Gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

444
FORFAR.
gallows. The town has been, within the last
few years, ornamented with a handsome suite
of county buildings, situated in Castle Street.
A new church and steeple have likewise
been built, as also a new episcopal chapel,
in High Street, finished in 1823. Being the
seat of the county courts of the sheriff, the
town has a number of public offices and legal
practitioners. The town has now an excellent
subscription newsroom and library. Besides
the established church and episcopal chapel,
there is a meeting house of the united seces-
sion body and methodists. The fast days of the
church are generally the Thursday before the
third Sunday of June, and the Thursday nearest
full moon in December. The town is provided
with a parish school and an academy for teach-
ing languages, mathematics, and geography.
The market-day is Saturday, and there are se-
veral annual fairs. Forfar is a royal burgh of
unknown antiquity, whose privileges were con-
firmed in 1669, in virtue of which it is govern-
ed by a provost, two bailies and nineteen coun-
cillors, annually elected. The revenue of the
burgh may be averaged at about L.1000. It
joins with Perth, Dundee, St. Andrews, and
Cupar- Fife, in sending a member to parlia-
ment. In point of trade and manufactures
Forfar can bear no comparison with Dundee
or Arbroath. Its chief trade is the weaving
of Osnaburgs and coarse linens, though from
time immemorial the manufacture of brogues
has engaged the employment of a number of
hands, insomuch that the term " Sutors of
Forfar," is held, in common parlance, just as
expressive of the whole population, as that of
" the Sutors of Selkirk," in the famous capi-
tal of the Forest. At Kirriemuir, a thriving
minor town in the neighbourhood, another
phrase obtains — " the weavers of Kirriemuir ;"
and the people of the two towns have had a
feud of several centuries continuance. This,
in former times, displayed itself in the substan-
tial shape of blows ; but its expression is now
confined to proverbial phrases of reciprocal vi-
tuperation. In illustration of their animosity,
as it used to be exhibited two centimes ago, it
is related by Drummond of Hawthornden, that
having, in the summer of 1648, arrived at For-
far, where he intended to pass the night, the
houses were all shut against him, the inhabi-
tants having learned that he was not only a
poet, but also a rcyalist, two offences, above
all things, repirgnant to the popular feelings of
that age. Being under the necessity of pro-
ceeding onward to Kirriemuir, he was there
exceedingly well received ; not that the people
of this village were less abhorrent of poetry
and " malignancy," but that they were glad to
act differently from the inhabitants of Forfar.
Next morning, on taking leave of them, he
gratified their prejudices by leaving a poetical
distich in allusion to a recent dispute between
the rival towns :
The Kirriemurians met the Forfarians at the Mulr-
moss ;
The Kirriemurians beat the Forfarians back to the
cross ;
Sutors ye are, and sutors will be —
Fye upon Forfar ! — Kirriemuir bears the gree.
On the west side of Forfar is a fine loch,
which, though diminished by draining, is still
about a mile in length by half a mile in
breadth, and is a beautiful sheet of water,
abounding in fish. Forfar is, perhaps, a sin-
gular instance in Scotland of a town of any
note built at a distance from running water ;
but the vicinity of the lake, with its nu-
merous springs, and the protection of a cas-
tle, a place, in former times, of considerable
strength, must have first invited the inhabi-
tants of the country to settle and form a vil-
lage, which, afterwards becoming the occasion-
al residence of majesty, was distinguished by a
variety of royal favours. The origin of the
castle of Forfar, which was situated on a mount
to the north of the town, is not certified, but
it is said to have been the place of meeting
of the first parliament of Malcolm III. (Can-
more), after the recovery of his kingdom from
Macbeth, in which assembly, according to
such historians as Boethius and Buchanan,
he first conferred titles and surnames tjpon the
Scottish nobility. The magistrates, some years
since, removed the market cross from the
street, to the site of the old castle, to mark the
place of the royal residence. The illustrious
Queen Margaret had a separate establish-
ment from her husband Malcolm, in the shape
of a nunnery, upon a small artificial island
near the north side of the loch, which is called
the Inch, though said, by tradition, to have been
connected with the land by means of a pas-
sage capable of giving access only to one per-
son. From this isle to the other side of the
loch, a causeway runs under the water similar
to that in the castle loch of Lochmaben. At
the draining of the loch for the sake of its