Crossroads and Characters

19. YOUR PURSE OR YOUR LIFE.

Modern travellers enjoying the scenery along the road to Auchterarder are passing through a place with a lively history. Up on Rossie Law on the left are the marks of an Iron Age fort In which some of our ancestors grouped to repel their enemies. The road itself has changed: it used to be even twistier and easy for highwaymen to waylay people returning home from Dunning market. 'There were a lot of wild characters about in those days', one story goes, 'and one day a Dunningite travelling by horse cart was surprised by a figure leaping out of the dusk and demanding 'Your purse or your life!' The man in the cart took his whip and struck the other in the face saying 'I'll know ye the next time.' Sure enough, there was a man in the village who had one eye he could never quite close, though nothing was ever proven.'