Dule Tree

Dule or dool trees in Britain were used as gallows for public hangings. They were also used as gibbets for the display of the corpse for a considerable period after such hangings. These "trees of lamentation or grief" were usually growing in prominent positions or at busy thoroughfares, particularly at crossroads, so that justice could be seen to have been done and as a salutary warning to others. Place names such as Gallows-Hill, Gallows-See, Gallows-Fey and Hill of the Gallows (Tom Nan Croiche) record the site of such places of male executions.

In Scots, dule or duill, also dole, dowle; dwle, dul, dull, duyl, duile, doile, doill, dewle, deull, and duel. In Middle English, dule, duyl, dulle, deul, dewle and variants of doole, dole, and dool. All these words mean sorrow, grief, or mental distress.

The furca and fossa, or the "pit and gallows", refers to the "high justice" including the capital penalty. The furca was a device for hanging slaves in ancient Rome and refers to the gallows for hanging men; the fossa was a ditch filled with water for the drowning of women. With the introduction to Scotland of the feudal system in the 12th-century, pre-feudal, or Celtic tenures, were transformed into holding from the Crown and a number of these were held directly or in chief of the Crown and were held in liberam baroniam, in free barony, with high justice (i.e., with pit and gallows). In Scotland trees were often used as gallows. These dule trees were also known as the 'Grief Tree', the 'Gallows Tree', the 'Justice Tree' and the 'Tree'. It is said that King Malcolm Canmore legislated in 1057 that every barony was to have a tree for hanging convicted men and a pit of water for the execution of convicted women.

These baronies belonged to the same order as earls and these earls and barons together formed the order of the three estaits of the Scots Parliament known as the Baronage of Scotland. The barons sat in the Scots Parliament until 1587, when they were relieved from attendance, which was burdensome and costly. The right of pit and gallows was removed in 1747 by the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746, lesser powers continued to the twentieth century.

Dule trees were also used by Highland chieftains, who would hang their enemies or any deserter, murderer, etc. from them. Highland clan chiefs also therefore had the power of 'life or death' over their clansmen in times gone by. The high ground on which these trees grew often became known as "gallows hills".

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