Blair Collection > Place names in Strathbogie, with notes historical, antiquarian and descriptive

242 Place Names in StratJibogie.
manstown in Rayne, Bowmanslands in Forfar,
and Bowmanis in Kincardine. There is also a
Bowmanhillock on Lessendrum, Drumblade.
Sheriff Cosmo Innes, in his 'Lectures on Scotch
Legal Antiquities,' explains the term Bowman.
Referring to a report, ' On the condition of the
Agricultural People and their Tenures,' by a
factor on the Drummond estate, Perthshire, he
says : — ' After the tenants holding by lease, and
the common class of sub-tenants he (the factor)
enumerates — i. A Bowman, whom he calls a
hired servant of the tacksman. But we know
better from other parts of the country that the
bowman was, or I may say still is, a person who
farms for a season the tenant's milk cows, and
the pasture to maintain them. 2. The Perth
factor next mentions Steel-bowmen, a class of
tenants who received stock and cattle along with
their farm,' The Sheriff is no doubt strictly
correct as to the primary meaning and use of
the term, but, so far as I have observed, ' bow-
men ' is used in various parts of the country to
designate small farmers, and occasionally farm-
servants.
Collonach is given in the charter of 1534,
Cullannach, and in later writings it is essentially
the same as we have it. Od-lonach means ' the
marshy hill-back,' which at one time the place
was, though now improved by drainage. Of this
dauch. Wellheads was 200 years ago, a very