Gow's Stone
No inscription - a glacial erratic boulder now built into a dry stone dyke near Migvie, locally known as Gow's Stone ('gow' from the Gaelic gobha, 'blacksmith').Context & sources
DOESN'T QUITE FIT - A NATURAL BOULDER WITH A THIN, INCONSISTENT LEGEND. Flagged via geograph.org.uk. This is a glacial erratic (a stone naturally deposited by ice-age glaciers, not placed or carved by people), now incorporated into a field boundary wall. The Geograph photo caption records a local legend that it marks where a blacksmith named Reid, from nearby Smiddyhill, was murdered by outlaws while helping King James IV. A separate search turned up what may be a different version of the same family legend - some sources describe James IV instead granting the blacksmith's widow as much land as she could cover on foot in a day, with no murder mentioned at all - so even the basic shape of the story is inconsistent between sources, and very little independent documentation was found beyond local tradition. Logged as a thin, unverified folklore case rather than a documented murder memorial.
Behind a paywall
- The fuller James IV / Reid family legend (land-grant version vs. murder version) - only found via a search-engine AI summary citing unspecified local-history sources; no single citable article was located and read in full. Worth someone tracking down the original source(s) directly.
- Town
- Migvie
- County
- Aberdeenshire
- Country
- Scotland
- Coordinates
- 57.1614, -2.9627
- Year
- Traditionally linked to the reign of James IV (1488-1513); the stone is a glacial erratic
- Condition
- Legible
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