Boontree
Boontree FAL F NO243082 2
Bowingtrie 1602 RMS vi no. 1349 [‘fra that northeist be the Den-burne as it rynnis till it com foiranent the Bowingtrie on the Park-dyke ...’, part of the bounds of the muirs of Falkland]
Boontree 1775 Ainslie/Fife [small settlement]
Boontrie 1821 Falkland Plan/1821
Boontree 1909 Falkland Cropping Book [field-name]
Sc bountree
‘Elder tree’. Note that Sc bountree is also found as bourtree, and that there is a field nearby on Woodmill farm called Boerland, which may contain the same element (see Ballingall FAL). For a more certain, example of this r/n alternation, see Bourtreebuss CUS, which appears on Ainslie/Fife (1775) as Bountreebush (see PNF 1, s.n.).
The Falkland Cropping Book (1909) shows a field called Boontree which was known to the late Mr William Mackie (born in 1917), who lived at The Muirs[68] as ‘The Boontree’.
This is the tree on which Jenny Nettles is said to have hanged herself. The story is that in 1715, after the battle of Sheriffmuir, Jacobite troops under Rob Roy took possession of Falkland Palace for a short time. One of the soldiers had a sexual relationship with a young local woman, Jenny Nettles, leaving her with child. When the troops moved on, so did he, and Jenny Nettles, overcome with grief and shame, hanged herself. She was thus unable to be buried in consecrated ground, and so was buried on Barrington Muir ‘described vaguely as half a mile west of Kilgour in the middle of the moor’ (Snoddy 1966, 25). Her sad story became well-known, and inspired a song by Allan Ramsay.[69]
This place-name appeared in printed volume 2