"Mortimers' Deep"

The church of St Fillan had stood there on the banks of the Firth for a mere 200 years when the building began on the banks of the Dour Burn of a keep, the ruins of which are at the west of Aberdour Castle near the church. Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, and gallant nephew of Robert the Bruce, is believed to have built the keep. The lands of Aberdour were once held by the Mortimer family, and that name is preserved in Aberdour by the fishermen's name of "Mortimer's Deep" for that stretch of water lying between the mainland and the island of Inchcolm. It owes that name to a drear legend.

Alan de Mortimer had granted half his lands to the abbey of Inchcolm in return for promise of burial in the abbey church. But this solemn bargain was not kept. The old chronicle tells that: "carrying his corpse in a coffin of lead by barge in the night-time, some wicked monks did throw the same in a great deep betwixt the land and the monastery, which to this day, by neighbouring fishermen and salters, is called Mortimer's Deep".

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