_Witch tales_
Dumfries, 1792.
Among the many witch stories I have heard relating to Alloway Kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.
Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts
of hail--in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in--a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing
homeward, with his plough irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the Kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching
a place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night a light, which, on
his nearer approach, plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or
cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads
of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c., for the
business of the night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from
off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it
on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows: On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick,
and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard,
in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about
two or three hundred yards further on than the said gate, had been
detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was
the wizard hour between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet
as it is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is
running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced
on his road. When he had reached the gate of the kirkyard he was
surprised and entertained through the ribs and arches of an old Gothic
window which still faces the highway, to see a dance of witches,
merrily footing it round their old sooty blackguard master, who was
keeping them all alive with the power of his bagpipe. The farmer,
stopping his horse to observe them a little, could plainly descry the
faces of many old women of his acquaintance and neighbourhood. How the
gentleman was dressed tradition does not say, but that the ladies were
all in their smocks; and one of them, happening unluckily to have a
smock which was considerably too short to answer all the purposes of
that piece of dress, our farmer was so tickled that he involuntarily
burst out with a loud laugh: 'Weel luppen, Maggy wi' the short sark!'
and recollecting himself, instantly spurred his horse to the top of
his speed. I need not mention the universally known fact, that no
diabolical power can pursue you beyond the middle of a running stream.
Lucky it was for the poor farmer that the river Doon was so near, for,
notwithstanding the speed of his horse, which was a good one, against
he reached the middle of the arch of the bridge, and consequently the
middle of the stream, the pursuing vengeful hags were so close at his
heels, that one of them actually sprang to seize him; but it was too
late, nothing was on her side of the stream but the horse's tail,
which immediately gave way at her infernal grip, as if blasted by a
stroke of lightning; but the farmer was beyond her reach. However, the
unsightly tailless condition of the vigorous steed was, to the last
hour of the noble creature's life, an awful warning to the Carrick
farmer not to stay too late in Ayr markets.
The last relation I shall give you, though equally true, is not so
well identified as the two former, with regard to the scene; but as
the best authorities give it for Alloway, I shall relate it.
On a summer's evening, about the time that nature puts on her sables
to mourn the expiry of the cheerful day, a shepherd boy, belonging
to a farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Alloway Kirk, had just
folded his charge and was returning home. As he passed the kirk, in
the adjoining field, he fell in with a crew of men and women, who
were busy pulling stems of the plant ragwort. He observed that as each
person pulled a ragwort, he or she got astride of it, and called out,
'Up, horsie', on which the ragwort flew off, like Pegasus, through the
air, with its rider. The foolish boy likewise pulled his ragwort and
cried with the rest, 'Up, horsie', and, strange to tell, away he flew
with the company. The first stage at which the cavalcade stopped was
a merchant's wine-cellar in Bordeaux, where, without saying by your
leave, they quaffed away at the best the cellar could afford, until
the morning, foe to the imps and works of darkness, threatened to
throw light on the matter, and frightened them from their carousals.
The poor shepherd lad, being equally a stranger to the scene and the
liquor, heedlessly got himself drunk; and when the rest took horse he
fell asleep, and was found so next day by some of the people belonging
to the merchant. Somebody that understood Scotch, asking him what he
was, he said he was such-a-one's herd in Alloway, and by some means or
other getting home again, he lived long to tell the world the wondrous
tale.