There is not a chip shop nor cheeseburger to be found in the hamlet of Lonmay in Aberdeenshire, but a Scottish author has found evidence that Elvis’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was married in the village nearly 300 years ago.

Now the small community hopes that it will be placed on the tourist map, with notoriously obsessive Elvis fans paying homage to the roots of the King of rock’n’roll.

Parish records show that eight generations before Elvis was born in 1935, his ancestor Andrew Presley married Elspeth Leg in Lonmay on August 27, 1713. Their son, also called Andrew, became a blacksmith and was the first Presley to leave Scotland for America.

Allan Morrison, author of The Presley Prophecy, said: “I started looking into Elvis’s past when I heard rumours of him coming from Scotland. I was able to trace his family tree and when it got to Lonmay it was like striking gold.”

Villagers in Lonmay expressed surprise that their sleepy hamlet, which has one hotel but no shop, café, post office or school, should be linked with such a legendary figure.

“I definitely think this is true as there are lots of Presleys in the area,” said Jim Presly, 70, who lives just outside the village.

According to Mr Presly, the ‘e’ disappeared from his name because of a spelling error generations ago but he has di- scovered local census records and an old family Bible with “Presley” spelt like the King’s surname.

John Wood, who runs the Old Lonmay Manse as bed-and-breakfast accommodation with his partner, Pamela Hall, welcomed the Elvis link.

He said: “Presley is an icon, although I have to admit I’m not a fan. The news could help the area enormously as it’s an area that does not benefit greatly from tourism. It will put Lonmay on the map.”

Once a busy farming community, Lonmay is now no more than a cluster of houses set in rolling farmland. It is so small that it does not feature on many maps. The winding road which slices the village in half is busy with traffic travelling between the fishing ports of Peterhead and Fraserburgh but there is no tearoom or historic landmark to encourage visitors to stop in Lonmay.

“The village doesn’t have a focal point, and something to commemorate Elvis’s roots might be what it needs,” Mr Morrison said. “Graceland still attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year 26 years after his death.”

Elvis never performed in his ancestral homeland but fans still talk fondly of the 60 minutes he spent on Scottish soil at Prestwick airport in 1960 on his way home from national service in Germany. For further evidence of his affinity for Scotland, they point out that he once sang Auld Lang Syne.

Rumours of Elvis’s Scottish ancestry are familiar to the suspicious minds of Elvis aficionados. The King’s ancestral seat has been variously placed in Paisley, the Preseli hills in west Wales, Ireland where St Elvis was bishop of Munster, and a Scottish village called Alves, which residents optimistically claimed was the source of the name “Elvis”.

According to rival theories, Elvis had Cherokee blood, while one genealogist even claimed to have unearthed family connections making him a distant cousin of Oprah Winfrey, the American talkshow host.

Todd Slaughter, president of the Elvis Presley Fanclub of Great Britain, did not take too much notice of the King’s family tree. “Whether Elvis is German, French, Jewish or Red Indian doesn’t matter. Most Elvis fans couldn’t give a monkey’s about his ancestry. It is his music that is the tangible side of Elvis.”

Scottish Elvis fans were more upbeat. Paul Downie, a spokesman for Scotland’s Elvis Touch Fan Club said: “For years fans have thought there was a connection between Presley and Scotland, and I have always thought his roots came from the Aberdeenshire area. I would think fans will want to visit Scotland and Lonmay — I imagine there will be an upsurge.

“Elvis was at Prestwick in 1960 for an hour and fans from throughout the world visit, so you can imagine what might happen to Lonmay.”

But Mr Slaughter was not convinced there would be a huge boost for Lonmay. “The odd person might go to Scotland, but it’s not going to be as big as Loch Ness,” he said.

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