The Annals of Aberdeen, which I have referred to in previous blogs, continue to be a source of joy, entertainment and education. With this being the first month of the new year, I thought I’d have a look and see what happened in Januarys past. As always when I scour the pages of the Annals, there was a lot to discover about how our antecedents lived…
“George and John Faws were tried before the baillies, 28th January, 1540, and convicted by a jury for wounding Alex. Barron to the effusion of his blood. They were ordered to pay for leeching him, and fined a crown of the sum for the amends of blood.”
“21st January, 1562, Elspet Murray was ordered to be carted, and banished from the town, it was sufficiently proved she was a bordelier (prostitute). William Christie, cordwainer, and Margaret Myrton, were ordered to suffer the same punishment, for being common adulterers.”
The students of those days were not quite as well behaved as their twenty-first century counterparts, and religion inflamed passions in a way that it rarely does today…
“The Pope tried, condemned and burned in effigy, at the cross of Aberdeen, 11th January (1689), by the Students of the Marischal College, in number 99.”
This being Aberdeen, the cruel sea often created peril and led to lives lost…
“In the month of January, of the present year (1815), several melancholy shipwrecks happened at this place, which were accompanied by circumstances of unparalleled distress. On Friday forenoon (27thJanuary), the brig Caledonia, and schooner, Providence, both belonging to Aberdeen, appeared, standing to the southward, but, from the strong flood tide, were carried near the Girdleness, when it became evident their situation was critical and perilous in the extreme…in a few minutes, the vessel (Caledonia), in holding to the northward, was struck, on the broadside, by a tremendous wave, which, breaking over her as high as the tops, threw her on her broadside with the topsails in the water… she was no longer manageable, and a succeeding wave completely overwhelmed her and all on board perished…”
It wasn’t all doom and destruction, at least not if you were a Queen…
“His (King James?) queen, in the month of January this year (1455), made a similar visit, and was received with equal marks of respect. A propine* was presented to her, of 100 merks** in money…”
In between interviews with new and existing members of RGU staff, news of new job vacancies and updates from the universities, I’ll continue to dig into the Annals of Aberdeen for interesting and amusing historical parallels between our forebears and the present. More to come later in 2022…
Julie Skinner, Resourcing and Benefits Specialist, RGU
* This being a university we keep learning things. In writing this article I discovered what ‘propine’ means, namely, to quote from the dictionary, “propine: transitive verb. chiefly Scotland: to present or give especially as a token of friendship.”
** and I also discovered that a merk was worth two-thirds of a pound Scots, or about one English shilling (5p). It might seem that 100 merks wasn’t quite such a generous gift, but at the time it was so much money that the Annals tell us there was considerable difficulty in actually finding this money.