Dunphail Castle

Five headless ghosts are supposed to have haunted Dunphail Castle near Forres.  This was a Cummings Clan Castle and was under seige from the Earl of Moray.  Five of the defenders of the castle (Alasdair Comyn of Dunphail and 4 of his men) fought their way out to re-supply their comrades with food.  But when they returned with grain they were captured by the Moray men and beheaded; their heads were thrown to the castle defenders,  allegedly with the words “here’s your beef for your bannocks”.

The garrison of the castle also tried to flee but were slaughtered.

The lands later passed to the Dunbars where there were many tales of the five headless ghosts.

Later five headless skeletons were found, buried in a mound or barrow outside the castle.

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European cave spiders, also known as Meta menardi, need very dark places to live, usually being found in caves and tunnels away from the light, but a colony have made a home for themselves in an 8ft opening within the 15th century castle’s walls.  The conservation work on the former Clan MacDougall stronghold will take a number of years to complete.  The ruins have suffered badly over the years from both the weather and the ivy that covers a large part of the exterior, but there is a strong desire to leave the spiders in peace.
Mike Robertson, secretary of the MacDougall of Dunollie Preservation Trust which is overlooking the restoration, said, “We are talking about work that could take six or seven years and the spiders will have to be specially protected.
“Basically it’s the darkness that they need, we can’t put bright work lights there. They will have to be kept in the dark, but it’s for the experts to decide how best to protect them.”
European cave spiders are one the UK’s largest spider species, reaching several centimetres in size, but they are completely harmless to humans.

The current ruins of Dunollie Castle, which sits looking over Oban Bay, was built in the 1400s. However, it’s believed that the third chief of the MacDougall clan, Ewan MacDougall, built a castle on the same site sometime in the 1200s, and there was even a known fortification there well before the unification of Scotland.
The MacDougalls lost Dunollie a couple of times over the centuries; forfeiting the land after siding with their allies the Comyns against Robert the Bruce, and again in 1644 when the castle was captured by the Marquis of Argyll, though it was returned in 1661. Dunollie Castle was finally abandoned by the clan in 1746 and they built Dunollie House not far from the castle ruins.

Dunollie Castle

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The image of the lion in art and culture dates back to pre history and cave paintings. Our ancient ancestors who’s story began in Africa would have admired these powerful beasts and they would become symbols of noble savagery. As society advanced the symbolism became stronger; In ancient Egypt the lioness was merged with the human to create the sphinx.

In almost every other culture the lion was also present. Hittites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persian and many early islamic cultures. Its not hard to understand, after all the lioness is a dedicated mother and ruthless hunter, the male lion a majestic animal that defends his pride with fury. a good role model for early civilisations.

The lion probably entered early Christian culture via a manuscript called the ‘Physiologus’. This document probably dates back to around the 2nd century AD and consists of a number of descriptions of animals and birds as characters in a series of moral tales. In the opening story a lioness gives birth to stillborn cubs but the lioness brings them to life by breathing upon them, this and other similar stories are a direct reference to the idea of Christ’s resurrection and the redemption of man. The Physiologicus also gives us the story of the Pelican wounding herself to feed her young, an image that can be seen on the Stewart crest.

In the middle ages the manuscript was translated into latin and spread through central Europe and was adapted into several ‘Bestiaries’ With such strong links to these moral tales such animals would naturally form the cornerstone of heraldic symbolism where they would become like ‘moral flash cards’.

Such tales established the idea of the lion as the ‘king of the beasts’ and so its understandable that heraldic art would take on this concept of using the lion as a symbol of the ruling elite. This symbol entered Scottish heraldry with King William I. Known as William the Lion this tag did not come from his appearance of character but simply from his adoption of the lion as part of his own standard. His successor Alexander II took the same red lion rampant on a yellow ground and made this the royal symbol that would become the well known Royal Standard of Scotland.

I have used the phrase ‘rampant’ above. this refers to the attitude that the animal adopts, in this case raised up on hind legs and paws raised to strike (the lion can stand on either one or two legs depending on tradition although in British heraldry it tends to be one with the other also poised to strike). There are many other attitudes that animals such as lions, wildcats etc can assume; ‘Passant’ is walking with one fore paw raised, ‘Statant’ is standing with all paws on the ground, ‘Salient’ is leaping, ‘Sejant’ means in a sitting position and so on. Other phrases you may hear are ‘Guardant’ or ‘Affrontee’, where the animal faces the viewer and ‘Regardant’ where the animal looks to its rear.

With such strong links to Scottish royalty its no surprise that the Scots nobility would incorporate the lion into their own arms, some such as MacGregor make no secret of this with a lions head and the motto which translates as ‘Regal is my Race’. Here are the clans  and Scottish armigerous families we know of that use the lion symbol in their crests.

Baxter (A Lion Passant)

Broun (Rampant)

Bruce (Statant)

Chalmers (Head and Neck)

Cumming (Rampant)

Dundas (Head, Guardant)

Fairlie (Head Couped)

Farquharson (Rampant)

Heron (Demi Lion Rampant)

Home / Hume (Head)

Inglis (Demi Lion Rampant)

Little (Demi Lion Rampant)

Lundin (Demi Lion Rampant)

MacDowall (Lion’s Paw)

MacDuff (Rampant)

MacGregor (Head)

MacLaren (Head)

MacPhee (Demi Lion Rampant)

Maitland (Sejant, Affrontee)

Middleton (Demi Lion Rampant)

Moncrieffe (Demi Lion Rampant)

Moubray (Demi Lion Rampant)

Newton (Demi Lion Rampant)

Nicolson (Demi Lion Rampant)

Pentland (Head)

Primrose (Demi Lion Rampant)

Stuart of Bute (Demi Lion Rampant)

Vans (Rampant)

Young (Demi Lion Rampant)

Its easy to be confused about how an animal native to Africa could have such a profound symbolic influence in Europe, we should also remember that lions though not native or wild would have been brought over with invading Romans who would have kept the creatures for games or even as status symbols. Personally though I prefer to believe that it was not these poor caged beasts that influence the heralds of early mediaeval Europe but the lion tales of old that were seen as symbols of the ancient code of chivalry.

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Alan Cumming

The tartan is Cumming Hunting Weathered.

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