Series 5 > Calendar of Fearn

22
CALENDAR OF FEARN
Master Thomas Ross
At an unknown date between 1557 and 1567 the Calendar was acquired
by Master Thomas Ross, later commendator of Fearn and provost of St
Duthac. He inserted two saints’ days, noted during a stay in Paris;
recorded a benefaction to St Duthac by his great-great-uncle Mr
Thomas Ross;17 listed fair-days at places between Dornoch and
Boyndie by Banff; gave sunrise and sunset times for each month in the
year; and jotted down two pieces of meteorological folklore (one in
Scots verse), an obscure piece of horticultural advice, and what appears
to be a dog’s death-notice.18 More importantly, he filled up many of the
empty spaces of the Calendar with at least 135 notes (66-210). Although
continuing on occasion to use Latin until the last years of his life, he was
the first annotator to write in Scots, at times producing lively
narrative.19 He was also the only annotator to show any sustained
interest in events and personalities outside Easter Ross. Other writings
by him are incorporated into what is known as The Brieve Cronicle of the
Erlis of Ross,20 and into the original of the Blackie MS.21
Analysis of Master Thomas’s historical additions to the Calendar
shows a number of earlier sources. He had access to lists of Scottish
kings22 and prelates,23 and may have known John Bellenden’s
translation of Boece.24 He was well-informed on sixteenth-century
Moray family history, his most likely sources being his mother-in-law
Barbara Tulloch and her brothers. He is unlikely to have written in the
Calendar before older hands ceased in 1558, but from 1569 he was a
contemporary source for events in Ross. A quarrel with Alexander
Ross of Balnagown and subsequent retiral to Forres brought a renewed
interest in Moray. He may have been an eye-witness of some of the
events surrounding the ‘Ride of Darnaway’,25 and in his later years
followed national happenings with some interest.26 One-third of his
17 See 63.
18 See 62-3.
19 See 200, 201.
20 As edited by W. R. Baillie in 1850, this is a conflation of several manuscripts, the oldest of which (the
Balnagown MS) was edited separately (with facsimiles) by W. Macgill in TGAS, new series, vii
(1924), 313-29. Baillie added to this text ‘some further particulars in reference to the Abbots of Fearn’
(Cronicle, 17-23), taken from an eighteenth-century copy. These relate to the abbots from Finlay
MacFaid (38) to Thomas Ross, and appear to be the work of the latter.
21 See 239-40.
22 67, 73, 81, 112, 113.
23 70, 71, 72, 77, 96, 98, 106, 122.
24 See Cronicle, 3, 13.
25 See 197, 198, 200, 201.
26 See 170,171,173,174,176,177,178,181,185, and the series
189-193).
i of reports on James Vi’s marriage (186,