The “Dule” tree of Leith Hall
Jane Mann takes us on a stroll through the haunted trees, woodland, and graveyard surrounding Leith Hall, a country house built on the site of the medieval Peill Castle, Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Woodland has always called to people’s hearts. A magical place to all who take a leafy track on a sunny day to enjoy the susurration of the trees and songs of the birds.
On a dark night, magic changes to mystic, as the moonlight turns trees’ elegant branches into terrifying claws. A country walk in the midnight trees can hold many terrors unknown.
Kennethmont, Aberdeenshire in darkest Scotland is home to the Leith Hall, built and occupied by the family Leith-Hay in 1650. Three centuries of Leiths born, lived, died and still haunt to this day. The last laird and his only son died within two months of each other, leaving Lady Leith alone in 1945, so she passed the property to the National Trust of Scotland, ghosts and all.
I first knew life in Kennethmont and Leith Hall, its pond, sinister “old graveyard” and vast surrounding woodland we visited daily.
So, let me take you on a walk as I did every evening as a child, out the top of the village and out the road to Huntly a little, to the entrance gate. Two granite pillars frame the gate, we see the avenue of trees lining the road has turned into woodland a long time ago. The hall itself, just glimpsable at the end.
It’s this road that visitors catch a glimpse of ancient soldiers, still waiting for some unknown purpose. Andrew Hay fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden, and hid at Lieth Hall after the fighting ceased, before fleeing to France. Is it Jacobite soldiers waiting for the order to march to the Battle that took their lives?
As we walk out of these haunted woods, we see the open lawns, the 35-room mansion, proud and white in the centre. Large, ancient trees are scattered across the lawns, but the first one, just to the right, is the famous “Dule” tree.
“Dule”, Gaelic for “Grief”, is the local name for a hanging tree. Usually a Sycamore, for its strength of limb, its stout branch used by the local Laird to administer punishment. Leith halls Dule, or Doole tree, would have been planted when the Hall was built. As it was built on the site of the medieval Peill Castle, it would have had a left-over Dule tree for the Laird to use till the new one grew.
A full court, Judge, Jury and executioner would have been present, crowding on the lawn, in front of the Grief tree. It was the Lairds duty to “meet out his Justice by stretching their necks”. Loved ones would grab their legs to add weight for a quicker death and is the origin of the expression “pull the other leg”.
Not just used to execute and lynch, but also as a Gibbet to display an executed corpse as an example to others. Baronies in Scotland lived the traditional “Pit and Gallows Right” rules up until 1746, when the Government legislated the “Heritable Jurisdictions Act” to control this vulgar local justice. The rope marks can still be seen and felt if you climb the bough today.
Our walk continues down to the boating pond and the path round. Ducks and waterlilies in the summer, and if you are lucky, you may meet the Green Lady, said to be Lady Mary, walking her lonely path alone at dusk. Her screams are said to echo the midnight corridors of the Hall, and a most putrescent stench left in the rooms she passes through, reminders of dark deeds done.
We make one last visit before we leave. The short-cut home first crosses the Railway line by means of a rickety wooden bridge, that shook and wobbled as a train went under. Built in 1858, the Railway route cut through the “Old Graveyard”, high on its isolated mound, a high granite wall was built to stop the Historic Graveyards collapse. Visitors now had a vertiginous view, straight down to the Railway line, with nothing but three loose lengths of wire to stop you falling to the tracks far below.
Up a narrow path along the side of a field, the reportedly haunted Graveyard homes a Mausoleum housing Lairds of old. There are many recumbent gravestones, some flat on the earth and, slowly, disappearing under the sod and moss. The secret language of symbols telling us who is buried here, can still just be made out. Masons to plague victims, their origins irrelevant to the colonies of rabbits that tunnel underneath. If you look closely at their spoil, old fragment of human bone can be seen.
On a misty day, the Old Graveyard looks straight out of a Hammer House of Horror film and you could well believe there are spirits about. Old Scottish Folk-lore believes that the last person buried, stays to guard its gates, roaming the grounds till released from their toil. Traditionally, we Scots buried a dog as the last occupant, to save a tortured soul being stuck, moaning and begging the living to release them and let them rest.
Copyright 2019 Jane Mann
Bibliography
Emma, S. Daily Record. 11/08/2013. Our intrepid reporter spends the night in Scotland’s spookiest castle . . . and lives to tell the tale. Available from: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/haunted-house-leith-hall-reveals-2151550 [Accessed 19th August 2019].
Leith Hall. Andrew Hay of Rannes. Available from: leith-hay.org/?page_id=784 [Accessed 19th August 2019].
Daily Motion. Most Haunted Season 3 Episode 4: Leith Hall. Available from: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x640uvm [Accessed 19th August 2019].
Biography
Jane Mann is a creative writer and voice/film editor, currently studying Radio Broadcasting. Described as a walking episode of Q.I., she is an avid bibliophile and enjoys fact-finding, humour, wyrd nature and alternative everything, including thinking. In her spare time, she enjoys foraging, nature gardening and exotic pets.
Email: janemann550@gmail.com
Twitter: @Janeman75288591