Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for Airdsmoss or Airsmoss

Airdsmoss or Airsmoss, a morass in the E of Ayrshire, between the Water of Ayr and Lugar Water. It begins about 1½ mile ENE of Auchinleck village, extends about 6 miles north-eastward, has a mean breadth of about 1½ mile, and is approached over most of its SE side, and crossed over a small part of its further end, by the railway from Auchinleck to Muirkirk. It was the scene, on 20 July 1680, of a sharp skirmish between 63 of the Covenanters and a party of dragoons, fatal to Richard Cameron: and it contains, at a spot where the deadliest of the strife occurred, a monument popularly called Cameron's Stone. The present monument is neat and modern: but the original one was a large flat stone, laid down about 50 years after the event, and marked with the names of the Covenanters who fell in the skirmish, and with the figures of an open Bible and a hand grasping a sword. The skirmish of Airdsmoss is the subject of the well-known effusion, beginning-

In a dream of the night I was wafted away,
To the moorland of mist where the martyrs lay;
where Cameron's sword and his Bible are seen,
Engraved on the stone where the heather grows green.'


(F.H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4); © 2004 Gazetteer for Scotland)

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a morass"   (ADL Feature Type: "wetlands")
Administrative units: Ayrshire ScoCnty
Place names: AIRDSMOSS     |     AIRDSMOSS OR AIRSMOSS     |     AIRSMOSS
Place: Airds Moss

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