This, by the way, is not our sole glimpse of the “folk-medicine” of this period. Among the multitudinous “varieties” of old papers, we find a prescription by the learned Dr. Clark of Edinburgh, for Sir Robert Gordon’s son, who was suffering from an obstinate cough, suggestive of the east winds of the fair city. May 20th 1739.—“Give him twice a day the juice of twenty slettars, squeezed through a muslin rag, in whey: to be continued while he has any remains of the cough.” The sletters which were to work this cure are those little, grey, armour-plated wood-lice which are found under old stones, and which, when alarmed, roll themselves up into hard balls.

Speaking of odd superstitions, there is one which somehow connected pigeons with death. It was said that a person lying on a bed of pigeon’s feathers could not die, and it was customary to apply living pigeons to the feet of a person in extremis. Thus Samuel Pepys speaks of a man whose “breath rattled in his throat, and they did lay pigeons at his feet, and all despair of him.” He also notes how the queen of Charles II. was so ill as to have pigeons put to her feet, and extreme unction administered. From this the birds would appear to have been applied as a last resource to prevent (or was it to facilitate?) death.

On the other hand, it was supposed that if a man wished to get rid of his wife he had only to build a pigeon-house. Sir Robert, who hated his wife, seems to have tried this remedy, for he built no less than four large dove-cots—circular towers of about thirty feet in height by sixty-three in diameter at the base, the interior being curiously fitted with hundreds of little compartments for nests. One of these still stands close to the house, and another at a very short distance. One of the four seems to have been built for the annoyance of his neighbours, being on a moorland marsh far from his own cultivated lands, but close to theirs, and especially to those of Brodie of Brodie, the Lord Lyon King of Arms. Hence we find a lawyer’s letter of remonstrance, showing that “Sir Robert’s doves in that dovecoat will be fedd by the Lyon’s tennant’s corns, especially the pease of Kinnedar.... The building of this fourth dovecoat is an iniquous burden levelled at the Lyon.”

How the aggrieved neighbours must have rejoiced when the Jacobite soldiers found their way to Gordonstoun and made a raid on the dove-cots! In the spring of 1746 Sir Robert writes: “The Rebells destroyed my pigeons at Gordonstoun by shooting the doves; and in the evening, when it was to be presumed the doves had entered the dovecott, they first stoped the dovecott, that the pigeons could not get out, then broke open the door, and entering, destroyed the doves within.... They also destroyed my dovecott of Bellormy.”

Whatever hope Sir Robert may have entertained of expediting the death of Dame Agnes, he failed signally, though he succeeded in making her life so miserable that she left Gordonstoun and went with two of her sons to live at Pitgaveny, beside the Loch of Spynie. Whereupon her loving spouse devised a very remarkable means to avoid being compelled to make her an allowance for aliment. As he sat down to every meal he sent a servant to Lady Gordon’s deserted apartments to summon her. Thus was Lady Gordon “called to her meals”!

When at length he was legally compelled to grant her maintenance, he assigned to her use the produce of certain outlying fields, on the verge of which (or, as the old record says, “on Lady Gordon’s extremities”) he built one of his great dove-cots with intent that the hungry birds should feed at her expense.

This much-aggrieved wife survived not only her loving spouse, but also her four sons, and even Sir Alexander Penrose Cumming of Altyre, who then succeeded to the estates, but died in 1806, SO THAT HER JOINTURE WAS PAID FOR SOME YEARS BY MY FATHER—a circumstance which certainly seems to bring us very near to all these strangely old-world doings.

In her later years she moved to a house at Lossiemouth, where she lived well into the nineteenth century, and was long remembered by the inhabitants as an energetic old lady with a gold-headed cane, living in great alarm of an invasion by the French, against whose approach she fortified herself by an expedient which was then deemed as ingenious as it was novel, namely, to crest her high garden walls with broken glass strongly embedded in lime.

Great was the rejoicing of rich and poor when in 1772 Sir Robert died, having, as aforesaid, actually been in possession of the estate for seventy-one years.

Gladly was the accession of his eldest son hailed, and great were the hopes that he might long be spared to hold his lands in peace and prosperity. For this young Sir Robert was an accomplished and kindly man, who, having escaped from his gloomy home, had spent much of his time in travel, and now gave promise of becoming a most useful county gentleman. Several very interesting and beautifully written diaries remain to prove his keen powers of observation at home and abroad.

But, alas! his career was hardly begun when, within three years, he died, and was succeeded by his brother William, who proved well-nigh as gloomy, retired, eccentric, and litigious as his father. Shutting up the greater part of the house, he lived entirely in one wing, practising strict economy. This measure was partly the result of the heavy tax on windows, which, having been first imposed in 1695, was considerably increased in 1784, in consequence of which many of the gentry resorted to the dismal expedient of building up several of their windows, while others gave up the use of half their houses, abandoning their empty rooms to the bats and owls. Nevertheless the obnoxious tax was still further increased in 1808, nor was it till 1823 that an alleviation was procured, and the final repeal was enacted in 1851. How quickly we forget pain when past! How few of the present generation remember the struggles of the last to secure the free use of light and air!

Sir William lived till 1795, and on his deathbed, knowing that the title must pass away to the family of Gordon of Letterfourie, and determined that they should not possess the estates, he made a will, leaving all his personal property and the valuable old library^[26] to his natural son, and all his lands to Sir Alexander Penrose Cumming of Altyre, as the direct descendant of Lucy Gordon, the daughter of Sir Ludovick.

Knowing that such a will was liable to be disputed unless it could be proven that the writer was not only of sound mind but had also been seen “at kirk and mercat”^[27] at a subsequent date to that of his signing the document, Sir William actually left his sick-bed to show himself publicly in the parish church, and on his return home wrote a letter to the father of the minister to say how much he had been gratified by the sermon preached that morning by his son. The cunning old gentleman was well assured that his carefully dated letter would be preserved by the proud father, and could be called for should any vexatious questions arise.

So the broad lands passed into the hands of Sir Alexander Cumming, who consequently assumed the name of Gordon. But he was by no means suffered to possess the estates unchallenged, the Duchess of Portland laying claim to them in right of her descent from another Lucy Gordon, of a later generation, the daughter of Sir Robert the Wizard. This Lucy had married David Scott of Scotstarvet, and some eminent lawyers maintained that her right by inheritance was sufficiently strong to upset Sir William’s will. So a tedious lawsuit commenced which wore on through weary years at an enormous expense to all concerned. The chances of the litigants appeared so well balanced that Sir Alexander, dreading the overwhelming costs that would be entailed on him should he lose his suit, strove to make some preparation for such a contingency by wholesale cutting of the fine old timber around the house—ornamental timber, which was so doubly valuable in this monotonously flat country.

From that evil period, it is needless to say, the estate has never recovered, so far as its appearance is concerned, though, happily, enough of the ancestral trees remain to satisfy the rooks, those most faithful adherents to old rook-traditions, whose cawing chorus and eerie flight at sunrise and sunset awaken such multitudinous memories of the past.