A real market, not a supermarket

Saturday was market day in Logierait, ten miles away from Aberfeldy but still our local market. It’s at the other end of Strath Tay from the ancient market site I visited about a month ago but it’s a living hint of what the old markets like that one at Inchadney were all about.

Logierait is a new market, started a few years ago by a local community group but now Pete and Fiona from Mill of Logierait farm run it and it’s a great place to go. There are plenty of stalls but there’s also live music, an outdoor cafe and even a wee train that can take you on a gentle chug around the farm for a couple of quid. It’s become a regular part of my life. I go to shop: there’s great bread on sale, superb chocolate, plenty of meat, including wild game, fish, veg, cakes, locally roasted coffee, plants, bric-a-brac and all sorts of crafty things. But I also go to meet up with people and do some small bits of business. So this month I was helping to publicise the new season of our local film society, sold some of the stuff I’ve been clearing out my house, did my weekly shop, met up with friends and made various social and work arrangements. Even Todd, my dog, had a good time and met up with plenty of doggy friends.

It seems like a simple thing, a few stalls in a field but it is makes a much pleasanter and more productive morning out than a trudge around a supermarket. It’s what markets should be about, local makers and producers selling direct, a local farm doing their best to diversify and a valuable gathering place for people from Aberfeldy, Dunkeld, Pitlochry, all the places between and a good few from further afield too. It’s made a real difference to Highland Perthshire where there is a real struggle to maintain a sense of community in an area with a small and dispersed population. It’s great to see a living version of the ancient markets that dotted the human landscape around here for so many centuries. Long may it prosper!

Nine Maidens Market and a Healing Well

I walked back to Aberfeldy from Kenmore on Monday 18th July, Nine Virgins Day. The Virgins were daughters of St Donald who all retired to the monastery at Abernethy when their father died, sometime in the eighth century. I don’t know why they were celebrated in the upper Tay valley but a market was held in their name around 18th July until at least the seventeenth century. It was last held in Kenmore but it was moved there from the field at Inchadney a mile or so down the Tay. There’s no sign of Inchadney now, either on the map or on the ground, though it was one of the most important places in the district. There was a ford across the river and a church as well as the market. The church and burial ground have disappeared under trees planted below the Star Battery, a peculiar concrete folly associated with Taymouth Castle, just across the river.

I discovered Inchadney after a friend told me about a well at the base of the scarp that skirts the edge of the Bulls Field, where Nine Virgins Market was held before it was moved to Kenmore. I found the well in wet carr marked by yellow flag and a fallen tree sprouting again in all that damp. It was a perfect little pool, cold and clear and protected by a mossy wall topped with white quartz. According to In Famed Breadalbane, our local history bible, the well was holy and much visited at Beltane, May 1st. It was easy to believe in its special powers when I drank the water. It was perfectly clear and very cold, even on a warm muggy day, with no trace of that slight muddiness of water after rain, even after the downpours we’ve had over these last few days, and weeks.