Hangman’s Crag sounds like the name came from the place being a site of execution, but actually it comes rather from the sad tale of one of Edinburgh's much hated and loathed executioners.
In the late Seventeenth Century
in Edinburgh, one of the city's hangmen was a young man who had come from a
wealthy and well-to-do family from Melrose in the Scottish Borders. On his father's death, he had inherited the
estate and a great deal of money.
However, the young man had extravagant tastes and wasted the whole
fortune on living the high life. When
not drinking, entertaining and visiting one of the city’s many whorehouses he
was gambling away vast amounts of money.
Soon he was broke. There was no
money left. To survive he had to move to
lowly lodgings and sell off his belongings, though he did keep one set of fine
clothes. The young man then had to do
what no gentleman should ever have to do, he had to work for a living. So, he
took the job as the city hangman. This
was a particularly odious and unpopular job at that time, as many of those
sentenced to die were innocent men fallen foul of higher powers or those whose
religion was not in keeping with the main orthodoxy. Even in normal times the city hangman was
seen as someone on the fringes of society, on the same level as common
criminals and prostitutes.
The young man took up this office
and performed his duties of execution, flogging and all the other rather
unpleasant sentences ordered by the courts.
Now, a man has to be of a certain mentality to carry out these sorts of
duties and not be affected or destroyed by the torment he is inflicting. This young man found escape from the guilt
of his actions and from the lowly office he now occupied in life, by donning
the one set of fine clothes he had kept and mixing with the gentlefolk of
Edinburgh. He would dress up and mingle
with the groups of Edinburgh society who played golf in the evenings at
Bruntsfield Links, and for a few hours he could feel he was back in his place
in society. He could switch off from the
haunting screams of those whose lives he was paid to end. Those he was paid to maim or torture or
humiliate.
One day while out at Bruntsfield
Links, the young man was recognised by a group playing golf. One of their friends had recently been
sentenced to death for some minor offence, and they realised that the young man
playing golf alongside them was none other than the man who had hanged him. They shouted at him and pointed out to the
others there who he was. They insulted
him, spat at him, threw stones at him and chased him away. They told him never to come back, that he was
a disgrace and lower than even the most common and base criminal who had
dangled from his rope. The young man
ran off humiliated and ashamed. He made
his way to the quiet solitude of one of the crags overlooking Duddingston Loch. There he contemplated his life and what he
had become. Falling into a state of
great despair he threw himself off the crag to his death. His body was then found there the next day. After this the crag he had thrown himself
from was always referred to as the Hangman’s Crag.
The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are:
Latitude 55.941027
