The key local legends here link the fourteenth-century Robert The Bruce to the area’s prehistoric monuments from thousands of years earlier. Bruce was taken ill at the Battle Of Slioch against the Comyns (1307). His camp was supposed to have been on Robin’s Height, to the north of Slioch, and the OSA in 1799 described the hill as having large inscribed stones and entrenchments. Whatever these earthworks and stones were, they are long gone. The prehistoric round cairn and long barrow on Newtongarry Hill to the north-east, along with a third, now vanished tumulus, were said to have been built by Bruce’s men as observation and communications posts, with the sick king giving orders from the camp. In later years one of the tumuli was named the Fairy Hillock, and was also supposed to have been a place of execution.
Mysterious Aberdeenshire
Geoff Holder