Leith Walk.] THE REV. JOHN KELLOE. I55
of sand, much of it was carted away, and, with the
ashes of the malefactors of centuries, converted into
mortar, and used in the erection of the New Town.
So far from being a knoll, the place is now a hollow.
It is related that, every day while the carts were
taking away the sand, the proprietor of the knoll
stood regularly at the place receiving the money in
return, and ?every little sum he got was converted
into liquor, and applied to the comfort of his inner
man. A public-house was at length erected oe the
spot for his particular behoof; and, assuredly, as
long as the Gallow Lee lasted this house did not
want custom, Perhaps, familiar as the reader may
be with stories of sots who have drunk away their
last coin, he never before heard of this thing being
done in so literal a manner.?
It immediately adjoined the place known as
Shrub Hill. Ordinary malefactors were hanged at
the Cross in the Grassmarket, or on the shore of
Leith ; but the Gallow Lee was latterly the special
place for the execution of witches, and for hanging
in chains the bodies of those who had committed
great crimes. Sometimes only a hand or other limb
was gibbeted here, while the rest of the body was
buried elsewhere. Among the most noted executions
and gibbetings here, we may add the following
to those which have been referred to incidentally
elsewhere in our pages :-
Crawford of Drumsoy records that two criminals
were burned to death here in 1570; and then he
relates an execution at the same place in the autumn
of the year, which made some excitement even in
the Scotland of those days.
Mr. John Kelloe, minister of Spott, near DunSar,
being seized by a sudden remorse of conscience,
came to Edinburgh, and judicially made confession
of a crime which otherwise would never have been
proved against him. He had been married to a
poor but very handsome and attractive girl, ? very
witty and fond, a very little woman, but well
shap?d,? before he got the benefice of Spott, after
which he began to propose to himself a second
marriage with the wealthy daughter of a laird,
whose name Crawford omits, provided he could by
any means rid himself of his first wife, to whom
now he began to behave harshly and petulantly.
To prepare the way for the execution of his design,
and to conceal it when done, he suddenly began to
dissemble in his treatment of her ; his manner was
full of tenderness, kindness, and delicacy.
?She who now thought herself the happiest of
her sex,? continues Crawford in his ? Memoirs,?
written in I 705, ? effusively strove to make him so
too, and hastened her own ruin ; for, upon a Sunday
morning, as she was saying her prayers upon
her knees, he came softly behind her, put a rope
(which he had kept all night in his pocket) about
her neck, and after he had strangled her tied her up
to an iron hook which a day or two before he had
purposely nailed to the ceiling of the room. This
done, he bolted his gate, crept out of his parlour
window, stept demurely to church, and charmed
his hearers with a most excellent sermon.?
The murderer next imited two or three of his
parishioners to sup with him, telling them casually,
as it were, that ?? his wife was not well, and of late
somewhat inclined to melancholy ; that she had not?
come to kirk that day, but would be glad to see
them at her house.? On knocking at the gate, the
Rev. Mr. Kelloe affected to be much astonished
that there was no response. Ultimately he and his
guests were obliged to make a forcible entrance, and
the murdered wife was found hanging from the
hook to which her corpse had been attached. The
reverend incumbent of Spott now feigned grief
and counterfeited sorrow so much to the life that
his neighbours almost forgot to mourn for the dead
so much were they afraid of losing the living.
However, these forged tears, by the mercy of
God to this great offender, suddenly became real
ones.?
Tortured by conscience, after six weeks of misery
he made a confession of his crime to the schoolmaster
of Dunbar, according to Crawford-to
Andrew Simpson, minister there, according to the
? Historie of King James the Sext ?-and after
being convicted, on his own confession, at Edinburgh,
he was conveyed to the Gallow Lee, on the
4th of October, and strangled. His corpse was
then consumed by fire and the ashes scattered on
the air. ?? Never did any man appear more penitent
or less fearful of death. He was attended from
the prison to the stake by three of the clergy, and
by the way he rather instructed them than received
any assistance from them.?
A century or so later and we have some appalling
accounts of the cremation of so-called witches
at the terrible Gallow Lee.
In 1678 five were (mercifully) strangled first and
burnt to ashes there, by sentence of the Lords;
and other four, their companions, were burned
at Painston Muk, in their own parish. The accusations
against them were intimacy with the devil,
dancing with him, renouncing their baptism, and
being kissed by him, though his lip3 were icy cold,
and his breath like damp air ; taking a communion
at his hands, when ?? the bread was like wafers, the
drink sometimes blood and other times like black
moss water,?? and much more to the same purpose,
all of which is gravely recorded by Lord Fountain
156 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Leith Walk.
hall within thirty years of the time when Steele and
Addison were writing in the Specfatorf
The 10th of October, 1681, saw five unfortunate
victims of misrule, named Garnock, Foreman,
Russel, Ferrie, and Stewart, executed at the Gallow
Lee, where their bodies were buried, while their
heads were placed on the Cowgate Port. Some of
their friends came in the night, and reverently
lifting the remains, re-interred them in the West
Churchyard They had the courage also to take
half of the linen over them, and stufft the coffin
with shavings.? Many urged that the latter should
be borne through all the chief thoroughfares ; but
PatricK Walker adds that instead, we went out
by. the back of the [city] wall, in at the Bristo Port,
and turned up to the churchyard [Greyfrairs],
where they were interred close to the Martyrs?
tomb, with the greatest multitude of people, old
and young, men and women, ministers and others,
that I ever saw together.?
JOPPA PANS,
down the heads for the same purpose, but being
scared they were obliged to enclose them in a box,
which they buried in a garden at Lauriston. There
they lay till the 7th of October, 1726, a period of
forty-five years, when a Mr. Shaw, proprietor of the
garden, had them exhumed. The resurrection of
the ghastly relics of the Covenanting times made a
great excitement in Edinburgh. They were rolled
in four yards of fine linen and placed in a coffin.
?( Being young men, their teeth all remained,? says
Patrick Walker (the author of ?? Biographia Presbyteriana
?). ? All were witness to the holes in each
of their heads which the hangman broke with his
hammer ; and according to the bigness of their
skulls we laid their jaws to them, drew the other
On the 10th of January, 1752, there was taken
from the Tolbooth, hanged at the Gallow Lee, and
gibbeted there, a man named Norman ROSS, whose
remains were long a source of disgust and dismay
to all wayfarers on the Walk. His crime was the
assassination of Lady Baillie, a sister of Home the
Laud of Wedderburn. A relation of this murder
is given in a work entitled ?Memoirs of an Anstocrat,?
published in 1838, by the brother of a
claimant for the Earldom of Marchmont, a book
eventually suppressed The lady in question married
Ninian Home, a dominie, but by failure of
her brothers ultimately became heiress, and the
dominie died before her.
Norman Ross was her footman, and secreted
