Fifty years ago, Monzie was a flourishing village of one hundred and twenty inhabitants, while in the immediate neighbourhood there would be perhaps two hundred and thirty more. Now, the population over the same area is not above a fourth of that number. The few cottages that remain speak of other days, and the old churchyard, and the jougs--an iron collar in which offenders were pilloried--fastened to the porch of the church, bring back the long-forgotten past. Many changes have taken place during the last fifty years. Pendicles have been swept into large farms; the industry of weaving and spinning has disappeared. But the natural aspect of Monzie is unchanged: the Almond and the Shaggie still run sunny and clear from the everlasting hills through her silent vales, which look upon the lover of nature with a face of beauty as fresh and entrancing as ever. [1] _Statistical Account of Monzie_, by Mr Laurie. [2] _Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland_, 1732. [3] _Liber Insule Missarum_. [4] _Memorials and Queries_. Printed by Constable, Edinburgh, 1846. [5] _The Holocaust_. By Rev. George Blair. Edinburgh: 1845. [6] The first Graeme of Inchbrakie was a son of the first Earl of Montrose. His father gave him a charter to it, and to Aberuthven, dated June, 1513. [7] The stone had been honoured by being set in a gold ring. [8] _Waverley Anecdotes_, p. 190. [9] _The Darker Superstitions of Scotland_. By John Graham Dalziel. Glasgow: 1835, p. 579. THE CASTLE, BARONY, AND SHERIFFDOM OF AUCHTERARDER By A. G. REID, F.S.A., Scot., Auchterarder Tradition asserts that the Castle of Auchterarder was one of the seats of the Scottish Kings and the residence of King Malcolm Canmore, who granted the Common Muir to the neighbouring burgh. The Barony was originally a Crown possession. Being situated on the road from the Royal Palaces of Scone and Forteviot to Stirling, and the principal manor place of a Barony belonging to the Crown, there is every probability that the tradition of its having been a royal palace is correct, and that the warlike Malcolm and the sainted Margaret abode within its walls. Auchterarder was one of the Royal Burghs of Scotland. It may be said that no charter of erection is in existence, but its absence is explained by the fact that the proximity of a royal seat gave the neighbouring town the status of a Royal Burgh. Whether or not Auchterarder got a charter of erection from the Sovereign, no doubt can exist that at a very early period it was one of the Royal Burghs of Scotland. In the charter of William, the son of Malise, of the lands within or outside the town of Auchterarder, still known as the Abbey lands, granted to the Canons of Inchaffray, which lands he had bought from John, the son of Baltin, he not only appended his own seal to the writing, but, for greater security and fuller evidence, procured to be appended thereto the common seal of the Burgh of Auchterarder.