Gordon Castle and William Marshall
With map and music!
Having visited Aberdeen and toured some key castles of the Scottish Northeast, we’ll now leave Aberdeenshire for a visit to neighboring Morayshire to the west, where we’ll find Gordon Castle and Craigellachie Bridge. Both have powerful musical connections, chiefly because of the great fiddler and composer William Marshall (1748-1833).
On the map below, these two locations are #7 and 8. The others are all places in the Scottish northeast that we’ve been visiting, or will visit in upcoming posts.
#1 is Aberdeen, where we visited the grave of fiddler and composer James Scott Skinner, got to hear the singing of Fiona Kennedy, and northeast ballads sung by Janice Reavell.
#2 - 6 are locations of castles we discussed last week. #3, Crathes Castle, is near Banchory, the birthplace of J.S. Skinner. All are in Aberdeenshire except #6, Glamis Castle, which is in Angus.
Upcoming: #9 is Findhorn, where we’ll have a special concert, and #10, Strathdon, for a unique and musical stay back in Aberdeenshire, along with a visit to a dramatic geological formation in the northeast corner of Cairngorms National Park.
Last week, we moved from castle to castle by 20-mile increments: first we saw Dunnottar Castle, which is 20 miles south of Aberdeen, then went 20 miles northwest to Crathes, 20 miles northwest to Craigievar, and 20 miles northwest again, to Huntly Castle. (Glamis was a special recent visit of mine which didn’t fit the itinerary of our walking tours.)
Let’s continue that pattern, and from Huntly Castle, we’ll go another 20 miles northwest to Gordon Castle near Fochabers. This castle was built in the 15th century by the same Gordons who owned Huntly Castle. We visited the area but not the castle itself; today, only the oldest tower and a wing of the building survive. It used to be quite large after a number of additions made over the centuries, but by the 1930s had to be sold off, and fell into disrepair over the following decades.
Below is a view of Gordon Castle from an 1804 engraving, at the time one of Scotland’s greatest fiddlers and composers, William Marshall, was living in the area. Marshall served the Duke and Duchess of Gordon in the castle for 30 years, later working for them outside the castle as a factor overseeing some of their estates.
Marshall served the 4th Duke of Gordon, known as “Cock o’ the North” because of the Gordons’ wealth and power in Scotland. The Duke and Duchess were a lively couple with a tempestuous marriage, neither making much effort to be faithful to the other. The Duchess, born Jane Maxwell, was considered a great beauty with an “open ruddy countenance” and “quick in repartee.” It was also written that “The Duchess triumphs in a manly mien; Loud is her accent, and her phrase obscene."
William Marshall began working for the Gordons in 1760 when he was 12 years old, having had only six months of schooling. He eventually became the butler, and later house-steward for the castle, which meant he took charge of the house when the Gordons were away, made the Gordons’ travel arrangements, and sometimes accompanied them on their journeys.
One of the times Marshall traveled with the Gordons was captured in a painting that I mentioned in an earlier post, about Robert Burns’s house in Dumfries. It portrays a moment in Edinburgh, 1787, when Burns entertained the Duchess of Gordon and others with readings of his works. Those present are named in the caption inscribed at the bottom of the frame. At the far right is “Willie Marshall, the butler,” in the act of pouring tea for the august company.
It is ironic to see Burns as the center of attention in that painting, while Marshall seems marginalized at the far edge, serving tea. Of course, Marshall was just doing his job as butler, but his musical prowess was greatly respected by Robert Burns, who called Marshall the “first composer of Strathspeys of the age” (i.e., the “#1 composer of strathspeys”), by which he was referring to a type of rhythmic tune unique and central to Scottish traditional music, dance, and song. Burns wrote words to several of Marshall’s tunes, including his famous “Of a’ the airts the wind can blaw” song, for which he used the melody of Marshall’s “Miss Admiral Gordon’s Strathspey.” This was quite a special song for Burns, as it was written for his wife during their honeymoon.
Marshall was a brilliant fiddler, and played regularly for the Duke and Duchess. One beautiful slow strathspey of his in Eb, called “The Marchioness of Cornwallis,” was a favorite of the Duke’s, and one he always requested to end his dining room concerts. (The Marchioness of Cornwallis was one of the Duke’s daughters.) Marshall composed over 200 tunes, all of them well-written melodies, ranging in key from four flats to four sharps, from slow and mournful to bright and quick. His music was well known throughout Scotland, many of his tunes being included in music books of the day, published by Niel Gow’s son Nathaniel and others. One of his tunes was called “Mr Marshall’s Compliments to Niel Gow,” which inspired a tune by Gow called “Niel Gow’s Compliments Returned to Mr Marshall.” Two books of Marshall’s compositions were published during his life, and a third posthumously.
Some players complained that they found his tunes too difficult, to which he responded that he didn’t write tunes for “bunglers.” This may explain the strange hand reaching out and grabbing my shoulder from behind Marshall’s grave, where I played some of his tunes for our group — I may have bungled a few notes!
In the middle photo above, you can see the size of Marshall’s grave, with two tablets carved to tell his story. The tombstone’s inscription is readable at right. (Reminder: if you are reading this in an email, you can click on any photo and it will take you to a view of the photo on my online Substack, where you can zoom in to get a closer look.)
The Bellie Cemetery, where Marshall was buried, contains quite a few other interesting tombstones, as well as a mausoleum where many members of the Gordon family were interred.
It seems hard to believe that Marshall had no musical training, as is claimed, and yet, he was so brilliant, dedicated and curious a man that he excelled not only in music but also in advanced knowledge about mechanics, astronomy, architecture, clockmaking, falconry, land surveying, gardening and more. He was also an accomplished athlete, being a good shot, a fine fisherman, and a top competitor in the hammer throw, foot races and jumping. One commentator mentioned that Marshall was also a light and agile dancer right into his 80s.
On one of our trips, we visited a historical museum in Fochabers, which features artifacts of local history, including a display about William Marshall, since he was born there, not far from Gordon Castle. You can see a few photos from the museum below.
At left is a picture of one of the clocks that Marshall designed and built. At the time we viewed the display, the actual clock was privately owned but was expected to be given eventually to the National Museum of Scotland. The clock shows exact equational time, the moon’s revolution around the earth, the signs of the zodiac, the sun’s place for each day in degrees and minutes, the sun’s declination north and south of the equator, sunrise, length of day and night, the equinoxes, and longest and shortest days.
Next to that photo is a shot of some of the old technology of the past, such as a buggy and various other contraptions, including a penny-farthing, which is that old bicycle from the 1870s with the giant front wheel and tiny back wheel. Below that is a series of humorous cartoons drawn when the penny-farthing was a newfangled thing, entitled “The Joys and Problems of Owning a Penny-farthing.” To the right are some images of several famous Gordons and Gordon Castle.
After 30 years, Marshall left the castle in 1790 and later worked for the Gordons as a factor on some of their estates. In 1822, he retired to a cottage south of the castle, near a marvel of civil engineering of the time, the Craigellachie Bridge.
Designed by the Thomas Telford, who built many roadways and infrastructure in Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, Craigellachie Bridge was revolutionary because it was made of cast iron, with enough strength to support a single 150-foot arch spanning the entire River Spey, even when it was “in spate,” or flooding.
In the photo at upper right, you can see the medieval-style towers. Notice that at the other end of the bridge, you might crash into a cliff if you go fast enough, because of a 90-degree right turn there, which has made the bridge impractical for heavy or speedy vehicles. About 50 yards away is a modern bridge that can handle highway traffic.
Thomas Telford also designed the bridge in Dunkeld, which was completed in 1807, the year Niel Gow died. It inspired Gow’s last tune, a lively reel in F called “Dunkeld Bridge.” Similarly, when William Marshall viewed the completed Craigellachie Bridge in 1814, he wrote one his most famous strathspeys, “Craigellachie Brig.” For our travelers, I used to play this tune at the bridge. You can hear fiddler Iain Fraser play it below, from his album Touchwood (with Christine Hanson on cello).
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