History and traditions of the land of the Lindsays in Angus and Mearns

170 LAND OF THE LINDSAYS.
several rude stone coffins and urns, containing human bones,
were found about twenty years ago. The urns, which were
found at Haerland Faulds, were filled with pieces of charred bones,
and although the coffins were carefully built of rude slabs, and
of about the ordinary length, and the bottoms laid with baked
clay, no trace of bones were found apart from those in the urns.
At the Haercairn again, there were no urns, and the remains
were confined to the coffins, which were of the same construction
as those at the Haerland Faulds. These places are barely three
miles east of the camp of Battledykes, and are popularly ascribed
to the time of the defeat of the Danes at Aberlemno, and as one
of the coffins at the Haercairn was found to be a little longer
than any of its fellows, the peasantry soon identified it as that of
one of the Deuchars of Feme, who is said to have been killed at
this place by the Danes. This luckless person was of gigantic
stature, and is said to have had the rather unique gift of six
fingers on each hand and as many toes on each foot !
Apart from the Lindsays of Barnyards and Markhouse on
the north side of the Esk, those of Blairiefeddan, Woodwray,
Balgavies, and Pitscandlie, were domiciled on the south. The
Blairiefeddan family, who subsisted from the time of John
Lindsay (who was a party to the slaughter of Sir John Ogilvy
of Inverquharity about 1535-9), till about the middle of the
seventeenth century, do not appear to have shone very pro-
minently in any transaction, more than their neighbours and
relations of Pitscandlie, who were proprietors of that estate down
to the first quarter of last century.* The burial place of both
these families was at Rescobie, and a monument belonging to
the former is built into the outer wall of the church.f
The first recorded Lindsay of Woodwra, or Woodwrayth,
(which was previously held by a family of the name of Wellem,
or Volume, who paid teinds to the Priory of Restinoth,|) was Sir
John, a son of the tenth Earl of Crawford, and also proprietor
of Balinshoe. His " castle " of Woodwray, which was in the im-
mediate vicinity of that of Finhaven, stood a little to the east of
the farm house, and was only removed about thirty years ago ;
but, with the exception of the old dove-cot, nothing of an inde-
* John Lindsay of Pitscandly, an elder —Par. Peg. of Reseobie, Feb. 2, 1718.
t See Appendix, No. V. £ Acta Dotn. Concilli, Oct. 23, 1488.