Dunmhor

Eastward from Lindores Abbey towards ancient Tayport a road slips along the banks of the Firth of Tay. On one side is the broad Firth, with the Sidlaw Hills beyond, and on the other side is the massive hog's back of Norman's Law.

An ancient way is this road. From the top of that bold, bare hill the Celts gazed across the Tay from the ramparts of their Dunmhor, the "Great Fort". Here at the dawn of Fife's history was one of the largest of Celtic settlements, a prehistoric metropolis, with large earthworks thrown up in circles around rude dwellings, and where from the hill-top the inhabitants stood guard over flocks in pastures sloping down to the shores of their great river. Here too the Northmen, the invaders from across the sea who swept in their galleys up that silver estuary-buried their illustrious dead. Thus it became "Northmen's Law".

The road runs under the shadow of that great Law until, as we go eastward, we glimpse suddenly, against its background of trees on the banks of the river, the massive ruin of a castle. Here is a memorial of a later age. This grand and sombre ruin, glowering from its cliff, its shattered windows and crumbling gables hanging precipitously above the placid Tay, is Ballinbreich Castle.

Six hundred years have passed since those massive stones were; dragged into position to build the still awe-inspiring keep and to surround an enclosure 160 feet long and 90 feet broad.

For centuries Ballinbreich was the stronghold of the Earls of Rothes. Proudly it grew. The finest workers of stone in Scotland must have been employed on its building. In its ruins Ballinbreich bears evidence of the magnificent masonry of its construction. The buildings were of three and sometimes four storeys high, and in its prime the castle must have stood most majestically on that cliff above the Tay. Even now, as though in massive defiance against centuries of neglect, its walls still soar to a vast height above the thrusting trees and its arches still bear the weight of the vast walls which once surrounded the great hall, 46 feet long and 17 feet wide.

From the foot of its walls the ground falls down to the banks of the Tay. This is one of the most beautiful and tranquil stretches on the Firth. These gentle acres of woodland shores belonged in the 12th century to one Orm, son of Hugh of Abernethy. Orm gave four acres of Ballinbreich and fishing rights on the Tay to the Priory of St Andrews. His son added to that gift a grant of ten shillings a year as the payment for masses for his parents.

The "Serpent" at Flisk

One of the men who witnessed the charter was William, parson of Flisk. The church of Flisk stands farther eastward, on the banks of the Firth, a modest, dour Scots kirk built in 1790. There are no traces of the pre-Reformation church of Flisk, unless the one carved stone in the wall of the outbuildings of the manse belongs to it. But discovered here recently was a stone many, many centuries old -a "serpent stone" believed to have been carved by the Celts. This stone has been built into the wall near the church. There we can see it now. A carved, mysterious coil. Simple, touching memorial of those ancient people who stared across this lovely valley from their earthworks high on Dunmhor.

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