DORNOCH (Sutherlandshire).

DORNOCH (Sutherlandshire). Has not matriculated any armorial bearings. Those occasionally quoted are " Argent a horse-shoe azure," but a copy of the seal is more generally made use of The seal, which has for legend simply the word " Dornoch," represents an escutcheon, and thereon within a horse-shoe the arms, crest, and motto of the family of Sutherland — namely, gules three mullets or. Crest — A mountain cat sejant guardant. Motto — " Sans peur." The following extract is taken from the " Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland " : — " Close outside the town, says Worsaae, there stands the Earl's Cross, a stone pillar in an open field, which is simply the remains of one of those market crosses so often erected in pre-Reformation times. As a matter of course, the arms of the Earls of Sutherland are carved on one side of the stone, and on the other are the arms of the town — a horse-shoe. Tradition, however, will have it that the pillar was reared in memory of a battle fought towards the middle of the thirteenth century by an Earl of Sutherland against the Danes. In the heat of the fray, while the Earl was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Danish chief, his sword broke ; but in this desperate strait, he was lucky enough to lay hold of a horse-shoe (the whole leg of a horse, say some) that accidentally lay near him, with which he succeeded in killing his antagonist. The horse-shoe is said to have been adopted in the arms of the town in memory of the feat; and the name Dornoch is popularly derived from the Gaelic dorn-eich, a horse's hoof, though dor-n-ach, ' field between two waters,' is a far more probable etymon."

Original Source bookofpublicarms00foxd_djvu.txt near line 8562.