and women drowned in a fen, river, pit or 'murder hole'; however, it may relate to ideas of decency. The place name 'Muttonhole' is not infrequently found, and one suggestion is that it is derived from 'mort-toun-hole', another of the names for a drowning pit. At Cumnock in East Ayrshire, women were placed in a sack and the mouth was tied; in other cases the condemned had to walk down a ladder that was then withdrawn. Many moot hills are near rivers or wetlands. In Norse law, the reason was that men were sent to Wodan, and women were given to Ran (a sea goddess) or Hel. In Norse tradition, the pit and gallows stood on the west of the moot-places or the prince's hall ready for use. The binomial expressions 'furca and fossa' and 'pit and gallows' refer to the high justice including the capital penalty. The furca was a device of punishment in ancient Rome and refers to the gallows for hanging men; the fossa was a pit for the drowning of women. As previously stated, the hereditary right of high justice survived until 1747, when it was removed from the barons and from the holders of regalities and sheriffdoms, by the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746. It is not clear that the moot hill was also the actual site of executions; folklore, tradition and the association of separate 'gallow' places names with moot hills on balance suggests that the usual place of execution was a separate 'gallows hill'. At Gardyne Law (Gardyne Castle's moot hill), however, an eyewitness recalled that judgement and execution took place on the same law. It does seems unlikely that in those superstitious days, meetings would be held at places of death. At Mugdock, separate moot and gallow hills are a good example. Such gallows may have been built of worked timber or a Dule Tree may have been used. RCAHMS records show that human bones have been frequently found in association with 'gallows' place name sites, but not at 'moot' sites. The term 'murder hole' may relate to the drowning sites, bones have been found close to some of these. The standard of justice An Ayrshire story tells of how an Ayrshire baron once strung up an innocent man, just because his visitor had never seen a man hanged before. Hopefully this was an isolated example, however the system suffered from many