Within Haunted Roxburghshire
Who Was Bad Lord Soulis?
The Soulis legend links a wicked lord, a murderous Border goblin and a prehistoric stone circle into one of the county's strangest tales.
On this page
- The tyrant of Hermitage Castle
- Robin Redcap and Border goblin folklore
- Ninestane Rig as a place of punishment
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Introduction
The Soulis legend is one of Roxburghshire’s most memorable supernatural punishment stories: a wicked lord of Hermitage, a bloodthirsty Border goblin called Robin Redcap, and a prehistoric stone circle at Ninestane Rig are drawn together into a tale of tyranny, magic and violent justice. The place is real, the de Soules family was real, and William de Soules really did lose his lands after conspiring against Robert the Bruce in 1320. The boiling alive at Ninestane Rig, however, belongs to folklore rather than verified history. Scott’s notes in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border say the historical Soulis was imprisoned in Dumbarton Castle, while local tradition turned him into a sorcerer whose tenants destroyed him in a cauldron on the hill above Hermitage.[Project Gutenberg]gutenberg.orgThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (3rd Ed) (3 of 3), by Scott, Walter…
That mix is exactly why the story matters. Around Liddesdale, Roxburghshire’s haunted landscape is not just about apparitions seen in ruined rooms. It is about how a harsh Border past became supernatural memory: castle power becomes black magic, local grievance becomes communal punishment, and an ancient stone circle becomes the stage for a legendary execution.
The tyrant of Hermitage Castle
Hermitage Castle stands in Liddesdale, close to the English border, and its history gives the Soulis legend a fittingly severe setting. Historic Environment Scotland records that the earliest evidence for Hermitage relates to a de Soules residence in the 1240s, although that earlier residence may have stood west of the present stone castle, near the chapel ruins. The massive stone castle now associated with the legend was begun later, around 1360, by Sir Hugh de Dacre and then transformed by William, 1st Earl of Douglas.[Historic Environment Scotland]historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
That matters because the legend often imagines “Bad Lord Soulis” brooding inside the present fortress, even though the historical William de Soules probably belonged to an earlier phase of Hermitage. The mismatch does not ruin the story; it shows how folklore works. Later generations attached the old wicked-lord tradition to the visible, intimidating ruin that dominated the valley. The castle’s actual record of Border violence, noble rivalry and strategic importance made it easy for a darker legend to cling to the stones.
The historical core is clearer than the supernatural embroidery. Scott’s antiquarian notes identify William, Lord Soulis, as a powerful landholder whose forfeited estates included Liddesdale and several Roxburghshire baronies. He was implicated in a conspiracy against Robert the Bruce, apparently with the aim, according to Barbour as cited by Scott, of raising Soulis towards the Scottish throne. The plot was uncovered, Soulis confessed in parliament, his lands were forfeited, and he was confined in Dumbarton Castle, where Scott says he died.[Project Gutenberg]gutenberg.orgThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (3rd Ed) (3 of 3), by Scott, Walter…
The legendary Soulis is much worse than the political traitor. In the local tale preserved and shaped through Border balladry, he becomes a giant-like oppressor, a sorcerer, a kidnapper and a man so feared that normal justice cannot hold him. Undiscovered Scotland summarises the popular version as one drawn largely from a Border ballad known in the eighteenth century, while noting that some writers have wondered whether older stories about an ancestor, Sir Ranulf or Randolph de Soules, murdered by servants in 1207 or 1208, may have become tangled with William’s later treason.[Undiscovered Scotland]undiscoveredscotland.co.ukUndiscovered Scotland William de Soules: Biography on Undiscovered ScotlandUndiscovered Scotland William de Soules: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland
This confusion is important for a haunted-history reading of the tale. The legend is not a court record disguised as a ghost story. It is a Border memory-machine, gathering several kinds of fear into one villain: feudal arrogance, betrayal, cruelty, sorcery and the dread of a lord who sits beyond ordinary restraint.
Robin Redcap and Border goblin folklore
Robin Redcap is the supernatural engine of the Soulis story. He is not a pale household ghost or a warning apparition. He belongs to the harsher goblin folklore of the Anglo-Scottish Border: a murderous spirit associated with ruined towers, bloodshed and wicked places. William Henderson’s nineteenth-century Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders records Scott’s explanation that “Redcap” was a popular name for a class of spirits haunting old castles, with every ruined tower in southern Scotland imagined as having one.[Wikisource]en.wikisource.orgOpen source on wikisource.org.
In the Soulis legend, Robin Redcap acts like a familiar spirit: a demonic helper whose presence explains why the lord is so dangerous and so difficult to defeat. Undiscovered Scotland’s retelling describes Soulis summoning Robin during black-magic rituals at Hermitage, and identifies redcaps, also called powries or dunters, as evil goblins of Border folklore, typically associated with ruined castles between England and Scotland.[Undiscovered Scotland]undiscoveredscotland.co.ukUndiscovered Scotland William de Soules: Biography on Undiscovered ScotlandUndiscovered Scotland William de Soules: Biography on Undiscovered Scotland
The figure makes local sense. Border castles and peel towers were not just scenic ruins; they were reminders of armed households, raiding, feud and private violence. A goblin who stains his cap with blood turns the ruined tower itself into a moral warning. The building is not haunted merely because someone died there. It is haunted because power was abused there.
Scott and Leyden’s treatment of the story helped fix Robin Redcap in literary memory. The British Literary Ballads Archive preserves John Leyden’s Lord Soulis, where the lord sits in Hermitage Castle and Redcap is summoned through the mysterious chest with rusty padlocks.[literaryballadarchive.com]literaryballadarchive.com4 Lord Soulis4 Lord Soulis Scott’s notes then frame the tale for readers as part local tradition, part antiquarian commentary and part literary Border Gothic. The result is not pure oral folklore untouched by print, but a powerful hybrid: local fear given shape by ballad collectors and Romantic-era fascination with the Borders.
Robin’s role also solves a narrative problem. If Soulis is merely a cruel lord, tenants killing him would be a rebellion story. If he is a sorcerer protected by a redcap, his death becomes a ritual counter-charm. Ordinary rope and steel are not enough. The community must find a form of punishment strange enough to overcome magical protection.
Ninestane Rig as a place of punishment
Ninestane Rig is not an invented stage set. Historic Environment Scotland records Nine Stones, stone circle, Ninestone Rig, as a scheduled monument in Castleton parish, Scottish Borders, first scheduled in 1958 and amended in 2002. The monument is a prehistoric ritual and funerary stone circle dating from the Neolithic period, set on a south-facing slope above the Roughley Burn as it runs towards Hermitage Water.[Historic Environment Scotland]portal.historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
The circle is small but distinctive. HES describes it as slightly oval, about 7.5 metres by 7 metres, with nine stones, seven of them small and two larger stones on the south-west side. Some lean inwards, and HES notes uncertainty over whether all the stones now visible stand at their original height or whether some were broken in antiquity.[Historic Environment Scotland]portal.historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
Folklore makes those stones do later moral work. HES explicitly records the local story that Lord Soules, the wicked inhabitant of Hermitage Castle, was entrapped by a sorcerer, encased in lead and roasted alive in a cauldron set in the centre of the stone circle. The record is careful: no excavation has taken place within the circle, so the story’s factual truth cannot be confirmed.[Historic Environment Scotland]portal.historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
Scott gives the fullest classic version. In his notes, the tenants complain so often that Robert the Bruce, irritated, allegedly tells them to “boil him” and trouble him no more. Taking the remark literally, they seize Soulis and boil him alive on the Nine-stane Rig in a cauldron said to have been preserved at Skelfhill between Hawick and Hermitage. Scott adds that messengers were sent too late to stop the act, arriving only in time to witness its completion.[Project Gutenberg]gutenberg.orgThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (3rd Ed) (3 of 3), by Scott, Walter…
This is not credible as a literal legal execution, but it is powerful as symbolic geography. A prehistoric circle, already old beyond local memory, becomes the one place strange enough to destroy a supernatural tyrant. The story effectively turns Ninestane Rig into an outdoor court of last resort: not a courtroom, not a gallows, but an ancient ring where community anger and magical counter-force meet.
What the legend remembers, and what it probably invents
The Soulis story survives because it sits on the boundary between history and folklore. Several layers can be separated without stripping the tale of its atmosphere.
The secure historical layer is the de Soules connection with Hermitage and the political fall of William de Soules. HES places the de Soules residence in Hermitage’s early record, and Scott’s notes describe William’s treason, forfeiture and death in Dumbarton Castle rather than at Ninestane Rig.[Historic Environment Scotland]historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
The local-tradition layer turns Soulis into “Bad Lord Soulis”, remembered for cruelty, sorcery and oppression. Scott explicitly says local tradition gave him a deeply unfavourable character and linked him to oppression of vassals, infernal aid and the building or fortifying of Hermitage by human and supernatural means.[Project Gutenberg]gutenberg.orgThe Project Gutenberg eBook of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (3rd Ed) (3 of 3), by Scott, Walter…
The ballad layer adds dramatic machinery: Robin Redcap, magical invulnerability, the spae-book, the cauldron, the lead and the ritualised end at Ninestane Rig. Leyden’s Lord Soulis helped give the tradition a memorable literary form, while later folklore writers repeated the redcap material as part of a wider Border goblin tradition.[literaryballadarchive.com]literaryballadarchive.com4 Lord Soulis4 Lord Soulis
The archaeological layer belongs to Ninestane Rig itself. The stones are much older than the medieval Soulis story. HES treats them primarily as a nationally important prehistoric ritual monument, valuable for understanding prehistoric religion and related stone-circle groups in the area. The Soulis legend is recorded as folklore attached to the site, not as the site’s archaeological explanation.[Historic Environment Scotland]portal.historicenvironment.scotOpen source on historicenvironment.scot.
The most sensible reading is not that a wizard-lord was demonstrably boiled in a stone circle. It is that Roxburghshire preserved a memory of feared Border lordship by translating political treason and local resentment into supernatural punishment. The tale gave ordinary people a satisfying ending that history did not: the tyrant did not merely die in a royal prison; he was carried out into the open, overcome by the community, and destroyed in the very landscape he had terrified.
Why the Soulis legend still defines eerie Roxburghshire
For visitors and folklore readers, the Soulis legend gives Hermitage and Ninestane Rig a shared atmosphere. Hermitage supplies the fortress: remote, severe and bound up with Border power. Robin Redcap supplies the haunting presence: a goblin of blood, ruined towers and moral corruption. Ninestane Rig supplies the older, stranger landscape: a prehistoric circle reimagined as the place where wickedness is finally answered.
The story also shows why Roxburghshire’s haunted traditions often feel different from genteel ghost stories elsewhere. This is not a tale of a lady in white drifting down a staircase. It is a Border legend of hard justice, rough memory and supernatural violence. Its fear comes from the social world behind it: tenants against lord, valley against castle, oral tradition against official record.
The credibility lies not in the literal boiling, but in the way different sources expose the tale’s making. Historic Environment Scotland anchors the real places and distinguishes archaeology from folklore. Scott preserves the older tradition while also stating the historical contradiction. Later folklore writing explains Robin Redcap as part of a wider Border pattern of castle-haunting goblins. Together, they make the Soulis legend one of Roxburghshire’s strongest examples of haunted history: not proof of a ghost, but a vivid survival of how a community imagined evil, power and punishment in the haunted Border country.
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Further Reading
Books and field guides related to Who Was Bad Lord Soulis?. Use these as the next step if you want deeper reading beyond the article.
Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish border
First published 1902. Subjects: Texts, Scots Ballads, English Ballads.
The Border Reivers
First published 1995. Subjects: Scottish borders (scotland), history, Great britain, history, military, Northumberland (england), history...
The Lore of Scotland: A Guide to Scottish Legends
Covers legendary Scottish figures and supernatural traditions.
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
Primary literary source for the Soulis and Border legend tradition.
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Endnotes
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