On the 26th of December, 1590, John Fian, _alias_ Cuningham (spelt Johanne
Feane, _alias_ Cwninghame), master of the school at Saltpans, Lothian, and
contemptuously recorded as "Secretar and Register to the Devil," was
arraigned for witchcraft and high treason. There were twenty counts
against him, the least of which would have been enough to have lighted up
a witch-fire on that fatal Castle Hill, for the bravest and best in the
land. First, he was accused of entering into a covenant with Satan, who
appeared to him in white, as he lay in bed, musing and thinking ("mwsand
and pansand," says the dittay in its quaint language) how he should be
revenged on Thomas Trumbill, for not having whitewashed his room,
according to agreement. After promising his Satanic majesty allegiance and
homage, he received his mark, which later was found under his tongue, with
two pins therein thrust up to their heads. Again, he was found
guilty--"fylit" is the old legal term--of "feigning himself to be sick in
the said Thomas Trumbill's chamber, where he was stricken in great
ecstacies and trances, lying by the space of two or three hours dead, his
spirit taken, and suffered himself to be carried and transported to many
mountains, as he thought through all the world, according to his
depositions." Note, that these depositions were made in the midst of
fearful torture, and recanted the instant after. Also, he was found
guilty of suffering himself to be carried to North Berwick church, where,
together with many others, he did homage to Satan, as he stood in the
pulpit, making doubtful speeches, saying, "Many come to the fair, and all
buy not wares;" and desired him "not to fear, though he was grim, for he
had many servants who should never want, or ail nothing, so long as their
hair was on, and should never let one tear fall from their eyes so long as
they served him;" and he gave them lessons, and said, "Spare not to do
evil, and to eat and drink and be blithe, taking rest and ease, for he
should raise them up at the latter day gloriously." But the pith of the
indictment was that he, Fian, and sundry others to be spoken of hereafter,
entered into a league with Satan to wreck the king on his way to Denmark,
whither, in a fit of clumsy gallantry, he had set out to visit his future
queen. While he was sailing to Denmark, Fian and a whole crew of witches
and wizards met Satan at sea, and the master, giving an enchanted cat into
Robert Grierson's hand, bade him "cast the same into the sea, hola," which
was accordingly done; and a pretty capful of wind the consequence. Then,
when the king was returning from Denmark, the devil promised to raise a
mist which should wreck him on English ground. To perform which feat he
took something like a football--it seemed to Dr. Fian like a wisp--and
cast it into the sea, whereupon arose the great mist which nearly drove
the cumbrous old pedant on to English ground, where our strong-fisted
queen would have made him pay for his footing in a manner not quite
congenial to his tastes. But, being a Man of God, none of these charms and
devilries prevailed against him. A further count was, that once again he
consorted with Satan and his crew, still in North Berwick church, where
they paced round the church wider shins (wider scheins?), that is,
contrary to the way of the sun. Fian blew into the lock--a favourite trick
of his--to open the door, and blew in the lights which burned blue, and
were like big black candles held in an old man's hand round about the
pulpit. Here Satan as a "mekill blak man, with ane blak baird stikand out
lyke ane gettis (goat's) baird; and ane hie ribbit neise, falland doun
scharp lyke the beik of ane halk; with ane lang rumpill (tail); cled in
ane blak tatie goune, and ane ewill favorit scull bonnett on his heid;
haifand ane blak buik in his hand," preached to them, commanding them to
be good servants to him, and he would be a good master to them, and never
let them want. But he made them all very angry by calling Robert Grierson
by his Christian name. He ought to have been called "Ro' the Comptroller,
or Rob the Rower." This slip of the master's displeased them sorely, and
they ran "hirdie girdie" in great excitement, for it was against all
etiquette to be named by their earthly names; indeed, they always received
new names when the devil gave them their infernal christening, and they
made themselves over to him and denied their holy baptism. It was at this
meeting that John Fian was specially accused of rifling the graves of the
dead, and dismembering their bodies for charms. And many other things did
this Secretar and Register to the devil. Once, at the house of David
Seaton's mother, he breathed into the hand of a woman sitting by the fire,
and opened a lock at the other end of the kitchen. Once he raised up four
candles on his horse's two ears, and a fifth on the staff which a man
riding with him carried in his hand. These magic candles gave as much
light as the sun at noonday, and the man was so terrified that he fell
dead on his own threshold. He sent an evil spirit, who tormented a man for
twenty weeks; and he was seen to chase a cat, and in the chase to be
carried so high over a hedge that he could not touch her head. The dittay
says he flew through the air--a not infrequent mode of progression with
such people. When asked why he hunted the cat, he said that Satan had need
of her, and that he wanted all the cats he could lay hands on, to cast
into the sea, and cause storms and shipwrecks. He was further accused of
endeavouring to bewitch a young maiden by his devilish cantrips and horrid
charms; but, by a wile of the girl's mother, up to men's arts, he
practised on a heifer's hairs instead of the girl's, and the result was
that a luckless young cow went lowing after him everywhere--even into his
school-room--rubbing herself against him, and exhibiting all the languish
and desire of a love-sick young lady. A curious old plate represents John
Fian and the heifer in grotesque attitudes; the heifer with large,
drooping, amorous eyes, intensely ridiculous--the schoolmaster with his
magic wand drawing circles in the sand. These, with divers smaller
charges, such as casting horoscopes, and wearing modewart's (mole's) feet
upon him, amounting in all to twenty counts, formed the sum of the
indictment against him. He was put to the torture. First, his head was
"thrawed with a rope" for about an hour, but still he would not confess;
then they tried fair words and coaxed him, but with no better success; and
then they put him to the "most severe and cruell pains in the worlde,"
namely, the boots, till his legs were completely crushed, and the blood
and marrow spouted out. After the third stroke he became speechless; and
they, supposing it to be the devil's mark which kept him silent, searched
for that mark, that by its discovery the spell might be broken. So they
found it, as stated before, under his tongue, with two charmed pins stuck
up to their heads therein. When they were drawn out--that is, after some
further torture--he confessed anything which it pleased his tormentors to
demand of him, saying how, just now, the devil had been to him all in
black, but with a white wand in his hand; and how, on his, Fian's,
renouncing him, he had brake his wand, and disappeared. The next day he
recanted this confession. He was then somewhat restored to himself, and
had mastered the weakness of his agony. Whereupon it was assumed that the
devil had visited him through the night, and had marked him afresh. They
searched him--pulling off every nail with a turkas, or smith's pincers,
and then thrusting in needles up to their heads; but finding nothing more
satanic than blood and nerves, they put him to worse tortures, as a
revenge. He made no other relapse, but remained constant now to the end;
bearing his grievous pains with patience and fortitude, and dying as a
brave man always knows how to die, whatever the occasion. Finding that
nothing more could be made of him, they mercifully came to an end. He was
strangled and burnt "in the Castle Hill of Edinbrough, on a Saterdaie, in
the ende of Januarie last past 1591;" ending a may be loose and not
over-heroic life in a manner worthy of the most glorious martyr of
history. John Fian, schoolmaster of Saltpans, with no great idea to
support him, and no admiring friends to cheer him on, bore himself as
nobly as any hero of them all, and vindicated the honour of manhood and
natural strength in a way that exalts our common human nature into
something godlike and divine.