By W. Scobie
I paddled in it when I was a wee boy living in Clyde Street in the 1950s.
You’d scarcely give it a glance as you pass the small burn flowing under the road yards from Dumbarton East railway station. But that wee burn has an amazing story…
The year was 1571.
Mary Queen of Scots was a prisoner in England and Scotland was being governed by a Regent – Matthew Earl of Lennox – on behalf of his grandson, the boy King James VI of Scots.
Dumbarton Castle was, however, being held by a garrison loyal to Mary.
It was the hope of the Queen of Scots and her supporters that a fleet of French or Spanish ships would sail up the Firth of Clyde with an army of Catholic soldiers and, from the secure base of Dumbarton Castle, reconquer Scotland for Mary and the old faith.
To prevent this, Regent Lennox entrusted a body of 150 men, led by Captain Thomas Crawfurd of Jordanhill, with the task of capturing the castle.
From Dumbuck, through the darkness of night, Crawfurd’s men proceeded by stealth along the Clyde shore.
To reach the Rock they first had to cross Gruggies Burn.
Their scout knew the burn was passable only at one place, by the bridge of a single fallen tree trunk.
What he did not know, and what the men could not see in the dark, was that the tree trunk was now fractured and in a precarious state.
It was unfit to hold the weight of a man and, had any tried to cross over the burn by it, it would almost certainly have collapsed with resulting cries of shock, alarm and probable injury.
Such an outcry would undoubtedly have been heard by alert sentries on the Rock.
The garrison would have been roused and forewarned. The element of surprise lost, the raid would have ended most assuredly in failure.
However (and this is a matter of record) – precisely at the moment when the first of Crawfurd’s men were about to step onto the ‘bridge’, a phenomenal light appeared before them…
It has since been rationalised as a ‘willo-the-wisp’ – marsh gasses igniting in the air – but Thomas Crawfurd was in no doubt; it was an angel.
Whatever it was, by the miraculous appearance of this mysterious luminous manifestation, the leaders could see the dangerous condition of the tree-trunk, disaster was avoided, and the men were able, by the clever use of ropes and ladders, to construct a makeshift bridge to cross Gruggies Burn and the raid thereafter was carried out successfully.
The castle was captured for the Regent Earl of Lennox and King James.
Had this not been achieved, a French or Spanish army could well have landed on the Rock. Catholic soldiers could have reclaimed Scotland for Mary. There would most certainly never have been a United Kingdom with a Catholic Scotland and a Protestant England.
There would have been no British Empire as such.
The world would have been incalculably different… For better or for worse.
It can be seen, then, that it is no exaggeration to say the course of world history hinged on the precarious crossing of that wee burn in Dumbarton East.
You may care to ponder these things the next time you pass it by.
Read the full story of Thomas Crawfurd’s capture of Dumbarton Castle in ‘Upon This Rock‘ by Alexander Tait.