* The Gazetteer may be found at www.scotgeog.com. This downloaded page, the legend of the Black Jaws which appears below on pp. 188–95 (evidently photocopied from Menteith’s Relicts and Reminiscences of Old Monimaskit) and the typed pages of his recorded interview with William Winnyford on pp. 269–97, are the only parts of Gideon Mack’s testament not in his own handwriting. – P.W.
* Following the Disruption of 1843, the Free Kirk raised funds for and constructed a church north of the river, and the original Church of Scotland building acquired the adjective ‘Old’ to distinguish it from this upstart. In 1960 the Free or ‘New’ Kirk, having in the interim become the United Presbyterian Church before closure in 1952, was demolished to make way for public toilets. The Old Kirk, despite now being the only Presbyterian establishment in the town, retains its familiar appellation. – P.W.
* NessTrek’s Elgin branch closed in 2001, and the company was bought by a competitor in 2002. I have been unable to find any information with regard to the present whereabouts of Gideon Mack’s collar. – P.W.
* James Sharp (1613–79), Archbishop of St Andrews from 1661, was one of the most hated opponents of the Covenanters, who saw him as having betrayed the Church of Scotland by reintroducing Episcopacy following the Restoration of Charles II. An unrelenting persecutor of religious and political dissent, he was murdered in the presence of his daughter on Magus Muir, near St Andrews. – P.W.
*The Ancient Stones of Monimaskit and Surrounding District (Dundee: The Ballindean Press, 1983). – P.W.
* For the sake of readers not familiar with the Scots language, I supply a glossary of some of the words employed by Ephie Lumsden (or Augustus Menteith!) on this and the following pages. – P.W.
* Neither volume has been in print for some years, although a facsimile of Relicts and Reminiscences was issued in the 1970s by Messrs Nimmo & Grant, Forfar, in a limited run of 500 copies, and a new paperback edition is under consideration by myself at the time of writing. – P.W.
† It has been drawn to my attention by Dr Hugh Haliburton of the University of Stirling that Menteith’s ‘Legend of the Black Jaws’ bears a striking resemblance to the tale of ‘The Lady of Balconie’, related by Hugh Miller (1802–56) in his Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland (first published in 1835), a source of folklore with which Menteith would certainly have been familiar. Miller’s story is associated with the Black Rock of Kiltearn, near Evanton in Easter Ross. Catherine Craigie, however, appears not to have been aware of this similarity. – P.W.
* Once again I am indebted to Dr Hugh Haliburton for identifying the words quoted by Gideon Mack as being those of Hugh Miller, from ‘Lecture Sixth’ of his Sketch-Book of Popular Geology (1859). – P.W.
*By a strange coincidence, or what William Winnyford might call a ‘conjunction’, a book of this title has been written by a Dr Roland Tanner, presumably the same Dr Tanner who ‘saw’ Gideon Mack several months after his death. – P.W.
* My informant Dr Hugh Haliburton tells me that this is the very name given by James Hogg to the mysterious, devil-like figure that haunts the anti-hero of his novel The Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. I have never read this book, nor, it seems, despite his degree in literature, had Gideon Mack. At least, I assume that, had he done so, he would himself have noticed and remarked upon this curious point. – P.W.
By the same author
Close & Other Stories
The Ragged Man’s Complaint
Sound Shadow (poetry)
Scottish Ghost Stories
Voyage of Intent: Sonnets and Essays from
the Scottish Parliament
The Fanatic
Joseph Knight
The Testament of Gideon Mack Page 44