Scotland was always foremost in superstition. Her wild hills and lonely
fells seemed the fit haunting-places for all mysterious powers; and long
after spirits had fled, and ghosts had been laid in the level plains of
the South, they were to be found lingering about the glens and glades of
Scotland. Very little of graceful fancy lighted up the gloom of those
popular superstitions. Even Elfame, or Faerie, was a place of dread and
anguish, where the devil ruled heavy-handed and Hell claimed its yearly
tithe, rather than the home of fun and beauty and petulant gaiety as with
other nations: and the beautiful White Ladies, like the German Elle-women,
had more of bale than bliss as their portion to scatter among the sons of
men. Spirits like the goblin Gilpin Horner, full of malice and unholy
cunning,--like grewsome brownies, at times unutterably terrific, at times
grotesque and rude, but then more satyr-like than elfish,--like May
Moulachs, lean and hairy-armed, watching over the fortunes of a family,
but prophetic only of woe, not of weal,--like the cruel Kelpie, hiding
behind the river sedges to rush out on unwary passers-by, and strangle
them beneath the waters,--like the unsained laidly Elf, who came tempting
Christian women, to their souls' eternal perdition if they yielded to the
desires of their bodies,--like the fatal Banshie, harbinger of death and
ruin,--were the popular forms of the Scottish spirit-world; and in none of
them do we find either love or gentleness, but only fierceness and crime,
enmity to man and rebellion to God. But saddest and darkest and unholiest
of all was the belief in witchcraft, which infested society for centuries
like a sore eating through to the very heart of humanity, and which was
nowhere more bitter and destructive than among the godly children of our
Northern sister. Strange that the land of the Lord should have been the
favourite camping-ground of Satan, that the hill of Zion should have had
its roots in the depths of Tophet!
The formulas of the faith were as gloomy as the persons. The power of the
evil eye; the faculty of second sight, which always saw the hearse plumes,
and never the bridal roses; the supremacy of the devil in this
God-governed world of ours, and the actual and practical covenant into
which men and women daily entered with him; the unlimited influence of the
curse, and the sin and mischief to be wrought by charm and spell; the
power of casting sickness on whomsoever one would, and the ease with which
a blight could be sent on the corn, and a murrain to the beasts, by those
who had not wherewithal to stay their hunger for a day, these were the
chief signs of that fatal power with which Satan endowed his chosen
ones--those silly, luckless chapmen who bartered away their immortal souls
for no mess of pottage even, and no earthly good to breath or body, but
only that they might harm their neighbours and revenge themselves on those
who crossed them. Sometimes, indeed, they had no need to chaffer with the
devil for such faculties: as in the matter of the evil eye; for Kirk, of
Aberfoyle, tells us that "some are of so venomous a Constitution, by being
radiated in Envy and Malice, that they pierce and kill (like a Cockatrice)
whatever Creature they first set their Eyes on in the Morning: so was it
with Walter Grahame, some Time living in the Parock wherein now I am, who
killed his own Cow after commending its Fatness, and shot a Hair with his
Eyes, having praised its Swiftness (such was the Infection of ane Evill
Eye); albeit this was unusual, yet he saw no Object but what was obvious
to other Men as well as to himselfe." And a certain woman looking over the
door of a byre or cowhouse, where a neighbour sat milking, shot the calf
dead and dried up and sickened the cow, "by the venomous glance of her
evill eye." But perhaps she had got that venom by covenant with the devil;
for this was one of the prescriptive possessions of a witch, and ever the
first dole from the Satanic treasury. When Janet Irving was brought to
trial (1616) for unholy dealings with the foul fiend, it was proved--for
was it not sworn to? and that was quite sufficient legal proof in all
witchcraft cases--that he had told her "yf schoe bure ill-will to onie
bodie, to look on them with opin eyis, and pray evill for thame in his
name, and schoe sould get hir hartis desyre;" and in almost every witch
trial in Scotland the "evil eye" formed part of the counts of indictment
against the accused. The curse was as efficacious. Did a foul-mouthed old
dame give a neighbour a handful of words more forcible than courteous, and
did terror, or revenge, induce, or simulate, a nervous seizure in
consequence, the old dame was at once carried off to the lock-up, and but
few chances of escape lay between her and the stake beyond. To be skilful
in healing, too, was just as dangerous as to be powerful in sickening; and
to the godly and unclean of the period all sorts of devilish cantrips lay
in "south-running waters" and herb drinks, and salves made of simples;
while the use of bored stones, of prayers said thrice or backwards, of
"mwildis" powders, or any other more patent form of witchcraft, though it
might restore the sick to health, yet was fatally sure to land the user
thereof at the foot of the gallows, and the testimony of the healed friend
was the strongest strand in the hangman's cord. This, indeed, was the
saddest feature in the whole matter--the total want of all gratitude,
reliance, trustiness, or affection between a "witch" and her friends. The
dearest intimate she had gave evidence against her frankly, and without a
second thought of the long years of mutual help and kindliness that had
gone before; the neighbour whom she had nursed night and day with all
imaginable tenderness and self-devotion, if he took a craze and dreamed of
witchcraft, came forward to distort and exaggerate every remedy she had
used, and every art she had employed; her very children turned against her
without pity or remorse, and little lips, scarce dry from the milk of her
own breasts, lisped out the glibbest lies of all. Most pitiful, most sad,
was the state of these poor wretches; but instructive to us, as evidencing
the strength of superstition, and the weakness of every human virtue when
brought into contact and collision with it. What other gifts and powers
belonged to the witches will be best gathered from the stories themselves;
for varied as they are, there is a strange thread of likeness running
through them all; specially is there a likeness in all of a time or
district, as might be expected in a matter which belonged so much to mere
imitation.
Scotland played an unenviable part in the great witch panic that swept
like an epidemic over Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It suited with the stern, uncompromising, Puritan temper, to
tear this accursed thing from the heart of the nation, and offer it,
bleeding and palpitating, as a sacrifice to the Lord; and accordingly we
find the witch trials of Scotland conducted with more severity than
elsewhere, and with a more gloomy and savage fanaticism of faith. Those
who dared question the truth of even the most unreliable witnesses and the
most monstrous statements were accused of atheism and infidelity--they
were Sadducees and sinners--men given over to corruption and uncleanness,
with whom no righteous servant could hold any terms. And then the
ministers mingled themselves in the fray; and the Kirk like the Church,
the presbyter like the priest, proved to be on the side of intolerance and
superstition, where, unfortunately, priests of all creeds have ever been.
And when James VI. came with his narrow brain and selfish heart, to
formularize the witch-lie into a distinct canon of arbitrary faith, and
give it increased political significance and social power, the reign of
humanity and common sense was at an end, and the autocracy of cruelty and
superstition began. It is a dreary page in human history; but so long as a
spark of superstition lingers in the world it will have its special and
direct uses.
The first time we hear of Scottish witches was when St. Patrick offended
them and the devil alike by his uncompromising rigour against them: so
they tore off a piece of a rock as he was crossing the sea and hurled it
after him; which rock became the fortress of Dumbarton in the days which
knew not St. Patrick. Then there was the story of King Duff (968), who
pined away in mortal sickness, by reason of the waxen image which had
been made to destroy him; but by the fortunate discovery of a young maiden
who could not bear torture silently, he was enabled to find the
witches--whom he burnt at Forres in Murray, the mother of the poor maiden
who could not bear torture among them: enabled, too, to save himself by
breaking the wasting waxen image roasting at the "soft" fire, when almost
at its last turn. Then we come to Thomas of Ercildoune, whom the Queen of
Faerie loved and kept; and then to Sir Michael Scot of Balweary, that
famous wizard, second to none in power; while a little further removed
from those legendary times we see the dark figure of William Lord Soulis,
who was boiled to death at Nine Stane Brig, in fitting punishment for his
crimes. And then in 1479 twelve mean women and several wizards were burnt
at Edinburgh for roasting the king in wax, and so endangering the life of
the sovereign liege in a manner which no human aid could remedy; and the
Earl of Mar was at their head, and very properly burnt too. And in 1480
Incubi and Succubi held the land between them, and even the young lady of
Mar gave herself up to the embraces of an Incubus--a hideous monster,
utterly loathsome and deadly to behold; and if the young ladies of the
nobility could do such things, what might not be expected from the
commonalty? But now we come out into the light of written history, and the
first corpse lying on the threshold is that of the beautiful Lady Glammis
(1537).