My friend's memories went back almost to the first quarter
of last century. A Morayshire man, he had spent his youth
and most of his manhood in the beautiful vale of Pluscarden.
It is cut off from the plain of Moray by the long wooded ridge
of the Heldon Hill, forming a welcome screen from the north,
while southwards across the vale the ground rises away up to
the moorlands of Badenoch. Through the vale flows the Black
Water on its way to join the Lossie near to Elgin, six miles off.
The cyclist, climbing the easy ascent of the valley, makes his
exit from the vale to westwards by the base of Cluny Hill into
Forres. The return journey to Elgin on the North side of the
Heldon would take him by the mystic sculptured stone of King
Sweno and the ruined abbey of Kinloss.
Early in the thirteenth century the Cistercians planted their picturesque priory here in a secluded vale (vallis clausa) that might well remind them of their own Italian Vaucluse. Alexander II. (1230) was partial to the Cistercians. He planted them in other two secluded retreats — Ardchattan and Beauly. Scotland owes them an unrecorded debt, for they were the farming monks who brought to the wild Celt land the arts of the sheep walk, the garden, and the meadows rich with corn. They chose out, as here and at Newbattle beside the South Esk, a spot embosomed among the hills, on the generous soil of the haugh land, where the clack of the mill might blend with the matins. The scene now breathes a singular calm—the solemn approach between the files of thickly-grown hollies, the stately eastern gateway through the lofty precinct wall, the silent mill, the deserted cloisters and the grey walls of the roofless pile looking out at intervals from their mantle of ivy. The lands came to the Duff family about 1710, but were sold by the Duke of Fife to the late Marquis of Bute. When I saw the priory the ivy was being removed, and the usual diggings and drawings of the Marquis's restorations were in progress. Early in last century (1821) the Earl of Fife contemplated the fitting up of the choir as a church for the district, but, instead, the monk's Calefactory was roofed in and set up as a Chapel of Ease, which ultimately was handed over to the Frees at the Disruption. Above this low-ceilinged place of worship is the Dormitory, usually chosen from the warmth afforded by the kitchen
