On the 4th of April, 1670, one Major Thomas Weir, an old man of seventy,
expiated his crimes on the Gallowlie of Edinburgh. A bad man, surely; a
canting, loose-lived hypocrite, who made his puritanism the cloak for his
secret crimes, serving sin with his body in daily and most detestable
service, while his lips spoke only of zeal to God and the soul's devoutest
exercise. Still, it was a terrible fate for nothing more heinous than an
unclean life; a purification by fire in truth, but not for the
sanctification of souls. Perhaps he would have got off altogether, had he
not been charged with witchcraft. Incest and the foulest vices were bad
enough, but witchcraft was worse. Yet no intelligible charge of sorcery
was brought against this man save the fact that he got the love of all
manner of women, poor and old though he was; and the testimony of a
frightened woman who gave a rambling account of shapes, and lights, and
women, all gathered down in Stinking-close, near to where the major lived;
all of which were, of course, phantoms, spectres, or devils, conjured up
by his magical and devilish arts. This, and the frantic saying of his poor
old sister, when she heard of his death, that if they had burnt his staff
they had destroyed his power, formed about the sum of the witchcraft
evidence against him. He was arrested on his own confession. Unable to
bear the weight of his secret vices, he gave himself up to the
authorities, who at first were disposed to think him mad, but who
afterwards, reporting him sane and collected enough, set him on his trial.
After he had once spoken he would say no more, would make no defence and
no further confession: he would not pray, he would not appeal to God. Like
a beast he had lived, like a beast he would die, and "since he was going
to the devil," he said, "he did not wish to anger him." He would have no
paltering with an outraged God by the way; so the fire and the faggot came
as the culmination of a life which in its mildest phase was infamous, but
which belonged to no lawful tribunal of man to punish.
If he died sullenly and in mute and dumb despair, his sister's anguish
found wild and desperate expression. She told her judges all about her
horrible life with him, and how he had been long given up to sorcery and
magic, as well as to things not now to be mentioned; and how his power lay
in that staff of his which had been burnt along with him. That thornwood
staff, with its crooked head and carved figures like satyrs running
through, seems to have heavily burdened the poor creature's mind, for she
told her judges that when she wished to plague her brother she would hide
it, and give it back to him only when he threatened to reveal her nameless
infamy if she did not restore it. On the morning of her execution she said
that she would expiate the most shameful life that had ever been lived by
dying the most shameful death; but no one knew exactly what she meant.
When she came to the place of execution--she was mercifully hung--she
began to talk wildly of the Broken Covenant, and exhort the people back to
their old faith, and then she attempted to throw off all her clothes that
she might die "naked and ashamed." This was the lowest depth of
degradation of which her crazed old brain could conceive, and was what she
meant in the morning when alluding to the manner of her death. The
executioner had to struggle mightily with her before he was able to
overmaster her, she smiting him on the cheek the while; but at last he
flung her "open-faced" on the ground, and threw some linen cloths over
her; but "her hands not being tyed when she was throwen over, she laboured
to recover hirselfe, and put in her head betwixt two of the steps of the
leather, and keiped that powster for a tyme, till she was put from itt."
It is curious to mark the little bit of sanity in all this mournful
lunacy, when the familiar things of life were spoken of. She had always
been a great spinner, and the fame now went abroad that the devil had
helped her in this. Asked if it was not so, she at the first denied
disdainfully; use only and industry, she said, had made her so deft at her
work, and the devil had done nothing for her; but afterwards she maundered
off into some nonsense about her yarn, and how her distaff was often found
full when she had left it empty; and how the weaver could never weave the
thread spun from this yarn, which, of course, was "devil's dust" of the
true kind. She was mad enough, the wretched being, and could not fail to
trip if stones were laid in her path. But her first instincts respecting
her every-day occupation were right, and are singularly illustrative of
some of the phenomena of madness, and of how intimately with one's life is
interwoven common sense, even in the fibres of a diseased brain. She said
further that she was persuaded "her mother was a witch, for the secretest
thing that either I myself or any of the family could do, when once a mark
appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great
distance! Being demanded what sort of a mark it was, she answered, 'I have
some such like mark myself when I please, on my forehead.' Whereupon she
offered to uncover her head for visible satisfaction; the minister
refusing to behold it, and forbidding any discovery, was earnestly
requested by some spectators to allow the freedom: he yielded. She put
back her head-dress, and, seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe,
shaped for nails, in her wrinkles--terrible enough, I assure you, to the
stoutest beholder." Her further confessions were curious, involving, as
they did, a visit from a tall woman who had one child at her back and one
or two at her feet; and who came to her, wanting her to speak to the Queen
of Fairy, and to strike and do battle with the said queen on her behalf.
The next day came "ane little woman," with a piece of a tree, or the root
of some herb, and she told her that so long as she kept the same she
should do well, and should attain all she might desire. So she spun at her
yarn, and found more yarn on the "pirn" than she thought to find; which
frightened her. This took place when she "keeped a school at Dalkeith, and
teached childering." She also rambled on about a fiery chariot in which
she and her brother had paid visits, and of his mysterious visitors and
his thornwood staff; and when nothing more was to be got out of her she
was hung, and the world was all the cleaner for the loss of so much folly
and wickedness from out the general mass.