Note 284 — 178 CAPTAIN CAR, OR, EDOM O GORDON

“After making considerable researches upon the subject, I am come to the conclusion that it was Towie House that was burnt. Cargarf never was in possession of a Forbes.” (Joseph Robertson, Kinloch MSS, VI, 28.) What is said of Corgarf in the View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, 1732, Robertson, Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, pp. 611, 616, is derived from Lumsden. Robert Gordon, writing about 1654, says, “Non procul a fontibus [Donæ] jacet Corgarf, exigui nominis.” A description of the parish of Strathdon, written about 1725, in Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections, MS., says of Curgarf, “This is an old castle belonging to the earls of Mar, but nothing remarkable about it:” pp. 26, 616, of the work last cited. The Statistical Accounts of Scotland give no light; the older tells the story of Corgarf, the later of both Corgarf and Towie, and the one is as uncritical as the other.

John Forbes of Towie (Tolleis) is one of a long list of that name in an order of the Lords of Council concerning an action of the Forbes clan against the Earl of Huntly in 1573; and in another paper, dated July, 1578, which has reference to the same action, the Forbeses complain that “sum of thair housiss, wyiffis and bairnis being thairin, were all uterlie wraikit and brount.” (Robertson, Illustrations, etc., IV, 762, 765.) Bearing in mind the latitude of phraseology customary in indictments, we are perhaps under no necessity of thinking that the atrocity of Towie was but one of several instances of houses burnt, wives (women) and bairns being therein. There may be those who will think it plausible that “Carrigill” in the Diurnal of Occurrents should be Corgarf, and that both were burnt.