CURSE ON CASTLE

Shannon News, 9 February 1926, Page 3

CURSE ON CASTLE

Lord Leith of Fyvie, who died at Hartwell House, Aylesbury, belonged to a Scottish family’who, according to ancient tradtion,' lay under a curse which banned direct succession from father to son. Lord Leith’s only son died in South Africa, and his grandson, Lieutopant Burn, was killed in Belgium in 1914. Tradition says that the curse was laid on Fyvie Castle in the thirteenth century by Thomas the Rhymer, the Scottish- poet and prophet, who was once turned away from Fyvie Castle when he visited it dressed as a beggar. No owner •of Fyvie Castle has ever been succeeded by his son since that time, and the peerage is now extinct. Lord Leith,, who was seventy-eight, and w’as created a peer in 1905, made a gerat fortune in America, where lie was a partner of Andrew Carnegie in the great steel trust. He married Mrs. 1 Marie Louise January, of St. Louis, and leaves a daughter, the Jllon. Lady Burn.