tacked Edinburgh Castle.
Edinburgh Castle hasn’t been attacked for some time now, so that may explain why he hasn’t been sighted by anyone alive today.
No one knows who the boy was and why he now haunts the castle, but his apparition suggests that he was beheaded. No one will know for certain what happened to him.
Maybe the Edinburgh University historic re-enactment society can provoke his drumming once again.
These Edinburgh boys aren’t having much luck are they? Early modern Edinburgh certainly put them through it, that’s for sure.
4. Janet Douglas, Lady of Glamis
The story of Janet Douglas is a tragic story of revenge against an innocent young woman, orchestrated by the king at the time, James V, who succeeded by accusing her on a baseless charge of witchcraft and poisoning.
Her father, George Douglas, Master of Angus, went on to marry James V’s widowed Mother, Margaret Tudor, and virtually controlled the kingdom by claiming to be acting on behalf of young James.
After Douglas and Janet’s brother fled Scotland, she was summoned to Court on a charge of communicating with her exiled brother, but refused to appear and thus forfeited herself. She and her family were besieged in Glamis Castle and then seized and brought to Edinburgh.
Although a woman of high stature, she was accused of trying to poison the king and also of witchcraft, although it took torturing Janet’s servants and friends to gain any evidence against her on those charges. Sadly nothing could save Janet and on 17th July 1537, on what is now the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, she was burned at the stake with her sixteen year old son forced to watch.
She was described as ‘in the prime of her years, of a singular beauty, and suffering through all, though a woman, with a man-like courage.’
After Lady Janet’s execution, the Grey Lady began appearing at the castle. A knocking sound can be heard and is thought to be the hammering of the workmen building the scaffold which Janet was burned alive.
Visitors to the castle have reported seeing the ghostly figure of Lady Janet roaming the halls and weeping.
Lady Janet’s story was one thousands of innocent women in Scotland would go on to share as they too became victims of Scotland’s obsessive witch-hunting.
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