The Devil’s Beef Tub

The Devil’s Beef Tub: now which self-respecting minister of the gospel would not go to see it for himself? It is found in southern Scotland and refers to a 500-feet-deep hollow where four adjoining hills meet. It is one of the most beautiful places in the kingdom, as well as one of the most dangerous to walk or drive around. Its odd name has as many competing explanations as there are days in the week, but few successfully justify this dramatic valley’s association with the Prince of Darkness. Yet this is a place where once his work was done.

Colonel James Douglas and a band of dragoons were active in the area during the so-called ‘killing times’. These ran from about 1679-1688 when the Stuart governments of Charles II and James VII violently suppressed Presbyterians in Scotland even more cruelly than their brethren in England, hoping that they would abandon their faith and become docile Anglicans/Episcopalians. The indomitable Scottish spirit fired by a fervent Protestantism caused many to refuse, who betook the name ‘Covenanters’. I have already written about two women who were martyred at this time, whose story will make you weep. John Hunter was another, and fled from Douglas’ dragoons to this place when they discovered him close by. He fled, but

He was most barbarouslie shot through the body, felled on the head with the neck of a gun, and casted headlong over a high steep craig.

His gravestone describes him as a...

Martyr who was cruelly Murdered at Corehead by Col James Douglas and his party for his adherence To the Word of God and Scotland's covenanted Work of Reformation, 1685

It appears that he attempted to escape capture and death by running up or down the Devil’s Beef Tub, which strikes me as an impossibly difficult task. Perhaps he might have successfully done it without the bullet in his back. Though he never made it to safety, he did make it to the arms of the Lord Jesus, for whose honour he had lived and for whose truth he died. The white memorial stone, below, remembers him.

That beautiful, dramatic valley surely echoes with the poignant pleas of his blood as it cries out to God from the ground. Within three years, Charles and James Stuart would lose their crowns and the Church of Scotland would become Presbyterian by order of William of Orange, which it remains to this day, after a fashion. For hunting Hunter, God expelled the Stuarts and exalted the Presbyterians. The devil might have a beef tub where he butchers the Lord's creatures, but God still owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and not one is taken without His consent. 

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Revelation 6:10