Norman Douglas:
"This faulty rime must have been concocted by an Englishman or American; no native of the country would think of making "Loch Leven" go together with "Heaven," save so far as natural scenery is concerned. And the accident becomes intelligible if we suppose that it occurred not in the morning but at seven in the evening. At that hour of an autumn or winter month it is already pitch-dark in the latitude of Loch Leven.

"The shit-pits, as they are locally called, used to be very common in England. Fabyan's Chronicles (1516) relate that in 1252 a Jew of Tewkesbury fell into one of them on a Saturday, but refused to be taken out on his Sabbath; whereupon the Earl of Gloucester, who was not to be outdone in religious zeal, refused to take him out on Sunday. On Monday he was found to be dead. They were introduced into Scotland about 150 years ago by one James Macpherson, a tea-merchant and shrewd pioneer, who has observed them in China, where they are known as pupu-holes. To disappear into an unfenced pupu-hole – if fenced round, how are you going to use it? – is an ordinary form of death out there, and even in Scotland fatal accidents have lately become so frequent that the custom, despite its obvious conveniences, is beginning to lose ground.