Battle of Coilsfield

The Battle of Coilsfield was a semi-legendary clash in Ayrshire, Scotland, between an allied force of Picts and Scots under Fergus I and an army of Britons led by Coilus, the Coel Hen of the Welsh genealogies. The Britons had invaded Ayrshire and established a substantial camp on or near the banks of the River Doon, south of the town of Ayr. Place-names such as "Cynning Park", "North Park", "Gear Holm", "Wrights Field", "Slap-house" Burn, and most telling, "Cambusdoon", provide clues to the extent of the encampment and the numbers of men involved. Fergus allowed the Britons to languish in their camp well into winter, so as to exhaust their supplies and whittle down their numbers through disease and desertion. Taking advantage of a drunken Yule-tide revelry in the camp, the Picts and Scots attacked at night during the first watch. The camp, which had no ramparts or palisade, was successfully overrun. The army of Coilus fled the Doon-side camp in complete panic. After a circuitous retreat south around the "Craigs of Kyle", over the flooded "Water of Coyle" at a place remembered as "the King's Steps" and back again northward, Fergus cornered the remnants west of the hamlet of Failford, and slaughtered Coilus and his men at the place now called Coilsfield. The few survivors rallied around the remnants of the baggage train, and after a brief truce the following day, Fergus wisely allowed them to depart. Place-names in this area include "Dead-mens Holm", "The Bloody Burn", "Fergus-lea", "Cairn-gillan Hill", "Shackle Hill", and "King Coil's Grave", a Bronze-age burial mound.

A poem written by Ayr schoolmaster, John Bonar around 1631, records important details of this event as found only in local memory:

"Coyle he fled,
unto the river Donne,
quher drowned were many,
yt thair did runn.
And northward held,
quhil they came to a muir,
and thair was stayet,
be Scots that on him fuir.
Fergus he followet,
and came right haestillie,
quhair Coyle was killet,
and all his hole armie.
The country people,
frae thenseforthe does it call,
Coylsfield in Kyll,
as ever more it sall."