You used this site "The Early Church in the North of Scotland" in your previous post about Pulvrennan and Knockando so I am surprised that you did not see it. The article was written in 1919.
To reference the Website in question I would ask you to use its proper title or its abbreviation ECNS not "on the Cushnie Enterprises website"!
Dear David, thank you very much for commenting, and I'm sorry not to have given ECNS its proper reference - I've updated that now. I did come across the Loch of Spynie article early on in my research, a fine piece of research by the author(s). If I wanted to reference it in future, what form should I use for the footnote/endnote? I thoroughly agree by the way that the importance of this part of Moray should not be neglected! I'm hoping to shine new light on early historic Moray with my current MA research and (hopefully) beyond.
Thank you David - I'll be sure to use that any time I cite your research. I was just re-reading the Loch of Spynie article and I see mention on p 17 of a legend of St Gartnait encountering Athelstan's fleet in 934 - surely anachronistic but it sounds like there may be something interesting there all the same. I'm writing about Athelstan's Scotland expedition in my dissertation, so I will follow that up.
Roots-wise I was born in Inverness and grew up around Cawdor and Nairn, then Forres and Kinloss. I left in 1991 and never returned, but I still have family in Nairn. I'd always meant to come back and look at early medieval Moray, which I'm at last doing - although I'm now based in Cornwall, not all that convenient for field visits!
Hello Fiona - a voice from the ghosts of your 6th form history course... also with an interest decades later in early medieval Moray, probably for very similar reasons. Saw your name pop up on the Northern Picts twitter feed.
Alastair and Helen's theories below could both be supported by the argument on page 114 of this https://pubs.bgs.ac.uk/publications.html?pubID=B01928, that the geological remains of shingle ridges and storm beaches around the modern mouth of the Lossie suggest that the Lossie and Loch Spynie were for some time blocked off from the sea east of Lossiemouth and instead were forced to empty to the west into Burghead Bay through the Roseisle/Alves gap. This subsequently silted up into marshland when access to the sea from the eastern end of the Loch opened up again, splitting the loch/estuary into the eastern Loch Spynie and the western Loch Roseisle. This does seem to have some respectable evidential basis beyond simple speculation around the local tradition of Vikings sailing past Kintrae/Roseisle/your old kitchen window (a tradition that the book is still sceptical about I'm afraid).
This would in turn suggest that the Findhorn wouldn't have had to meander anywhere near as far east as you'd imagine to have emptied into "Loch Spynie", it could conceivably have done so somewhere near, say Coltfield or Hempriggs, and could have done so passing north rather than south of Forres, which seems a bit more realistic. If the Lossie and the Findhorn both entered the sea together via Loch Spynie between Kinloss and Roseisle it could also support the theory that Kinloss might be named after its relationship with the Lossie, and explain why the tiny Lossie/Loxa but not the much larger Findhorn seems to have been recorded by Ptolomy. It is hard to see any of this still being the case as late as 1100 though?
Stratigos' recent paper on the subject (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14732971.2021.1930775) seems to disagree, but without directly mentioning or rebutting the 1968 book. His model has Loch Spynie and Loch Roseisle as always essentially separate, as with your map above. His analysis does seem primarily to be based on changing water levels in the context of constant back-projected modern contours though, so might miss the effects of the movements of silt and sand and shingle causing land contours to change, which seems such a well-recorded feature of the area's history, and which the 1968 book with its geological approach seems to focus on more.
(On the other hand Stratigos is a leading academically authoritative wetland paleogeographer and archaeologist and I'm a random bloke on the internet, so who am I to comment?)
Hi Daniel, how lovely to hear from you! Gosh, that is a name from the past - hope you're doing well. Thanks very much for all these thoughts, I'm really enjoying hearing from people who are also fascinated by early medieval Moray.
That book looks v. useful on the possible extent of Loch Spynie, and very timely too as I was planning to write about Kinneddar for my next post. I've read Michael Stratigos's paper and assumed it to be the last word on the subject, so it's intriguing to think there might be other possibilities.
Re. Loxa/Lossie, W.J. Watson believed Ptolemy meant the Findhorn, which would indeed make sense if both rivers had the same estuary. And maybe that would explain the name Kinloss (and, I can't help but think, also the name of my old house: Muirhead, 'the head of the sea'...). Interesting!
I'm very well thank you, though envious of you moving all this into the realms of proper adult respectability.
While we are on the subject of moist placenames the presence of "Bridgend" and "Inchkeil" immediately south of Roseisle, at what would be the highest point between the east and west basins/lochs, also seem to suggest that even there it was pretty wet within relatively recent times? Wet enough to need a bridge, wet enough to constitute a river or loch, and wet enough to sail a longboat up are all very different things I suppose though.
Hi Fiona. Very thought provoking as ever! Thanks. Have to say though I can’t see a way that the Findhorn ever flowed east, south of Forres. If it did it would have had to flow uphill not to mention cutting across the Altyre/Mosset burn as well as Kinloss burn. I still favour the Lossie flowing west to Kinloss. I see Helen’s argument below but the ridge from Roseisle to Ardgay could have formed in post medieval times - the soil of the Laich is susceptible to westerly windblow to this day.
Can I also though point out another place name that has always puzzled me: Cassieford on the Forres to Kinloss road. I don’t know the root of the name so the ford bit could be a corruption but nowadays there is no water there to be forded. Certainly before the land bounced back after the ice melted it is thought that the sea reached to Forres with all the land north of there (and Cassieford that sits on the same ridge) was salt marsh at best.
Thanks Alastair, and I agree, I can't see how the Findhorn could possibly have flowed all the way over to Loch Spynie. Good suggestion with Cassieford, though! It's listed in Alasdair Ross's book as part of the davoch of West Tarras in Rafford parish, which according to a 1649 charter, included "Lochihillis" and "Calsafuird" (Cassieford) and was also the davoch that had Sueno's Stone on it. I don't know the etymology either, but "fuird" could plausibly be "ford". Cassieford is right next to Inchdemmie, which was "Inche Damin" in the 12th century, an island of dry land among the marshes. We really need a in-depth place-names of Moray survey, like the one Simon Taylor and Gilbert Márkus have done for Fife...
Is it possible that Cassieford is “causewayford”, I.e the ford of the causeway ((between Burghead and Forres). Causeway is often pronounced causay or calsay in Scots.
A couple of other thoughts. Earnside sits atop a slope so the side might refer to that slope rather than any waterway. A few miles almost due west (and west of Forres) is Earnhill which is however barely more than a protuberance in the flat modern landscape. But the configuration of the ground between the two places is not inconsistent with it once having been a waterway.
Final thought: more or less a few miles due west of Earnhill is Auldearn, a significant royal site in the 12th century, the name of which is most likely derived from Gaelic allt-earn, Water of Earn. I can’t trace that stream on the modern map or on the ground, but all told there are signs of a west-east watercourse which might have been called Earn and given its name to the surrounding district.
Hi Hector, yes I think 'causewayford' sounds extremely plausible - I've updated my latest post with that suggestion, thank you.
There does seem to be more to all the 'earn' place-names than can be explained by proximity to the Findhorn - especially as William the Lion gave Kinloss Abbey the grant of "a toft in Eren", which must be Auldearn. Both W. J. Watson and Thomas Clancy have said it could have been a name given to the wider district. If this district took in Auldearn, Earnhill, Invererne, Cullerne and Earnside, it seems to have stretched west-east and across the modern course of the Findhorn. Unless the Findhorn has rotated ninety degrees, the district of Earn/Eren must have been much bigger than its immediate environs!
Fascinating, thanks Fiona! This whole region is difficult to understand, the movement of sand, the changing water flow, the 17thC drainage, and all subject to periodic massive flooding, to say nothing of slippery placenames.
Trying to get my head around this. The direction water flowed is still possible to assertain from the lay of the land. The Kinloss burn flows westwards down to Findhorn Bay, so it can’t have once flowed eastwards. Also, there is a small rise of land, I hesitate to call it a ridge, which forms the west side of old Spynie Loch, roughly from Roseisle down to Ardgye, so it isn’t likely an eastward flowing stream could go up and over this rise.
But now that you’ve brought up this topic, there is something else suspicious. If we go south a bit from your putative line, then we see the Monaughty burn, and this rises by several burns in the hills to its south which then fall together and yes, this burn flows to the east. Eventually it falls into the Lossie river beside Elgin, then out to Lossiemouth. So the main part of this burn starts in the south near Kinloss, and ends up at Lossiemouth. I wonder if its possible that before the modern township, that Kinloss was just that, the head of the Lossie (burn/river)?
But either way that still doesn’t make any sense of a bridge at Kinloss does it. (I drew a map for you but the comment box won't allow me to post it... )
Thanks Helen! I agree, I really can't see how the Findhorn could have flowed past Earnside into the Loch of Spynie, as Jones and Keillar seem to have suggested, and which Ross repeated in his book. I guess if I'm going to do this to death in my dissertation, I'm going to have to track down H.B. Mackintosh's book and see what evidence he offers for it. Interesting to think of Kinloss as the source of the Lossie! It does fit nicely with the place-name, but Kinloss is on such flat land and so close to the coast that I can't see how it could be.
Thanks Melanie! It's an area that's rich in archaeology (and getting richer all the time as initiatives like the Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University dig more sites), but we know barely anything about the history of Moray in the first millennium. I'm very excited to get stuck in with it, and see if I can shed any more light on anything.
This matter regarding the extent of Loch of Spynie is covered in an article at https://cushnieent.com/articles/LochSpynie.htm
You used this site "The Early Church in the North of Scotland" in your previous post about Pulvrennan and Knockando so I am surprised that you did not see it. The article was written in 1919.
To reference the Website in question I would ask you to use its proper title or its abbreviation ECNS not "on the Cushnie Enterprises website"!
Dear David, thank you very much for commenting, and I'm sorry not to have given ECNS its proper reference - I've updated that now. I did come across the Loch of Spynie article early on in my research, a fine piece of research by the author(s). If I wanted to reference it in future, what form should I use for the footnote/endnote? I thoroughly agree by the way that the importance of this part of Moray should not be neglected! I'm hoping to shine new light on early historic Moray with my current MA research and (hopefully) beyond.
Thank you for replying so quickly.
Most people use "The Early Church in Northern Scotland (ECNS)" and link that text to https://cushnieent.com
By the way, I'm from Lossiemouth - where are your 'roots'?
Thank you David - I'll be sure to use that any time I cite your research. I was just re-reading the Loch of Spynie article and I see mention on p 17 of a legend of St Gartnait encountering Athelstan's fleet in 934 - surely anachronistic but it sounds like there may be something interesting there all the same. I'm writing about Athelstan's Scotland expedition in my dissertation, so I will follow that up.
Roots-wise I was born in Inverness and grew up around Cawdor and Nairn, then Forres and Kinloss. I left in 1991 and never returned, but I still have family in Nairn. I'd always meant to come back and look at early medieval Moray, which I'm at last doing - although I'm now based in Cornwall, not all that convenient for field visits!
Hello Fiona - a voice from the ghosts of your 6th form history course... also with an interest decades later in early medieval Moray, probably for very similar reasons. Saw your name pop up on the Northern Picts twitter feed.
Alastair and Helen's theories below could both be supported by the argument on page 114 of this https://pubs.bgs.ac.uk/publications.html?pubID=B01928, that the geological remains of shingle ridges and storm beaches around the modern mouth of the Lossie suggest that the Lossie and Loch Spynie were for some time blocked off from the sea east of Lossiemouth and instead were forced to empty to the west into Burghead Bay through the Roseisle/Alves gap. This subsequently silted up into marshland when access to the sea from the eastern end of the Loch opened up again, splitting the loch/estuary into the eastern Loch Spynie and the western Loch Roseisle. This does seem to have some respectable evidential basis beyond simple speculation around the local tradition of Vikings sailing past Kintrae/Roseisle/your old kitchen window (a tradition that the book is still sceptical about I'm afraid).
This would in turn suggest that the Findhorn wouldn't have had to meander anywhere near as far east as you'd imagine to have emptied into "Loch Spynie", it could conceivably have done so somewhere near, say Coltfield or Hempriggs, and could have done so passing north rather than south of Forres, which seems a bit more realistic. If the Lossie and the Findhorn both entered the sea together via Loch Spynie between Kinloss and Roseisle it could also support the theory that Kinloss might be named after its relationship with the Lossie, and explain why the tiny Lossie/Loxa but not the much larger Findhorn seems to have been recorded by Ptolomy. It is hard to see any of this still being the case as late as 1100 though?
Stratigos' recent paper on the subject (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14732971.2021.1930775) seems to disagree, but without directly mentioning or rebutting the 1968 book. His model has Loch Spynie and Loch Roseisle as always essentially separate, as with your map above. His analysis does seem primarily to be based on changing water levels in the context of constant back-projected modern contours though, so might miss the effects of the movements of silt and sand and shingle causing land contours to change, which seems such a well-recorded feature of the area's history, and which the 1968 book with its geological approach seems to focus on more.
(On the other hand Stratigos is a leading academically authoritative wetland paleogeographer and archaeologist and I'm a random bloke on the internet, so who am I to comment?)
Hi Daniel, how lovely to hear from you! Gosh, that is a name from the past - hope you're doing well. Thanks very much for all these thoughts, I'm really enjoying hearing from people who are also fascinated by early medieval Moray.
That book looks v. useful on the possible extent of Loch Spynie, and very timely too as I was planning to write about Kinneddar for my next post. I've read Michael Stratigos's paper and assumed it to be the last word on the subject, so it's intriguing to think there might be other possibilities.
Re. Loxa/Lossie, W.J. Watson believed Ptolemy meant the Findhorn, which would indeed make sense if both rivers had the same estuary. And maybe that would explain the name Kinloss (and, I can't help but think, also the name of my old house: Muirhead, 'the head of the sea'...). Interesting!
I'm very well thank you, though envious of you moving all this into the realms of proper adult respectability.
While we are on the subject of moist placenames the presence of "Bridgend" and "Inchkeil" immediately south of Roseisle, at what would be the highest point between the east and west basins/lochs, also seem to suggest that even there it was pretty wet within relatively recent times? Wet enough to need a bridge, wet enough to constitute a river or loch, and wet enough to sail a longboat up are all very different things I suppose though.
Hi Fiona. Very thought provoking as ever! Thanks. Have to say though I can’t see a way that the Findhorn ever flowed east, south of Forres. If it did it would have had to flow uphill not to mention cutting across the Altyre/Mosset burn as well as Kinloss burn. I still favour the Lossie flowing west to Kinloss. I see Helen’s argument below but the ridge from Roseisle to Ardgay could have formed in post medieval times - the soil of the Laich is susceptible to westerly windblow to this day.
Can I also though point out another place name that has always puzzled me: Cassieford on the Forres to Kinloss road. I don’t know the root of the name so the ford bit could be a corruption but nowadays there is no water there to be forded. Certainly before the land bounced back after the ice melted it is thought that the sea reached to Forres with all the land north of there (and Cassieford that sits on the same ridge) was salt marsh at best.
Not sure that helps in any way though.
Keep it up
Thanks Alastair, and I agree, I can't see how the Findhorn could possibly have flowed all the way over to Loch Spynie. Good suggestion with Cassieford, though! It's listed in Alasdair Ross's book as part of the davoch of West Tarras in Rafford parish, which according to a 1649 charter, included "Lochihillis" and "Calsafuird" (Cassieford) and was also the davoch that had Sueno's Stone on it. I don't know the etymology either, but "fuird" could plausibly be "ford". Cassieford is right next to Inchdemmie, which was "Inche Damin" in the 12th century, an island of dry land among the marshes. We really need a in-depth place-names of Moray survey, like the one Simon Taylor and Gilbert Márkus have done for Fife...
Is it possible that Cassieford is “causewayford”, I.e the ford of the causeway ((between Burghead and Forres). Causeway is often pronounced causay or calsay in Scots.
A couple of other thoughts. Earnside sits atop a slope so the side might refer to that slope rather than any waterway. A few miles almost due west (and west of Forres) is Earnhill which is however barely more than a protuberance in the flat modern landscape. But the configuration of the ground between the two places is not inconsistent with it once having been a waterway.
Final thought: more or less a few miles due west of Earnhill is Auldearn, a significant royal site in the 12th century, the name of which is most likely derived from Gaelic allt-earn, Water of Earn. I can’t trace that stream on the modern map or on the ground, but all told there are signs of a west-east watercourse which might have been called Earn and given its name to the surrounding district.
Hi Hector, yes I think 'causewayford' sounds extremely plausible - I've updated my latest post with that suggestion, thank you.
There does seem to be more to all the 'earn' place-names than can be explained by proximity to the Findhorn - especially as William the Lion gave Kinloss Abbey the grant of "a toft in Eren", which must be Auldearn. Both W. J. Watson and Thomas Clancy have said it could have been a name given to the wider district. If this district took in Auldearn, Earnhill, Invererne, Cullerne and Earnside, it seems to have stretched west-east and across the modern course of the Findhorn. Unless the Findhorn has rotated ninety degrees, the district of Earn/Eren must have been much bigger than its immediate environs!
Fascinating, thanks Fiona! This whole region is difficult to understand, the movement of sand, the changing water flow, the 17thC drainage, and all subject to periodic massive flooding, to say nothing of slippery placenames.
Trying to get my head around this. The direction water flowed is still possible to assertain from the lay of the land. The Kinloss burn flows westwards down to Findhorn Bay, so it can’t have once flowed eastwards. Also, there is a small rise of land, I hesitate to call it a ridge, which forms the west side of old Spynie Loch, roughly from Roseisle down to Ardgye, so it isn’t likely an eastward flowing stream could go up and over this rise.
But now that you’ve brought up this topic, there is something else suspicious. If we go south a bit from your putative line, then we see the Monaughty burn, and this rises by several burns in the hills to its south which then fall together and yes, this burn flows to the east. Eventually it falls into the Lossie river beside Elgin, then out to Lossiemouth. So the main part of this burn starts in the south near Kinloss, and ends up at Lossiemouth. I wonder if its possible that before the modern township, that Kinloss was just that, the head of the Lossie (burn/river)?
But either way that still doesn’t make any sense of a bridge at Kinloss does it. (I drew a map for you but the comment box won't allow me to post it... )
Thanks Helen! I agree, I really can't see how the Findhorn could have flowed past Earnside into the Loch of Spynie, as Jones and Keillar seem to have suggested, and which Ross repeated in his book. I guess if I'm going to do this to death in my dissertation, I'm going to have to track down H.B. Mackintosh's book and see what evidence he offers for it. Interesting to think of Kinloss as the source of the Lossie! It does fit nicely with the place-name, but Kinloss is on such flat land and so close to the coast that I can't see how it could be.
Yes, that's a problem, the only thing I can think of is that the town has taken the name from the larger region, but it's just a guess.
Super interesting. I know the area from spending holidays there, so this has been fascinating
Thanks Melanie! It's an area that's rich in archaeology (and getting richer all the time as initiatives like the Northern Picts project at Aberdeen University dig more sites), but we know barely anything about the history of Moray in the first millennium. I'm very excited to get stuck in with it, and see if I can shed any more light on anything.
I love that a lot.