This is the House of Binns, in West Lothian. It was the location of regular card games
with Satan himself. If you re interested in the people,
places and events in Scottish history then click the subscribe
button at the bottom right of the screen In the meantime, let me tell you a story
Do you believe in ghosts and demons? Let me know in the comments section.
If this was an episode of Most Haunted I d spend the episode collecting questionable,
evidence that there was something mysterious in the tale of a man playing cards with the devil
in this house leaving us all spookily uncertain. But since this is an episode of Scotland History
Tours, what I m actually going to do is tell you the story of the man
who was born and lived here , then show incontrovertible evidence that he sat
long into the night playing Satan at cards or was it Buckaroo?
I ve seen this monument on the hill lots of times as I ve passed on the M9 to Edinburgh,
but I ve never got round to coming up here... which is crazy.
From the folly on this hill you get some gorgeous views across the Forth Estuary in that direction
and West Lothian countryside this way and the hills are important, because the name
The Binns comes from the Gaelic Ben for hill. This is the House of the Hills
and as part of a four-episode series telling you why you should visit West Lothian
I want to tell you the story of Tam O The Binns ,
The man who lived here. The man who played cards with the devil
before Chris de Burgh was even a glint in his father s eyebrows.
Born here in 1615, Tam O The Binns lived a life that was eventful.
It spanned the most tumultuous times on these islands and he was at the heart of them.
See when you were 13 did you have a job? I had a paper round.
This guy was in Charles I s army fighting the French.
because in 17th century Scotland... you couldnae get a Daily Record.
So young Tommy Binns sets off to fight in the French religious wars.
The Three Mustketeers, Duke of Buckingham, Cardinal Richelieu
and anyone else that wanted a square go. The head of the Anglican church, Charles I,
supported the French Hugenot protestants against their Catholic king
at the same time as the protestant Dutch supported the Catholic French king
and the Catholic Spanish supported the Protestant Hugenots.
There was no way to avoid these wars even if you supported Partick Thistle
If you re one of the international viewers don t even try the subtitles to get you
out of that one. It s cultural.
Anyway, twenty years later Tam was a Colonel fighting under Covenanter
Generals in Ireland during the War of the Three Kingdoms
If you still call it The English Civil war then riddle me this
What were they doing in Ireland fighting with Scottish Covenanters?
We ll come back to Covenanters later. The important thing here is not to lose focus
Stop it! Charles I s war of the Three Kingdoms
English Civil War, showed what a proper royalist and loyalist Tam was.
When Scots delivered Charles I to Cromwell s Parliamentarians for later execution
Tam refused to shave his beard as a personal penance
for the behaviour of his countrymen That may sound silly, but I haven t shaved
my armpits since Scotland drew with Iran in the 1978 world cup finals
The Scotland manager was so shamed he got one of those comb over hairdos.
As Cromwell s forces overtook Ireland in 1650 Tam was captured at Carrickfergus.
He was banished from Scotland, but the fact that he was with Charles
II s army when Royalist hopes finally came to an end at Worcester
suggests that he d managed to sneak back to Scotland in disguise
Then he was imprisoned in the Tower of London , but managed to escape six months later.
He and some of the 1978 Scotland midfield tied their beards together
and used them as a rope to climb out the window. But having escaped abroad, a couple of years later
he was back getting involved in Glencairn s rising in the Highlands against Cromwell.
In May 1654 at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh the first Union
between Scotland and England was declared. Cromwell was declared Lord Protector of Scotland,
England and Ireland; and the Scots who had committed crimes against him were pardoned
but Tam O The Binns was excluded from this Act of Grace.
In fact a 200 guinea reward was put up for his capture dead or alive.
That s when he stopped cutting his nostril hair
In spite of the price on his head Tam manages to escape and re-invents himself as a Russian officer
fighting against the Turks and the Tartars. Life has been busy.
So imagine you re 45. You ve fought the French, led troops in the
most all-encompassing war in the British isles, been banished from your country,
imprisoned and escaped from the Tower of London, lived as a fugitive on the run, a mercenary
in foreign wars and most of it whilst tripping over facial hair
but you ve never played cards with the devil The peak of your notoriety is about to start.
When Oliver Cromwell died Charles II was invited back to be king of England
with all sorts of promises of bygones being bygones.
He d already been crowned King of Scots eleven years before that and signed the
National Covenant in order to do so. If you re in any doubt about what the
National covenant was then check out my video on The Covenanters.
Basically, what sparked off the War of the Three Kingdoms was the people of Scotland
signing a covenant to say that Charles s dad the now headless Charles I wasn t
above the Scottish church. Now Charles II had to sign it
so as to get the Scottish crown, but he wasn t really in a position of strength at the time
now he was. So after his restoration to the
English throne in 1660 he imposes a progressively tighter and increasingly brutal crackdown
on people who don t recognise his right to be above the church and impose bishops
the very thing that kicked things off in the first place.
Now if you re going to impose a brutal regime of religious persecution,
who would you invite back from exile, but that ever loyal beardy guy Tam O The Binns,
who had fought FOR the covenanters in Ireland before your dad s head choppy thing.
This is where Tam O The Binns gained his brutal reputation.
He implemented pitiless violence with a gusto which gained him the epithet Bluidy Tam
The painting of Tam in the national Gallery on Edinburgh s Mound shows him clean shaven,
so maybe this is the point at which he gave up the role of penitential
and started communing with Satan.
He s certainly reported to have hung a child who wouldn t give up his father,
had an innocent man shot for failing to provide information they knew he didn t have
just to set an example to others. Even Dayell s own men had to be forced
to follow through on some heinous war crimes. The list of brutality goes on and you can read
about them in the book Covenanting stories. Link in the description.
But all his intemperate temporal activities in persecution of the Covenanters are trumped
by a supernatural event that took place here. The story goes that in his cleanshaven years, Tam
had regularly played cards with Satan, but the event I m going to describe
must have happened after 1681, for reasons which will become apparent.
So Bluidy Tam and the Devil are in the house in one of their midnight card playing sessions.
Satan is losing badly. All he s holding is a pair of
twos a Jock of clubs and Mr Bones the Butcher. What s more, Tam knows what Satan s holding
because he s strategically placed a mirror in the room
so that it s behind his satanic playing partner. No matter how close Satan holds his cards to his
chest his reflection is invisible, so you just see the cards.
Genius . Until Satan
realises what s going on and he goes mental, loses it and throws the card table at Tam.
Tam ducks and the table flies out the window,
Ironically hitting some ducks, before falling into the pond.
The pond is called The Seargent s pond. Tam was appointed colonel at the formation
of the famous cavalry regiment that would become the Scots Greys,
and the pond was dug so that the dragoons could water their horses when they were at the house.
That s why this supernatural demonic furniture throwing had to have happened after 1681.
The legend of this event grew after Tam s death in 1685
as did rumours of a ghostly horseman on a grey horse riding along the road to the house,
and Tam s cavalry boots marching round the house on their own at night.
Then 200 years later, during a severe drought in 1870, as the pond dried up,
poking out of the water s surface was a marble topped card table.
The very card table that Satan had thrown at Tam O The Binns two hundred years earlier.
What I m saying is there s lots to see and do in West Lothian
and House of Binns is only one of them. Go to this webpage to find out more about
places to visit in West Lothian, or find the link in the description
Of course if you d like another video on West Lothian history and places to visit,
there s one coming up on screen now In themeantime