with a great Noise, which made many of the beholders run into their Houses, for fear the Fire should have devoured them.

The report was in a single-sheet broadside entitled ‘Strange and Wonderful Apparitions’. A report in the Statistical Account of Scotland stated that in November and December 1792 ‘many of the country people observed very uncommon phenomena in the air (which they call Dragons) of a red fiery colour, appearing in the North, and flying rapidly towards the East.’ And on 8 Aberdeen 1850 a dark red object with a yellow-orange plume ejected a small object that was seen to travel at right angles to the original course. A similar red object trailing sparks and dropping a dark mass was seen on the same day over the Cote d’Azur in France; presumably it was a meteor shedding parts of itself as it burnt up in the atmosphere (La Chronique des OVNI by Michel Bougard).

More recent sightings are perhaps more problematical, because the ‘extraterrestrial hypothesis’ is now so much part of our culture that when some people see odd things in the sky they automatically conclude that an alien craft is responsible, when meteorology, military activity, modern technology or misperception are more likely to be the cause. In 1966 the magazine Flying Saucer Review reported that eleven people had seen three unidentified craft in Aberdeen on 5 August 1948. In July 2006 the website www.ufoevidence.org had an eyewitness report from a man who as a boy had seen a large (100ft/30.5m diameter) orange-red sphere floating above the city centre in 1977. The report stated that there had also been a ‘mass sighting’ of a similar object in 1998, but I have not been able to track any report of this. Another website, www.ufo-casebook.com, logged sightings over Aberdeen on 23 October 1998 (two shiny silver spheres), and 3 and 4 April 2001 (red, blue and green twinkling star-like object).

SPONTANEOUS ATHEISTICAL COMBUSTION!

An Aberdeen man attempted an incestuous relationship with his sister, then, rebuffed by her objections based on Christian morals, proceeded to denounce God, the Devil, Heaven and Hell as nothing but fictions designed to cow the weak and easily-led. No sooner had he uttered the blasphemous words than he was consumed by a great fire that, over two hours, burned him slowly to death, so that he suffered the torments of the damned in the very pit of Hell.

This, at least, is the event described in a ballad from around 1600, entitled A wonderful Example of God’s Justice shewed upon one Jasper Conningham, a Gentleman born in Scotland, who was of opinion that there was neither God nor Devil. The title gives the game away – this is a typical example of a seventeenth-century moral tract inveigling against the evils of atheism. And very gorily the ballad makes its point too. Having bewailed his fate and – at great and poetic length, considering he is being consumed by fire – Jasper finally admits the existence of the Supreme Being and the Adversary:

…with these speeches, his eyes fell from his head, And by the strings hung dangling below his chin stark dead.

Even with his eyes plucked out, Jasper can still keep up a commentary:

See how the devils then he said, have pluck’t my eyes out quite, That always was unworthy to view the heavenly light.

Finally Jasper has nothing more to say:

Then from his mouth there fell his foul blasphemous tongue, In very ugly manner it most pitteously it hung. And there away it rotted in all the peoples sight, By lice and filthy vermine, it was consumed quite.

The end is not over. The fire ceases when Jasper dies, but his corpse smells so badly that no one will bury him, so it is left above ground to decay, the garden where the event having taken place being securely locked. So denying God gets you burned, tortured, mutilated, killed, and then left to rot.

It is possible the story was prompted by a genuine case where an Aberdeen gentleman tried to force himself on his sister, but I suspect it is pointless looking for ‘Jasper Conningham’ in the Aberdeen records. The ballad is a finger-wagging fable, warning good Christians not to stray from the precepts of a Godly society lest they suffer Mr Satan’s barbecue sauce.

I found a copy of the ballad in James Maidment’s Scotish [yes, one ‘t’] Ballads and Songs, published in 1849, and a superb commentary on the ideology of seventeenth-century religious ballads by Michael Goss in Fortean Studies Volume 1 (1994). Mr Goss deserves some kind of prize for inventing the brilliant descriptive phrase re-used in the title here, ‘Spontaneous Atheistical Combustion’. (For an example of Spontaneous Human Combustion, see CONSTITUTION STREET.)

A FOE TO THE EVIL ONE

‘One day, during a snowstorm, the Revd George More was riding from Aberdeen to a village in the vicinity of that town. He was enveloped in a Spanish cloak, and had a shawl tied round his neck and shoulders. These loose garments, covered with snow, and waving in the blast, startled the horse of a “bagman”, who chanced to ride past. The alarmed steed plunged, and very nearly threw its rider, who exclaimed – “Why sir, you would frighten the very devil!”

“I’m glad to hear that,” said Mr More, “for it’s just my trade.”’ (The Book of Scottish Anecdote, 1883).

CATS V. WITCHES

Sometime around the 1920s or early 1930s a workman renovating a 400-year-old property in Aberdeen lifted a massively heavy granite hearthstone to find the skeleton of a cat. The creature would have been deliberately buried as an apotropaic act to prevent witches and fairies coming down the chimney. The discovery is reported in Fenton Wyness’ Spots from the Leopard, but no location is given. Where was this cat found and what happened to it?

URBAN LEGENDS AND ‘FRIEND-OF-A-FRIEND’ STORIES

‘North-East Man Lost At Sea.’ This is the classic joke of Aberdeen parochialism, a staple of journalistic barbs and after-dinner stories. The joke being, of course, that this was how a local newspaper reported the sinking of the Titanic. But although the story is much-loved, it is completely untrue. In April 2005 Sandy Hobbs investigated ‘The Titanic Headline’ in Foaftale News, the newsletter of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research. He found numerous recent allusions to, and variations on, the story, but no evidence from the actual period. On 4 June 2004 the newspaper supposedly guilty of the faux pas, the Press & Journal, categorically denied it had printed the headline. And the proof is in First Daily, The history of the P & J by Norman Harper (1997). Harper reproduces the very page from 16 April 1912; The headline reads ‘Mid-Atlantic Disaster: Titanic Sunk By Iceberg. 1,683 Lives Lost; 675 Saved. Liners Race to Rescue’. Not very parochial, then.

An Aberdeen newspaper did slip up in 1962, however. The Evening Express accidentally captioned Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home as Mr Vass, a local bailie. The satirical magazine Private Eye thereafter maintained that Douglas-Home was an impostor, unmasked by the fearless investigators of the Express. For more than thirty years the magazine maintained this position, always referring to the former prime minister as Bailie Vass.

In 1993 Rob Adams wrote an article for the Huddersfield Daily Examiner in which he brought up two Aberdonian stories. The first, which he knew to be apocryphal because it was also told of Forfar and Edinburgh, was that many years ago a proposal was put before the council to attract tourists to the boating pond in one of the city parks by purchasing a dozen gondolas. One of the councillors objected on the grounds of economy: ‘Wouldn’t it make more sense just to buy two and see if they’ll breed?’

The second tale, from 1987, Adams said he had on good authority. The council were discussing the city’s first arts festival when one member suggested booking Louis Armstrong. There was a pause. ‘But he’s dead,’ someone said. ‘That’s your opinion,’ retorted the councillor, angry that the great jazzman was thought to be ‘behind the times’. ‘No, he’s really dead,’ came the reply, Mr Armstrong having passed away sixteen years previously.

In Essays of Travel (published in 1905, written some years earlier) Robert Louis Stevenson described how a man fell from a housetop in Aberdeen, and when being treated in hospital for broken bones, said he earned a living as a ‘tapper’. The doctors did not know this work, so asked him to explain. When some slaters fancied bunking off work for a pint or two, their unskilled substitute would sit on the roof ‘tapping’ away with mallets to keep up the illusion that work was progressing. The slaters paid him out of their own pockets. Stevenson cautiously noted, ‘I give the story as it was told me, and it was told me for a fact.’

According to the Mail on Sunday for 27 December 1998, an Aberdeen DIY store put up a notice about choosing the right paint because they were fed up with men returning colours their wives didn’t like. The notice included reference to ‘A poxy resin.’

SNAKES IN A DRAIN

In July 1997 seventeen-year-old Joss Clark was descaling his pet python Winston when the 6ft (1.83m) snake did a runner (well, a slither) down the toilet, re-appearing in the lavatory bowl of his neighbour two floors down. Not surprisingly the woman flushed it away, but Winston survived his U-bend adventure and was safely recovered. (Daily Telegraph, 4 December 1998.)

HAIR-RAISING

Advertisement in the Aberdeen Free Press, some time before the First World War: ‘A really acceptable present for a lady is a nice piece of artificial hair, as, when not absolutely necessary, it is always useful and ornamental.’

SOURCES

All books, articles, newspapers and websites referred to in the text are listed in the Bibliography. Writing a new work on Aberdeen is a nerve-wracking experience for an author – possibly even an exercise in hubris – for so many good books on the city already exist. In particular I have made use of the output of Norman Adams (Blood and Granite, Hangman’s Brae, Scottish Bodysnatchers and others), Robert Smith (including The Granite City, Aberdeen Curiosities and The Hidden City), Diane Morgan (Lost Aberdeen and The Granite Mile) and Fenton Wyness (City By the Grey North Sea, Spots from the Leopard and many more works). In terms of more antique contributions there are several dozen that deserve to be honoured, but pride of place must go to Aberdeen’s first historian John Spalding, for The History of the Troubles and Memorable Transactions in Scotland, from the Year 1624 to 1645. Spalding not only recorded the history of his time, he also filled his work with omens, spirits, legends, monsters and other wonders. Here is a fine example of his style, a detailed description of a man with a parasitic twin growing from his chest:

There came to Aberdeen an Italian monster of a man, about twenty-four years of age, having a birth growing from his breast upward, face to face as it were, a creature having head and long hair of the colour of a man’s, the head still drooping backwards and downwards; he had eyes, but not open; he had ears, two arms, two hands, three fingers on each hand, a body, a leg, and foot with six toes, the other leg within the flesh, inclining to the left side. It had some signs of virility, it had a kind of life and feeling, but void of all other senses; fed with man’s nourishment, and evacuated the same way as his. This great work of God was admired of by many in Aberdeen, and through the countries where he travelled; yet such was the goodness of God, that he could go and walk where he pleased, carrying this birth without any pain, yea, or unespied when his clothes were on. When he came to town he had two servants waiting on him, who, with himself, were well clad. His portraiture was drawn and hung up at his lodging to the view of the people; the one servant had a trumpet which sounded at such time as the people should come and see this monster, who flocked abundantly to his lodging.

1

THE CITY CENTRE – THE CASTLEGATE AREA

MERCAT CROSS – CASTLEHILL – JUSTICE STREET – THE TOLBOOTH

The annals of criminal jurisprudence exhibit human nature in variety of positions, at once the most striking, interesting and affecting. They present tragedies of real life, often heightened in their effect by the grossness of the injustice and the malignity of the prejudices which accompanied them. At the same time real culprits, as original characters, stand forward on the canvas of humanity as prominent objects for our special study.

Edmund Burke

CASTLE STREET

Also known as Castlegate, this pedestrianised area has been at the very heart of Aberdeen life since records began, having been the market square, public gathering space, the main fulcrum of the roads system, and the site of proclamations, executions and witches’ meetings. In medieval times all the entrances and exits from the square were controlled by lockable gates called ports. Aberdeen’s brief-lived castle once lay on Castlehill just to the east, where the tower blocks of Virginia Court and Marischal Court now stand, while St Katherine’s Hill (now gone) once formed the urban boundary to the west. City life was administered and justice dispensed at the Tolbooth (now across the road), and the current Council’s Town House, plus the Sheriff Court and Police Headquarters, continue to operate from the same area, a remarkable continuity of use stretching back centuries on the same site. When Marischal Street, Union Street and King Street were laid out, cutting orderly straight lines through the spaghetti tangle of medieval chaos, Castlegate was the hinge from which they sprung.

The striking hexagonal Mercat Cross is the finest of its kind in Scotland. Constructed in 1696, replacing a more ancient model, its decoration is enjoyably over the top, with gargoyles of dogs and monsters, Green Men, grotesque faces, foliaceous birds, thistles, bunches of grapes, the royal arms of Scotland and the Aberdeen coat of arms, and an extraordinary set of royal portraits in stone – James I, II, III, IV, V, VI and VII, Charles I and II, and Mary Queen of Scots. The 1696 sculpture was the work of John Montgomery, also responsible for several of the carved gravestones in the burial ground of the KIRK OF ST NICHOLAS and the truly amazing monument to Bishop Scourgal in ST MACHAR’S CATHEDRAL. The whole affair is surmounted by a tall Corinthian column topped by a wonderful white marble unicorn. The arches have also been used for market stalls and, for a brief period from 1822, as what must have been a very cramped post office.

The high quality of the carvings reflects the Cross’s symbolic importance as a signifier of civic authority and status. Monarchs were proclaimed here, Acts of Parliament read out, and convicted criminals chained up, exhibited and branded. An excellent overview of the Cross’s history appeared in The Lone Shieling, a miscellany of essays published in 1908 by G.M. Fraser, the city librarian. Among other fascinating snippets Fraser records several punishments at the Cross. In 1563 two Flemish sailors were sentenced to have their right hands cut off for severing the cable of a ship in the harbour; the sentence was commuted to a public repentance and the pair duly appeared at the Cross with the cut cable, confessing ‘by holding up their right hand and giving praise to God and thanks to the Council for the favour that had been shown them.’ There is nothing in the records to show what was going on behind the scenes, but this was only three years after the Reformation; I suspect the two Flemings were Catholic and their ‘giving praise to God’ involved a specifically Protestant prayer. Presumably they preferred apostasy to amputation. In 1617 a man insulted one of the bailies and paid by being exhibited at the Cross and banished from the town. In 1640 a woman convicted of ‘unbecoming behaviour’ was scourged and banished; she was ‘drawn in a cart through the streets, bearing a paper crown on her head, the bellman going before proclaiming her offence.’

Some of Fraser’s other anecdotes feature the great canker of Scottish (and Aberdonian) history, religious intolerance. As the year 1688 drew to a close Scotland and England gained a new monarch, the Protestant William of Orange, who along with his wife Mary (James’ Protestant sister) replaced Catholic James VII in a bloodless coup known (to Protestants, anyway) as the Glorious Revolution. Religious feeling was running high and in January 1689 some students from Marischal College – which, unlike King’s College in Old Aberdeen, was defiantly Protestant – gathered at the Cross and conducted a trial of the Pope. The Plaintiff was found guilty of various crimes and was burned in effigy. Around the same time a prominent Catholic, Peter Gibb, poked some fun at Protestant fanaticism by naming his terriers Calvin and Luther. Gibb was publicly rebuked and the two poor dogs hanged at the Cross.

Three of the Green Men that decorate the seventeenth-century Mercat Cross, Castlegate. (Geoff Holder)

Fraser also pooh-poohed the popular and much-repeated story that on festive occasions wine was pumped into a central cistern within the Cross and poured out of the gargoyles. He examined the records minutely and concluded that the Council supplied only limited quantities of wine, and this was dispensed in glasses to a small number of privileged individuals standing round the Cross. So all images of couthy Aberdonians lying beneath geysers of wine erupting from the mouths of gargoyles should be dispelled from your mind.

With the various urban developments in this area, and part of the Castlegate open space being subsumed into the eastern end of Union Street, the Mercat Cross has moved from its original location opposite the Tolbooth. Its current location is near where the Fish Cross once stood, the place in medieval Aberdeen to buy freshly-caught herring or mussels. Several of the witches convicted in 1597 were said to have danced around the Fish Cross (seeINTERLUDE: WITCHCRAFT IN ABERDEEN, below). Almost opposite where Lodge Walk now runs was the Flesh Cross, a platform (this one with a crucifix) marking the site of the ‘shambles’, where beasts were butchered and meat sold. Between them the Mercat, Flesh and Fish Crosses defined the Aberdeen supermarket experience until the eighteenth century.

Around 1752 a pavement 84ft by 57ft in size (25.6m × 17m) was laid on the west side of the Cross, and – being largely free of mud and dung – the ‘Plainstones’ soon became a popular area for citizens of standing to conduct business and take the air. It had other uses, of course. In 1763 two toffs, Abernethy of Mayen and Leith of Leith-hall, had a disagreement while drinking in the adjoining New Inn. The quarrel spilled outside and the two fought an impromptu duel with pistols on the Plainstones; Leith was shot through the head.

In 1881 Walter Gregor, writing in his classic work Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland, recorded a story that one of the Dukes of Gordon, stung at the criticism of the traditional two-ox plough by a Provost of Aberdeen, stated that the hand-made implement was so strong it could tear up the ‘plainstones’ in Castlegate. The Provost accepted the challenge, and the Duke brought his best oxen, plough and ‘goodman’ from Huntly. With an eager crowd of onlookers hoping for some entertainment, it first appeared as if the Duke would lose his bet; but when an extra goad was applied to one of the beasts, the team surged forward, scattering the plainstones right and left. Gregor does not give a date for the event and describes it as a ‘tradition’: it may or may not have happened as described.

Aberdeen has had several sites of execution over the centuries. After 1776 the gibbet was moved from GALLOWS HILL (near Pittodrie) to just west of the current position of the Mercat Cross, opposite King Street, where it remained for about a decade. In September 1785 a vagrant named John McDonald was hanged here for fire-raising. He believed that if he ate enough meat in the days before he went to the gallows, the drop would not kill him; this belief proved to be unfounded. John Milne in his 1911 book Topographical, Antiquarian, and Historical Papers on the City of Aberdeen describes the method of execution: the felon was escorted to the gallows on a carriage or sledge belonging to the watermen, a fraternity who carried butts of water through the streets; apparently it was the duty of the youngest member of this society to perform the task, a rather grim initiation ritual. At the gallows the noose was adjusted and the carriage driven smartly off, so that ‘the victim was left suspended by the neck, with his feet within a yard of the ground.’ Under these circumstances the ‘drop’ was unlikely to have broken the neck, so most victims would have died of slow strangulation. Things improved slightly with the construction of new-style gallows in front of the Tolbooth in 1788.

Milne recorded more on ancient punishments. In 1320 the Cock or Cuckstool stood on the south-west of Castle Street. This was a long beam balanced on a fulcrum, with a rope attached to one end. The criminal was tied to a seat at the other end and was ducked in water as many times as the law required. Apparently the Cuckstool was frequently used to punish ‘scolding women, brewsters of bad ale, and profane swearers.’ There is now no permanent water source in Castlegate; either there was once a pond or water-trough in the area, or the ducking stool was simply stored here and moved to somewhere watery when required. Next to the Cross was a post bearing a set of jougs, an iron collar on a short chain; gossips were sentenced to stand chained up here.