Minstrelsy of the Scottish border - National Library of Scotland

274 MINSTRELSY OF
barons had prepared a fire and a boiling cauldron, into which
they plunged the unlucky sheriff. After he was sodden (as the
king termed it,) for a sufficient time, the savages, that they
might hterally observe the royal mandate, concluded the scene
of abomination by actually partaking of the hell-broth.
The three lairds were outlawed for this offence ; and Bar-
clay, one of their number, to screen himself from justice, erected
the kaim (?. e. the camp, or fortress) of IMathers, which
stands upon a rocky and almost inaccessible peninsula, overhanging
the German Ocean. The Laird of Arbuthnot is said
to have eluded the royal vengeance, by claiming the benefit of
the law of clan ]\Iacduff, concerning wliich the curious reader
will find some particulars subjoined. A pardon, or perhaps a
deed of replegiation, founded upon that law, is said to be still
extant among the records of the Viscount of Arbuthnot.
Fellow narrates a similar instajice of atrocity, pei-petrated
after the death of JMuley Ismacl, Emperor of IMorccco, in
1 727, when the inhabitants of Old Fez, throwing off all alle-
:
giance to his successor, slew " Alchyde Boel le Rosea, their
" old governor, boiling his flesh, and many, through spite, eat-
" ing thereof, and throwing what they could not eat of it to the
" dogs."—See Fellow's Travels in South Barbari). And we
may add, to such tales, the oriental tyranny of Zenghis Khan,
who immersed seventy Tartar Khans in as many boiling caul-
drons.
The punishment of boiling seems to have been in use among
the English at a very late period, as appears from the following
passage in Stowe's Chronicle — " The 17th March (1524,)
" Margaret Davy, a maid, was boiled at Smithfield, for poison-
" ing of three households that she had dwelled in." But un-
questionably the usual practice of Smithfield cookery, about
that period, was by a different application of fire.