Would ye credit it? Foster's Scottish Oddities records the country's quirky heritage

From the execution of a haggis to the untimely demise of a foreign feathered visitor, truth is stranger than fiction, as a new book of odd, bizarre and barely believable stories from our history shows.

Here we reproduce excerpts from Foster's Scottish Oddities by Allen Foster . . .

Immigrant guest of honour becomes lunch

IN November 2006, fate played a cruel trick on a rare visitor to Britain. A red-rumped swallow (Hirundo daurica) from southern Europe took a wrong turn on its annual migration to Africa and ended up in Lunan Bay, near Montrose, in Angus.

Normally the rare swallow was not found any farther north than Greece and its arrival delighted bird watchers, who flocked to the area to see the welcome visitor. As they looked on in horror, a Scottish sparrowhawk swooped down and killed the swallow. The species only occasionally turned up in Britain during its migration season. A specimen had previously been seen in the Tayside area in 1987.

Lone heroine of Aberdour

THE Dundee steamer William Hope was driven on to the rocky shores of Aberdour Bay in Fife and wrecked on the night of 27 October, 1884, when its engines failed during a storm.

John and Jane Whyte and their nine children lived only a short distance from the shore of the bay in Waukmill, a small woollen mill and croft. After her husband had left for work the following morning, Jane went down to the shore for a walk with her collie.

A short distance from the shore she spotted the half-sunken wreck of the William Hope in the raging sea. Men stranded on the wreck were clinging to the masts. They cried out to Jane Whyte for help. One of the survivors threw her a rope and she braved the bitterly cold and dangerous seas to reach the rope.

Somehow, she managed to tie it around her waist and get back to shore. There was nothing on shore on which to tie the rope in order to anchor it, so Jane held the line tight as all 15 of the surviving crew men escaped the wreck and made it ashore through the heavy seas, aided by the rope. She took the cold and weary sailors home, dried their clothes and fed them. The next day they made their way back to Dundee, grateful to be alive.

For her heroic actions, Jane Whyte was presented with the silver medal of the Royal Navy Lifeguard Institute and awarded 10.

Birthday gift … of a birthday

DURING his time in Samoa in the 1890s, American diplomat Henry Clay Ide became friendly with the writer RL Stevenson. When Ide mentioned to Stevenson in passing how disappointed his young daughter Annie was that her birthday fell on Christmas Day, meaning that she had no separate birthday celebration, Stevenson drew up a formal deed of gift, properly sealed and witnessed as a legal document, donating his birthday (13 November) to Annie. She celebrated that date as her birthday until her death in 1945.

Head over heels for a Celtic goal

PATSY Gallacher enjoyed a successful career as a football player for Celtic. He also scored one of the strangest goals ever recorded. During the 1925 Scottish Cup Final against Dundee, Gallacher ran into the box with the ball and wedged it between his heels. Then, with the Dundee defenders all around, Gallacher somer-saulted over the goal line with the ball and into the net for a goal.

Weighty matters of inheritance

IN 1807, a wealthy Scotsman left an eccentric and original will. In it, he left each of his two daughters their weight in 1 banknotes. The women were duly weighed and then received their inheritance. The elder daughter weighed seven stone, two pounds (45kg) and the younger eight stone (50kg). As a result, the heavier daughter received 57,344, while her older sister got 51,200. It was calculated that 512 1 banknotes weighed a pound and the sisters' inheritance was reckoned on that basis.

Royal registration superstition

PRINCESS Margaret was born at Glamis Castle in Angus on 21 August, 1930. The registration of her birth was delayed so that her number on the register would not be the unlucky number 13.

Chieftain's end

WHEN John B Henderson, the chess correspondent of The Scotsman, landed in Seattle in April 2001 at the height of a foot-and-mouth crisis, US customs officers confiscated his haggis. They then took it out to the runway and shot it five times before dousing it with petrol.

Catch of the day

AN attendant found a dead porpoise propped up in one of the cubicles of the men's toilets in Glasgow Central Station on 1 November, 1965. The staff thought it was a dolphin, but the four-foot (122cm), 64lb (29kg) carcass was identified as a porpoise by the museums department of Kelvingrove Park. How it got there nobody knew.

One gentleman told The Times: "We had heavy rain and there was flooding, but this is ridiculous." The porpoise was taken to Glasgow City Council's Museum, where the curator of the Department of Natural History said it was "freshly caught" and that porpoises were quite common in the Firth of Clyde. He later arranged to have a fibreglass cast taken of the specimen.

Sideboard's champagne surprise

THE world's oldest known bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne, dating from 1893, was found hidden in a sideboard in Torosay Castle on Mull by the castle's owner, Christopher James, left, in July 2008.

For years James had wondered about what lay behind a locked secret panel in a sideboard at his family's ancestral home. When he took over the running of the castle, he hired a specialist locksmith to help him solve the mystery. Inside was a hidden drinks cabinet which contained the 1893 champagne, a bottle of brandy, a port decanter and a bottle of claret.

Experts said the unopened 115-year-old bottle of champagne was "literally priceless". The "Torosay bottle", as it is now known, is believed to be the oldest surviving vintage of the famous champagne house and was in mint condition, having been safely locked away from sunlight.

Unfortunately, the liquid inside is probably undrinkable because champagne does not usually last for longer than 30 years.

James made a gift of the bottle to Veuve Clicquot and it is now on display in their visitor centre in Reims.

"I'm delighted the bottle is now on display in its rightful home," James said. In return for his generosity, the company presented him with a case of its finest champagne.

Museum with so much history, it's even in the walls

BUILDER Billy Hardy was knocking a hole in a wall at the Royal Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh in the summer of 1994 when he discovered fossils of a 336-million-year-old swamp tree in the stone. When Hardy noticed the strange lines running through the sandstone, he informed the museum.

Staff identified the marks as fossils of a lycopsid, a "scale tree" that had grown in the Carboniferous era. The trees grew up to 115ft (35 metres) high and had trunks more than a yard across. Unusually, the lycopsids were supported by their tough bark, which was covered with needle-like leaves. The museum was built in 1889 with sandstone from Hermand Quarry in West Lothian. In Carboniferous times, Scotland was near the equator and covered in tropical swamps.

Since Hardy's discovery, more fossils of the same species have been found in another wall of the museum.