Tour Scotland Video Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Stone National Museum Edinburgh

Tour Scotland travel video of the Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Stone on ancestry, genealogy, history visit and trip to the National Museum in Edinburgh. This stone was discovered at Hilton of Cadboll, on the East coast of the Tarbat Peninsula in Easter Ross. It is one of the most magnificent of all Pictish cross-slabs. On the seaward-facing side is a Christian cross, and on the landward facing side shown in the video are secular depictions. The latter are carved below the Pictish symbols of crescent and v-rod and double disc and Z-rod: a hunting scene including a woman wearing a large penannular brooch riding side-saddle. Like other similar stones, it can be dated to about 800 AD.

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Tour Scotland Video Cars Driving Through Flooding Road Perth Perthshire

Tour Scotland Summer travel video of cars driving through a flooded road on visit and trip just South of Scone Palace, Perth, Perthshire, Scotland.

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Old Photograph Kincardine Castle Auchterarder Scotland

Old photograph of Kincardine Castle by Auchterarder, Perthshire, Scotland. About the middle of the 13th century Malise, Earl of Strathearn, conferred the lands of Kincardine on Sir David de Graham, to whose descendant, the Duke of Montrose, they give the title of Earl of Kincardine. The coat of arms of Sir David de Graham appears on the earliest known roll of Scottish arms dated 1332. These shows three scallop shells, used as pilgrim’s begging bowls, and indicate an early Graham had made the pilgrimage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella in Spain. The scallops are also found on the earliest known Graham seal dated 1230.



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Old Photograph Lady Nairne Memorial Gask Perthshire Scotland

Old photograph of the Lady Nairne Memorial in Gask, Perthshire, Scotland. She was born Carolina Oliphant, at Gask House, Perthshire on 16th August 1766. She had three sisters and two brothers, and fortunately, her father was a progressive thinker for his time as he belived in education for girls as well as boys. Her father, Laurence Oliphant, and her mother's family, the Robertsons of Struan, were fierce supporters of the Jacobite movement. Both her father and grandfather had to leave Scotland after Culloden. Their lands were bought by relatives in the ensuing sales of forfeited estates. Her father suffered in poor health, brought on by his experiences whilst in exile, and to cheer him and her uncle, Duncan Robertson, Chief of Clan Struan, she composed Jacobite songs and set them to old tunes. Charlie is my Darling, Will Ye no Come Back Again, and The Hundred Pipers are examples of this.



In her younger years, she was pretty, energetic, and had a keen fondness for dancing. Niel Gow, the famous fiddler, was a contemporary, and they no doubt crossed paths. It was at this time that she adapted popular melodies with new lyrics. The original lyrics would have been considered much too crude for society folk. These included The Laird o' Cockpen, The County Meeting, and The Pleughman.

On June 2nd, 1806, at age 41, she married her second cousin, Major William Murray Nairne, and they remained in Edinburgh until his death in 1830. It was upon coming to Edinburgh that she became involved in her lifelong project to preserve and foster the songs of Scotland. In those days, it was not considered proper for ladies of her place in society to dabble in what she herself called "this queer trade of song-writing". Her attempts at keeping her hobby a secret included not telling her husband, publishing her books anonymously, or under the nom-de-plume: Mrs. Bogan of Bogan. Much of her work was contributed in this form, to Robert Purdie's The Scottish Minstrel, 1821-24, in six volumes. When she went to visit him, she would wear an old, veiled cloak, in the hopes she would not be recognized.

In 1824, following George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822 and Walter Scott's endless petitioning, Parliament restored the forfeited Jacobite peerages and Major Nairne regained the family Barony, and she and her husband became Baron and Baroness Nairne.

Baron Nairne died in 1830, and from then on, she travelled quite extensively with her invalid son, who was born in 1808, and her great niece. First, she went to Bristol, then Ireland, and then travelled widely on the Continent. Her son died in Brussels in 1837, and she finally relented to her relatives' pleas to return to Scotland in 1845. Tired and sick, she came back to her home in Gask to die on October 26, 1845, at age 79. She was buried within the new chapel which had been completed only days earlier.

Two years after her death, a posthumous collection of verse, Lays of Strathearn, was prepared by her sister, but this time her name subscribed to the book. A granite cross was erected to her memory in the grounds of Gask House. Altogether, she wrote or adapted nearly 100 songs and poems in her lifelong endeavor. Lady Carolina Nairne deserves recognition today, because not only did she help to preserve many Scottish tunes, but also, at a time when women's talents were expected to be merely domestic, she managed to do her own thing.

Her creative ability, the secret part of her life, never interfered with her position as a society lady. Lady Carolina Nairne has been sadly neglected, but to her we owe immense gratitude, for, without her, much of the Scottish musical heritage would have been lost.

Lady Nairne was an astute collector of song and wrote some of Scotland's best known songs, yet today there are few people that are familiar with her work. It doesn't help that some of her songs and prose have have been attributed to Robert Burns, James Hogg or Sir Walter Scott.

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Old Photograph Lifeboat Girvan Scotland

Old photograph of launching the lifeboat from the beach by Girvan in South Ayrshire, Scotland. The first lifeboat was the Earl of Carrick built at a cost of £300 and was launched by carriage which could if necessary be transported by road to a launching site nearer to the emergency. In 1910 the lifeboat station was moved and rebuilt on a new site. In 1931 the first motor lifeboat Lily Glen Glasgow arrived and was kept at moorings in the harbour.



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