From Hopeman Book of Rememberance TDGD.

Value of Tradition Now. (in three parts)

On Ascension Day this year, 1920 (May 13th) a sudden and rather severe gale blew down the finest tree in the parish - a big ash that grew at F??lhead burn - near the bridge on high ???, and at the East si?? of old Market stance (or village green), where the annual Fumac fair was held. There were two of these trees, the other still stands and the story told of them when I was young was that they had been stolen out of a cartload of plants that were being taken up to Balvenie where Lord Fife was building his new house there - quite a possible thing, and the age of the tree as shown by the rings confirms that in the old days there was a small village there and, they said, an inn or change house.

However about 20 years ago my wife went to see an old woman who was not far off her 100 years - Ina Stephen by name, and she contributed the following strange ??? "you'll have heard of Prince Charlie, weel he came into the parish fechtin and he stopped to drink at the change house and got fou and hadna the siller to pay his ???, so he just gied the good wife these ash plants and she planted them".!!

In old times accounts of events were handed down more or less correctly but after the middle of XIX ?? cent the folk began to move about so much that recollections become distorted and died out.

Sept 1920