Dance Crieff Fair 1415

The douce Perthshire town of Crieff was the scene of the great cattle market every year from 1672 until 1770. The Highlanders brought their saleable cattle down from the mountains along the drove roads and at Crieff they would meet the buyers from the Lowlands and from England who would drive the herds that they had bought south to be fattened.

In 1672 James Drummond, 4th Earl and titular 1st Duke of Perth (1648–1716), later Lord Chancellor of Scotland, obtained from the Scottish Parliament an act establishing an annual tryst at Crieff, which lay in Drummond territory, a cattle sale that was to become the most important in all of Scotland. At the Crieff Fair of 1723, over 30,000 head of cattle were sold. In 1770, the market was transferred to Stenhousemuir near Falkirk in Stirlingshire, a much easier location for the buyers to reach as it was out of the hills and well south of the River Forth.

Lying on the first wooded slopes of the Grampians and overlooking the wide and verdant valley of the Earn, Crieff as a place is ancient but the town itself is comparatively new. In 1218 the town was officially referred to as “Crefe die Sancta Ambrosii”, though why St. Ambrose, a 4th century bishop of Milan, should be connected with Crieff is a bit of a mystery as the town’s saint was Thomas. There are only two relics of any antiquity in Crieff. One is the 10th century Cross of Crieff, a Runic carved stone of the Celtic church which was probably a preaching cross. The other is the Cross of the Burgh of the Regality of Drummond. Both of these crosses stand under protective canopy roofs on the High Street.

In January of 1716 Crieff was totally destroyed by a fire set at the order of John Erskine, 11th Earl of Mar (1675–1732). The purpose of this atrocity, committed by the Jacobite army to a town within the territory of the Jacobite Drummond family, was to prevent the Royalist army under John Campbell, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1678–1743), from obtaining provisions in its march from Stirling to Perth in hot pursuit of the already defeated rebels. In addition to “Bobbing John” Erskine’s “scorched earth” action, the old Crieff Bridge over the River Earn was also partially destroyed as a delaying tactic to th enemy’s possible advance northward. Crieff rose phoenix-like about 1732 when it was rebuilt by James, 6th Earl and titular 3rd Duke of Perth (1713–1747), only to suffer further severe damage during the Rising of 1745.

Today a pleasant and serene holiday centre, Crieff has had other brushes with history. The Romans encamped nearby. Robert the Steward, the first Stewart king of Scotland, is reputed to have held court there. On the south side of Crieff Bridge was the court of the Stewartry of Strathearn and there was located the “kindly gallows of Crieff” where was turned off many a Highland cattle thief. “Kindly” is a strange word to apply to a gallows, but compared to the othe rmeans of execution employed at the time, hanging was certainly the most benign. The last victim of the gallows was the Reverend Richard Duncan who was executed for child murder in 1682. Just behind Crieff looms the Knock or Crobha Cnoic and Kate McNievan’s Craig, the alleged spot where Scotland’s last witch is supposed to have been burned. For the unhappy woman the “kindly” gallows on the other side of the river would have been infinitely preferable.

As at other fairs throughout the Scottish countryside, Crieff Fair was a major event and held attractions beside the buying and selling of cattle. Booths would have been set up to entice Highlanders with money to spend to buy what to them were luxury items to take back to their isolated homes. In an atmosphere of barter and good cheer, where Gaels and English commingled, there was a social side to the event as men drank together in the taverns and the young people sought each other out for dancing to the tunes of the local fiddlers and for rural courtship.