this dreadful Sight
had made her cry out, and then the Bloody Head disappeared; that in a
few Moments she saw the same frightful Apparition again, on which she
repeated her Shrieks; and at the third time she fainted away, but was
just recovered when she saw his Lordship coming in, which had made the
Impression on her they had been witness of.

This Relation given by the affrighted Gentlewoman was only laughed at
and ridiculed as the Effect of Spleen-Vapours, or the Frenzy of a
deluded Imagination, and was thought no more of, till one Night, when
the Earl of Kilmarnock, sitting round a Bowl by the Winter Fire with my
Lord Galloway,--and it is at such a Time that men are most prone to
fall-to telling of Ghost Stories,--and their Lordships' conversation
turning on Spectres and Apparitions, the vulgar notions of which they
were deriding, the terrible tale of the Bloody Head was brought up, and
then dismissed as the idle fancy of a Hoity-toity Tirewoman. But after
Kilmarnock had engaged in the Rebellion, and Lord Galloway was told of
it, he instantly recollected this Story, and said, "I will wager a dozen
Magnums of Claret, and my best Silver-laced Justaucorps, that my Lord
Kilmarnock will lose his Head."

Nobody took his bet, not daring thus to trifle with the lives of the
Quality; but that Scots Lord lost his Head, notwithstanding; and I saw
it cut off on Tower Hill in the latter summer of the year '46.

This story of the Bloody Head was common Talk among us Warders at the
time,--who were full as superstitious as other Folks, you may be sure.
Many such Legends are there, too, current of Persons who were to die
Violent Deaths at the hands of the Public Executioner, being forewarned
many years before of their Impending Fate. And sometimes hath the
Monition come nearer to the Catastrophe, as in the case of K. C. the
1st, who, entering Westminster Hall at that Unnatural Assize presided
over by Bradshaw, the Gold Head fell off his Walking-Staff, and rolled
on the Pavement of the Hall among the Soldiers; nor, when it was
restored to him, could any Efforts of his make it remain on. Also it is
said of my Lord Derwentwater, that the last time he went a hunting in
the north, before he joined the Old Chevalier of St. George, his
whippers-in unearthed a litter of Fox-cubs, every one of which Vermin
had been born without Heads. And as well authenticated is it, that when
my Lord Balmerino (that suffered on Tower Hill with the Earl of