WHY DO PEOPLE SPIT ON THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN?

Please remember to spit on the Heart of Midlothian the next time you’re in Edinburgh.

The Heart, on the Royal Mile, marks the spot where the old Tolbooth stood and many a border ancestor was imprisoned and executed there – men such as Adam Scott ‘The King of Thieves.’

So it is a long-standing tradition among the locals to spit on the granite blocks in the pavement as a display of disdain for authority and contempt of the Law.

Adam Scott was born sometime in the late Fifteenth century, a son of David Scott in the hills of Ettrick, who had gained possession of the lands at Tushielaw in around 1480/90. Adam was granted a charter by King James IV to the forest stead and lands of Tushielaw ‘with the right to build a tower and fortalice’ in 1507 for a yearly payment of £24.

His brother William was also a reiver who in 1502 was riding, and committing ‘stouthreifs, slaughters, burnings and other crimes,’ with Archibald and Ninian Armstrong. Adam specialised in taking ‘blackmeal’ – protection money – and it appears he was still demanding money with menaces even while imprisoned in Edinburgh in May 1530 along with fellow villain William Cockburn, the Laird of Henderland.

But Adam, who was known as The King of Thieves and The King of the Border, was a reiver that also stood accused of murder, theft, receiving stolen goods and ‘maintaining thieves’ i.e. being the head of a crew. Forget the romantic view of Scott being hung from a tree in his backyard that was popularised by Border Balladeers; it seems that he was actually lifted, tried and executed in the capital city.

The then 19-year-old King James V of Scotland consolidated his power in 1530 with a clampdown on the Border families which also saw the Earl of Bothwell banished and the Lords Maxwell and Hume and Lairds of Buccleuch, Cessford, Ferniehurst, Polwart and Johnstone, among others, imprisoned.

This was probably in response to the fact that the Border warlord Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus – his stepfather – had held the teenager virtually prisoner and exercised power for him for three years until 1528. Buccleuch (Walter Scott of Branxholm and Buccleuch) had actually tried to free the young King in 1526 during what became the Battle of Melrose.

Adam Scott had been jailed in Edinburgh castle in 1505 but had broken out and, perhaps most tellingly, in 1525, he agreed to assist the Earl of Angus in staunching ‘theft, reiving, slaughter, etc.’ It was his connection with Douglas that made the young King probably see Adam as such a threat that he had to go.

Adam Scott and William Cockburn were publicly hung, then beheaded and their heads fixed on spikes at the Tolbooth. Soon after, the King descended on Ewesdale and Eskdale with 12,000 men and hanged another 48 well-known reivers – including the infamous Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie.

It was all about power and money. So remember to spit on the heart the next time you wander by – and tell the startled tourists: ‘That’s for Adam Scott.’

* Northumbrian poet Jon Tait’s new book ‘King of Thieves’ is published by Carlisle-based Fyrebrand and is available now at Amazon, priced at £7.46.