"Wherever there is a place of Prayer, the Devil builds a chapel there. It will be found upon examination, the second has the larger congregation" DeFoe
Ah the flavors of life! That despicable English spy Daniel DeFoe was certainly much maligned by my dear old dad but his skill with the quill was almost as good as mine. There is nothing more devious than a skulk of foxes and how easily a flock of sheep can transform into just that. To borrow a phrase from my dear friend William Burke, today's story is one that you can really get your teeth into!
The 14th Century saw a period of terrible famine descend on much of lowland Scotland. The repeated invasions north of the border by Edward I and Edward II of England and the attacks south by Robert I left a once fertile and beautiful land scarred by the hunger of ground troops. Armies have to march,and wherever they do they leave behind a trail of broken woodland and farmland. Trees must be felled for machines of war and the passage thereof, livestock must be consumed and it is easier to eat what you discover on the road than to drag beasts with the caravan of soldiers.
In the early 14th Century there were no roads in Scotland, and our rich forests were natural, hosting a range of wildlife. The beautiful borderlands were the home of countless farms and crofts, assembled around villages and markets. The greatest Scottish city of the time was not Edinburgh. Berwick, on the border of Scotland and England, boasted the title of Scotland's first Royal Burgh.
Gone now is Berwick, the Earth all but salted. It is the disappearance of this huge city that informs us better than anything else, of the carnage that the Wars of Independence brought. For as the armies of single minded Kings marched north or south from the kingdoms they called their own the devastation left in their wake was considerable. For two generations the borderlands were the battlefield for the powerful tyrants of the time and while the wealthy played out their games the peasants had no choice but to survive the carnage unleashed upon them.
So, in 1350, with Robert I dead of leprosy and Edward II's ambitions aimed away from Scotland it would seem that a reprieve was in order for the people of lowland Scotland. How sad it is to know then, that only now their greatest enemy was about to attack their holdings. This would be an enemy much more dangerous than the rampaging Kings of the past 30 years, an enemy that could not be fought with spear or bow. The coldest winter in remembered history, the black winter of 1352, rolled across the North Atlantic Ocean and upon breaking against the Highlands, washed white across the lowlands from coast to coast.
And now, deep midwinter of 1352, the last grains in the holdings are iced to the ground and the last bleat of the starving lamb rings once before it crumples to the ground frozen and malnourished.
It is at this time a group of peasants, themselves cold and starving, make the decision to travel North in attempt to escape the devastation of the lowlands. The plan was a very simple and desperate one. The Grampian Mountains in the North East of Scotland would provide shelter and life could be sustained as a hunter or scavenger. The groups original numbers are unknown, however by the time their terrible story ends there was 15, we make a best guess that around 30 men women and children took the march from South of Edinburgh to 40 miles West of Aberdeen.
After a weeks journey, marching in conditions which must have seemed so desperate, the group of scavengers arrived at a cave in the Grampians unoccupied and with a fresh waterfall cascading over the caves entrance. Berries and nuts grew around the waters edge and it is said that the hunger mad scavengers fell on the food with terrible fervour but such was their starvation that each could eat no more than a handful of berries before their swollen bellies were sated. Nevertheless, they had succeeded. They had arrived where they had determined to journey to and the prophesied food and shelter had been found.
It is not in the nature of the storyteller to regale the audience with a happy ending though, for this world provides no happy endings, just good last jokes at the expense of the dead.
Within 6 months of their arrival the entire scavenging party lay prone on the floor of their cave. The winter had grown worse, not better and less and less food could be found. Where hope had blossomed, now there was only the grim specter of death through starvation. It is a terrible death, where men go mad and bite at their own limbs for nourishment and women eye their children hungrily. On this occasion it was an older lady to give up the fight first, the reaper finally cutting the light of misery from her eyes.
These things work on a base human level. It is said that only 3 days without food, water, and shelter is enough to drive a sane person insane. So there cannot be too much surprise or revulsion to learn that the survivors in the cave capable of dragging their bodies with gnawed fingers across to the old woman's corpse found her a lesser burden to their appetites in death than she had been in life. Upon consuming her flesh the survivors must have felt invigorated.
Have you ever eaten human flesh? Most will swear they have not, and with good cause, for it is a terrible act. Terrible and addictive. The ghoul of ancient middle eastern folklore was a flesh eating creature lurking as a saprobe around battlefields. It complexion pale and haggard until it consumed the flesh of a mortal man whereupon it could resume an almost human appearance until the hunger began to take hold again.
My physician informs me that when I eat human flesh my body considers itself injured. "The arm that is inside my stomach, this must be my own arm", my brain decides. So to counter the terrible injury that must have befallen me a flood of powerful endorphins is released from my pineal gland. These endorphins are addictive and the more human flesh I consume, the more my body releases, convinced that I am experiencing terrible pain. It is true that the more endorphins I savor, the less effective they are, so the pineal gland must swell larger in the brain to produce more of the pain relieving chemicals to flood my body.
Of course there are no chemicals that cure the hunger of cannibalism, and the pain of Gods hatred towards my atrocities cannot be cured by any method of science, nor by the bumbling of a church clown...
With invigorated bodies, mouths filled with the taste of red iron from their fist good meal in months, the caves survivors have seemingly made a decision that in order to survive, they will have to eat more of their own. It is suggested from the stories that three more of the groups weakest members were killed as they lay prone and freezing on the cave floor. Throats slit and claret spilled, their deaths and great charity of flesh begins the rise of one of Scotland's most dreadful nightmares.
With three members of the party murdered and four consumed in a bloody feast the party elects a leader. Peter Christie, originally from Dunfermline becomes the head of the newly formed cannibal gang and directs the group to their next meal. The roads through the Grampian mountains are often the track of lone messengers on horseback thundering between towns to deliver the Kings messages. The first of many missing messengers will be the gangs first victim outside the cave.
The weapons used by Christies Clique are known as Cleeks, a weapon used on battlefields to demean cavalry . The Cleek is a long pole arm, or stick, about 5ft long, and topped with a gruesome curved blade bound to the pole with twine or sometimes molten lead. With such a weapon Christie's gang would hide by the side of the road, on knees with their cleeks beside them, and ready themselves when they heard the sound of distant hooves. As the horseman draws in range the entire gang leap to their feet and thrust the cleeks across the road, dragging the horse and rider to the ground with the terrible bloody claws.
The exact number of victims of Christies Clique is unknown, it is understood from the confessions of several of the gang that they operated from the cave for nearly 2 years. During this time there are reports of hundreds of missing travellers, though the roads in the Grampian
Mountains hold many dangers besides the cannibal human. The remains of 50 people were found in the cave by the officers at arms when they finally took the gang in the Summer of 1354. Some of these may have been members of the gang, for the confession was that any who attempted to leave would not be able to do so unless inside the belly of their co conspirators.
When the gang was executed in the Aberdeen Castlegate September 1354 they numbered only 15 and while all were willing to confess their terrible crimes, none would confess to being named Peter Christie. They were of course all insane by this time, bodies and minds ravaged by the terrible hunger of cannibalism. So perhaps even their names had been forgotten in the madness of their bloodletting.
Even without the name Peter Christie, the authorities were seemingly satisfied. The name Peter Christie would not surface again in the company of Cannibals. But it would not be the end, rather just the beginning of the legend of Christie Cleek.
Facts and fears are a powerful cocktail, one that you peasants have been devouring for centuries. When fact is corrupted with fear the imagination can create its own new truths and this is certainly the case with the legend of Peter Christie. Today when you mortals are being scolded by your mother for being so lazy and filthy she is likely to say "Clean your room or you don't get to play computer games!" A powerful threat indeed! My mother, or auntie if you prefer, would tell me "James, clean your dungeon or... CHRISTIE CLEEK! CHRISTIE CLEEK!" at which point I would leap into action cleaning the blood from the walls with great gusto. For if you say his terrible name three times.... the next time the shadows can creep far enough across the floor, a cleek will be thrust out of them and you will be pulled in to wherever Peter Christies madness wants to take you.
As far as I can remember, until the end of the nineteenth century the boogieman for Scotland was Christie Cleek.
Well mortals that is all the time I have for you today, my apologies for the lack of contact this past week, I have been raising the corpses of some notable characters from sixteenth century Edinburgh. Why you ask? Well its not really any of your business but I am training them to perform in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The show is called 'Late Night Old Town Bloodbath' and if you are very good I may arrange an invite for you. I have to say, the trouble with using dead folks as actors is they are very stupid, constantly reliving their final agonising memories of life. The benefit is you don't have to pay them anything which is just as well because this late night splatter fest is probably going to land me in court and if the toon rats discover what i did to little Timothy in 1707 I'll be up to my bloodshot eyes in bluidy legal fees....
Greetings foul tongued air breathers! Today my dinner ghosts asked me why the underground of Edinburgh has so many things built over the top of it. I told him that it wouldn't be underground if it didn't eh? Or rather if it didn't have the ground over the top of it then what was built below would at no time be referred to as below unless the foresight had been such that a realization of what would one day be above had already been understood in the below.It seems this has not satisfied his curiosity so perhaps the best way to explain is to start at the beginning. Or at least halfway through the beginning of the middle.
Edinburgh's Old Town has certainly changed a great deal over the centuries. The oldest known settlement on Castle Rock dates all the way back to 7000bc! In the the 12th Century the city was granted the status of a town and in the 16th Century the Edinburghers built a wall around their town.
Why build a wall around the town? To keep out snotty English people and smelly Highlanders! Bring the wall back I should say, and hanging is too good while we are at it.
So it goes that in 1513 the Queen of France sent a letter to King James IV of Scotland. The letter said "Bonjours King Jacques, join avec moi and let oui destroy the silly English persons!". A very pretty turquoise ring was delivered with the envelope and the King liked the ring, so Scotland went to war.
The first man to die in the war was King James IV of Scotland. At the battle of Flodden he positioned his heavy cannons at the top of a hill then remembered they were to big to aim down. Oopsadaisy! In a panic he led the Scottish army charging down the hill towards the English army and into a swamp.
The King had never been in a fight in his life much less a battlefield. It was a massacre, some ten thousand Scottish casualties in a matter of minutes. Almost all the nobility of Scotland had been killed in one fell swoop and when the people of Edinburgh discovered what had happened, well, their trousers filled up with the brown stuff.
With no King to think rationally and no army to protect the city a decision was made. Build a Wall!
Construction began immediately on the Flodden Wall. Forty feet tall and half a mile by quarter mile it fully enclosed the South, East and West of the city. It's just a shame it took fifty six years to build... Luckily for the builders and their children the immediate invasion of Scotland never took place because it must be said that the Flodden Wall was never good at keeping people out. It was, however, very good at keeping them in.
For very soon after completion of the wall the people of Edinburgh became terrified of the world beyond their city. Highlanders! English! English Highlanders! The fear was so great that most people born in Edinburgh in the 17th Century would die in Edinburgh in the 17th Century without ever gong outside their walls.
This led to a huge population increase and with no space to build more houses inside the wall, the decision was taken to start building houses on top of houses. Edinburgh's skyscrapers are born!
These old skyscrapers were some of the tallest in Europe, one reached the height of sixteen levels. In the 17th Century! Made from wood, with thatched roofs and no planning permission, these giant structures were extremely safe places to live. They were in fact so safe that other buildings would be built leaning against them for extra support. Of course what this means is if one building were to collapse then the rest would follow like a line of dominoes. Edinburgh could collapse in an instant.
Living at the top of one of these titans was very dangerous but living at ground level the smell was over bearing. Like my Benedict Cumberbatches after they have not been washed for a year! It was such a foul odor at street level Edinburgh because of the lack of toilets. For three hundred years all sewage just went straight out the window and into the crowded streets below.
Today we have no skyscrapers left in Edinburgh and almost all of the Flodden Wall has come down. Where did it all go? That will have to be another story for another day. I have a luncheon appointment with a young boy who will be frightfully hot and bothered if I don't see to him soon. Fare ye well mortals, or as they say in France; "Reservoir!"
James Douglas of Castle Drumlanrig
Cityofedinburghtours.com
Edinburgh became the biggest toilet in Europe in the early 19th Century. Not because of the the prostitution and destitution, nor even the streets lined with feces. The smell in reference here was undoubtedly brought by the sick man of Europe, The Irish.
Now some learn ed doctors would lead you to believe that us Scots are all from
Irish descent, something about a tribe known as the Scotti exiled from Ireland.
Well these learn ed peoples may well be right about where peasants come from but my father and his sister know a little bit more about where I come from than any jeans science person begging your pardon!
Ahem. So as I was saying, as if the smell in Edinburgh couldn't get any worse, the Irish moved into town!
They came to Scotland en mass at the beginning of the 19th Century to work as
cheap labor in the Industrial Revolution but when the work ran out they settled
in Edinburgh's Cowgate, Grassmarket, and a disgusting slum known as the West Port.
Under the South shadow of Edinburgh Castle is The Cowgate, the old walk of the cows, the street the beasts would be marched along to be sold at the Grassmarket. It is where many of Edinburgh's peasant nightclubs are today so in many ways the name is still more than suitable. Guffaw!
Leaving the Cowgate and walking to the end of the Grassmarket, one finds oneself in the West Port, the site of the old West Gate into Edinburgh where the 3 roads lead off to Stirling, Glasgow and Carlisle. Today Edinburghers call this place the 'Pubic Triangle' due to the gentlemens clubs that surround the three roads. I will take the word of the peasants on that, please believe me that I have never ever visited the place ever.
If you will take a walk with me through the West Port in 1827 however, we will
find a little dirt path called Tanners Close and upon that path of misery sits a
crude broken down hostel known as Lucky Logs....
Mrs Log, the proprietor, was known as Lucky because you could get 'lucky' with Mrs
Log if you stayed the night. Her husband William Hare was a very tall Irishman,
pale and rakish thin hailing from the town of Londonderry in the North of Ireland.
Hare was every inch the wretch. Weak of character and body. Constantly drunk and
very, very stupid. He could not read, could not write, could not count and with
his thick accent he could only just speak. He was kept in line by his associate
William Burke, a fellow Irishman from the town of Donegal working as a cobbler in
Edinburgh. While Hare was of a towering height and stupid as tea with no pinkie,
Burke was short in stature but quite bright, at least by the standards of the
Irish. The two formed a very successful capitalist venture late in the year of
1827. You could even say they made a killing...
One cold night in 1827 an old man visiting Edinburgh took a walk down Tanner's
Close and stayed the night in Lucky Logs. He put his head down on the soiled
pillow and never lifted it again. He died of natural causes and owing to the lack
of curiosity arousing from this tourists passing Burke and Hare took the old mans
body through the West Port, the Grassmarket, the Cowgate, up the High School Wynd,
and entering through the back door of the Edinburgh University set about to
selling the body for medical research. A noble cause!
Seven pounds and six shillings was the fee paid by Dr Robert Knox for the stiffy.
A weeks earnings in those days would amount to about a pound on average so these
two Irishmen were already making a killing. Now, let us not be too crude or
judgemental here but perhaps, well maybe, we cannot be surprised to learn that
their next destination was the pub.
To the Grassmarket swagger the pair and into The White Hart Inn. Here they meet
with another old man, a tourist drinking alone. They share a few drinks with him
and he considers himself lucky to be in the company of such friendly Irishmen.
"Have another whiskey... One more for the road..... One more will help you sleep
better tonight..." Very soon this old man had drunk so much whiskey that he could
not even remember where is lodgings were but , to his great misfortune, there was a spare
room for him at Lucky Logs. Helping the man out of the Grassmarket and into the
West Port, Burke and Hare bundle him into the top floor of Lucky Logs and lay him
on his back on the bed. Hare, the wretch, then sits atop the old mans chest as
Burke drives his fingers up the poor fellows nose, holds his tongue hard with his
thumb and the pair watch as the bewildered old fool begins retching. Water,
whiskey, bile, all vomiting out of his mouth as he drowns in his own sick.
It was, I suppose, a perfect murder. Who should care if a drunken tourist dies
from intoxication in a slum in Edinburgh? The pair took the body speedily then,
through the West Port, Grassmarket, Cowgate, up the Old High School Wynd and into
the University. The good Dr Knox paid them ten pounds! Well, a business was born.
The business was murder and business was about to boom.
Have you heard of Jack the Ripper? Whitechapel Jack from London? Now i will not hear any slight on that good fellows character but for all his fame he did only kill four people. Well, five if you count the American but that is cheating really. Oh please! Americans are far too easy to kill. Let me preface this by saying, I didn't tell you this if anyone asks ok? Jack was a wimp compared to Burke and Hare.
Victim number thirteen is alleged to be Peggy Haldane the granddaughter of one of
Burke and Hares previous victims. William Hare seduced this young unfortunate
while his colleague Burke was out of town. Burke had taken leave to Newcastle to
collect his cousin and bring her to Edinburgh to 'meet the King' and he had left
Hare with no money, no whiskey, and the insistance that no business would be done
until he returned. A visit to the pawn shop and Hare had enough money to buy some
drinks for young Peggy Haldane. He needn't have bothered as Peggy was a lady
working the streets, but then again, William Hare was a very stupid man. What
would take place next is a matter open to the imagination but according to William
Hares testimonial in court, his level of intoxication was so severe from the
processes of the nights courtship that he found himself unable to kill her
forthwith and instead settled for chaining her up in the cellar of Lucky Logs.
That this is true we can only hope for it was two days before Peggys body was sold
to the good Dr Knox for the measly sum of two pounds. Why so little coin you may
ask? The girl had no skin left on her upper extremities. Hare explained in court
that the rats in his cellar must have de-sleeved her.
Now it is at this time we find a young student studying anatomy in the University.
This chap by the name of Charles Darwin was so horrified by the skinless
prostitute in the dissection hall that he quit his studies in Edinburgh and went
off to study...erm... computer game design or something. That however, is another
story for another day.
For this was not the end of Burke and Hares business of death. They are perhaps
the most proficient serial killers in history of murder. Their killing spree
lasted for eight months and they were killing with such ease and frequency that
they began to allow that most Irish of sentiments back into their life. Laziness. The
amounts of money they were bringing in had made the recklessly addicted to whiskey
and in the stupor of the drunk they had begun to hide the bodies of their victims
under the beds in the hostel, allowing for more whisky through the night and
leaving the sale for the morning after.
If you look under your bed in an Edinburgh hostel the sights are oft verily
disgusting, but an old dead women by the name of Mary Docherty is probably not
what James Gray had expected to find that night in Lucky Logs. The police alerted
by Gray, a chase across Edinburgh begins, culminating in the arrest of Burke and
Hare in the University dissection rooms, haggling over the price of the dead body.
Talk about caught red handed! The terrible pair are arrested on suspicion of a
murder. Just one murder mind you, for Edinburgh's constabulary had no idea the men in
their custody were mass murderers.
So it goes that in a remarkable miscarriage of justice William Hare is offered the
chance to turn Kings Evidence against Burke, essentialy a complet pardon for all
his crimes if he tells the truth about William Burkes misdemeanours.
Well, Hare may have been stupid but he took this chance to go free and once he
started talking his gums did not stop flapping for six days! In this overcrowded
city Burke and Hare had been killing people that no one would miss. Beggars, tourists,
drunks, prostitutes.... tourists. Haha! We can only guess at how many people the
two men killed in 1828 and 1828 but a coservative estimate today is sixy. Three
people a week! Let it be known that this guess is very conservative for there were
over one hundered and seventy dissections at the university over the eight months
the pair were active. Four of the cadavers were sourced legally from local
executions but where all the other bodies came from is still a mystery.
William Hare walked free from Edinburgh after the trial and whatever happened to
him remains a mystery to this day. Many specualate on his whereabouts after
Edinburgh but there can be no specualtion as to what happened to Burke. Convicted
of sixteen counts of murder William Burke Esq. was publicly hanged on Edinburgh's
High Street in January of 1829. In those days it was commonly believed that if
your body was not intact you would not be allowed into heaven on the final day of
reckoning so William Burke, by selling his murdered victims for dissection, was
considered not to have simply killed his victims. Rather he was condeming their
souls to Hell for all eternity.
The twenty five thousand strong crowd roared their approval as the noose was
placed around Burkes neck. The crowds fury rose to the volume of a storm as the
murderer from Donegal dropped through the gallows port and exited the land of
mortals for ever. Lest there be any doubt as to where his soul was bound for,
Burkes corpse was transported immediately to the Edinburgh University where Doctor
Monro Tertius, the private tutor of the afore mentioned Charles Darwin, produced
his scalpels and proceeded to dissect the still warm body of William Burke.
After cutting him open from his guts to his skull, Monro pulled Burke apart,
removing all his internal organs and skinning the body in its entirety. Some of
the more excitable students gathered the skin as it fell from the dissection table
and used it to bind their textbooks. A 'novel' idea I must say! All that remained
at the end of the dissection was a bloody skeleton on a slab, a skeleton which
remains in Edinburgh to this day. Not in the graveyard, oh no no! The skeleton of
Burke has been kept by the university and to this very day, two centuries later,
the skeleton is still on display inside the University buildings.
Now then mortals, that concludes our story for today. There is a lot more to tell
about Burke and Hare of course and perhaps another day we will look at the pair
again. For now this will have to do as the unsavory area of Edinburgh beneath the South face of the Castle Rock is filled with too many peasants for a dignitary of my stature to linger long.
Of course, they were just business men at the end of it all. They saw an opening
in the market and they took it. My father always said that you have to do what is
right for yourself, survival of the fattest and all that. Until next time mortals, take heed the old adage: "Beware Irish bearing gifts!"
Yours, for all eternity,
James Douglas of Castle Drumlanrig
Greetings Mortals! I am James Douglas, Earl of Drumlanrig Castle and first in line to the Dukedom of Queensberry and I am dead. For the past 300 years I have been haunting Edinburghs Underground Streets in the Old Town since the unfortunate matter of my death in 1715.
Too much of a good thing can kill you mortals. "Four warnings is the same as having four arms", is what I vaguely remember my dear father telling me on one of the few occasions we got to have a good blether. He of course, I presume, perhaps, maybe, was referring to the need for extra arms to hold his daggers to swat those reprehensible anti-unionist peasants that ran amok through Edinburgh back in 1707. I died from chronic obesity so if I had any extra arms they would be employed in the holding of another fork or two! Haha! Well perhaps that old saying doesn't relate to my pontificating but too much of a good thing can definitely kill you! Probably. I should think.
So now I have this fabulous new on-ternet journal where i can share my marvelous ghost stories with all my on-ternet friends who if i am honest with you don't appear to have much dress sense or even a single silver spoon in their collective mouth. Getting things down in writing can be a bit difficult when you are an illiterate imbecile kept in the basement of Queensberry house but if i thought i had it bad then... Haha! Let me tell you mortals, after becoming a corporeal being doomed to relive my past misdemeanours for all eternity in a state of damnation and perpetual agony it has not got any easier! I can't even hold a quill!
However it's not all tombs and gloom mortals because through the goggles, wiglopedias, bogs, and whatever other new ologies the on-ternet has produced I find it very easy to get my thoughts to appear here. Just as well because they are bluidy important. Very bloody!! I have become a ghost writer! For myself! Geddit?
Forever yours,
James Douglas of Castle Drumlanrig
Cityofedinburghtours.com
So, in 1350, with Robert I dead of leprosy and Edward II's ambitions aimed away from Scotland it would seem that a reprieve was in order for the people of lowland Scotland. How sad it is to know then, that only now their greatest enemy was about to attack their holdings. This would be an enemy much more dangerous than the rampaging Kings of the past 30 years, an enemy that could not be fought with spear or bow. The coldest winter in remembered history, the black winter of 1352, rolled across the North Atlantic Ocean and upon breaking against the Highlands, washed white across the lowlands from coast to coast.
