Dance The Reel of Glamis 5520

(or “The Clever Lad”)

Glamis is a village in the Vale of Strathmore in the fertile farming country of Angus. There is an unmistakable aura of the mediaeval world about Glamis, for the ancient cottages of the village huddle close as if for protection to the high walls that surround the great castle.

Glamis Castle has been made famous by a long ago king and a modern queen. MacBeth, king of Scotland from 1040 to 1057, was the Thane of Glamis of Shakespeare’s play, and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, spent much of her childhood at the family castle.

The castle itself began as a hunting lodge of Scottish kings probably about the 11th century. Indeed, one of the many traditions of Glamis is that Malcolm II died there in 1034. Another tradition has it that the castle was to have been built atop Hunters Hill, certainly a more advantageous situation for any castle, but each morning the workers found that the local fairies had been busy during the night scattering the building stones that they had laboriously set the day before. Naturally, this sort of activity was discouraging to the 11th century workmen and the castle was erected on the flat land by the Dean Water at a good distance from the irate fairies. Even so, the castle was not without its defences for in place of a commanding situation it had double walls and seven gates leading to it.

In 1372 Robert II granted Glamis to Sir John Lyon of Forteviot, the “White Lyon”, who was to become Chamberlain of Scotland and husband of the king’s daughter, Joanna. The castle, much as it appears today, was built by Patrick Lyon who was created Earl of Kinghorne in 1606 by James VI (I). Patrick, the third earl, changed his style in 1677 to that of Strathmore and Kinghorne. In 1767 John, 9th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, married Mary Eleanor Bowes, an English heiress, and from that time the family has been known as Bowes-Lyon. In 1923 Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon married Albert, Duke of York, who became George VI in 1936. Princess Margaret Rose was born at Glamis in 1930.

Hoary Glamis Castle, towering and ghost-ridden, has sheltered many notable people. James V seized the castle after Janet Douglas, the widowed Lady Glamis, had been burnt on a trumped-up charge of witchcraft in 1540, and he and his court lived there for four years. Queen Mary stayed at Glamis in 1562 on her way north to Inverness and her son, James, whas often a guest at the castle. The troops of Oliver Cromwell, destructive rather than notable, were quartered there. James Francis Edward Stuart, the “Old Pretender”, spent a night there in 1716 and a total of eighty-eight beds were bespoke for his retinue.

Since the late 18th century Glamis Castle has undergone many alterations that have turned it into a family home. But the old tower remains unchanged, and the crypt and the dungeon and so do the many ghosts that nightly inhabit its many rooms.