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This inhuman and barbarous cruelty made his name odious, and stained all his formerdoings, otherwise he was held very active and fortunate in his enterprises,”
Doctor Percy thinks that the name of Ker is assumed, and substituted for Gordon, in thenarrative of this catastrophe, but that there is no doubt Adam de Gordon of Auchindown, wasthe hero of the ballad; the Doctor also states, that the minstrels of the age, substitutednames to suit their hearers, and consequently imputed the barbarity here deplored, to a Gordonor a Ker, as answered their purpose.
Tytler , in his excellent history of Scotland , records the fact, that the Castle of Towie,with Lady Forbes and her whole household, being, as he states, thirty-seven in number, wasburnt by Adam Gordon, brother to Lord Huntly. The authority of Buchanan is to the sameeffect.
This barbarous act exasperated the Forbes’s, who mustered under the Master, and theirpursuit of Adam de Gordon, terminated in the conflict at the Craibstane, near Aberdeen, be-tween the Gordons and the Forbes’s, in November 1571.
Alexander Forbes died in 1580, and was succeeded by the second son of his marriage,after the above events, with the daughter of John Forbes of Reives ; this son married Elizabeth,daughter of Duncan Forbes of Monymusk ; their son, John, succeeded his father, and marriedMargaret, daughter of John Sumner of Brodie, by whom he had two sons, Alexander andArthur, called Black Arthur of Towie. In the person of this Alexander, the regular successionof the house of Towie failed. In 1684, the Castle and estate belonged to Arthur Forbes ofBrux ; to him succeeded Roderick, the possessor in 1696. Arthur Forbes obtained the estatein 1717, and, in 1726, it was sold to Arthur Gordon of Carnousie ; in 1745, it became theproperty of Alexander Leith of Freefield; in 1808, it was purchased by Sir Harry NivenLumsden, Bart., and is now the property of Henry Lumsden, Esq. of Auchindoir.