Refers to St Adrian's journeys and his missionary
enterprises.
Pittenweem was created de novo a Burgh of Barony of the
Prior of Pittenweem in 1526 and was made a Royal Burgh by King James
V in 1541.
The arms repeat the device on an old seal of the Burgh of which a
sixteenth century impression is on record.
They show St Adrian, the martyr of the May, on his hazardous
journey to Scotland from Pannonia in Hungary.
He established a community on the Isle of May, off the Fife
coast, became a missionary to the Picts and is said to have been
slain on the May about 870 during a Danish invasion.
St Adrian is connected with Pittenweem, as a convent there was
joined to the May community, and about the twelfth century monks from
May moved to Pittenweem to be nearer their property on the mainland.
They built a priory and the town grew up around it.
