Christian Shaw, Bargarran's daughter, was a little girl of about eleven
years of age, "of a lively character and well inclined." On the 17th of
August, 1696, she saw the woman servant, Katherine Campbell, steal a drink
of milk from the can, whereupon she threatened to tell her mother; but
Campbell, "being a young woman of a proud and revengeful temper, and much
addicted to cursing and swearing upon any light occasion," turned against
her vehemently, wishing "that the Devil might harle her soul through
hell," and cursing her with violent imprecations. Five days after this,
Agnes Naismith, an old woman of bad fame, came into the courtyard, and
asked Christian how old she was, and how she did, inquiring also after the
health of other members of the family. Christian gave her a pert answer,
and there the matter ended; but the next night the young girl was taken
with fits, and the first act of the long and mournful tragedy began. In
her fits she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith,
saying they were cutting her side and otherwise tormenting her; then she
struggled as with an unseen enemy, and her body was, now bowed stiff and
rigid, resting in an arch on her head and her heels alone, and now shaken
with such a strange motion of rising and falling, as it had been a pair of
bellows; her tongue was drawn into her throat, and even the great Dr.
Brisbane of Glasgow himself was puzzled by what name to call her passion,
for she began to vomit strange things, which she said the witches, her
tormentors, forced upon her--such as crooked pins, small fowl bones,
sticks of candle fir, filthy hay, gravel stones, lumps of candle-grease,
and egg-shells. And still she cried out against Katherine Campbell and
Agnes Naismith; holding long conversations with the former, whom she
affirmed to be sitting close by when she was perhaps many miles away, and
arguing with her out of the Bible: exhorting her to repent of her sins
with more unction than logical clearness of reasoning. Agnes Naismith she
took somewhat into favour again; for the poor old woman, having been
brought by the parents into the chamber where she lay, and having prayed
for her a little simple prayer very heartily, the afflicted damsel
condescended to exempt her from further persecution for the moment, saying
that she was now her defender and did protect her from the fury of the
rest. For the crafty child had seen too well how her first venture had
sped not to venture on a broader cast. One day being in her fits she made
a grip with her hands as if to catch something, then exclaimed that J. P.
was then tormenting her, and that she had got a grip of his jerkin which
was "duddie" (tattered) at the elbows; and immediately her mother and
aunt heard the tearing of cloth, and the girl showed them in her hands two
pieces of red cloth newly torn, where never a bit of red cloth had been
before. Then she went off into a swoon or "swerf," and lay as if dead a
considerable time. These fits continued with more or less severity far
into the winter of the next year, and with ever new victims claimed by her
as her tormentors. Now it was Elizabeth Anderson; now James and Thomas
Lindsay--the latter a young lad of eleven, "the gley'd or squint-eyed
elf," as she called him; now "the scabbed-faced lass," who came to the
door to ask alms; and now the weary old Highland body, begging for a
night's lodging; then Alexander Anderson, father of Elizabeth; and Jean
Fulton, the grandmother; and then Margaret Lang--Pincht Margaret as she
was called--"a Name given her by the Devil, from a Pincht Cross cloath,
ordinarily worn on her Brow;" and her daughter, Martha Semple. Of the
twenty-one people accused by this wicked girl, Margaret Lang and her
daughter were the most remarkable--the one for her courage, her fine
character and powerful mind, the other for her youth, her beauty, and
child-like innocence of nature. When she heard that she was accused,
Margaret--who had been advised to get out of the way for a time, but who
had answered disdainfully, "Let them quake that dread and fear that need,
but I will not gang"--went up straight to Bargarran house, and passing
into the chamber where Christian lay, put her arms round her and spoke to
her soothingly, saying, "The Lord bless thee and ding the devil frae
thee!" She then asked her pointedly if she had ever seen her among her
tormentors?--to which the girl said. "No, but she had seen her daughter
Martha." Afterwards she retracted this admission and said that Margaret
had really afflicted her, but that she was under a spell when asked and
could not confess. Martha could not take things so gently. "She was as
well-Favoured and Gentill a Lass as you'l look on, and about 17 or 18
years of Age," says an old authority in an anonymous letter written to a
couple of initials. Poor Martha! her youth and beauty and passionate
distress moved even the bigoted wretches who condemned her; but their
compassion led to nothing pitiful or merciful, and the poor, bright,
beautiful girl passed into the awful doom of the rest. Then the
authorities "questioned" the witches; they were pricked, according to
custom and the national law; and "There was not any of them, save Margaret
Fulton, but marks were found on them, which were altogether insensible.
That a Needle of 3 Inches length was frequently put in without their
knowledge, nor would any Blood come from these places." Elizabeth
Anderson, a girl of seventeen, a beggar, James Lindsay, of fourteen, and
gley'd Thomas, his brother, not yet twelve--who for a halfpenny would turn
himself widershins and stop a plough at a word--were found willing and
able to confess. Elizabeth Anderson was especially determined that things
should not be lost for the want of finding. She said that about twenty
days ago her father had told her to go with him to Bargarran's yard,
somewhere about noon, where they met a black man with a bonnet on his
head, and a band round his neck, whom her father and Agnes Naismith, then
present, told her was the devil: that certain people, named, were also in
their company; that their discourse was all of Christian Shaw, then lying
sick, "whose Life they all promis'd to take away by the stopping of her
Breath;" that they all danced in the yard; that her father "Discharged
her to tell anything she saw, or she would be Torn in Pieces: and that she
was more Affraied of the forsaid persons than she was of the Devil." This
confession was made on the 5th of February, 1697. A few days later her
imagination was more lively. About seven years ago, she said, as she was
playing round the door of her grandmother, Jean Fulton's, house, she saw
"ane black grim man" go into the house to her grandmother, where he abode
for a while talking. Jean bade her take the gentleman by the hand, and he
would give her "ane Bony Black, new Coat; which accordingly she did." But
his hand was cold and she was afeard: and then he vanished away. The same
thing happened once again, when the black gentleman and her grandmother
fell a-talking together by "rounding in other's ears," but the girl
understood not what they said. This time she would not touch his hand for
all his promises of bran new clothes; so "the gentleman went away in a
flight," and she saw him no more for long after. The next time was when
her father "desired her to go with him through the Country and seek their
Meat; to which she replyed she need not seek her Meat, seeing she might
have Work:" but her father prevailed, and took her to a moor where above
twenty people were assembled; whose names she gives in a formidable
muster. Now the devil tempted her anew with meat and clothes, but she
would not consent; so he and her father stepped aside and conferred
together. Their meeting this day was for the destruction of a certain
minister's child, which they were to effect by means of a wax picture and
pins. Another time it was for the destruction of another minister's child
by the same means, and she heard Margaret Rodger say, "Stay a little, till
I stop ane Pin in the Heart of it:" which accordingly she did. This time
her father took her on his back over the water to Kilpatrick in a Flight,
saying Mount and Fly. She was with the witch crew when they drowned
Brighouse by upsetting his boat, and when they strangled a child with a
sea napkin: after which they all danced with the devil "in ane black Coat,
ane Blew Bonnet, ane Blew Band," who played the pipes for them, and gave
them each a piece of an unchristened bairn's liver to eat, so that they
should never confess if apprehended. With other abominations too foul to
be repeated.
The same day, February 18th, James Lindsay, the elder of the two brothers,
confessed. Jean Fulton was his grandmother too, and he said that one day,
when she met him, she took his little round hat and plack from him. Being
loath to part with the same, he ran after her crying for them: which she
refusing, he called her an old witch, and ran away. Whereupon she
threatened him. Eight days after this, as he was begging through the
country near Inchannan where she lived, he met her again; and this time
she had with her "ane black grim man with black cloaths, ane black Hat and
blew Band," who offered his hand, which James took and which he found cold
as it gript him straitly. The gentleman asked if he would serve him for a
Bonny black coat and a black hat, and several other things, to which he
replied "Yes, I'll do't." He then went to all the meetings, and saw all
the people and did all the things that Elizabeth had spoken of; even to
strangling Montgomerie's bairn with a sea napkin at twelve o'clock at
night, while the servant girl was watching by the cradle. Young Thomas the
gley'd followed next, confessing to just the same things, even to the
liver of the "uncrissened bairn," which all eat save Elizabeth and their
two selves: a slip-by that accounted for their confessions. And now
justice had a good handful to begin with, so the work of accusation went
briskly forward. Bargarran's daughter still continued bringing out crooked
pins and stones and all sorts of unmentionable filth from her mouth, and
still went on quarrelling with the devil whom she called an old sow, and
holding conversations with the apparitions of her tormentors, still mixed
up fraud with epilepsy, and lies and craft and wicked guile with hysteria,
till the witch-fires were fairly lighted, and seven of the poor wretches
"done to death." Among whom brave Margaret and her beautiful child held
the most prominent place. Never for a moment did Margaret Lang lose her
courage or self-possession. Seeing a farmer whom she knew, among the crowd
assembled round the gallows, she called out to him bitterly, "that he
would now thrive like a green bay-tree, for there would be no innocent
blood shed that day;" but what she meant for irony the people took for
confession. When she was burned, the answer of a spectator to one who
asked if the execution was over, showed what feeling they had about her:
"There's ane o' the witches in hell, an' the rest 'ill shune follow!" said
he contentedly. Another man, whose stick was taken to push back the legs
of the poor wretches as they were thrust out of the flames, when it was
returned to him, flung it into the flames, saying, "I'll tak nae stick
hame wi' me to nay hous that has touched a witch." When all was over and
the sacrifice was complete, Bargarran's daughter declared herself
satisfied and cured; no more "bumbees" came to pinch her--no more charms
of balls of hair or waxen eggs were laid beneath her bed--no more
apparitions thronged to vex her, nor had she fits or tossings, foamings
or strange swellings as of old; the devil left off tempting her with
promises of a fine gentleman for a husband; the witches no longer allured
her by phantom aprons filled with phantom almonds; the Lord "helped the
poor daft child," as Mrs. M. had prayed, though she was scarce worth the
helping, and the world was oppressed with her lies no more. But the blood
of the murdered innocent lay red on the ground, and cried aloud to heaven
for vengeance against the murderers. The case of Bargarran's daughter has
been always accepted as one of the most puzzling on record; but when may
not mankind be puzzled if they have but sufficient credulity? Subtract
from this account the possible and the certain--the possible frauds and
the certain lies--and what is left? A diseased girl, hysterical and
epileptic, full of hallucinations and pretended fancies, with a certain
quickness of hand which the tremendous gullibility of her auditory
rendered yet more facile--unscrupulous, mendacious; the only thing
surprising in the whole matter was that there was not one man of
sufficient coolness of judgment, or quickness of perception, to see
through the imposture and set his grip on it ere it passed. Dickie and
Mitchell, who a few years back visited the house where all this took
place, found a slit or hole in the wooden partition between her bedroom
and the room next it; a slit, evidently made purposely, and not a natural
defect in the wood, and so placed that when the bed was made up (the bed
of richly-carved oak yet stands or stood there) it could not be seen by
any one in the room. This little fact seems to speak volumes, and to help
materially towards establishing the questions of fraud and connivance. The
remote sequel is the only consoling feature in the case. From being the
most notorious impostor and the most cruel, false, and deadly persecutor
of her time, Bargarran's daughter, as Mrs. Miller, became one of the best
and most famous spinners of fine and delicate thread. She caused certain
machinery to be brought from Holland, and wrought at her spinning wheel
with all the intelligence and zeal that, earlier, had been so miserably
employed to the ruin and destruction of her fellow-creatures. It is to be
hoped that the coolness and reflection of maturity gave her grace to
repent of the sins of her girlhood, and that after-penitence wiped out the
terrible stains of youthful lying and murder.