Tales from Scottish Lairds

Reviewed by Sharma Krauskopf and rated

Tales from Scottish Lairds is a great little book. It makes you familiar with many great castles of Scotland and the tales that only those who have lived in them would know. It is such fun. The great castles of Scotland receive many thousands of visitors each year. Now, in this collection of stories handed down through the generations, a vivid picture emerges of life in these stately homes in past centuries. Clan feuds, a strong belief in the supernatural and rigid social barriers all play their part in the stories which are told told by lairds of some of the most famous stately homes. Each tale is accompanied by a specially commissioned line drawing of the castle from which the tale comes.

The following is just one of the tales told:
Hopetoun House is, on the whole, a very happy home, but there is one tale which is imbued with terror. It is related here by the Marquess of Linlithgow.

There is a particular path, in the grounds of Hopetoun, which as children, for some reason or another, my sisters and brother and I always used to avoid. We had no particular reason for doing so except that we were always frightened of it. It was many years after we grew up that we were told the story which may or may not have had something to do with our fears, although, of course, we knew nothing about it when we were young.

The tradition is that on a number of occasions a dark, robed figure has been seen in the area. This ghostly apparition always coincides with some misfortune, usually a death in the family, almost immediately after the visitation.

The only incident which I can vouch for is that one day we were walking in the area with our dogs when, to our horror, they began growling and barking, and were obviously following something that they could see and we could not. One of them was even trying to snap at a pair of invisible ankles. Certainly, disaster followed within forty eight hours, and ever since that day I have avoided the area as much as possible. If I do have to take that particular path, I move with considerable speed and am very glad when I am past a particular tree, after which all sensations of fear disappear.