Aberdeenshire

“ The Highlanders retreated whence they came and the county of Aberdeen was saved from the imminent peril of a Celtic recrudescence. This is the only really memorable battle associated with Aberdeenshire soil. Its “red” field, on which so many prominent citizens shed their life-blood (Provost Davidson and Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum being of the number) , was long remembered as a dreary and costly victory.
Another battle of much less significance was that of Corrichie, fought in Queen Mary’s reign in 1562 on the eastern slope of the Hill of Fare, not far from Banchory. ”

“ The exquisite little ballad from which I quote is calculated to raise expectations of beauty which the picturesque surroundings of Bennachie are well able to satisfy. Great tracts of Aberdeenshire are flat, treeless, and painful in their monotony; in winter, great gusts sweep the cold plains, and make driving or walking a trying ordeal; the country is thinly peopled, and the impression of the visitor is that, in some districts, railway stations are more numerous than villages. Round Bennachie, however, the scenery is most pleasant and picturesque. ”

“ The crops chiefly cultivated are oats, barley, turnips and potatoes. Wheat is not grown except now and again in an odd field. The climate is too cold, the autumn heat never rising to the point of ripening that crop satisfactorily. Oats is the most frequent crop, and Aberdeenshire is the oat-producing county of Scotland. A fifth of the whole acreage under this crop in Scotland belongs to Aberdeenshire. Perth, which is next, has only one-third of the Aberdeenshire oat-area. Twenty thousand acres are devoted to barley, only one-tenth of the barley-area in Scotland. ”

“ The county sends two members to parliament —one for East Aberdeenshire and the other for West Aberdeenshire. The county town, Aberdeen (q.v.) , returns two members. Peterhead, Inverurie and Kintore belong to the Elgin group of parliamentary burghs, the other constituents being Banff, Cullen and Elgin. The county is under school-board jurisdiction, and there are also several voluntary schools. There are higher-class schools in Aberdeen, and secondary schools at Huntly, Peterhead and Fraserburgh, and many of the other schools in the county earn grants for secondary education. ”

“ Malcolm shortly after passed through Aberdeenshire at the head of an expedition against the Celtic population which had supported Macbeth. The Norman Conquest, nine years thereafter, was the occasion of Anglo-Saxon settlements in the county. The court of Malcolm and Queen Margaret became a centre of Anglo-Saxon influence. The old Gaelic language gave way before the new Teutonic speech. The Celtic population made various attempts to recover the power that was fast slipping from their hands. ”

“ Aberdeen was a model landlord. By draining the land, by planting millions of trees and by erecting numerous buildings, he greatly improved the condition of his Aberdeenshire estates, and studied continually the welfare of his dependants. A bust of him by Matthew Noble is in Westminster Abbey, and his portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence. He wrote An Inquiry into the Principles of Beauty in Grecian Architecture (London, 1822) , and the Correspondence of the Earl of Aberdeen has been printed privately under the direction of his son, Lord Stanmore. ”

“ In Aberdeenshire it is believed that whosoever pulls the first stone out of a church, although it is for a good purpose, and to make way for a new one, will come to a violent end. My informant, a clergyman of the Church in Scotland, knew a case in which no workman had courage to begin, although the new place of worship had been built. ”

“ But he was afterwards consulted by the government respecting the affairs of Scotland, and the Duke of Newcastle aided him in what proved to be his successful candidature for Aberdeenshire. He was elected as a staunch whig in 1747. ”

“ Over seven thousand acres go to potatoes; the southern counties have a soil better adapted to produce good potatoes; Forfar, Fife, Perth and Ayrshire excel in this respect and all these give a larger acreage to this crop. As regards turnips, however, Aberdeenshire is easily first. Being a great cattle rearing and cattle feeding district, it demands a large tonnage of turnip food. It is estimated that a million and a half tons of turnips are consumed every year in the county.
As regards cattle and horses the county has first place in Scotland. ”

“ All throughout those troubles, the northern Dioceses, and among them the Diocese of Aberdeen, were so many green spots in the desert. The arts of insurgency had been so successful in other districts as to create a specious but false appearance of national sympathy with, and adherence to, the Covenant, and of disaffection to the Church and the Throne. Throughout the larger half of Scotland, and especially in Aberdeenshire, all that was sober-minded, well ordered, and loyal, was in the ascendant. The two northern Universities spoke out, true as ever to Church and King. ”

“ The term came along with the people who were flocking into Scotland from the south. The lines were drawn for what seemed political convenience and no doubt they were suited to the times. To-day the boundaries seem on occasion somewhat erratic. Banchory, for example, is in Kincardineshire, while Aboyne and Ballater on the same river bank and on the same line of road and railway are in Aberdeenshire. If the carving were to be done over again in the twentieth century, more consideration would probably be given to the railway lines. ”

“ These elect the chairman and vice-chairman, who are designated respectively convener and vice-convener. County Councils were first established in 1889. The county is divided into districts, and each district has so many divisions, or parishes, which elect one councillor. Aberdeenshire has 85 parishes, which are grouped in eight districts: (1) Deer with fifteen electoral divisions, (2) Ellon with seven, (3) Garioch with six, (4) [167] Deeside with six, (5) Turriff with seven, (6) Aberdeen with nine, (7) Alford with four, and (8) Huntly with four, making fifty-eight electoral divisions in all. ”

“ Its most valuable mineral is granite, large quantities of which are exported. The principal rivers are the Dee and the Don, both of which enter the sea at the town of Aberdeen. Cereals (except wheat) and other crops succeed well, and the number of acres under cultivation is nearly double that of any other Scottish county. Great numbers of cattle are fattened and sent to London and the south. On the banks of the upper Dee is situated Balmoral, a favourite residence of Queen Victoria. Aberdeenshire and Kincardine unite in sending three members to Parliament. ”

“ Agriculture.The agriculture of Aberdeenshire has been considerably improved of late years; and wheat, as well as other grain, with potatoes, turnips, and clover, are now cultivated according to the best courses of modern husbandry. Farms, however, are still generally of a small size, compared with these of the south-eastern counties; and the buildings, though gradually improving, are for the most part much less convenient and comfortable. Here, as in every other part of Scotland, a lease for nineteen years is the most common bond of connection between the landholder and farmer ”

“ The student of eugenics will note that among the tea-bibbing islanders of the west the teeth of the natives are poor. My experience tends to show that the best teeth in Scotland are to be found in Aberdeenshire. When a Buchan audience laughs, there is a gleam of polished ivory that is very impressive; but rural Aberdeen has deviated less into slops than any other part of Britain.
[6] "There are probably now more persons of Highland descent in the Lowlands than in the Highlands themselves."—Scotland of To-Day, by Henderson and Watt, p. ”

“ It is the focus of the trawling industry, and of the granite trade; while the agricultural interests of the county look to Aberdeen as their chief mart and distributing medium. Its secondary schools, its technical college, its agricultural college, its University, all help to swell its population by bringing strangers to reside within its boundaries. ”

“ Edward I of England in 1296 at the head of a large army paid these northern parts a visit. He entered the county by the road leading from Glenbervie to Durris, whence he proceeded to Aberdeen, exacting homage from [108] the burghers during his five days’ stay. From Aberdeen he went to Kintore and Fyvie and on to Speyside, returning by the Cabrach, Kildrummy, Kincardine O’Neil and the Cairn-o-Mounth. ”

“ No less potent a factor in the evolution of the Aberdonian has been his struggle with a well-nigh irreclaimable soil. The county is without mineral wealth, and the only outlet for his energy was found in attacking the boulder-strewn moors and in clearing them for the plough. To this he set his mind in the eighteenth century with grim determination. Small farmers and crofters by dint of great personal toil and life-long self-sacrifice transformed stony tracts of poor and apparently worthless land into smiling and productive fields. ”

“ A third district, often and seriously disturbed by robberies, was Strathspey and the alpine ground extending from it towards Perthshire and Aberdeenshire—a country of Macphersons and M‘Intyres, now the scene of an improved agriculture, and the nursery of vast herds of sheep and cattle devoted to the sustenance of the industrial cities of England. In those days, men who would now be successful farmers, exemplifying the decent virtues of the Scottish middle class, were little better than banditti. ”

“ The area of the county, exclusive of water and roadways, is 1955 square miles, or 1,251,451 acres. Of this exactly one half is under cultivation, 628,523 acres. When we remember that Scotland contains some nineteen million of acres and that only 25 per cent. of this acreage is arable land, it is apparent that Aberdeen with its 50 per cent. is one of the most cultivated areas. As a matter of fact it has by far the largest acreage under cultivation of any Scottish county. Next to it is Perthshire with 336,251 acres. ”

“ The country districts are but thinly peopled, especially on the Highland line, and the tendency is for the rural population to dwindle. They either emigrate to Canada, which is a regular lodestone for Aberdonians, or they betake themselves to the towns, chiefly to Aberdeen itself. Except in and around the principal town, the county has hardly any industries that employ many hands. Agriculture is the main employment, and modern appliances enable the farmer to do his work with fewer helps than formerly: hence the depopulation of the rural districts. ”

“ Henceforth we are alongside of Kincardineshire and the line bends north-west with a semi-circular sweep round Banchory-Ternan and the Hill of Fare to Crathes, from a little beyond which, the bed of the Dee becomes the boundary line all the way to Aberdeen. In all this area of high ground the line of march is practically the watershed throughout, marking off the drainage area [14] of the Don and the Dee from that of the Deveron and the Avon (a tributary of the Spey) on the one hand, and from that of the Tay and the two Esks (south and north) on the other. ”

“ It is this struggle with a malignant soil, more than anything else, that has made the Aberdonian; one triumph led on to another, and to-day the spirit of enterprise in farming is nowhere more pronounced than in this difficult county. ”

“ Besides coal, esparto grass, wood-pulp and rags for paper-making, foreign granite in the rough state sent to be polished, flour, maize, linseed, the horns of cattle used for comb-making, and the salt used in fish-curing, are the chief materials landed on the Aberdeen quays. Aberdeen being the distributing centre for the county, and all the railway routes focussing in it, the coal and the building materials not produced in the district, such as lime, slate and cement, all pass this way, while the tea and sugar, the tobacco and other articles of daily use, also arrive mostly by the harbour. ”

“ The county is almost purely agricultural. It has always enjoyed a certain measure of maritime activity and of recent years the fishing industry, especially at Aberdeen, has made immense progress, but as a whole the area is a well-cultivated district. Round the coast and on all the lower levels tillage is the rule. In the interior the level of the land rises rapidly, and ploughed fields [6] give place to desolate moors and bare mountain heights in which agriculture is an impossible industry. The surface of the lowland parts, now in regular cultivation, was originally very rough and rock-strewn. ”

“ The most easterly of the Scottish counties, it abuts like a prominent shoulder into the North Sea. It has, therefore, a considerable sea-board partly flat and sandy, partly rocky and precipitous. The population of the numerous villages dotted along this coast used in time past to devote themselves to fishing, but the tendency of recent years has been to concentrate this industry in the larger towns, Fraserburgh, Peterhead and Aberdeen.
Other industries there are few. Next to agriculture and fishing comes granite, which is the only mineral worthy of mention found in the county. ”

“ These were united in 1860 as the University of Aberdeen. Since that time the buildings of both Colleges have been largely added to, and the number of professorships greatly increased. Its students in the different faculties, Arts, Medicine, Science, Law and Divinity are little short of 1000.
The Old Grammar School, Schoolhill
Being the only really large town in the county, and for that matter in the whole north of Scotland, it tends to grow in importance, and its business connections are ever extending. ”