Articles

One year a shooting star streaked across the night sky, and a good harvest followed. Since shooting stars were not at their command, the people set out to mimic them with home-made fireballs.

A ballad called The Jolly Beggar, believed to be about King James V, tells of him seeking lodgings at ‘a hoose near Aiberdeen’ disguised as a beggar

The Mither Kirk Project has taken about six years to reach this stage. We anticipate that contractors will be on site shortly to begin Phase 1 – the repair and restoration of the exterior fabric. Phase 2, the interior structures and fit out will follow as soon as funding permits.

The lands of Auchmacoy have almost doubled in size, while Clan Buchan is a flourishing organisation with branches throughout the world.

Since their beginnings in 1973, the Bailies of Bennachie have embraced the story of the squatters who lived on the east corner of the hill. Today these crofting ruins can be explored freely, but little is known about them.

The last generation of traditional Kincardineshire fisherfolk is passing and the race is on to preserve something of their knowledge, of their life experience, before it slips irretrievably beyond our grasp.

“The recipe, as explained to me many years ago, is impressively easy to follow: Tae mak brose? One, a haunfae o oatmeal. Two, a pickie saut. Three, haud on the bilin watter. Fower, steer like buggery.”

Somewhat belittled in the ballad, the self-educated Jock Bruce of Fornet was in fact a writer with an interest in radical politics, an ardent campaigner and public speaker, a defender of the rights of the tenant farmer and a social commentator.

How an Aberdeen town councillor stole 1,044 coffin lids, seven coffins and two shrouds… and an undertaker was found guilty of the reset of 100 coffin lids and two coffins.

St Carol’s bell in the kirkyard at Ruthven, Aberdeenshire was named The Wow o’ Riven by Feel Jock – and it was a bell worth fighting over.

It is 700 years since the Martyrdom of William Wallace, Scotland’s greatest patriot – a charismatic leader, a brilliant military commander, and a man of ardent patriotic spirit and dauntless personal courage. As Scotland strives to regain its true place in Europe and the world, the City of Aberdeen is celebrating Wallace’s life on 20 August, remembering him with pride.

One hundred and twenty-five years ago this month, the Tay bridge blew down in a storm. How could this structure, such a source of profit and pride to its owners, vital key in a masterplan to connect Aberdeen to London, become to land communications what the Titanic became to the high seas?”

An insight into the customs of fisherfolk on the east coast of Scotland

Early last century, Gavin Greig, the well-known song collector, warned that unless the whaling minstrelsy was recorded it was ‘likely to die out with the veteran army of Greenland heroes’. This is a background to some of the songs that survived.

Norman Kennedy, the Aberdeen-born traditional singer and handloom weaver, Norman Kennedy, has been awarded the prestigious National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts in the USA.

Winnie Carnegie takes a look at the magpie’s curse, and other superstitions.

A supernatural tale by Frank Woods.

Marion Youngblood on the last in the Heroic Age of Pictish warriors.

A closer look at our ancient northern rituals of flaring fireballs, blazing barrels and boats – and sometimes sacrifice for the greater good of the community.

We’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns, but how much do we know about him?