Ninestane Rig is a small stone circle in Scotland near the English border. Located in Roxburghshire, near to Hermitage Castle, it was probably made between 2000 BC and 1250 BC, during the Late Neolithic or early Bronze Age. It is a scheduled monument and is part of a group with two other nearby ancient sites, these being Buck Stone standing stone and another standing stone at Greystone Hill. Settlements appear to have developed in the vicinity of these earlier ritual features in late prehistory and probably earlier. The circle consists of eight stones fast in the earth, but six of these are now just stumps of or less. Of the two large standing stones remaining, one is a regular monolith a little under tall and the other, a pointed stone, is a little over tall. According to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, a number of similar circles formerly existed in the immediate area; the stones have been removed, but the hollow in the center of each circle and marks in the earth showing the former positions of the stones are still visible. In the immediate area there is also a street of circular pits deep which may have formed the shelters of the people who set up the circles, although this is not certain. Ninestane Rig is actually the name of the low hill atop which the stone circle stands but is also usually used to designate the circle itself
According to legend, William II de Soules, who was lord of Hermitage Castle, was arrested and boiled alive by his tenants at the site in 1320 in a cauldron suspended from the two large stones, on account of being a particularly oppressive and cruel landlord. William was also a traitor and, according to Walter Scott, by local reputation a sorcerer. In John Leyden's ballad Lord Soulis, William's mastery of the black arts was such that rope could not hold him, nor steel harm him, so he was wrapped in a sheet of lead and boiled. According to Leyden's ballad, in his time the locals still displayed the supposed cauldron used: However, William II de Soules was not actually boiled alive but died in prison in Dumbarton Castle, probably sometime before 20 April 1321. It is believed that an earlier ancestor Ranulf II de Soules was killed in his teens by his servants in 1207 or 1208, on grounds of general vileness and wickedness; whether or not William's fate became commingled with Ranulf's in local oral tradition is now impossible to determine. Scott notes that "The tradition regarding the death of Lord Soulis, however singular, is not without a parallel in the real history of Scotland."
