They say Nero fiddled while Rome burned. More than 300 years ago, the man known as the Robin Hood of Scotland also memorably fiddled—under very different circumstances.
Jamie MacPherson’s entire life story is remarkable. Space doesn’t permit me to go into all of it. Basically, he was the illegitimate offspring of a Scottish lord’s dalliance with a gypsy woman he met at a wedding in 1765. He was tall, handsome, powerfully strong, and very talented on the fiddle.
MacPherson led a gang of what was later called cattle rustlers. They stole from the rich, avoided robbing the poor, and sometimes helped out the needy. That gave him quite a folk following.
But his chief rival, Lord Duff of Braco, eventually got tired of all the rustling. His Lordship put the heat on the local authorities, who finally went after MacPherson.
He was arrested twice. One time he escaped by himself; the other he was rescued by a good friend. Braco furiously demanded the third apprehension be the last. He set a trap in the town of St. Rufus Fair in Keith in November 1700. 
MacPherson was finally captured for the final time when a woman threw a blanket or rug on him from an upstairs window, allowing Braco’s men to overpower him.
There was a trial with a predictable outcome. MacPherson was convicted of theft, cutting a woman’s purse strings and—get this—being a gypsy. He was sentenced to “be hanged by the neck between the hours of two and three.” Which is where things really got interesting.
While waiting to be executed, the condemned man wrote a ballad called MacPherson’s Lament or MacPherson’s Rant (depending on one’s point of view). The death sentence was to be carried out on November 16 from the clock tower in the town of Banff, where special gallows were constructed.
As the scheduled execution hour was drawing near, a lone horseman was spotted in the distancing racing toward Banff. Lord Braco feared he was carrying a pardon. Unwilling to let his nemesis escape yet again, Braco ordered the clock’s big hand moved ahead 15 minutes.
With rider drawing closer and the clock ticking, MacPherson was led to the gallows and allowed to perform his farewell song. He picked up his fiddle and let rip. When he finished, he offered the fiddle to the crowd … with one condition. Accounts of what it was differ. Some claimed he offered it to anyone who would play it at his funeral. Others said it available to anyone who would say a kind word about him after he was gone. Still others vowed it was free for the taking to anyone who wanted it.
But one thing is certain: no one accepted MacPherson’s prized instrument. They were too terrified, because taking it would have incurred Lord Braco’s wrath. “Then no one shall play Jamie MacPherson’s fiddle ever again!” he roared. Once more, there were differing versions of what came next. Some said he bashed the fiddle against the tower wall. Others swore he broke it over his knee, while others insisted he smashed it over the jailer’s head. One story even claims that he tossed the fiddle’s shattered remains into his grave and insisted they be buried along with him.
That part, at least, isn’t true. Because the battered bits and pieces are on display in a museum in Scotland. (At least they’re supposed to be from MacPherson’s fiddle.)
It is widely believed in rural Scotland to this day that the rider was indeed bringing a pardon, but he arrived too late to save its recipient. The men who moved the clock’s hands ahead were later punished. But for more than 150 years it was intentionally kept 15 minutes fast, a  reminder that it was “the clock that hanged MacPherson.”
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