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Failford

Near this little village, in 1786, Burns took his farewell of Highland Mary, who would die soon after in Greenock. Burns, disillusioned by his treatment at the hands of Jean Armour’s parents, had asked her to accompany him to Jamaica. They exchanged Bibles, which was seen as a marriage contract, and Mary set off home to Dunoon to prepare for the voyage. However, en route she died in Greenock. The Failford Monument, on a slight rise, commemorates the meeting.

It is in the Failford Inn that the guide centre for the 44-mile River Ayr Way, a long-distance footpath that follows the course of the River Ayr from its source at Glenbuck to the sea and passes through some of Ayrshire’s most stunning scenery and sites of interest

 A mile east of Failford, in a field, are the remains of a tumulus known as King Cole’s Grave. Legend tells us that Old King Cole of nursery rhyme fame was a real person - a British king called Coel or Coilus, who ruled in Ayrshire. In the Dark Ages, he fought a great battle against the Scots under their king, Fergus. Cole’s army was routed, and he fled the battlefield. Eventually he was captured and killed. His supporters later cremated his body and buried it with some pomp at the spot where he died. The Kyle area of Ayrshire is supposed to be named after him.

The tumulus was opened in 1837, and some cremated bones were discovered in two small urns. Up until not so long ago the nearby stream was referred to locally as the “Bloody Burn”, and one field beside the stream was known as “Deadmen’s Holm”, as that is where those killed in the battle were supposedly buried. Tales were often told of bits of human bone and armour being turned up by men ploughing the field.