A Scottish Ex Voto for Tiny Tuesday

OK, so not really an ex-voto (offering to a saint or divinity), but for some Scots as close as it gets.

This tiny, hand written piece of stone (slate?) was left on the William Wallace memorial in Smithfield. 

Sir William Wallace (1270-1305) was a Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the First War of Scottish Independence.

Along with Andrew Moray, Wallace defeated an English army at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in September 1297. He was appointed Guardian of Scotland and served until his defeat at the Battle of Falkirk in July 1298. In August 1305, Wallace was captured in Robroyston, near Glasgow, and handed over to King Edward I of England, who had executed for high treason and crimes against English civilians.

Accounts of his execution make harrowing reading: he was stripped, dragged through the streets of London to Smithfield on a wooden frame, and there hanged, drawn and quartered in front of a baying crowd. This dreadful, barbaric, punishment for treason may have been uniquely English: it involved strangulation by hanging until the victim was almost dead, thereafter being cut down, emasculated, disembowelled, heart cut out, decapitated and the torso butchered into four pieces. Wallace’s body parts were dipped in tar for preservation: his head was displayed at London Bridge and the remaining parts of his body were exhibited at Newcastle upon Tyne, Berwick upon Tweed, Stirling and Perth.

Extras are the full memorial, you can just see the little slate in the bottom right corner behind the railings, and a brass plaque at the nearby st Bartholomew the Great church where a funeral service was held in 2005, 700 years after his execution.

It is said that the Latin inscription on the memorial is a saying that Wallace knew; it translates roughly as “My son, freedom is best, I tell thee true; never live like a slave”.  “Bas Agus Buaidh” is a Scots Gaelic battle cry and means “Death and victory.”