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.

    451/502 (page 423)
    “SECT. 1] APPENDIX. No. 1. | 424 To the third title, concerning earths, is to be added an earthquake occasioned by a speate of water, some twenty five years ago, or thereabout, at Taces in this shire, thus: there is a great descent of that land towards the water, _which is the march betwixt it and the avenue, to the west of the mannour of Craighall: and there is an high bank above the water there, upon the south side of the water belonging to the. Taces; the torrents, in the furrows above this bank, had during the speate, after great rains, so sunk into the ground above the bank, that by the force and im- petuosity of these subterraneous torrents, the whole face of the bank, opposite to the foot of the west avenue to Craig- hall (containing more as an acre of ground) was shaved down (as if it had been cut off by proper instruments) the height of three or four spears, and was laid upon the ground of Craighall, with the shrubs and plants growing uponit. ‘This I saw the day following, as I went to Craig- ber 1608, there was in Fife, an earthquake betwixt nine and’ ten hours at even, which lasted about a quarter of an hour; that it terrified all the persons within the towns of Couper of Fife, Newburgh, Dunfermling; Bruntisland and others within ‘Fife. | As to the fourth title, concerning stones; these additions are to be joined : first, that beside the white marble found upon the coast at Vicar’s Grange, it is reported, that red marble was found in Luck+law-hill, in the north-east part of this shire, not far from Teuchars. And at Cambo, the seat of the present Lord Lyon, there are divers curious formed stones cast up by the sea, upon the shoar there, some of them in shape resembling flooks, or the flounder fishes ; historians however, point out the extent of the devastation, or the names and situations of the towns that were destroyed, to enable us to estimate the loss of territory that was sustained. ‘The uncertain voice of tradition, points out many places now always covered with water, and at a great distance from the shore, which were then parts of the inhabited land. And it particularly mentions, that the extensive and elevated sands of Barrie, on the opposite side of the Frith of ‘Tay, were then formed, and that a town was buried under them; and that a considerable portion of the land on the south side of St. Andrews bay was overwhelmed. ‘There is no doubt that the sea has made several encroachments on the coasts of Angus, Fife, and Lothian, in former times; but our annalists, more interested about fabu- taining the date of them.