Wife in Fife

Kilconquhar cemetery

Burials have taken place in this cemetery for 800 years; many deaths and even more memories as well s striking arches and tombstones.

proverbs

It was in Fife that the first collection of Scottish proverbs was made by David Ferguson, minister of Dunfermline. Ferguson’s collection was published in 1644, nearly fifty years after his death. It had been made during his life in the latter half of the sixteenth century; a collection of sometimes odd and often amusing sayings.

They say in Fife,
That next to nae wife,
The best thing is a guid wife.

proverb from Fife

In graveyards, wives of any kind ususally get the attribute “most beloved” although one might safely assume that this was not always the case. How much truth does one want to read on a gravestone? And what about “beloved husbands”?

9th and 10th Earl of Lindsay

John Trotter Bethune, 10th Earl of Lindsay certainly had an impressive memento commisioned for his French wife who died in 1897, one might think. But then again, he was already dead by the time she passed away. He had died in 1894. She was Jeanne Eudoxie Marie Duval of Bordeaux and little else can be found about her. She was a wife, they rarely had a life of their own in the 19th century.

John Trotter Bethunes father, the 9th Earl, had been a military man, a Mayor-General, part of a mission against the Persian Empire. He died in Tehran in 1851.

His son John was 24 at the time of his father’s death. Unlike most of his siblings (two of his brother and two of his sisters died unmarried), the Earl of Lindsay took a wife seven years later. His marriage with a young French woman had no issue and the baronetcy of Kilconquhar became extinct after the 10th Earl had left no heirs. Documents often use the letters d.s.p.: decessit sine prole – died without issue.

Had they married for love? Or did he simply want to continue the line? Did it then matter to him, that they had no children? And why didn’t they?

11th and 12th Earl of Lindsay

He was succeded by his second cousin once removed, David Clark Ayton-Lindsay (later Bethune) became the 11th Earl of Lindsay and married the widow Emily Marian Barnes. That name is not given on her gravestone, but that of her father.

The 12th Earl of Lindsay had a wife from Yorkshire.

None of them took a wife from Fife.

Liked the read? There’s more here…

The stories of this book have been discovered and gathered for my blog, Graveyards of Scotland, over many years. Find treasure all over Scotland with my latest book. I am Nellie Merthe Erkenbach, journalist and author.The fairy hill in Inverness, a nitrate murder on Shetland, a family of left-handers, wolves, Robert the Bruce and William Wallace shown in a new light, the secret bay of the writer Gavin Maxwell, a murdering poet and so many things you didn’t know about Scotland, its clans and its history.

My main sources were historical travel guides from the 18th and 19th centuries, where the finds were scary, beautiful, funny, and sometimes, cruel. 

This unusual approach to a country’s history has produced amazing results. You don’t have to share my passion for cemeteries to enjoy this book; only a small number of the stories in this collection take place in graveyards, though they do all end in them, so perhaps it helps. 

Scotland for Quiet Moments is available @Amazon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️