‘A star was seen at twelve hours of the day by a great company of
people met for sermon on Gargunnock Hills, and that when the sun was
shining.’--_Law._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: SEP.]
One John Scott, a Quaker in Leith, was fined by Bailie Carmichael
there, in a hundred dollars, and banished from the town, for brewing
upon the Sunday, and answering, when challenged for it by the bailie
and Mr Hamilton the minister, that ‘he might as weel brew on the Sunday
as Mr Hamilton might take money for going up to a desk, and talking
and throwing water upon a bairn’s face.’ He appealed to the Privy
Council against the sentence as over-severe and beyond the power of the
magistrate; but ‘he was ill set, for he had both the magistracy and the
clergy--who solicited strongly--against him, for both of them would be
baffled if the sentence were found unjust. The Council ratified the
bailie’s sentence ... whereupon Bailie Carmichael arrested and seized
eighty bolls of malt, the said Scott had paid ten or eleven pound the
boll for, when victual was dear, and caused apprise and judge it to
him, for his hundred dollars.’--_Foun._
* * * * *
[Sidenote: DEC.]
For several years there had been a remarkable lull in the spiritual
world, and, whether from the judicious mildness of the government
in ordering that no women should be condemned for witchcraft except
upon voluntary confession, or any other cause, witch cases had wholly
ceased. All at once, the devil’s work recommenced, and a series of
dismal tragedies ensued. It seems to have been primarily owing to a
vagrant girl named Janet Douglas, who appeared deaf and dumb, and who
may be reasonably set down as one of those singular young persons
who, acting under a morbid love of mischief, have at the same time
marvellous powers of deception. Whether she was the same person who
figures in the anecdote below,[250] we have no means of ascertaining.
[Sidenote: 1676.]
Sir George Maxwell of Pollock had for some weeks been very unwell,
with a pain in his side and one in his shoulder. The illness had
first come upon him suddenly in the night, when at Glasgow, in the
form of a violent heat, attended with pain. At the time noted in the
margin, Janet Douglas came to the neighbouring village, and began
to frequent Pollock House. Attracting the attention of Sir George’s
sister and daughter, she endeavoured to apprise them by signs that, at
a certain cottage not far off, there was a picture of wax turning at
a fire; and she expressed in her imperfect way a wish that a couple
of men should go with her thither. Lady Maxwell, not being inclined
to superstition, would have denied the girl’s request; but the two
other gentlewomen consented. So Janet went away with two men-servants,
and straight conducted them to the cottage of an old woman of evil
fame, named Janet Mathie, whose son the laird had some time before
imprisoned for stealing his fruit. ‘She going in with the men, the
woman on some occasion stepping to the door, the dumb lass instantly
put her hand behind the chimney, and takes out a picture of wax wrapped
in a linen cloth, gives it to the men; away they all come with it,
and let the gentlewomen see it. They find two pins stuck in the right
side of it, and a pin on the shoulder downward, which they take out,
and keeps quiet; and that night the laird had good rest, and mended
afterward, though slowly, for he was sore brought down in his body: and
in two or three days they made him understand the matter. The woman
is apprehended, and laid up in prison in Paisley.’ On being searched,
several _witch-marks_--that is, spots insensible to pain--were found
upon her.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
On the 4th of January, Sir George’s illness recurred with the same
violence as before, and his face assumed the leaden hue of death.
Amidst the anxieties which this occasioned, the dumb girl sent to
inform the family that John Stewart, Mathie’s son, had made a new
image of clay, for the purpose of taking away Sir George’s life. Two
gentlemen went next day with the girl to Mathie’s cottage, and keeping
her at a distance, but acting under her directions, found such an image
under the bolster of a bed, with three pins sticking in it. The young
man and his sister Annaple were immediately apprehended. From that day,
it was said that Sir George began to recover his health.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
Stewart at first denied all concern in the images, but, on witch-marks
being found on his person, he was ‘confounded,’ and joined his sister
in a confession, which described witch-conventions in their mother’s
house, along with ‘a man dressed in black, with a blue band and white
hand-cuffs, with hoggars over his bare feet, which were cloven!’ Three
women of the neighbourhood, Bessie Weir, Margaret Jackson, and Marjory
Craig, were accordingly apprehended and examined, when the second
gave a confession to much the same effect, but the other two proved
‘obdurate.’
In the subsequent judicial proceedings, Annaple Stewart gave a clear
statement regarding the making of the first wax image in October last
in the presence of the Black Man, her mother, and the other three
women. They bound it on a spit, and turned it round before the fire,
saying: ‘Sir George Pollock! Sir George Pollock!’ The young man, who
was not then at home, had returned and been present at the making of
the second image in January. ‘After he had gone to bed, the Black Man
came in, and called him quietly by his name, upon which he arose from
the bed and put on his clothes. Margaret Jackson, Bessie Weir, and
Marjory Craig did enter in at the window in the gable.... The first
thing that the Black Man required was that he should renounce his
baptism and deliver up himself wholly unto him, putting one of his
hands on the crown of his head, and the other to the sole of his foot
... promising he should not want any pleasure, and that he should get
his heart sythe on all that should do him wrong. [All having given
their consent to the making of the clay image, which was meant as a
revenge for Sir George Maxwell taking away his mother], they wrought
the clay, and the Black Man did make the head and face, and the two
arms. The devil set three pins in the same, one in each side, and one
in the breast; and John did hold the candle all the time the picture
was making.... The picture was placed by Bessie Weir in his bed-straw.’
On this occasion, they had all had nicknames given them by the devil,
who himself bore the name of Ejool.[251]
It is noted that when the girl, after confession in bed in Pollock
House, was asked what the devil’s name had been to her, ‘she, being
about to tell, was stopped, the bed being made to shake, and her
clothes under her blown up with a wind.’
[Sidenote: 1677.]
When the two young people had been committed to Paisley prison, Janet,
their mother, desired to see her son, and the request being granted,
‘they make a third and new picture of clay, which the dumb lass again
discovers.’ It was supposed that this was intended for Sir George’s
daughter-in-law, who had taken an active interest in detecting the
diabolic conspiracy, and who fell ill about this time.
In consideration of her nonage and penitency, Annaple Stewart was not
brought to trial, though retained in prison. On the 15th of February,
the rest of the party were tried and condemned, Janet Mathie, Bessie
Weir, and Marjory Craig continuing to deny their guilt to the last.
The obduracy of Mathie was considered the more horrible, as her two
children seriously exhorted her to confession, Annaple with tears
reminding her of her many meetings with the devil, but all in vain. The
four women and the boy actually suffered in Paisley (20th February).
Mathie was first hanged, and then burned, along with the wax and clay
effigies. When Weir, the last of the four, was turned off the gallows,
‘there appears a raven, and approaches the hangman within an ell of
him, and flies away again.’--_Law._
[Sidenote: 1677.]
It is perhaps the most singular fact regarding this case, that the
particulars of it are narrated with all seriousness by Sir George’s
son and successor, Sir John Maxwell, who was subsequently Lord
Justice-clerk--that is, supreme criminal judge in Scotland. He
intimates not the least doubt of any of the facts, neither of any of
the popular inferences from them. Other intelligent men in that age
were struck by the manner in which the doings of the witches were
detected, and Janet Douglas was for some time the subject of general
attention. In the same month which saw the witches done to death on
Paisley green, she detected a similar conspiracy against Mr Hugh
Smith, the minister of Eastwood, who ‘was much afflicted with pain and
sweating, to the changing of half-a-dozen shirts some days, and was
brought very low, but after the discovery, and the effigy gotten, and
the prins taken out, grew well again.’ It was given out regarding the
girl, that she understood any language in which she was addressed.
When she had somewhat recovered the use of her own tongue, which was
about two months after these events, she told that three years before,
she had had ‘an impression on her spirit’ to come to Pollock. ‘Being
asked how she had knowledge of detecting witches and other secrets,
she declared that she knew not from what spirit; only things were
suggested to her; but denied that she had any correspondence with
Satan.’--_Law._ According to Sir John Lauder, she stated that ‘she
had all things revealed to her in her sleep by vision.’ This learned
gentleman adds: ‘What made her very suspect to be haunted only by a
familiar, was her dissolute idle life, having ... not so much as a show
or semblance of piety in it, but much lightness and vanity.’[252]
The Privy Council, hearing much rumour of these things from the west,
sent orders to search for and apprehend Janet Douglas, and she was
brought to Edinburgh in May, and lodged in the Canongate Tolbooth.
People flocked to see her, and she began to exercise her art of
witch-finding amongst them, but with no particular effect. In June,
nevertheless, five or six women of the west, whom she had detected
in killing Hamilton of Barns by a wax image, were burned for their
imaginary crime at Dumbarton. Next month we find a reference to her in
another case.
[Sidenote: 1677.]
Two sons of Douglas of Barloch having been drowned in crossing a river
at one time, the father was induced by Janet Douglas to believe that
the calamity was an effect of witchcraft. Barloch consequently caused
John Gray, Janet M‘Nair, Thomas and Mary Mitchell, to be apprehended
and carried to Stirling Tolbooth. There, ‘their bodies being searched
by the _ordinar_ pricker, there were witch-marks found upon each of
them, and Janet M‘Nair confessed that she got these marks from the grip
of a grim black man, and had a great pain for a time thereafter.’ After
keeping these four persons in jail on his own charges for fourteen
weeks, Barloch found the expense more than he was able to undergo,
‘being but a gentleman of a mean fortune;’ and on his petition, the
Council ordered (July 5, 1677) that the magistrates of Stirling should
in the meantime ‘entertein the prisoners.’ Against this ordinance, the
magistrates immediately reclaimed, ‘seeing it is a great burden to the
town, who have so many other contingencies to undergo;’ and the lords,
reconsidering the matter, commissioned the Lairds of Kier, Touch, and
Herbertshire, to examine the prisoners, and ‘try what they find anent
these persons’ guilt of the crime of witchcraft, and report.’
What was ultimately done with the four Stirling prisoners, we do not
learn. As to Janet Douglas, the Council began to feel that she was
something of an inconvenience in the country; so they determined to
banish her beyond seas. At first, no skipper could be found who was
willing to take her in his vessel; some were disposed to set sail
without a pass, to avoid being compelled to take such a dangerous
commodity on board. But Janet was ultimately banished and heard of no
more.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1676-7.]
Lord Fountainhall notes a remarkable homicide as taking place this
winter, at the village of Abernethy in Fife. A butcher and another man,
sitting in an ale-house together, quarrelled, and in a sudden fit of
passion, the butcher inflicted a mortal stab upon his companion. Some
gentlemen sitting in a neighbouring room heard the fray, and, rushing
in, found the butcher with the bloody knife in his hand. Excited by the
atrocity of the deed, they hurried off the murderer to the regality
gallows, and instantly hanged him, though they had no sort of authority
to act in that manner. They probably acted upon a popular notion, that
a murderer taken _red-hand_, or fresh from the act, may be instantly
done to death by the bystanders; which appears, however, to be a
mistake.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1677.