LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

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LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Fri Dec 27, 2013 1:30 pm

I am researching the origins of a myth about a "Lady Lilyburn" (Lillyburn, or Lillieburn) taking a dive at Kinneil House into a "Gil-burn" and becoming a ghost story which still collects money at Halloween. I am also trying to debunk the same myth from being linked to Colonel Robert Lilburne who was Commander in Chief for Oliver Cromwell in Scotland for a brief period of time.

The myth claims that "Lady Ailee" or "Lady Alice" Lillyburn; Lilyburn or Lillieburn, was the wife of Robert Lilburne. This I have already established as nonsense - his wife's name was Margaret and she was healthily giving birth to kids long after "Lady Aliee" is supposed to have died.

I have also established that Robert Lilburne never lived at Kinneil House while he was in Scotland.

However, this ghost story that has found its way on to Wikipedia which references a lawyer from the turn of the last century who placed Robert Lilburne into the story! Because Wikipedia has this silly rule about forbidding original research it prefers rubbish to a lack of existing citations!

Well the Wikipedia source goes back to the 1800s and a writer who was a visitor to Kinneil House, and she was a friend of Walter Scott who made up all kinds of rubbish about Scottish history.

This author was told the ghost story about a "Lady Ailee Lilyburn" by the owner of the house, who at the time was trying to keep neighborhood kids out of his apple orchard!

Now I have researched the old print works at Lillyburn that became a distillery before becoming a print works again, and then the site was put to many other uses. Right now East Dunbartonshire Council seem to be trying to sell the old buildings through a company in Larbert.

Therefore what I want to find is some sort of connection to a "Lady Ailee" or a "Lady Alice" that links to the old print works of the mid-1800s, which is when the ghost story began. I suspect that the writer living in Kinneil House at that time had some sort of connection to Lillyburn - near Milton, and cobbled together as a tale that still excites the BBC enough to include it as a ghost story on its web site.

Can anyone help me out by shedding some light on the true Lillyburn origins of the character named in the Kinneil ghost story?
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Re: Do you know anything the Lillyburn print works?

Postby freebornjohn » Sat Dec 28, 2013 9:21 am

Sorry if the original heading 'shouted' in caps, because I am looking for information to help my research, not trying to drive readers away. :oops:

I am getting readers but no contributors to this thread. :(

Here's why I need your help:

I posted the basics of what I know about the place - it was one of two fabric print works near Milton, and for a time it became a distillery before becoming a print works again. Then it had other uses before being put up for sale - the other print works was demolished.

But because of the name Lillyburn - sometimes printed as Lillieburn (in an old Glasgow newspaper ad for the distillery that can be seen on an EDC site), it seems logical to me that there is a connection between the location name 'Lillyburn' (with two 'l's), and the Kinneil House 'ghost story' name about 'Lady Lilyburn'. I just don't know what the connection might be,

The reason why I want to know is because I have debunked the widely held explanation, but now I need to find an alternative explanation. I want to know why someone living in Kinneil House at about the same time that the print works was in operation, would have picked that name - even if they did drop one of the 'l's.

It is such an unusual name that I feel that logic says that there must be a connection.

Was there ever a 'Lady Ailee' or Alice connected with the print works at Lillyburn? :)
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Lucky Poet » Sat Dec 28, 2013 7:10 pm

To be fair, it is a wee bit obscure (not that that's a bad thing). Plus everybody's probably hungover and/or otherwise engaged. Patience, man :)
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Icecube » Sat Dec 28, 2013 10:14 pm

Is Kinneil House not near Bo'Ness?
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Sun Dec 29, 2013 5:52 am

Icecube - Yes, it is.

The reason why I posted this is because the name 'Lilyburn' is the name first used by the person who invented the ghost story at about the time that the Lillyburn print works first opened. (Then it became a distillery, before reverting to a print works again. The site still stands and EDC is trying to find a buyer for it. Other historic print works in the same general area were not preserved.)

At the time that this story first surfaced in the mid 1800s, the name of the ghost was simply a 'Lady Lilyburn', but then along came a solicitor a few years later and he created a detailed, but full of errors, history of Bo'ness and the area. In it he added a lot of details that are simply pulled from thin air - in other words they are bogus.

He claimed that the first name of 'Lady Lilyburn' was either Ailee or Alice, and that she was the wife of one of Cromwell's generals who lived at Kinneil House. He then infused the idea that 'Lady Lilyburn' should either be identified as 'Lilbourn' or Lilburn.

Upon this foundation Wikipedia; BBC; Falkirk Council and its Trust with its so-called historians, have cemented together the story that the general in question was Robert Lilburne.

However, Robert Lilburne was a colonel and not a general. He never lived at Kinneil House. His wife is named Margaret and she remained very much alive in England producing a series of offspring for her husband.

Robert Lilburn is important to the story of Scotland because he was its Acting Commander in Chief of the Army representing the English republic called the Commonwealth, into which Scotland was later merged. This is all a part of the hidden history of Scotland covered up by the equally bogus term of 'Interregnum' - when there was no interruption of the monarchy. It was abolished. It ended with Charles I in England, and a spurious attempt was made by a vacillating faction in Scotland to make his son the King of Scots. That nightmare ended when he was defeated at Worcester in England by the forces of - Robert Lilburne. Charles II became King of Scots and King of England (long before the birth of the UK) and he simply wiped out all history and law from the execution of his father in 1649 to 1660 - hence the bogus term 'Interregnum'. But its true, for a time in the Seventeenth Century Scotland ceased to be a separate nation or even a monarchy. A few years after England became a republic, Scotland did too!

There is a lot more to this story, and that is what I am working on for a book, because Robert Lilburne was the brother of 'Freeborn John' Lilburne (my hero) who was related to the line that produced Thomas Jefferson as president of the USA. His trials in the Court of Star Chamber are also the recorded backbone of many US Supreme Court decisions.

My problem is that Wikipedia does not like original research - its against their policy. So stupid reporting is cited instead to prop up the ghost story. This is what the BBC has bought in to, and of course it is what the so-called historians of the Falkirk Trust like to flog in an effort to drum-up cash from ghost-seeking tourists.

I know what 'Lady Lilyburn' does not relate to, but I now need to find out who that name does relate to.

The ghost story was concocted originally in the 1800s to keep kids from raiding the apple orchard at Kinneil - at least that's one contemporary version which seems to have some weight.

But where did the person (a writer) living at Kinneil get the name from? The first person to report this ghost story was another writer visiting the inhabitants of Kinneil. But she was a travelling friend of Walter Scott, and we all know how much rubbish he wafted into print from thin air. But Scott's rubbish stuck, and it is his bogus version of Scotland that most foreign visitors come to know and the souvenir manufacturers keep that idea going.

When I looked for a possible source for the 'Lilyburn' name I found 'Lillyburn'. I am wondering if there was a 'Lady Ailee' or Alice who had a connection to the Lillyburn print works and who also had some reason for being known by the person living in Kinneil House who invented the ghost story.

That's why I posted this strange tale asking for help with my manuscript in progress.

I am sure that there is someone out there who is a local Milton historian or maybe there are experts on the history of the fabric print works that used to be close to it. I am hoping that someone reading this blog knows something about a real 'Lady Ailee or Alice Lilyburn'.

:D
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Icecube » Mon Dec 30, 2013 12:19 am

Cromwell's invasion and subjugation of Scotland is not something that sits well in the mainstream edited version of Scottish history. Indeed not something the present regime would like to hear very much about either but your correct Scotland was incorporated in to the English Commonwealth at the time.
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Mon Dec 30, 2013 8:59 am

Icecube wrote:Cromwell's invasion and subjugation of Scotland is not something that sits well in the mainstream edited version of Scottish history. Indeed not something the present regime would like to hear very much about either but your correct Scotland was incorporated in to the English Commonwealth at the time.


That's politics for you. The current fight over 'Yes'/'No' is set in 1320 for the 'Yes' side, but 'they' (being the First Minister) who began the campaign by wafting around the Declaration of Arbroath, do no want people to read the preamble to it, because it is in support of the idea that the Scots are (for want of a better term), a part of the 'Lost Tribes of Israel' story (same with the Stone of Scone.) But in reading further down into the text of that document, it is clear that Scotland was not then an independent nation, but a vassal of the Pope, who was also overlord of Edward in England. Hence the appeal to the Pope to get your boy off our back - or else! (The 'else' bit being in the person of 'The Bruce'.)

But if we move up in time from 1320 to 1652, well the English have dumped the Pope in Rome and created their own King/Pope - Henry VIII. Then, with the execution of Charles I in 1649, the English republic gobbles up the Scottish kingdom and until 1661, England and Scotland are no more. There is one republic called the Commonwealth.

That's why Charles II tried to bury history in order to bury law. But it is why the First Minister does not want to take the 'Yes'/'No' fight into a reminder that until 1661, Scotland was a state within a republic and had ceased to exist as such. So he has jumped all the way back to 1320 - which if anyone actually reads the Declaration will see that it opens up another can of worms.

While I have been able to document the Robert Lilburne story, I would like to explain in the book that I am writing (with help from someone on this forum), how and why the strange and rather unique name of Lillyburn (which I have seen spelt as Lillieburn and of course with only one 'l'), came to be applied to a ghost story at Kinneil near Bo'ness. The time period of the cloth print works near Milton is the right time period for the ghost story, and because it is a somewhat unusual name, I think that there is a good chance that there is a connection between the area of Milton and the area of Bo'ness.

I just don't know what it might be at this moment in time, but I am guessing that there might have been a Lady Ailee from the Lillyburn area who did jump out of a window to her death. Then that story was transported to Kinneil as a ghost story to keep kids out of their apple orchard. :)
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby robertpool » Mon Dec 30, 2013 8:37 pm

I wonder if that's where Lillyburn Place in Drumchapel got it's name from ... the place used to scare the shit out of me :-)
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Icecube » Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:42 pm

FBJ you must know that the precise spelling of the name doesn't matter much, there was no uniformity until recently. In fact it doesn't matter that much now does it? Despite the Spelling Gestapo screaming it does.


::):
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Lucky Poet » Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:28 pm

freebornjohn wrote:That's why Charles II tried to bury history in order to bury law.

Ok, you've got me curious. What does this mean?

freebornjohn wrote:[...]if anyone actually reads the Declaration will see that it opens up another can of worms.

Not really. Context is all, in its case. It's misused by a lot of people, and is (from our far vantage point in time) quite enigmatic.
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:50 pm

Icecube wrote:FBJ you must know that the precise spelling of the name doesn't matter much, there was no uniformity until recently. In fact it doesn't matter that much now does it? Despite the Spelling Gestapo screaming it does.


::):


I took Lillyburn spelling about the print works from the EDC photo file captions, and the Lillieburn spelling from a Glasgow newspaper ad selling the place. Obviously both spellings refer to the same place and that is why I used both versions. The Kinneil version uses one 'l' in Lilyburn. Because the name is usual I thought that there might be a connection since the stated connection about the ghost is untrue. Therefore I turned to you guys for help. :D
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Tue Dec 31, 2013 12:03 am

Lucky Poet wrote:
freebornjohn wrote:That's why Charles II tried to bury history in order to bury law.

Ok, you've got me curious. What does this mean?

It means that the term 'Interregnum' was invented to join up the gap between the reign of Charles I and Charles II, and Charles II then rolled back time from 1660 to 1649 and made the laws in between times null and void, and he essentially made the actual history of the republic disappear from public view. Now people refer to Oliver Cromwell without knowing anything about the man or the time period he represented. Therefore most people do not know that at one time Scotland became a republic and ceased to exist as a country under that name.

freebornjohn wrote:[...]if anyone actually reads the Declaration will see that it opens up another can of worms.

Not really. Context is all, in its case. It's misused by a lot of people, and is (from our far vantage point in time) quite enigmatic.


Well this is a side-bar issue. But the context is that the preamble describes the origin of the Scots and the body describes a situation where an appeal is being made to an overlord of two countries. That, without getting into anything deeper is the nature of the document.

But back to the reason why I posted all this:

Does anyone know anything about a Lady Ailee or Alice who might have had a connection to the Lillyburn print works at Milton and met an untimely end, thus providing fodder for a ghost story?

:?:
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Lucky Poet » Tue Dec 31, 2013 12:40 am

freebornjohn wrote:
Lucky Poet wrote:
freebornjohn wrote:That's why Charles II tried to bury history in order to bury law.

Ok, you've got me curious. What does this mean?

freebornjohn wrote:It means that the term 'Interregnum' was invented to join up the gap between the reign of Charles I and Charles II, and Charles II then rolled back time from 1660 to 1649 and made the laws in between times null and void, and he essentially made the actual history of the republic disappear from public view. Now people refer to Oliver Cromwell without knowing anything about the man or the time period he represented. Therefore most people do not know that at one time Scotland became a republic and ceased to exist as a country under that name.

Well, that statement is flat out wrong. If you know anything of this, then you know it's a hell of a lot more complicated than that.

freebornjohn wrote:
Lucky Poet wrote:
freebornjohn wrote:[...]if anyone actually reads the Declaration will see that it opens up another can of worms.

Not really. Context is all, in its case. It's misused by a lot of people, and is (from our far vantage point in time) quite enigmatic.


freebornjohn wrote:Well this is a side-bar issue. But the context is that the preamble describes the origin of the Scots and the body describes a situation where an appeal is being made to an overlord of two countries. That, without getting into anything deeper is the nature of the document.

But back to the reason why I posted all this:


Sounding childish, you raised it in the first place, and at some length. If you don't want to get any deeper, then we'll leave it in saying that our modern understanding of nation and church doesn't easily apply to the early fourteenth century. That letter to the Pope was in response to Edward's citation of the legend of Brutus*. It's no less ridiculous, but that's how the world worked back then.

*Look up Geoffrey of Monmouth on Wikipedia.
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby freebornjohn » Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:47 am

Lucky Poet wrote:Sounding childish, you raised it in the first place, and at some length. If you don't want to get any deeper, then we'll leave it in saying that our modern understanding of nation and church doesn't easily apply to the early fourteenth century. That letter to the Pope was in response to Edward's citation of the legend of Brutus*. It's no less ridiculous, but that's how the world worked back then.

*Look up Geoffrey of Monmouth on Wikipedia.


Unfortunately the First Minister used the Declaration of Arbroath to kick-off the independence referendum lead-in by citing that document in exactly the way you stated that it cannot be cited.

As for the annexation of Scotland into the English Commonwealth - that is a well documented fact of history. One book (and there are many that I could cite) that is useful in that respect, is 'Cromwellian Scotland 1651-1660' by F.D. Dow; published in Edinburgh in 1979. Unfortunately, because Charles II did roll back time to obliterate events and laws that had taken place between 1649 and 1660, the history of that period is not well known because both England and Scotland suddenly became monarchies again, following a period when they had both become republics. If it was more widely understood by the general public there would be no point in me writing a book about it.

As for Wikipedia, it is the last source on earth for reliability and the same should be said about 'Geoffrey of Monmouth' whose veracity matches the ghost story I am debunking. :)

Of course the work I am researching is more complicated than the quick overview I have provided, and that is why I am writing a full-length book with notes; sources and bibliography using the most agreed upon academic guidelines. My focus is upon Robert Lilburn and events as they related to him. Hence my interest in the Kinneil ghost story because it places him in a time and space that he did not occupy, and married to a person to whom he was not married. Therefore I had to dispose of that story, and while doing so, I looked for an alternative explanation for its creation. Those are some of the reasons why I am seeking to find an alternative explanation for the origins of the Kinneil ghost story on this site - with your help. :wink:
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Re: LILLYBURN - OR LILLIEBURN - LOOKING FOR INFORMATION

Postby Lucky Poet » Wed Jan 01, 2014 8:17 pm

The First Minister can answer for himself. I'm saying your interpretation is crap; maybe his is as well.

freebornjohn wrote:As for the annexation of Scotland into the English Commonwealth - that is a well documented fact of history.

It's a fact, but utterly meaningless in isolation.

Good luck with your book.
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