#A.# ‘The Laird of Waristoun,’ Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, I, 109.
#B.# ‘Laird of Wariestoun,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 217; Kinloch’s Ancient
Scottish Ballads, p. 49.
#C.# ‘Death of Lord Warriston,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of
Scotland, I, 56.
Birrell’s Diary, under the date of July 2, 1600, has the following
entry: “John Kinland [Kincaid] of Waristone murderit be hes awin wyff
and servant-man, and the nurische being also upone the conspiracy. The
said gentilwoman being apprehendit, scho was tane to the Girth Crosse
upon the 5 day of Julii, and her heid struck fra her bodie at the
Can-nagait fit; quha diet verie patiently. Her nurische was brunt at the
same tyme, at 4 houres in the morneing, the 5 of Julii.” P. 49.
Both husband and wife belonged to houses of some note. The wife, Jean
Livingston, was a daughter of John Livingston of Dunipace, “and related
to many of the first families in Scotland.”
Nothing seems to have been done to keep the murder from divulging.
Warriston being only about a mile from Edinburgh, information very soon
reached the authorities of justice, and those who were found in the
house, the mistress, the nurse, and two female servants, were arrested.
The crime was committed on Tuesday morning, not long after midnight. On
Thursday such trial as there was took place, and it may have occupied
three hours, probably less. At three o’clock on Saturday morning
sentence was executed. This had been burning (_i. e._ after strangling),
both for the principal and her accomplice, the nurse; but for the
well-born woman, no doubt through the influence of her kindred, it was
commuted to beheading. The servant-man who did the handiwork fled, but
the penalty for undue devotion to his former master’s daughter overtook
him within four years. He was broken on a cart-wheel with a
plough-coulter.
The judicial records in the case of Jean Livingston are lost, but the
process of the murder and the provocation are known from a register of
the trial of Robert Weir, the actual perpetrator, and partly also from
Jean Livingston’s own relation. Jean Livingston, having conceived a
deadly hatred and malice against her husband, John Kincaid, “for the
alleged biting of her in the arm and striking her divers times,” sent
word by her nurse, Janet Murdo, to Robert Weir, formerly servant to her
father, to come to Wariston to speak with her concerning the murdering
of him. The nurse, who, we may safely suppose, had been the witness of
Kincaid’s brutal behavior, was no unwilling agent. “She helped me too
well in mine evil purpose,” says her mistress; “for when I told her what
I was minded to do, she consented to the doing of it, and ... when I
sent her to seek the man who would do it, she said, I shall go and seek
him, and if I get him not, I shall seek another; and if I get none, I
shall do it myself.” This the nurse confessed. The other two women knew
nothing of the deed before it was done; “and that which they knew,” says
the mistress again, “they durst not tell for fear, for I had compelled
them to dissemble.” Robert Weir, having given consent, was put in a
cellar, where he stayed till midnight, about which time he came up and
went to Kincaid’s chamber. Kincaid, who had waked with the “din,” and
was leaning over the side of his bed, was knocked to the floor by a blow
in the neck, kicked in the belly, and then throttled. “As soon as that
man gripped him and began his evil turn,” says the wife, “so soon as my
husband cried so fearfully, I leapt outover my bed and went to the hall,
where I sat all the time till that unhappy man came to me and reported
that mine husband was dead.” She desired Weir, she says, to take her
away with him, for she feared trial, albeit flesh and blood made her
think that her father’s interest at court would have saved her (this may
have been an after-thought). But Weir refused, saying, You shall tarry
still, and if this matter come not to light, you shall say he died in
the gallery, and I shall return to my master’s service. But if it be
known, I shall fly and take the crime on me, and none dare pursue you.
A benevolent minister, who visited Jean Livingston in prison about ten
o’clock on Thursday, the third day after the murder, found her “raging
in a senseless fury, disdainfully taunting every word of grace that was
spoken to her, impatiently tearing her hair, sometimes running up and
down the house like one possessed, sometimes throwing herself on the bed
and sprawling, refusing all comfort by word, and, when the book of God
was brought to her, flinging it upon the walls, twice or thrice, most
unreverently.” His warnings of wrath to come and his exhortations to
seek mercy through repentance were treated as “trittle, trattle,” and
she stubbornly refused to pray for herself, or to take part in his
prayer, or to say so much as God help me. He told her that she was
promising herself impunity, but within a few hours, when she should have
the sentence of death pronounced against her, the pride of her heart
would be broken. The trial and sentence followed hard upon this, and
when the minister returned, some time in the afternoon, he found a
visible and apparent grace beginning in her. He remained with her till
after midnight, and when he left her, Jean Livingston could say that she
felt in her heart a free remission of all her sins. This worthy man came
to the prison again early the next morning, and found God’s grace
wonderfully augmented in her. She was full of joy and courage. Those
that stood about her said they never saw her so amiable or well-favored.
The glory of God was shining both without and within her.
To follow no further this astounding chapter in psychology, this bairn
of twenty-one years,[10] with whom the Lord began to work in mercy upon
Thursday at two hours in the afternoon, gave up her soul to him in peace
upon the Saturday following at three hours in the morning. “When she
came to the scaffold and was carried up upon it, she looked up to the
Maiden with two longsome looks,” but her serenity was not disturbed. She
made a confession at each of the four corners of the scaffold, took
“good night” cheerfully of all her friends, kissing them, and then, “as
a constant saint of God, humbled herself on her knees and offered her
neck to the axe.”[11]
It may be gathered from Weir’s indictment that it was the ill treatment
which she had received from her husband that incited the wife to the
murder. Two of the ballads, #A# 4, #B# 2, make the same representation.
An epitaph on Jean Livingston gives us to understand that both parties
were very young, and were married aganst their will (invita invito
subjuncta puella puello): whence perpetual disagreements (nihil in
thalamo nisi rixæ, jurgia, lites).
In #A#, #B#, the strangling is done by the nurse and her lady, Man’s
Enemy personally knotting the tether in #A#; in #C# it is done by the
nurse alone. In #B# 8 the great Dunipace, in his anger at hearing what
his daughter has done, cries out for her to be put in a barrel of
pikes[12] and rolled down some lea. In #C# the father, mother, and
brother come to see Jean, and would fain give everything to borrow her.
This is a by much too flattering account of the behavior of her
relatives, who were principally anxious to have her got out of the world
with as little éclat as might be. None of them came near her in prison,
though Wariston’s brother did. #C# makes Wariston’s mortal offence not
the throwing a plate at her face (#A#) or striking her on the mouth
(#B#), but the taxing her with a bairn by another man.[13] The
unfriendly relations of the pair must have been notorious. In the prison
the wife “purged herself very sincerely from many scandalous things she
had been bruited with. Not that she would excuse herself that she was a
sinner in the highest rank, but that she might clear herself from these
false reports that her house was charged with:” Memorial, p. XXVII.
* * * * *
A
Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, I, 109, as taken down by Sir Walter
Scott from the recitation of his mother.
1
Down by yon garden green
Sae merrily as she gaes;
She has twa weel-made feet,
And she trips upon her taes.
2
She has twa weel-made feet,
Far better is her hand;
She’s as jimp in the middle
As ony willow-wand.
3
‘Gif ye will do my bidding,
At my bidding for to be,
It’s I will make you lady
Of a’ the lands you see.’
* * * * * *
4
He spak a word in jest;
Her answer wasna good;
He threw a plate at her face,
Made it a’ gush out o blood.
5
She wasna frae her chamber
A step but barely three,
When up and at her richt hand
There stood Man’s Enemy.
6
‘Gif ye will do my bidding,
At my bidding for to be,
I’ll learn you a wile
Avenged for to be.’
7
The Foul Thief knotted the tether,
She lifted his head on hie,
The nourice drew the knot
That gard lord Waristoun die.
8
Then word is gane to Leith,
Also to Edinburgh town,
That the lady had killd the laird,
The laird o Waristoun.
* * * * * *
9
‘Tak aff, tak aff my hood,
But lat my petticoat be;
Put my mantle oer my head,
For the fire I downa see.
10
‘Now, a’ ye gentle maids,
Tak warning now by me,
And never marry ane
But wha pleases your ee.
11
‘For he married me for love,
But I married him for fee;
And sae brak out the feud
That gard my dearie die.’
* * * * *
B
Kinloch MSS, VII, 217; from the recitation of Jenny Watson.
1
It was at dinner as they sat,
And whan they drank the wine,
How happy war the laird and lady
Of bonnie Wariston!
2
The lady spak but ae word,
The matter to conclude;
The laird strak her on the mouth,
Till she spat out o blude.
3
She did not know the way
Her mind to satisfy,
Till evil cam into [her] head
All by the Enemy.
* * * * * *
4
‘At evening when ye sit,
And whan ye drink the wine,
See that ye fill the glass weill up
To the laird o Wariston.’
5
So at table whan they sat,
And whan they drank the wine,
She made the glass aft gae round
To the laird o Wariston.
6
The nurice she knet the knot,
And O she knet it sicker!
The lady did gie it a twig,
Till it began to wicker.
7
But word’s gane doun to Leith,
And up to Embro toun,
That the lady she has slain the laird,
The laird o Waristoun.
8
Word has gane to her father, the grit Dunipace,
And an angry man was he;
Cries, Gar mak a barrel o pikes,
And row her down some lea!
9
She said, Wae be to ye, Wariston,
I wish ye may sink for sin!
For I have been your wife
These nine years, running ten;
And I never loved ye sae well
As now whan ye’re lying slain.
10
‘But tak aff this gowd brocade,
And let my petticoat stay,
And tie a handkerchief round my face,
That the people may not see.’
* * * * *
C
Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 56.
1
‘My mother was an ill woman,
In fifteen years she married me;
I hadna wit to guide a man,
Alas! ill counsel guided me.
2
‘O Warriston, O Warriston,
I wish that ye may sink for sin!
I was but bare fifteen years auld,
Whan first I enterd your yates within.
3
‘I hadna been a month married,
Till my gude lord went to the sea;
I bare a bairn ere he came hame,
And set it on the nourice knee.
4
‘But it fell ance upon a day,
That my gude lord returnd from sea;
Then I did dress in the best array,
As blythe as ony bird on tree.
5
‘I took my young son in my arms,
Likewise my nourice me forebye,
And I went down to yon shore-side,
My gude lord’s vessel I might spy.
6
‘My lord he stood upon the deck,
I wyte he haild me courteouslie:
Ye are thrice welcome, my lady gay,
Whae’s aught that bairn on your knee?’
7
She turnd her right and round about,
Says, ‘Why take ye sic dreads o me?
Alas! I was too young married,
To love another man but thee.’
8
‘Now hold your tongue, my lady gay,
Nae mair falsehoods ye’ll tell to me;
This bonny bairn is not mine,
You’ve loved another while I was on sea.’
9
In discontent then hame she went,
And aye the tear did blin her ee;
Says, Of this wretch I’ll be revenged
For these harsh words he’s said to me.
10
She’s counselld wi her father’s steward
What way she coud revenged be;
Bad was the counsel then he gave,
It was to gar her gude lord dee.
11
The nourice took the deed in hand,
I wat she was well paid her fee;
She kiest the knot, and the loop she ran,
Which soon did gar this young lord dee.
12
His brother lay in a room hard by,
Alas! that night he slept too soun;
But then he wakend wi a cry,
‘I fear my brother’s putten down.
13
‘O get me coal and candle light,
And get me some gude companie;’
But before the light was brought,
Warriston he was gart dee.
14
They’ve taen the lady and fause nourice,
In prison strong they hae them boun;
The nourice she was hard o heart,
But the bonny lady fell in swoon.
15
In it came her brother dear,
And aye a sorry man was he:
‘I woud gie a’ the lands I heir,
O bonny Jean, to borrow thee.’
16
‘O borrow me, brother, borrow me?
O borrowd shall I never be;
For I gart kill my ain gude lord,
And life is nae pleasure to me.’
17
In it came her mother dear,
I wyte a sorry woman was she:
‘I woud gie my white monie and gowd,
O bonny Jean, to borrow thee.’
18
‘Borrow me, mother, borrow me?
O borrowd shall I never be;
For I gart kill my ain gude lord,
And life’s now nae pleasure to me,’
19
Then in it came her father dear,
I wyte a sorry man was he;
Says, ‘Ohon, alas! my bonny Jean,
If I had you at hame wi me!
20
‘Seven daughters I hae left at hame,
As fair women as fair can be;
But I would gie them ane by ane,
O bonny Jean, to borrow thee.’
21
‘O borrow me, father, borrow me?
O borrowd shall I never be;
I that is worthy o the death,
It is but right that I shoud dee.’
22
Then out it speaks the king himsell,
And aye as he steps in the fleer;
Says, ‘I grant you your life, lady,
Because you are of tender year.’
23
‘A boon, a boon, my liege the king,
The boon I ask, ye’ll grant to me;’
‘Ask on, ask on, my bonny Jean,
Whateer ye ask it’s granted be.’
24
‘Cause take me out at night, at night,
Lat not the sun upon me shine,
And take me to yon heading-hill,
Strike aff this dowie head o mine.
25
‘Ye’ll take me out at night, at night,
When there are nane to gaze and see,
And hae me to yon heading-hill,
And ye’ll gar head me speedilie.’
26
They’ve taen her out at nine at night,
Loot not the sun upon her shine,
And had her to yon heading-hill,
And headed her baith neat and fine.
27
Then out it speaks the king himsell,
I wyte a sorry man was he:
‘I’ve travelld east, I’ve travelld west,
And sailed far beyond the sea,
But I never saw a woman’s face
I was sae sorry to see dee.
28
‘But Warriston was sair to blame,
For slighting o his lady so;
He had the wyte o his ain death,
And bonny lady’s overthrow.’
* * * * *
#B.#