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The village of Tarland (pop. 523) lies about six miles from Aboyne in Deeside (see map of Aberdeenshire), and has a colourful history according to the following account relating to the eighteenth century: "An almost invariable accompaniment of certain of the fairs was the occurrence of party fights, or personal encounters between rustic athletes fond of testing their physical prowess. These encounters, which ordinarily took place about the close of the fair, were sufficiently brutal in character, the combatants often mercilessly belabouring each other with cudgels. In no quarter perhaps were they so formidable or so systematically kept up as in the district of Cromar, where the periodical onsets between 'the rough tykes of Tarland,' and 'the Leochel men' seem to have been as regular in their occurrence as the fairs in which the two parishes were interested; the fight being understood always to end in one or other of the sides being driven off the field vanquished." (Alexander, 1877:77-78)
Tarland is home historically to the composer Peter Milne (1824-1908) and has a reputation as a musical place. According to Sandy Cooper, Sandy Milne (a former conductor of the Banchory Strathspey and Reel Society who was brought up in Tarland) used to say that around the early 1900s, "almost every household in Tarland had at least one fiddler and a lot of them very good fiddlers. The real old style – Scots traditional fiddling." Tarland has strong musical links with Banchory, as fiddlers from the village in the past and at the present have often been members of Banchory Strathspey and Reel Society.
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Last modified Wednesday, 26-Aug-2009 13:33:35 BST by Katherine Campbell