Dunottar Castle.
The detached, or semi-detached, rock on which the ruins of the Castle stand is about two miles south of Stonehaven. It is 160 feet high, and a deep chasm separates it, all but completely, from the mainland, which at this point is wild and precipitous. The neighbourhood, indeed, is a continuous series of cliffs, which are frequented by numerous sea-birds: hence the popular name given to the coast, of the ‘Fowlesheugh.’
Here again the resources of our own Antiquary were called into requisition, and he assured us, with the unblushing confidence of an expert, that the name of the Castle meant in Gaelic ‘the fort of the low promontory.’ It is easy to believe that the rock was the site of a castle from very early times, a siege of ‘Dunfoither’ (as it was then called) by a king of the Picts in the seventh century being on record (681 A.D.). [1] The Castle the ruins of which remain is of course of much later date, though its buildings belong to different ages. It appears, from evident signs, to have covered the greater part of the surface of the rock, which is 4½ acres in extent.
[1] See Sir Donald Currie’s Book of Garth and Fortingall, page 83.
Its position resembles very closely that of Tantallon Castle in the Firth of Forth, and before the days of artillery it must have been almost impregnable. Nevertheless, Blind Harry describes a capture of Dunottar by William Wallace, when four thousand Englishmen were burned in the Castle. It was re-fortified by Edward III. in 1336; but these incidents relate to an older castle than that of which the remains survive.
The present Castle, as far as can be ascertained, was begun by Sir William Keith, the ‘Great Marischal of Scotland,’ towards the close of the fourteenth century, and the lands and castle remained in the hands of the Keith family till the Rebellion of 1715, when the owner threw in his lot with the Pretender, and forfeited his estates. One of the mottoes of the family was couched in the quaint and defiant words,
‘They haif said:
Quhat say they:
Lat thame say!’