Series 1 > Tours in Scotland 1747, 1750, 1760

ST. ANDREWS, GRAIL.
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the town. They are mostly farmers and shopkeepers, & a few
merchants, and people that subsist by the University. They
have a pier for small vessels and boats, but the weather must
be good, when they enter, the Coast being mostly rocky, and
there is a bay before the mouth of the Eden.
There is a little promontory to the North of the enclosure
of the Cathedral, and just over the pier, on which was the
Collegiate Church called Kirkheugh; They show the place a
little beyond the pier where it was first built, and was called
the Lady’s Craig; but the Sea encroaching on it, ’twas built
on the heights ; It consisted of a Provost and ten prebendaries
and belonged to the Culdees till the fourteenth Century : In it
was the Statue of King Constantine who retired and professed
himself a Culdee : It was called Praepositura Sanctae Mariae de
rupe, also Capella Regia & Capella Domini Regis Scotorum.—
I am, &c.
Letter LIV.
Lesly in Fife, September 2d, 1760.
Dear Sister,—On the first of September I left St. Andrews
accompanied by Dr. Simpson. We went by the sea side and
passing over the bridge the Dr. showed me a plant growing out
of the joints of the stones, which we could not come at. It is
I think peculiar to this place and is called Secale Scoticum
Jmperatorwe affine. The lands round about the town which
were in the Church now belong to the Colleges: There is a
ridge of low hills called Barnymount (in the Map Byre hills)
which seems a corruption from Boar hills, there being a tradi¬
tion that when they hunted the boar here, he always ran along
this hill to Boar hill: There are several stones about this road,
.set up on end, & they have a tradition that there was a battle
here with the Danes. We passed by Kings Barns where they
say the Kings of the Piets lived, which might be their hunting
Seat as well as their Farm.
We came on six miles in all from St. Andrews to Crail a
small town about a mile from the South East point of the