We open on Dumbarton’s streets, the year is 1632.
ISOBELL: “Ye CLATTIE BADROUNS, ye!”
MARTHA: “Awa wi ye, ye WITCHES GET!” (both lunge and fall to ground, Martha atop)
BURGHERS: “Here! Yous! Gie’s a pound each!”
*end scene*
In January 1631, two men were stealing the beams from underneath the Tweed Bridge in Peebles. John Wilesone saw them while he was “fisching in the nicht” and cast his line at them and “tuik aff ane o thair bonnettis” and it was used as evidence in their trial.
On 21st June 1870, Alexander Duncan, 29, was digging potatoes at Middlerigg outside Falkirk. Neighbours heard two shots and an hour later, Duncan was found dead with two shots to the chest. An inquiry ruled his horse had shot him by nudging the trigger. Twice.
In 1421, 5 nobles murdered the Sheriff of Glenbervie by shoving him in boiling water “til he wis sodden an suppit in bree”.
They “supped” the “bree” with horn spoons (it’s unclear why). A vat and human skull were found SE of Laurencekirk in 1875 near Garvock.
In 1842 workers went on strike at John Cochrane’s bleachworks at Kirktonfield, Neilston. He tried to break the strike by filling the workers’ dorms with chlorine gas “as a joke”. He almost killed 150 women, had to meet their demands, and became “Smeekin Johnny”.
In 1908 Allandale boy, Francis O’Neil’s stepmother made him sleep in a cupboard under the stairs as “he was aye stealing the jam” and “throwing letters up the chimney”. She was fined £3.
BUTTOCKMAIL. n. fine paid to the kirk for intercourse outside of wedlock. Like BLACKMAIL, but for buttocks.
“Wi ruefu face and signs o grace / I paid the buttock-hire”
Robert Burns – The Fornicator
Burns would’ve paid his buttockmail to the Tarbolton Kirk in about 1785.
In 1734, 13 Huntly women petitioned for “riding the stang” as the legal punishment for abusive husbands. The offender was made to straddle a “stang” by neighbours, while others banged pots and jeered. Sometimes naked, usually painful, always embarrassing.
In September 1630, Alexander Blair, a tailor from Currie married his third wife, Catherine Windrahame, the daughter of his first wife’s half-brother. He was sentenced to be beheaded for incest. At the time cousins were no big deal.
In August 1626, Lanarkshire man, William Hamilton was put on trial for incest after he married the widow of his step-grandmother’s brother.
Worse yet, in June 1643, Janet Imrie lost her head for being the lover of two brothers, thus having caused them to have committed incest with each other.
The two brothers went unpunished.
If they’d been cousins, Janet probably would’ve been fine.
