"Weir made an immediate escape from justice; but Lady Waristoun and the nurse were apprehended before the deed was half a day old. Being caught, as the Scottish law terms it, _red-hand_,--that is, while still bearing unequivocal marks of guilt, they were immediately tried by the magistrates of Edinburgh, and sentenced to be strangled and burnt at a stake. The lady's father, the Laird of Dunipace, was a favourite of King James VI., and he made all the interest he could with his majesty to procure a pardon; but all that could be obtained from the king, was an order that the unhappy lady should be executed by decapitation, and that at such an early hour in the morning as to make the affair as little of a spectacle as possible. "The space intervening between her sentence and her execution was only thirty-seven hours; yet, in that little time, Lady Waristoun contrived to become converted from a blood-stained and unrelenting murderess into a perfect saint on earth. One of the then ministers of Edinburgh has left an account of her conversion, which was lately published, and would be extremely amusing, were it not for the disgust which seizes the mind on beholding such an instance of perverted religion. She went to the scaffold with a demeanour which would have graced a martyr. Her lips were incessant in the utterance of pious exclamations. She professed herself confident of everlasting happiness. She even grudged every moment which she spent in this world, as so much taken from that sum of eternal felicity which she was to enjoy in the next. The people who came to witness the last scene, instead of having their minds inspired with salutary horror for her crime, were engrossed in admiration of her saintly behaviour, and greedily gathered up every devout word which fell from her tongue. It would almost appear from the narrative of the clergyman, that her fate was rather a matter of envy than of any other feeling. Her execution took place at four in the morning of the 5th of July, at the Watergate, near Holyroodhouse; and at the same hour her nurse was burnt on the castle-hill. It is some gratification to know, that the actual murderer, Weir, was eventually seized and executed, though not till four years after." CHAMBERS'S _Scottish Ballads_, p. 129. From Buchan's _Ballads of the North of Scotland_, i. 56. My mother was an ill woman, In fifteen years she married me; I hadna wit to guide a man, Alas! ill counsel guided me. O Warriston, O Warriston, 5 I wish that ye may sink for sin; I was but bare fifteen years auld, Whan first I enter'd your yates within. I hadna been a month married, Till my gude lord went to the sea; 10 I bare a bairn ere he came hame, And set it on the nourice knee.