Lagwyne and Traditions of Grierson of Lag #History
Did the notorious persecutor of the Covenanters, Robert Grierson of Lag, ever stay at Lagwyne? Tradition claims that he did, but there is no historical evidence.
According to the OS Name Book of the mid nineteenth century:
‘Lagwine’: ‘A farm house and out houses in bad repair, with a farm of land attached. The property of the Hon.Col. McAdam Cathcart. This house it is said was for a short time the residence of Grierson of Lag, during the persecution [of the 1680s].’
The Canmore website records a ruined farmstead under Lagwyne in 1853. It also records the now lost Lagwyne Castle in an entry from 1897: ‘The site of the castle of Banck or Lagwine is about a quarter of a mile north of Carsphairn village. Said to have been destroyed by fire, it was the residence of the McAdams of Waterhead from which family John Lowden Macadam, the road improver, came.’
The castle, if it existed in the era of the Killing Times, may have been a more suitable place for Lag to have lodged.
Simpson in his Traditions of the Covenanters claims that Lag stayed at the neighbouring farm of Garryhorn, rather than Lagwyne. From there he is supposed to have killed a Covenanter called M’Roy, but there is no historical evidence for the death. He is also supposed to have killed John Dempster nearby, but, again, there is no historical evidence for that event.
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