Colinsburgh

Map of this area

The Earl's Village

The village of Colinsburgh is one straight street. Ranged austerely on each side of the road are cottages whose doors open on to the pavements and whose flat faces give no hint of the long and pleasant gardens behind them. There is an old-fashioned inn and a sprinkle of shops. That is about all. But we stop here to listen to the story of the man who built Colinsburgh, the Earl whose name it bears.

Colin, third Earl of Balcarres. His Colinsburgh, at the eastern end of which can be seen the entrance to the park of Balcarres, was founded in 1705: only a couple of centuries ago, so his village is still sound and solid. Yet about Colin and his name hangs an aura, a feeling that all told of him is legend rather than fact, and even the solid presence of the cottages he built cannot make it seem authentic history. Perhaps this is so because he was so much himself the romantic. The nobleman, the laird, devoted to lost but ever appealing causes, altogether the character beloved in Scottish history. Even as an old man that devotion summoned him again to battle, and our last glimpse of him is one in which sorrow and happiness are strangely mingled, an old man skating on a loch under the eye of an English guard. An old man, his cause forever lost, but who had found in age the tranquillity, the indifference that age must bring. But our story of Colin had best begin in his youth when the young Scots nobleman, already pledged to the Stuart cause, was at the court of King Charles II.

Here he met his first love, Mauritia de Nassau. The wedding was arranged. On the morning appointed for this brilliant ceremony Mauritia appeared at church. But no bridegroom awaited her there. A messenger was sent to seek him. Colin, in gown and slippers, was calmly breakfasting: he had forgotten all about his appoint-ment. He hurried to the church. And now he had forgotten the ring. A friend quickly took a ring from his finger and passed it to the bridegroom. Colin put the ring on the bride's finger. She glanced at it and then fainted. From her hand a death's head had grinned at her. The ring borrowed so hurriedly was a mourning ring decorated with a skull. The bride recovered and the guests comforted her, but she declared that she would die within twelve months, and this doleful prophecy came true.

Colin had other loves, other wives, but constant was his devotion to the Stuart cause. His service to it took him into exile for seven years, from 1693 to 1700. When he returned he turned to the tending of the estate, and in 1705 he founded his village of Colinsburgh to house his disbanded soldiers. But in 1715 the Stuart call came again. He was an old man now, but the cause of his youth was still dear to him. He joined in the Rebellion and, at its collapse, faced sentence. It was a comparatively mild one, for the Duke of Marlborough in-tervened on his behalf, and Colin was ordered to be confined to his home of Balcarres, and a dragoon was appointed to be his guard. Thus we come to that last picture of Colin, third Earl of Balcarres. On a winter morning skating on nearby Kilconquhar Loch, with the dragoon standing guard.

When we leave Colinsburgh on the eastward road we come, after passing the southern entrances to Balcarres, to a crossroads at which, on the south-east corner of Balcarres Park, stands a pleasant cottage. This cottage is now referred to as "Auld Robin's Gray's cottage", although the shepherd's home was actually deeper in the park behind this cottage and has disappeared. The ballad which im-mortalised the shepherd's name was written at Balcarres in 1771 by Lady Anne Lindsay.

From viewpoints along the road can occasionally be glimpsed in the grounds of Balcarres a ruinous tower of apparently great age. The tower is neither ancient nor ruined, but is a "folly" built in the last century on the height known as Balcarres Craig, and is merely a fanciful attempt to create a romantically situated ivy-cloaked ruin.

On the road from Colinsburgh to Cupar is the village of Largoward, from which can be seen views strangely characteristic of the East Neuk of Fife, long, level landscapes of low, rolling hills, particularly charming when seen with the pale tints of early Spring. Prom this region, now so quiet and agricultural, coal was taken to Falkland Palace when James VI was living there.

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