The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross : with the description of both, and of the firths of Forth and Tay, and the islands in them ... with an account of the natural products of the land and waters / By Sir Robert Sibbald.

  • Robert Sibbald
Date:
1803
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The history, ancient and modern, of the sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross : with the description of both, and of the firths of Forth and Tay, and the islands in them ... with an account of the natural products of the land and waters / By Sir Robert Sibbald. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/502 (page 7)
    CHAP. 1.] ANCIENT EXTENT OF THE sirre. 5 It was but in later times, that (as George Buthanan tells eth us), “ Reliquum agri ad Fortham usque, ambitio in va~ rias prefecturas dissecuit,, Clacmanam, Colrossianam et Kinrossianam‘* :? And the last of these, that’s, the country to the east of the two former, was divided into the two shires of .Kinross and Fife, viz. about the year 14263. and of late, viz. at the revolution *, three patoches, viz. that of Orwel, Tillibole, and. Cleish, were taken off Fife, and cast into the small shire of Kinross. And it was from the. large extent of Fife of , old, that the wulgar are wont to call it, THe Kincpom oF Fire, The many fine houses of the nobility and gentry, and the many burghs royal in it; the number of paroches, and the many religious houses were in it, and the several juris _ ditions in it, made the commons so talk of this country. The breadth of this country is noways proportionable to the length; for where it is broadest, it does not exceed ~ some seventeen miles, and in the middle ’tis but betwixt ' thirteen or fourteen miles broad. a the east, the “land is contracted to.two narrow angles, one of which is obtuse, and the other is sharp, and ends in a narrow point. * CHAP, -Pidtish men. The learned Mr. Pinkerton supposes, that this compound word was the etymon of the Latin, Vecturiones. There is considerable. plausibility, however, in Commissary Matle’s conjecture. = * The rést of the country, even unto the Forth, man’s ambition hath divided into several stewartries, as the stewartry of Clackmanan, of -Cul- ross, and of Kinross.” Buch. Transl. Vol. 1. p. 24. 2 Not at, but before the revolution, viz. anno 1685. See Part Uf, Hist. of Kinross. .