Dorsal's Diary: Scotland

This morning I was presented with a special pin by David.

Everybody bought in except Mardi. She likes touching me 😍. I just hope she's careful 😇.

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Back to business. We headed out this morning to visit Holyrood Palace. That's where the Royals stay for a week each year.

Pictures are not allowed inside, but the outside is pretty nice. Especially the old Abbey ruins.

The ten acres of gardens are beautiful, even without Mardi and me in the picture..........

..........and they are designed to blend in with the landscape beyond.

They also appear to contain some ancient structure foundations.

And right outside the property is Salisbury Crag (an ancient spelling of Craig as my sister reminded me).

But the connection of this old volcanic remnant may not be the source of my paternal grandfather's middle name as I suspected. Salisbury Crag was a royal hunting ground - we Craigs were likely not welcome. But who cares - it makes a good story.

Although there are a few Craig castles in Scotland, David suggests that we were serfs/slaves to the Gordons or the Murrays (see following story). My dad told me that the Craigs fought for the Gordons in the war, which I assume was the Jacobite war that ended with their defeat in the final Battle of Culloden.

After the war came the Clearances, when farms concentrated on raising sheep and farm workers were not as required. Scots people left voluntarily, or were chased out after those two events.

The farthest back that sister Judy could trace our ancestors was to a death a few years after the clearances, but no birth records, so I assume that he left Scotland for one of the foregoing reasons.

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Early Origins of the Craig family

The Pictish clans of ancient Scotland were the ancestors of the first people to use the name Craig. The name was found in Aberdeen (part of the modern Grampian region), and other shires across Scotland. The Craig surname is derived from the Scottish Gaelic word creag, meaning "a rock" which became the Scottish word "craig." Craig is a parish in Forfarshire which was "formerly called Inchbrayock, the 'island of trout,' by which name an island of thirty-four Scotch acres within the parish is still known. Craig was at that time only the designation of one of the chief estates, and it is supposed that, when the place of worship was transferred from the island to the property of Craig on the continental part of the district, the name of Craig, which is naturally derived from the rocky nature of the shore, was extended to the whole of the parish."

The surname Craig was first found in Aberdeenshire (Gaelic: Siorrachd Obar Dheathain), a historic county, and present day Council Area of Aberdeen, located in the Grampian region of northeastern Scotland. This northern Clan was frequently associated with the Gordons (the Gordons were the most powerful clan in northwest Scotland and the Craigs were one of about 80 sects that fought for them), but their first records appeared in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire to the south about 1180. One of the first records of the name was Johannes del Crag who was witness to a charter by William the Lion. Later, Robertus de Crag witnessed a charter by Alexander II.

Clan Craig has been amerigerous (no chief who possesses the "chiefly arms") since1823 when Robert Craig of Riccerton died, leaving no heirs. A descendant, James Gibson, changed his name to James Gibson Craig and took over.

The Gordon motto "Bydand" means steadfast. The Craig motto is either "J'ai Bonne Esperance" i.e. I have good hope, or "Vive Deo Et Vives" i.e. Live for God and you will have life (I like the first one better).

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After we left Salisbury Crag we headed up the Royal Mile again. Stopped for a beer along the way.