Drowning-pit

A 'Drowning-pit', 'Drowning pool' or 'Murder-hole' was a pit or well dug for the purpose of specifically executing females under Scottish feudal laws. Rivers, lochans, etc. were used if conveniently situated near to the Moot hill where the baronial court dempster would announce the death penalty. The term 'Fossa' was also used as in 'furca and fossa', the fossa being a ditch filled with water.

Drowning-pits came into legal use after it was enacted at the parliament assembled in Forfar in 1057 by King Malcolm Canmore that every baron should sink a well or pit, for the drowning of females, a gibbet being used for males. The place name element 'murder hole' sometime relates to these formal drowning sites. Bones have been found close to some of these sites, suggesting that the corpses were buried close by and not in hallowed ground.

Some drowning-pits had ladders down which the condemned person had to climb; the ladder was then withdrawn. On other sites hurdles were used to hold the person below the water. Many Moot hill sites are or were surrounded by water or were situated at the edge of a body of water, such as Mugdock, Mound Wood near Auchentiber and the Court Hill at the Hill of Beith, Hutt Knowe at Bonshaw, etc.

It is not clear why men were more likely to be hanged and women drowned in a fen, river, pit or 'murder hole,' however it may relate to ideas of decency or because it was a less violent death. In Norse law the reason was that men were sent to Wodan, and women were given to Ran (a sea goddess) or Hel. In Norse tradition the pit and gallows stood on the west of the moot-places or the prince's hall ready for use.

The term pit and gallows or furca and fossa, refers to the 'high justice' rights of a feudal baron, etc., including the capital penalty. The right is described in full as pit and gallows, sake and soke, toll, team, and infangthief.

With the introduction to Scotland of the feudal system in the 12th-century, pre-feudal, or Celtic tenures, were transformed into holding from the Crown and a number of these were held directly or in chief of the Crown and were held in liberam baroniam, in free barony, with the aforementioned high justice (with pit and gallows). It is said that King Malcolm Canmore legislated in 1057 that every barony was to have a tree for hanging convicted men and a pit of water for the execution of convicted women.

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Wikipedia