A traditionally thatched cottage, Collessie, FifeThe old lanes of Collessie, Fife
Collessie is a village and parish of Fife, Scotland. The village is set on a small hillock centred on a historic church. Due to rerouting of roads, it now lies north of the A91. Though a railway embankment was constructed through the middle of the village in the 19th century, it retains many of its traditional 17th–18th century houses. In recent years some of the older houses have been re-roofed in traditional thatch.
Collessie's name derives from Scottish Gaelic although the exact derivation is unknown. The first element is either cùl (behind) or cùil (nook) and the last element may be either eas (waterfall) or lios (enclosure, garden).[1]
Demographics
The civil parish had a population of 1,921 in 2011.[2]
Notable locations
The Church
Collessie church, Fife
The church was consecrated by the Bishop David de Bernham of St. Andrews in July 30, 1243,[3][4] and is mentioned in charters of both 1252 and 1262. Prior to the Reformation, the church was under the ownership of the Abbot of Lindores and was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
In 1742 and 1743 the Rev Hugh Blair was the minister of Collessie.[5]
The church was remodelled in 1838–39 by R & R Dickson[6] to a T-plan form with a pinnacled western tower and has remained virtually unchanged since that date.[4][7] The minister was the Rev John MacFarlane (1798-1875) who served from 1833 but left in the Disruption of 1843.[8] The pulpit is in a central position at the head of the T, as in several Scottish churches including as Currie on the outskirts of Edinburgh. The pews date back to 1911, when they were adjusted to a less upright stance to improve comfort. The font dates from 1928.
The Collessie war memorial is in the east transept. The communion table was brought from Cowlairs Church in 1978 and was their war memorial.[4]
In 2020 the church was listed for sale by the Church of Scotland.[4] As of January 2022, a local resident planned to buy the church and remodel it into a home.[4]
The Churchyard
Thatched houses in Collessie, FifeCountryside south of CollessieThe tomb of Sir James Melville, Collessie, Fife
The churchyard has been in use since at least the 12th century. It was extended in 1840 and 1871 and was taken over by the local County Council in 1929, who still manage it as of 2022.[4]
The central feature of the churchyard is 'the Melville Tomb', the mausoleum of the local lairdly family of Melville of Halhill, which was restored from a ruinous condition in 2004.[9][10] It was erected in 1609 to house the remains of Christian Boswell, the wife of the courtier, diplomat and memoirist Sir James Melville of Halhill. She was a Boswell of Balmuto, an estate north of Burntisland.[11]
Sir James Melville and Christian Boswell had four children; the most well known being the poet Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross, who named one of her daughters Christian. Presumably, the mausoleum received Sir James's body in 1617,[original research?] and is now somewhat inaccurately described on the information board next to it simply as 'the tomb of Sir James Melville of Halhill'.[citation needed] The Collessie mausoleum gradually fell prey to neglect and became a ruin: the carved heraldic shields that once filled niches on the walls are gone, as has the date '1609', recorded as late as 1895.
Before restoration, the Melville Tomb was already well known in 'funerary' literature, because it bears two seven-line stanzas of Scots-language verse.[12] These are inscribed on the outer wall, which forms part of the churchyard boundary, and overlooks what was formerly the principal highway to St Andrews. Now damaged, it was transcribed and published complete in 1895.
The Collessie poem makes no mention of Christian Boswell or her husband, but constitutes a short sermon about sin, redemption, death, burial and resurrection. The second stanza sternly denounces the widespread practice of burying bodies inside churches, and its striking first line has twice been used in the titles of articles on burial practices.[13] Both these articles discuss The Blame of Kirk-Buriall, Tending to Perswade Cemeteriall Civilitie, by Mr William Birnie, Minister of Lanark (Edinburgh, 1606), edited W.B.D.D. Turnbull (London, 1833).
Ye loadin pilgrims passing langs this way
Pans on your fall, and your offencis past, ponder
How your frail flesh first formit of the clay
In dust mon be desolvit at the last:
Repent, amend, on Christ the burden cast
Of your sad sinnes, quha can your sauls refresh
Syne rais from grave to gloir your grislie flesh.
Defyle not Chrysts kirk with your carrion,
A soleme sait for Gods service prepar[e]d,
For praier, preaching and communion:
Your burial suld be in the kirkyaird.
On your uprysing set your great regard,
Quhen saull and body ioynes, with joy to ring reign
In heaven for ay with Christ our head and king.
The poem, which uses 'rhyme royal' (known in Scotland as 'Troilus verse'), has been attributed to Christian Boswell's poet-daughter Elizabeth Melville on biographical and stylistic grounds.[14] The original literary inspiration may have come[original research?] from an inscription on the wall of Aberdour Kirk[15] on the Fife coast, close to Balmuto Castle and to another Melville family seat, Rossend Castle in Burntisland (home of Elizabeth Melville's uncle Sir Robert of Murdocairnie, and then his son, Sir Robert of Burntisland):
Pans O pilgrim ponder
That passith by this way
Upon thine end
And thou sal fear to sin
And think also
Upon the latter day
When thou to God man count must give account
Then best thou now begin then
Which laid out as pentameter verse (with a hypermetric last line) would read:
Pans O pilgrim that passith by this way
Upon thine end, and thou sal fear to sin:
And think also upon the latter day,
When thou to God man count: then best thou now begin.
It has been suggested that 'pilgrim' alludes to the mediaeval pilgrimages to a well-known, now vanished healing well located near the church.[16] However, 'when' (rather than Scots 'quhen') is suspicious in a supposedly pre-Reformation inscription.[citation needed] The word 'pilgrim' for all human beings on their earthly journey was a standard metaphor much used by Protestants, as the Collessie mausoleum inscription indicates.[citation needed] Elizabeth Melville repeatedly employs the term in her poetry.[17]
It is possible that the Melville tomb inscription provided the inspiration for the Aberdour inscription.[original research?] If the Aberdour inscription predates 1609 and the Collessie tomb, Elizabeth Melville could have known of it from the man who in 1603 became master of Culross grammar school – her fellow Presbyterian John Fairfoul, former minister of Aberdour, who had become minister of Dunfermline in 1598.[18] Alternatively, Sir James Melville himself may have told his daughter about the Aberdour inscription (he is likely have had considerable input into the content of the poem on his wife's mausoleum).[original research?] Aberdour is quite close both to Balmuto Castle where Christian Boswell was born, and to another Melville family seat, Rossend Castle in Burntisland, home of Sir James's elder brother Sir Robert of Murdocairnie, 1st Lord Melville, and then of his son, Sir Robert of Burntisland, 2nd Lord Melville.[19][circular reference] Furthermore, Aberdour Kirk stands next to Aberdour Castle, one of the seats of the Douglas earls of Morton. It was therefore a residence of two important Scottish peers well known to Sir James Melville, namely the Regent Morton (died 1581) and the militantly Presbyterian Archibald Douglas, eighth Earl of Angus and fifth of Morton.[20]
The school and schoolmaster's house date from 1846 providing free education (prior to the Education Act of 1872) from an early date. As with the church, it was designed by R & R Dickson.[6]
Fife is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire.
Burntisland is a former royal burgh and parish in Fife, Scotland, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth. According to the 2011 census, the town has a population of 6,269. It was previously known as Wester Kinghorn or Little Kinghorn.
Rossend Castle is a historic building in Burntisland, a town on the south coast of Fife, Scotland.
Sir James Melville (1535–1617) was a Scottish diplomat and memoir writer, and father of the poet Elizabeth Melville.
Durie is a Scottish family of the Scottish Lowlands, not a Scottish clan as sometimes reported.
Auchtertool is a small village in Fife, Scotland. It is 4 miles west of Kirkcaldy. The name is from the Gaelic uachdar, meaning upland or heights above the Tiel burn. The Tiel Burn flows a few hundred yards south of the kirk and village, which was formerly known as Milton of Auchtertool. The parish belonged to the diocese of Dunkeld, having been given to Bishop Gregory by King David I in the twelfth century. Soon after, the church was given to the priory of Inchcolm.
Hallyards Castle, located to the north-west of the village of Auchtertool, is reputed to have been a hunting seat of Malcolm Canmore. With the establishment of the Roman Church, Halyards became the local residence of the Bishops of Dunkeld; it remained so until the first lay proprietor took possession in 1539.
Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (c.1578–c.1640) was a Scottish poet.
Scottish renaissance painted ceilings are decorated ceilings in Scottish houses and castles built between 1540 and 1640. This is a distinctive national style, though there is common ground with similar work elsewhere, especially in France, Spain and Scandinavia. An example in England, at Wickham, Hampshire, was recorded in 1974. There are records of over 100 examples, and a much smaller number of painted ceilings survive in-situ today. Some salvaged painted beams and boards are stored by Historic Environment Scotland. The paintings at Crathes Castle, dating from 1597 and 1602 are probably the best known.
James Kirkcaldy of Grange, a Fife laird and treasurer of Scotland.
Master John Wood, was a Scottish courtier, administrator and secretary to the Earl of Moray. He was assassinated on 15 April 1570.
Jane, Janet, or Jean Kennedy was a companion of Mary, Queen of Scots, during her captivity in England.
Claud Irvine Boswell, Lord Balmuto was a Scottish judge.
Robert Melville, 1st Lord Melville was a Scottish diplomat, administrator, jurist, and intriguer, and uncle of the poet Elizabeth Melville.
Burntisland Parish Church is a church building in the Fife burgh of Burntisland, constructed for the Church of Scotland in 1592. It is historically important as one of the first churches built in Scotland after the Reformation, with a highly distinctive and apparently original square plan. It is Category A listed for its architectural and historical importance.
Sir James Sandilands was a courtier to King James VI and I and captain of Blackness Castle
James Scott of Balwearie was a Scottish landowner and supporter of the rebel earls.
John Boswell of Balmuto (1546-1610) was a Scottish landowner and courtier.
Andrew Balfour of Montquhanie was a Scottish landowner.
References
↑ "Collessie". Fife Place-name Data. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
↑ Census of Scotland 2011, Table KS101SC – Usually Resident Population, publ. by National Records of Scotland. Web site http://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk/ retrieved March 2016. See "Standard Outputs", Table KS101SC, Area type: Civil Parish 1930
↑ "Collessie Parish Church". POWiS: Places of Worship in Scotland. Scottish Church Heritage Research Ltd. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
↑ See, for example, Andrew Spicer, ‘"Defile not Christs Kirk with your carrion": The development of burial aisles in post-Reformation Scotland', in P.Marshall and B.Gordon, eds., The Place of the Dead in European Society, 1400–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), pp.149-69. Spicer assigns the date of Christian Boswell’s death to her husband, a mistake which has given rise to published statements that Sir James died in 1609, e.g., in Sarah Tarlow, Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (2010) and in The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial (2013).
↑ E.g. in Ane Godlie Dreame (1603), Melville calls on God to 'Mak haist to end our painefull pilgrimage' (line 32); she also describes herself as 'Ane pilgrime puir consumit with siching sair' (line 108) and the reader as 'Ane pilgrime puir into thy loathsum lyfe' (line 398). See Jamie Reid Baxter, Poems of Elizabeth Melville (Solsequium: Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 73, 76, 88.
↑ Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae , v, p.27.
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