There are some absorbing nuggets for Ochils buffs in this account of a Victorian, pioneering, female archaeologist who was refused full membership of the male-orientated Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and was only grudgingly made a lady associate member. She had to get a male Society member to read her research papers at meetings, and we don't know what she looked like because her local history and archaeology society only kept portraits of the men.
In her own way, Maclagan was a giant - and, not surprisingly, she was a campaigner for women's rights. She was very comfortably off and travelled widely all over Scotland and abroad, surveying, excavating and drawing hill forts, brochs, stone circles and cairns. She made hundreds of "rubbings" of carved stones, and these are now in the British Museum in London. She wrote four books and many articles. One huge tome in particular, The Hill Forts, Stone Circles and Other Structural Remains of Ancient Scotland, published in 1875, was widely praised.
Maclagan's researches can read like travelogues, and contain personal opinion, comment, folklore and even a recipe for heather-crop ale. Critics say some of her researches are overly romantic, and that she saw ancient races as "our people" and the Romans as brutal invaders. She believed that many forts, brochs and duns were lines of defence against the Antonine Wall. She was nowadays what we would call "a character".
She referred to Dumyat as Dunmyot, and wrote in 1873 that the Iron Age / Pictish fort on the lower shoulder had three walls "but it was much dilapidated for nothing is more common than to see the idler rolling its stones over the cliff, and then with eager delight watching their progress as they bound down the sides of the mighty precipice which surrounds this 'castle in the air'". Our modern problems on Dumyat include litter, out-of-control dogs and idiots who paint yellow arrows on boulders. But shoving stones over the cliff's edge has ceased, other than prompted by the natural forces of wind, ice and water.
Maclagan also noted nettles growing on stone-heaps as evidence of disturbed ground and human habitation. This is now widely accepted, but she was an early observer of the phenomenon. Because of the "pow", "poo" and "pool" place-names on the lower ground, she imagined the British fleet moored below this fort.
She wrote about Tillicoultry's "Johnnie Mool's Hill", which (I surmise) was where the modern quarry stands. She also wrote that "aged people" in the village remembered playing in their childhood in a fort or "castle" with a roof of stone. She drew the ruins in 1875 and marked a sheep field, the walls of the "castle" and stairs on the hill. The view from the top, she wrote, was very fine: "The wild, deep, rugged glen - the lofty mountain (2700 feet high) - the far stretching valley - the glittering winding river - the distant sea - all make up a scene of rarest beauty...". The "lofty mountain" may have been a reference to the hills as a whole, but she may have confused Ben Cleuch with the Law even though she got the height wrong.
Author Sheila M Elsdon comments: "This sense of enjoyment is lost in modern archaeological reports." Maclagan argued that "proper brochs" had three walls with the innermost thickest, and that the entrances were covered. Elsdon says there is no mention of the Tillicoultry site in archaeological guides now.
The book includes material on Abernethy, Dunning and the Dupplin Cross (now in Dunning church). The author, herself an archaeologist and lecturer, first came to Scotland in 1944 when she was evacuated to the Stirling area. There she spent "the happiest nine months" of her life exploring the Ochils and Ben Ledi.
There are bound to be Tillicoultry folk who know about the vanished fort and the name Johnnie Mool. Was Johnnie a quarry worker, local worthy or farmer? Is the name a corruption of something? (As with Andrew Gannel Hill, which comes from an sruth gainmheail or sandy stream, according to Peter Drummond in Scottish Hill and Mountain Names - Ed.) Mool could be from the Gaelic meal, a mound-hill. Comments, please, to the newsletter editor.