15 August 2023
Header Image Credit: Frances W. Pritchett / Columbia University / Wikimedia Commons (Munster, S., 1544, Cosmographia)
Each year on International Left Handers Day (13 August), my Twitter feed lights up with folk tagging me in on corporate tie-in posts claiming that the Scottish mediaeval Kerr family were congenitally left-handed. A good example of the genre, this year, was a post by Historic Environment Scotland. Such posts will inevitably state that the spiral staircase in the Kerr family castle at Ferniehirst turns anti-clockwise so that the left-handed family would have the advantage in swordfights.
Now, we’ve covered the swordsman theory of spiral staircases before on this blog. So, for a short discussion on why the story that spiral staircases turn clockwise in castles to advantage right-handed defenders is a myth, please follow this link. One of the primary arguments for the tale being inaccurate is that a substantial minority – around 30% – of castle staircases turn anti-clockwise.
The inevitably leads advocates of the swordsman theory to offer a predictable defence when challenged by the widespread presence of anti-clockwise newels: that they were built for pre-dominantly left-handed defenders. Quite how this argument tallies with the reality that most castles with anti-clockwise newels also have clockwise examples is beyond me (as happened at Caernarfon, Conwy, Bodiam, and the Tower of London).
Ferniehirst Castle (Image Credit: Mainlymazza / Wikimedia Commons)
One of the most famous iterations of the left-handed defence comes from Ferniehirst Castle (Roxburghshire) located in what, for many centuries, were the disputed borderlands between England and Scotland. The tale proposes that the Kerr family, who commissioned the castle, had a high preponderance of left-handed members. Consequently, it is supposed that the stair turret of the late sixteenth century tower-house at the heart of the castle was built with an anti-clockwise newel to better advantage their fighters in the vicious border raiding (Serdiville & Sadler 2018, 103; Wolman 2005, 39; Meikle 1988, 448; Fraser 1971, 52)
The reputation of the Kerrs for being left-handed can be found in a few Victorian poems including the Raid o’the Kerrs by James Hogg (1830) and The Reprisal by Walter Laidlaw (1900). It is also there in contemporary texts on the history of the region which point to the surname Kerr as possibly deriving from the Gaelic word ‘cair’ or ‘cear’ meaning left (Alexander 1855, 157). More recent scholars have shown that the name Kerr is more likely to derive from the Old Norse ‘kjarr’ meaning marsh dweller or a variant on the Gaelic ‘ciar’ meaning ‘dusky‘. The tradition linking the Kerrs to genetic left-handedness might not be more than a couple of centuries old.
Rievers at Gilnockie Tower, Nineteenth century print (Image Credit: G Catermole / Wikimedia Commons)
Despite this, a survey of 200 members of the Kerr family, made during the 1970s, seemed to show that they really did have a higher preponderance of left-handedness (29.5%) when contrasted with a control group (11%) (Research Unit 1974, 437-39). However, a later research project found that the methodology of the 1970s study was fatally flawed by a small sample size coupled with voluntary response bias. Writing in the British Journal of Psychology for 1993, Duncan Shaw and Chris McManus reported that, under more scientifically meticulous circumstances, just 9.2% of the 706 Kerr family members proved to be left-handed – which was slightly less than the 12.97% of 695 people in the control group (Shaw & McManus 1993, 545-551).
Although there is still great debate on the subject – two studies published in 2004 claimed that left-handedness was variously genetic and not genetic in origin – McManus, a professor of psychology at University College London, has a certain form for looking into the subject of handedness. He has stated that: ‘You’re left-handed because you carry a gene as an embryo that, through different biomechanisms, made the two different sides of your brain unequal’ (Wolman 2005, 40).
McManus’ scholarship largely follows the prevailing work of Marian Annett who proposed Right Shift Theory during the 1970s. Annett suggested that the 90% of humans who show a predominance towards right-handedness are decidedly at odds with other animals who demonstrate an approximate 50/50 split of right to left bias. She argued that this dramatic shift was triggered by an evolution of cognitive functions which rely on the left hemisphere of the brain – connected especially to speech, which is unique to humans. The conclusion is that although there may be a gene which determines right-handedness in 90% of the population, there is no corresponding one for left-handed people. She attributes the cause of left-handedness to a lack of the right shift gene, or a random preference as found in other animals (Wolman 2005, 44-46, 49).
Image Credit: Kara98 / Wikimedia Commons
Meanwhile, McManus has demonstrated that two left-handed parents have only a 26.1% chance of producing left-handed offspring. It therefore seems unlikely that, even if there was a pre-dominance for left-handedness amongst the Kerr family (which there isn’t), it could not have been reliably passed on through the family even with significant levels of inbreeding or selective partnering (McManus 2002, 156-57).
The connection between the Kerrs and left-handedness may have come about due to a comment by one of their English enemies, the beleaguered Lord Dacre, who described their fighting characteristics as being ‘devilish’ during the 1523 siege of Ferniehirst (Moffat 2008, 153). The demonic or subversive has been commonly associated with the left-hand side in European culture and remained a feature of folk belief well into the modern era (Opie & Tatem 1989, 231). As the Kerrs’ standing as ferocious fighters grew in later legend, so did their demonic reputation in the eyes of their detractors. This may have been stretched to link the sinister stories regarding the very hand that they wielded their swords with and a misinterpretation of the staircase at their principal castle.
What is almost overwhelmingly overlooked, though, is that the stair at Ferniehirst changes direction. It has sections which are both clockwise and anti-clockwise (although it is pre-dominantly clockwise). This is unusual, but Ferniehirst is not alone. The late thirteenth century newel within the great tower at Dudley (West Midlands) begins as an anti-clockwise turn but changes to a clockwise one mid-way up the structure. This feature can also be found in the fifteenth century at Caister (Norfolk) where the change in direction marks the transition between higher status and lower status areas of the tower.
Part of the staircase at Ferniehirst which does actually turn anti-clockwise (Image Credit: Andy Sweet / Stravaiging around Scotland)
Conclusions
In a five-volume study of Scottish castles, published in 1887, David McGibbon and Thomas Ross noted that Ferniehirst was not particularly defensible and, accordingly, made no conclusion regarding the direction of the anti-clockwise stair. Neither did they mention the legend of the left-handed Kerrs in their assessment – it was just not relevant to the discussion (MacGibbon & Ross 1889, 156-62). In fact the direction of a spiral stair had not even been linked to handedness yet, that only occurring after the art critic Theodore Andrea Cook invented the swordsman theory in 1902 (see Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog #3)
The belief that the Kerrs, with their devilish reputation, had many left-handed members and so built the staircase at Ferniehirst anticlockwise to advantage their fighters seems to be circular reasoning. There is no evidence to suggest that the family really were overwhelmingly left-handed and their staircase at Ferniehirst twists both clockwise and anti-clockwise.
Acknowledgements
My great thanks to Simon Forder (The Castle Guy) for his advice on the precise arrangements of the spiral staircase at Ferniehirst.
References
Alexander, J., 1855, History and antiquities of Roxburghshire and adjacent districts, from the most remote period to the present time. T. C. Jack. Edinburgh.
Fraser, G., M., 1971 (1995 edition) The Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers. HarperCollins. London.
MacGibbon, D. & Ross, T., 1889, The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century Volume II. David Douglas. Edinburgh.
McManus, C., 2002, Right Hand, Left Hand: The Origins of Asymmetry in Brains, Bodies, Atoms and Cultures. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Meikle, M. M., 1988, Lairds and gentlemen : A study of the landed families of the Eastern Anglo-Scottish Borders c.1540-1603. Unpublished doctoral thesis. University of Edinburgh.
Moffat, A., 2008, The Reivers. Birlinn. Edinburgh.
Opie, I. & Tatum, M., 1989, A Dictionary of Superstitions. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Research Unit (The Royal College of General Practitioners, Birmingham), 1974, ‘The handedness of Kerrs – a surname study’ in Journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners Vol. 24
Serdiville, R. & Sadler, J., 2018, Castles: Fortresses of Power. Casemate. Oxford and Havertown.
Shaw, D. & McManus, I. C., 1993, ‘The handedness of the Kerrs’ in British Journal of Psychology Vol. 84. Wiley-Blackwell / British Psychological Society.
Way, G. A., 1994, Collins Scottish Clan & Family Encyclopedia. HarperCollins. Glasgow.
Wolman, D., 2005, A Left-hand Turn Around the World. Da Capo Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.
About the author
James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
He welcomes contact through Twitter or email.
The Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog blog is the basis of a forthcoming book – Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology which will be released via The History Press on 6 June 2024. More information can be found here:
