Broadcast - Musical Correspondent... with Tom Morton
Photo by Dg-505 CC BY 3.0 Macduff Parish Church with its blank clock face
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Story behind the song… Macpherson’s Rant
f you visit Banff in the North East of Scotland and gaze across the mouth of the River Deveron to neighbouring Macduff you’ll see the impressive Doune Kirk standing tall overlooking the Moray Firth. Look closely and it becomes obvious the 215-year-old church
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has an unusual clock tower - it tells the time on only three sides. The place on the west side of tower where a clock face should be, overlooking Banff, is blank. Local legend has it that this is a deliberate slight by the residents of Macduff against their neighbours for their complicity
in the death of a popular local outlaw with a reputation of being something of a Robin Hood figure. James Macpherson was born in 1675, the illegitimate son of a local laird and a gypsy girl, who grew up to be a man of “beauty, strength and stature rarely
