318 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[Oct. 27. 1855. 



cofltume de faire conduire ignomineusement siir im araba 

 (voiture non suspendue), train^ par des boeufs, les fonc- 

 tionnaires qui encouraient sa disgrace — innovation qui fut 

 cause de sa perte. Le Kyzlar-agagi Ismail, destitue par 

 le grand vizir, ^tait pr^s de monter sur le char h. bceufs, 

 lorsque son successeur Nezir-Aga reclama, auprfes de la 

 Khasseki-sultane, au sujet d'un outrage fait h, un person- 

 nage de rang si ^leve: instruit de cette violation de I'eti- 

 quette, le sultan ota le sceau h. Ali-Pacha, et envoya ce 

 ministre en exil il Rhodes sur I'araba nieme qu'il avoit 

 prepare pour son ennemi." 



Our own history affords the next example of 

 retributive death : 



" Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England, died of a 

 wound received from a crossbow, while besieging a small 

 castle in France. It has been remarked that he met his 

 death by a weapon introduced into warfare by himself, 

 much to the displeasure of the warriors of his time, who 

 said that ' heretofore brave men fought hand to hand, 

 but now the bravest and noblest might be brought down 

 by a cowardly knave lurking behind a tree.' " — Satur- 

 day Mag., vol. ii. p. 120. 



Ralpho, in Hudibras (part ii. canto iii.), In sa- 

 tirizing the enormities of the witch finders, 

 alludes to the notorious Hopkins — 



" Who after prov'd himself a witch. 

 And made a rod for his own breech." 



Dr. Hutchinson, in his Historical Essay on 

 Witchcraft, says : 



" These two verses relative to that which I have often 

 heard, that Hopkins went on searching and swimming 

 the poor creatures, till some gentlemen, out of indignation 

 at the barbarity, took him, and tied his own thumbs and 

 toes, as he used to tie others ; and when he was put into 

 the water, he himself swam as they did. This cleared 

 the country of him, and it was a great deal of pity that 

 they did not think of the experiment sooner." — P. 65. 



Lalanne, from whom I have previously quoted, 

 concludes his interestinsj chapter on " Feines et 

 Supplices " by the following cases in point : 



" Faisons encore les rapprochements suivanfs. Dans le 

 Rosier, ou epitome historial, abrege des grandes chroniques 

 de France, on lit au f" 63. : ' Philippe le Bel fit faire le 

 Montfaucon, et de ce faire eut la charge messire Enguer- 

 rand de Marigny.' Or, Enguerrand de Marigny fut 

 pendu en 1315 h ce meme gibet de Montfaucon. En 

 1328, Pierre Remy, principal tr^sorier de Charles IV., fut 

 pendu k Montfaucon, ' h un grand gibet qu'il avait fait 

 faire lui-meme (dit le continuateur de Guillaume de 

 2fangis), et dont il avait donne, dit-on, le plan aux 

 ouvriers.' Ainsi se trouva verifiee une prediction qu'on 

 avait, disait-on, grave'e sur le principal pilier du gibet, et 

 qui portait ces deux vers : 



' En ce gibet ici emmi, 

 Sera pendu Pierre Remi.' " 



While speaking of this mode of punishment, I 

 may allude to the case of the notorious Deacon 

 William Brodie, executed in 1788 at Edinburgh, 

 for robbery of the Excise Office. From a clever 

 little volume, T'he Book of Bon Accord, or a 

 Guide to the City of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, ] 839. 

 I learn that the machine by which the sentence of 



No. 313.] 



the law was carried into effect was the invention 

 or improvement of the patient himself: 



" Thus to the fact that Deacon Brodie suffered by his 

 own improved drop, common fame has added the embel- 

 lishment that he was the first to prove its efficiency." 



However this latter point may be, in its effi- 

 ciency he seems to have taken a most paternal 

 interest. The following account of his last mo- 

 ments is given by one of his biographers : 



"He scanned the apparatus with the coolness of a pro- 

 fessional man, and half jestingly desired Smith to mount 

 first. Having mounted himself, he found the rope too 

 short, descended till it was made longer, ascended again, 

 and found it still too short ; when he once more stepped 

 lightly down, and waited till it was made somewhat 

 longer. Being at length satisfied, he reascended, helped 

 the executioner to adjust the rope, shook hands with a 

 bystander, whom he desired to acquaint his friends that 

 he died like a man, and went carelessh^ out of the world, 

 with his hand slung in the breast of his vest." 



Towards the latter end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, an attempt was made by the Regent, James 

 Earl of Morton, to introduce into Scotland the 

 Mannaja, Mannaye, or Halifax Gibbet, as an in- 

 strument of judicial execution ; it was by this 

 that he lost his own head. Sir Walter Scott 

 informs us that — 



" He met his death with the same determined courage 

 that he had often displaj^ed in battle ; and it was re- 

 marked with interest by the common people, that he 

 suffered decapitation by a rude guillotine of the period 

 which he himself, during his administration, had intro- 

 duced into Scotland from Halifax; it was called the 

 ' Maiden.' " — History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 168. 



To this the favourite " embellishment " has been 

 added by popular tradition : 



" He was the first and last person who suffered by it in 

 Scotland, and it still exists in the parliament house at 

 Edinburgh." — Hone's Every Day Book, vol. i. p. 149. 



So also in an epigram preserved in Kelly's Col- 

 lection of Proverbs : 



" He that invented the Maiden first hanselled it." 



Such, however, is not the fact, as" I learn from an 

 interesting paper on " The Maiden, an ancient In- 

 strument of Execution," in Chambers's Journal, 

 O. S., vol. viii. p. 139. An excerpt from the books 

 of the Treasurer of the City of Edinburgh, " To 

 Andro Gotterson, smith, for grynding of the 

 Madin, v. sh.," is of earlier date than the execution 

 of Morton ; and a subsequent entry of five shil- 

 lings to the same individual, " for grynding of the 

 Widow," testifies to the frequency of its use, and 

 the appropriate change of name, after the first 

 spouse of the Maiden had perished in her fatal 

 embrace. It seems too, as I gather from the same 

 paper, to have been the custom to give, when 

 possible, a retributive significance to the mode of 

 its working : 



" By a quaint regulation, highly characteristic of our 

 ancestors, when a cow or horse was the piece of property 



