Records of the clan and name of Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus

36 CLAN FERGUSSON
might have recovered, had not his wife helped him out of this world
of trouble by smothering him with a down pillow as he lay in bed
weak from loss of blood. She was Lady Janet Gordon, daughter
of George, second Earl of Huntly, and of his wife, Princess Anna-
bella, daughter of King James I. No sooner had she got rid of
Lindsay than she married Patrick, son of Lord Grey. Whether she
took the down pillow to him or not history sayeth not, but he de-
parted, and she was soon again married, the third time, to Halker-
ston of Southwood. Though she thus escaped punishment for a
time, yet justice at length overtook her, and, in the year 1500, she
was condemned for the murder of the Master of Lindsay to per-
petual imprisonment on the top of Craig-an-Fhithiche, the Ravens'
Rock, a stupendous cliff that rises about 300 feet above the river
Ericht, and here, every day, before she was allowed any food, she
had to spin a thread long enough to reach from her prison down
till it reached the water of the river, and there she lingered on spin-
ning her daily thread to an extreme old age. So far history goes,
and stops, but as usual, local tradition steps in, and draws aside
the veil of time, and tells us how —
" Lady Lindsay sat on the Kaven's Eock,
An' weary spun the lee-lang day ;
Tho' her fingers were worn, they aye bore the stain
0' the bluid o' her first luve, the lycht Lindsay,"
till she was over a hundred years of age, and till at last her shrivelled
finders were Avorn by the constant friction of the thread to mere
stumps. At last she died, but still there was no rest for the mur-
deress, for there her ghost was seen to sit and spin, and often the keen
angler, as he fished the clear waters of the Ericht, below the
Ravens' Rock, was startled by seeing a shadowy thread coming
slowly down from above, till it touched the water, when it
instantly disappeared, and the scared fisherman knew that the
Lady Lindsay's task was over for that day at least. So the thread
of time spun on for over two centuries, and still the ghost of the Lady
Lindsay, the misguided grandchild of a gallant Stuart king, was
seen to spin on, perched on her lonely rock, till at last came the
black day of Culloden, when the Stuart cause was lost for ever, and
many of the brave Strathardle lads, who had escaped from the
Royal Butcher, returned to hide in their native glen. Amongst
others came one of the young Fergussons of Balmacrochie — Nidi
Mor nam Breac — Big Neil of the Trouts, so called from his being a
very expert angler, like all his race, who were so fond of fishing