Talk:Windygates

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There is a clock at the cross roads in a small village called Windygates in Fife. There is a well known story of the caves beneath the Cross clock which lead to the Wemyss Caves on the fife coast, and of the legend of the Prince of Redpath. The windygates caves had three entrances. One to the house beside the clock, one underneath the old Millers sweet shop which was opposite Ore Thomson’s offices; this is now the front patio of the windygates hotel, and one by the entrance down Huaghmill lane. These were blocked up during the Roman conquest and are steeped in the legend of a Prince from a village called Redpath who came to Windygates from the Scottish Borders. He had been told by a sorceress that he would find a beautiful princess to marry at the gates of the windy cross road beneath the village of Ceann-achadh. This village is now called Kennoway. The prince traveled to the gates and searched the village which was filled with children. Each child was over a thousand years old and none would tell him where to find the Princess except an old hag who hated the children and was ready for death. The old hag told of a maiden who had been captured by Roman soldiers, and was awaiting her execution in a Roman Hill fort which the Picts called DunOigh. (This is a Gaelic variation of “Dun” meaning castle and “Oigh” which in old Gaelic meant maiden; there is a locally known mound now called Maidens castle. The Prince freed her from the Roman fort, slaying all of the soldiers garrisoned there. The maidens name was Elisheba. She was a Princess and last heir to the dynasty of Elisheba. The Elisheba had fled from Palmyria to the land of the Picts for fear of persecution by the Roman Emperor Claudius who wanted to end the Elishaba dynasty with her death. She and the Prince of Redpath fell in love and were married by the druid king Fibs by an ancient bridge on the river Culahibh. Beyond the bridge was a pool of water where legend told that its waters gave eternal life. They drank from it each day as the children of the Windy gates did, and they never aged: Culahibh is Gaelic for “back”, and may relate to the old Back burn in Windygates. They conceived an immortal daughter who they named Isobel. Unlike the children of the windy gates, their daughter stopped aging before she reached her twentieth birthday. However, Claudius sent a thousand soldiers to slay Prince Redpath and Elisheba and when the soldiers drank from the water they discovered its power of immortality. The Prince of Redpath knew that the soldiers could never leave with the secret, so he told Isobel to lead them to the caves. She told the soldiers where they could find the Prince of Redpath and they followed her to the caves where they pursued the Prince down into the caverns. The Prince of Redpath told his wife to seal the Caves of Weymss, and his daughter to seal the last entrance at Windygates. Both mother and daughter wept as the Prince was left to slay the Roman soldiers for eternity. The mother and daughter left Windygates under the protection of the Cristini, an ancient family from the Forests of Fib whose generations continued to protect them and change their names every few decades. When Elisheba heard that St. Kenneth was on a pilgrimage in Scotland, she asked for his help in freeing her husband. St. Kenneth gathered and army and opened the caves. They released the Prince of Redpath and fought the Roman army back into the caves where they sealed them there for all time. The Prince of Redpath, Elisheba and Isobel stayed with the Cristini moving from place to place. In 1753 Isobel took the name Clementina Maria, a variation of her previous name Mariota and fell in love with a young man called Bonny Prince Charlie. They had an immortal child, but because of her relationship with the Prince after his attempted an abortive invasion of England, she went into hiding with her parents who had taken the name of Douglass. She gave her child the name Clementina Johannes Sobieski Douglass, the middle names to honour Prince Charlie’s Polish mother. Prince Charlie had given his love a medallion that was struck to celebrate the marriage of James III, and she gave it to her daughter Clementina who also stopped aging before she turned twenty. There is a grave baring the name Clementina Johannes Sobieski Douglass at Finsthwaite graveyard at the bottom of lake Windermere. This is reported to be the resting place of the Illegitimate Princess of Scotland, but rumour has it that the Prince of Redpath and Elisheba left the Island and Clementina travelled back to Scotland with her mother to keep vigil on the Caves, lest anyone attempt to open the seals. Here they remain and both married only once, creating their own dynasty hidden amongst the villages that surround the Windygates. Elisheba took the name Jane Janet Penny; there must be no coincidence that according to research Clementinas best friend was apparently called Janet Penny. In 1818 a John Redpath from Montreal Canada amassed a fortune and married a woman called Janet, and from this union, seven children were born. Janet apparently died of cholera, but strangely, a year later he married a 19 year old girl called Jane who bore ten children. Did the Prince of Redpath make a new start in a new land, and did he re-marry his wife following her fictiscious death?

In 1901, Ada Maria Redpath and Clifford Redpath, the apparent descendants of John Redpath, were seemingly found shot dead in their family mansion. However, several newspapers reported that both Ada and Clifford Redpath were transported to the Royal Victoria Hospital following the shooting, but there was no mention of their admittance in the hospital’s patient registers. Dr. Roddick, the Redpath’s family physician, testified that he had arrived at the mansion and examined both bodies, but newspaper accounts note that Dr. Roddick did not return to Montreal until the following day. Even more mysterious was the fact that the Police were not involved. So what happened to Ada and Clifford’s bodies? Where they in fact an elaborate plot to fabricate their deaths so they could take new identities?

Was the Union of Elisheba and the Prince of Redpath a Myth, or is this a reality born from the waters of the Culahibh, a reality resulting in a family of immortals? Does Clementina and her immortal dynasty continue to live amongst us to this day in Scotland? Do the Roman soldiers patiently wait in the Windygates caves to be unleashed, so they may continue their mission to end the Elisheba dynasty. When does coincidence become fact?