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Kirriemuir - The Den

The Den - October 1997

This is the Kirriemuir Den. it is a steep depression in the ground off the Glengate. The Gairie Burn runs down into the Den. There were the Big Pond and Little Pond. The big pond was flooded for skating. The little one was a swamp, later turned into a children's playground. There had been a mill in the den. It was removed in the 1940s. Once bands or minstrel groups performed in the Den and people sat on the slopes to watch. Now there is a bandstand there.

According to a biography of Sir J. M. Barrie: "Kirriemuir had a fine tradition of loyalty to "the King over the water", and very soon Barrie was leading the last Jacobite rebellion, and was himself Prince Charlie hiding in a "lair" above the little stream which flowed through the valley on the outskirts of the town, known as "the Den". The whole new page in Jacobite history is graphically described in Sentimental Tommy, and doubtless Barrie's imagination painted the scene so vividly that we might almost take as autobiographical Tommy's sentimental picture in Tommy and Grizel of Corp Shiach's vain search for "the Den" to show to his own small son in after life." [Excerpt from Green, Roger Lancelyn, J. M. Barrie, pp. 11-12, New York: Henry Z. Walck, Inc., 1961.]

According to J.M. Barrie's characters in Sentimental Tommy (Volume II), there was a lair in the Den. The children played that they were Prince Charles and his band hiding in the lair:
  "The spot chosen by the ill-fated Stuart and his gallant remnant for their last desperate enterprise was eminently fitted for their purpose. Being round the corner from Thrums, it was commanded by no fortified place save the farm of Nether Drumgley, and on a recent goustie night nearly all the trees had ben blown down, making a hundred hiding places for bold climbers, and transforming the Den into a scene of wild and mournful grandeur. In no bay more suitable than the flooded field called the Silent Pool could the hunted prince have cast anchor, for the Pool is not only sheltered from observation, but so little troubled by gales that it had only one drawback: at some seasons of the year it was not there. ... Part of the way to the lair they usually traversed in the burn, because water leaves no trace, and though they carried turnip lanterns and were armed to the teeth, this was often a perilous journey ...
  "The lair was on the right bank of the burn, near the waterfall, and you climbed to it by ropes, unless you preferred an easier way. It is now a dripping hollow, sown which water dribbles from beneath a sluice, but at the time it was hidden on all sides by trees and the huge clods of sward they had torn from the earth as they fall. Two of these clods were the only walls of the lair, which had at times a ceiling ..."
(Barrie, Sir J.M., Sentimental Tommy, Volume II, pp 278-280, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1898.)

The Den - October 1997

And Miller's Pend and Jukie's Close
My memory is never weary
And autumn nights by the Den Brae
We played at Smugleerie.

Miller's pend was an opening, an easement, leading from the mill in the Den to the street named Glengate. Jukie's Close was also an opening, probably at the Glengate end.

The Den - October 1997

"And when I go back to Kirriemuir
I'll tell you so that you ken
The place I shall go to the first
Will be the Kirrie Den
..........
"Each neuk, each tree, and every stone
I knew them all you ken
And many days I spent alone
Down in the Kirrie Den.
..........
"And bask into the sunshine warm
Throughout the livelong day
You seemed to be so free from harm
The birdies seemed to say.
..........
"To lay down there and watch the sky
You never seemed bereft
And watch the clouds go floating by
Till there was nothing left."

"And when we went into the Den
And swing around the Stiles
There was nothing better that I knew
Than tease auld Sandy Miles.
..........
"I well remember auld Sandy Miles
Forgive me Oh Dear Lord
He chased us home but could not find
Us in the old cupboard.
..........
"And why I think of him so much
I'll tell you so you ken
The bairnies all knew him as such
As the Keeper of the Den.
..........
"He kept it trim the grand old Den
The finest in the land
Where lads and lassies used to go
And listen to the band."
..........

Sandy Miles may have been the den keeper in a time when the area was formally looked after.

The Den - 1930s (?)

This is the entrance to the Den and the Gairie Burn.

"Ah'll aye mind the runnin' brook
In summers lang gone by
Ah'll aye mind the ivy neuk
Faar we lingered you and I.
..........
Those lovely days sae ever bricht
An' enthusiasm ran sae high
We sat there i' the summer nicht
An' waatched the clouds roll by.
..........
An' summer nichts were a' sae bricht
As stars lit up the sky
We wondered tae, with a' oor micht
If we, like stars, w'uld die.

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