Stirling's Hangman Did Not Choke on a Chicken Bone, Says Folklorist

STIRLING, SCOTLAND — The hangman who choked upon a chicken bone is a figure beloved of Stirling storytellers, but according to Spooky Isles, the man who knows him best doubts the tale. Actor, writer and folklorist David Kinnaird has portrayed Jock Rankin, the town's torturer and executioner, on the Stirling Ghost Walk for decades.

While researching his book Auld Stirling Punishments, Mr Kinnaird says, he found a notice of dismissal and banishment in the burgh archives. In the familiar legend, Rankin's wife, Isabell Kilconquahar, known as Tibbie Cawker, dropped the fatal bone into his broth. The records, he says, describe instead her conviction for stealing cheese, port and shirts from a neighbour's cellar. Rankin was made to whip his wife through the town before being sent back to Ayr.

Mr Kinnaird suggests residents later used a ghost story about Rankin to keep children away from Hangman's Close, whose former official residence had become a lodging house for drunkards and vagrants. Victorian histories, he points out, preserved the more memorable ending, notably William Drysdale's Old Faces, Old Places and Old Stories of Stirling.

A similar gap appears in the story of Blind Alick Lyon, said to have battled Satan on Ladies Hill in the Holy Rude Kirkyard. Research for his book Haunted Stirling led Mr Kinnaird to a local drunkard who recited scripture on demand. He believes the early Victorian temperance movement recast the man as an enemy of drink.

Asked whether anything unexplained has befallen him on a walk, Mr Kinnaird said nothing has, though he remains interested in the supernatural. He offers the Old Town's foxes as one possible explanation for visitors' sense of being watched. His interest, the article says, lies in how stories change as people repeat them.