Yes it's unclear to me too why people would trek that far afield from the local parish church.
They wouldn't. It's over 40 miles each way (depending slightly on where Shenlachie was, of course) so it's not a journey you would readily undertake in the 18th century, not long after the upheavals of the 1745 Jacobite rising, and when the only power available was muscles. (Unless it was possible to do part of the journey by water on the River Spey, but I have never heard of that being customary.)
Occasionally you do find an out-of-parish baptism but only when the kirk in the next door parish is more convenient than the kirk of your own parish. This obviously does not apply to Mortlach and the Shenachie, which aren't even in the same county.
The spelling 'Shenlachie' in the register and 'Shenachie' the place name may not be interchangeable
Probably not. And I'd be surprised if either name has anything to do with storytellers.
My current thinking is that there is a another place Shenlachie in Mortlach.
Yes, that is absolutely the right conclusion to draw.
It could be somehow referring to a Gaelic meaning of the word which seems unlikely.
Both names do seem to be Gaelic in origin. 'shen' is usually from 'sean', meaning 'old, but I can't hazard a guess about the rest of either name.
The place called Shenachie may have been better known as Pollochaig in the past.
Yes. The first edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map shows it as Polochaig. See
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=57.3905&lon=-3.9469&layers=5&b=1An earlier map shows it as Pulochaig, with links to the south-west rather than in the direction of Mortlach.
https://maps.nls.uk/view/74400177However the second edition of the six-inch map names it as Shenachie
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17&lat=57.3912&lon=-3.9510&layers=6&b=1 so the name must have been changed during the second half of the 19th century - long after your Roy baptisms in the middle of the 18th century.
So I am confident that Shenachie in the parish of Moy and Dalarossie, county of Inverness (three counties away!), is a complete red herring, with nothing whatsoever to do with Shenlachie in Mortlach.
I have been through the OS Name Book for Mortlach, but found nothing that looks even vaguely like Shenlachie, so I am no nearer knowing where it was.
The answer is probably in estate maps, if they have survived. However most of Mortlach was part of the estates of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, and their muniments are not readily accessible as far as I know.
