Sept 2 marks the anniversary of the hanging of Maggie Dickson. Maggie was a fishwife in Musselburgh. Not an easy life by any stretch. Maggie is left for days and often weeks at a time with two small children while her husband is out at sea eeking out a living. Upon his return, Maggie guts and fillets the fish and then places them in her creel. When the creel is full, Maggie carries it on her back, some six miles, to Edinburgh to sell. Maggie is outspoken, promiscuous, a bit rough around the edges, and has a sailor’s vocabulary but Maggie is also quite charming.

Image

On one trip to sea, Maggie’s husband fails to return. Unbeknownst to Maggie, he has been pressed into the Navy. She hears a rumor that he may be in Berwick and sets off to find him. Reaching Kelso, Maggie is tired, cold, and hungry. She stops at a tavern. The innkeeper’s wife quite likes Maggie and offers her a bed in exchange for work. Maggie makes a terrific bar wench and stays for several months.

Life is going swimmingly until Maggie becomes infatuated with the son of the innkeeper. Maggie falls pregnant by the son, William Bell. She conceals her pregnancy so as not to alert the innkeeper and his wife. She feels they will send her packing and she needs the money the job provides.

Maggie gives birth to a son. Only a few days old, his body is discovered on the banks of the River Tweed. It soon becomes town gossip that the mother of the dead infant is none other than the fishwife-come-barmaid from out of town. Maggie is questioned by the constabulary and admits the child is hers. However, she states that he was stillborn and, in a panic, she placed him on the banks of the river.

Maggie is charged with murdering her infant son and taken to Edinburgh to stand trial. Maggie is convicted and sentenced to hang. Following the hanging, Maggie’s body is cut down, the doctor pronounces her dead and her body is handed to her family who seeks to take her back to Musselburgh.

Image

En route back with the body, the family takes a break and stop at a local tavern. Maggie’s coffin and cart are pushed up under a tree and left while the family takes suppage. A passerby hears a knocking sound coming from the coffin and alerts Maggie’s family. Her father attends the cart, removes the lid from the coffin and Maggie sits upright.

Maggie was not retried for the murder. It was decided that her sentence had indeed been carried out. The fact that the hanging was not successful was not Maggie’s fault, so she was free to go. Maggie became a bit of a celebrity and ever after was known as Half-Hangit Maggie.

Maggie was reunited with her husband and then went on to have several more children together.

There is a pub in the Grassmarket named after Maggie. It sits not far from the site of the gallows where she had once been hanged.

 

The Real America

September 1st – was the day that World War Two started.  And here is FJB with what I could only think was his Nuremberg moment.

For those that do not know, from 1933 to 1938, Nazi Germany held party rallies at the Nuremberg Stadium.  Great big events with all the military in their regalia attending, passionate speeches by der Fuhrer, and rituals to excite his fan base.

If you see pictures from that time, everything was in black and red with der Fuhrer giving speeches from the podium to rile up his base – just like Brandon in the picture above.

 

It’s not a bad idea

The military museum in Aqaba, Jordan, offers around 20 vehicles ranging in depth between 5-30m. It’s an excuse to take a diving tour and a way for Jordanians to fleece the public – and it’s cool, all at the same time.

The world’s first underwater military museum has been created just off the shores of Aqaba, Jordan. After 30 days of planning, a total of 19 pieces of hardware were sunk over a period of seven working days leading up to the launch ceremony on 25 July.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

23 COMMENTS

    • Rows of searchlights aimed upwards. Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect and minister for armaments and war production, is generally credited as being the first person to use lighting as an element of architectural design.

  2. Unbelievably disturbing, the Biden speech. Even more so that it will get the demonrats votes and no one will see anything wrong with it.
    If TRUMP had given a speech like that, ANTIFA, BLM and any other demonrat groups would have been rioting in the streets.

    • I love the Tattoo. I was there in 2019 – before the plague struck. I used to live in Edinburgh, you know. Neat city.

  5. The speech. Is anyone in Biden’s circle in touch with reality? Or, is our reality the system is so rigged they cannot lose?

  7. Greetings my fellow semi-fascists!

    I didn’t bother to waste my time watching “The Wind and the Othering” but caught a bit on Tucker Carlson’s commentary, enough to make me sick. I feel sorry for the two Marines used as stage props.
    At least they didn’t have a choir singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in the background or a rousing hat-burning to inspire their Sturmabteilung (books being unknown to them).
    When do we have to sew little red elephants onto our clothing?

      • You have admit that the rally would have been better if the Brandon youth sang that song at the Philadelphia rally while holding torches aloft.

      • From the YT link: “The patriotic song from Cabaret, in the Biergarten in pre-war Nazi Germany, sung by the Arian Hitler youth…”

        I had no idea that the Hitlerjugend were nontrinitarian and believed that Jesus was subordinate to The Father due to having been created or begotten subsequent to the existence of The Father. “Arian youth” my yellow butt. Hahaha! The things I learn from YouTube.

        Anyhoo, I must have been typing my stuff below when you put up this link.

    • Hell, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” is the most wholesome scene in the cesspit of debauchery that is the movie “Cabaret”.

      But one of the writers (I forget if it was Kander or Ebbs) was disappointed with the movie, because TBTM was supposed to be played twice. Apparently their plan was that on the initial hearing the audience would hear the first verse (or so) of TBTM and fall in love with the song. Only later would we hear the “Oh! Fatherland fatherland” part and discover that TBTM was a “fascist Nazi anthem”. This was supposed to make us feel very very ashamed. (Long digression on cheap manipulation tactics and Christian vs Han vs K+E neuroprogramming redacted.) I remember watching Cabaret on TV as a teenager and coming away intensely revolted. And that was the no-doubt cleaned up “PG13” cut of the movie. What a bunch of revolting characters in a disgusting demi monde (and now all of our society reflects the gleam in K&E’s eyes). I couldn’t stand the sight of Liza Minnelli for, well, since forever after that experience.

      The imagery of President Biden’s speech reminded me of the IngSoc (“Norsefire”) scenes in the movie V for Vendetta. How ironic that the people who whinge most about scary white supremacists are exactly the ones who use the stereotypical imagery. But self awareness has never been their forte. (Actually, that lack of self awareness, plus utter lack of shame, combined with their embrace of hypocrisy, are major contributors to their success.)

      • Yeah, we’re fascists (Italian national socialism) and Nazis (German national socialism) for wanting the government to get out of everything except a minimalistic touch on the national levels.

        While they’re freedom-loving individuals who want everything and everybody controlled by big government and no deviations allowed or off to the camps.

        Point this out to THEM and they just don’t get it, do they?

        • No, they look at you with a blank expression and then (mindlessly) spout democrat party talking points that include Orange Man Bad as the central theme. It’s like watching MSNBC or CNN and actually swallowing that pap as truth. The strident propaganda is annoying and when you add the creepy, demented, Hollow Man reading/screaming from the teleprompter on his creepy Nuremberg set — it’s just too much.

  8. Ah, my whatever he is.

    Yeah, brilliant. Actually come out on the 1st day of Nazi war and do this Nazi thing in a Nazi way. Adolf, Franco, Peron, Fidel and Iosif would be so proud (well, the last two were more internationalists than nationalists but that’s potayto vs potaaato territory.)

Comments are closed.