Christian Wilson, _alias_ the Lanthorne, which name she had gotten from
the devil at the time of her baptism, was too famous in her generation.
She lived near her brother Alexander, and there was notorious ill blood
between them, perhaps because of her notorious evil proceedings. One
evening Alexander was found dead in his own house, naked, with his face
torn and cut, but without a spot of blood anywhere. Yet a "greate lumpe of
fleisch" had been cut out of his cheek more cleanly than any ordinary
razor could have cut either flesh or cheese. Christian bore herself
strangely. She expressed no sorrow, perhaps because she felt none, and
absolutely refused to see or touch the corpse according to the fashion of
the honest and the orthodox of the time. This refusal did her much harm in
men's minds, for was it not very evident that she was afraid of the
bier-law, or bahr-recht, which, in 1661, when all this took place, was
such a useful agent of the police, and helped so powerfully to the
discovery of murder? The bailies and ministers heard the rumours affecting
her, and commanded her to be brought into the house to touch the corpse,
as the rest had done. "She came trembling all the way to the house, but
she refused to come nigh the corpse, or to touch it, saying that 'she
never touched a dead corpse in her life.'" The neighbours did not allow of
her plea, and dragged her to the murdered man, that she might touch it
softly. She went forward to do so. "But before shoe did it, the Sone being
shyning in at the howse, shoe exprest herselfe thus, humbly desyring that,
'as the Lord made the Sone to shine and give light into that howse, that
also he would give light to discovering of that murder!' And with these
words shoe tuitching the wound of the dead man verie softlie, it being
whyte and cleane, without any spot of blood or the lyke, yet immediately,
while her fingers was upon it, the blood rushed owt of it, to the greate
admiratioune of all the behoulders, who tooke it for discoverie of the
murder according to her own prayers." Another charge, no less grave than
that of murder, was, that William Richardson, having felled one of her
hens with a stone, she frowned on him threateningly, and said he should
never throw another stone. And he never did; for immediately he fell into
ane "franicie" and madness, took to his bed, and died in a few days, all
the time of his sickness crying out against Cristiane Wilson, who, he
said, was tormenting him in the likeness of a grey cat. After his death
his nephew teased the witch by calling her "The Lanthorne," which every
one knew to be her devil-name; but Cristiane threatened him, and said that
"if he did not hold his peace she would make him die by the same death as
his uncle," which was proof sufficient of the truth of the grey cat and
her guilty sorcery. This was the same Cristiane Wilson who, when she was
being carried off to Nidrie, there to be confronted with another witch,
was suddenly lifted off the pillion by a furious blast of wind, which she
got the devil to raise in the hope of her rescue. But though she was blown
into the stream, she swam lightly as a witch should and as only a witch
could, and her jailers fished her out again, to secure her better for the
future. As the sky was cloudless when the blast arose, and as no storm
followed after, there was no possibility of doubting the Satanic origin of
that mighty puff of wind. Besides, did not Jennot Cock, another confessing
witch, say to John Stevin, when he told her that Cristiane was to be
carried to Nidrie to-morrow, "Will not yow think it a sport, if the
deivill raise a whirrell of wind, and tak her away from among yow by the
gette (way) to-morrow?" This and that together made the thing certain; and
the fall of the poor wretch was included in the dittay as one of the
counts against her, proving her witchcraft.
Witch-finding now increased rapidly in Scotland. No fewer than fourteen
special commissions were issued for the sole purpose of trying witches for
the sederunt of November the 7th, 1661; and on the 23rd of January, 1662,
fourteen more were made out. It was the popular amusement of the day, and
no one or two men then living could have turned the tide in favour of
these poor persecuted creatures. Even Sir George Mackenzie, that "noble
wit of Scotland," failed to make any reasonable impression on the besotted
public, though his pleadings and writings got him into immense disfavour
with the religious part of the community, and caused him to be ranked as
an atheist and Sadducee, and classed with the Pilates and Judases of
history. Though it had been the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484,
which had first stirred up the zeal of the godly against witchcraft, and
written that terrible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," in
still more terrible characters of blood and suffering, yet Calvinistic
Scotland soon outstripped even the superstitious Papacy in her frantic
piety, and poured out a sea of innocent blood which will stain her pages
with an ineffaceable stain, for ever and for ever. Yet she was nearly a
hundred years behind Rome in her zeal, for it was not till June, 1563,
that she made the subject matter for legislation at all, and then the
Estates[50] enacted "that 'nae person take upon hand to use any manner of
witchcrafts, sorcery, or necromancy, nor give themselves furth to have ony
sic craft or knowledge thereof therethrough abusing the people;' also,
that 'nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation, at ony sic
users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under pain of death.' This is the
statute under which all the subsequent witch trials took place." But bad
as it was under the Presbyterians and the Elders, it is true that under
the Restoration the witch persecutions in Scotland were even more
excessive than during the reign of the Covenanters, and that the return of
Charles II. brought satisfaction and pleasure to the younger women only of
his dominions, but nothing save torture to the old, the poor, and the
despised. Ray says that about a hundred and twenty witches suffered in the
year 1661, the year after the Restoration had brought joy and gladness to
all loyal hearts; so that it mattered little whether Puritan or Cavalier,
Presbyterian or Episcopalian, had the upper hand. Superstition was the
greatest lord of all, and a slavish adherence to a few words fettered men
down hopelessly to ignorance and wickedness.
At this time (1661) John Kincaid and John Dick were the most notorious
prickers; and they let no one escape whom they had the chance of hurting.
One John Hay, an old man of sixty, and of untarnished reputation, fell
into Dick's hands, accused of sorcery by "a distracted woman," whose words
were not worth the wind that wafted them. But Dick shaved him, and pricked
him, and tortured him in all allowable ways, then sent him off to
Edinburgh, two hundred miles away, to be locked up in the Tolbooth,
pending further proceedings. The case against him was too slight for even
those times to entertain, and he was liberated on his own petition, and a
few testimonials: but John Dick was not reproved, nor was his zeal thought
extreme or passionate.