(Vol. v., p. 372.)
A. N. asks for some historical notices of the above fanatics: as he may
not be satisfied with Timperley's meagre allusion, allow me to refer him
to the _Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee_: London, 1714. The author
of this, "An Officer of the Army," speaking of the stiff-necked
Presbyterians, says:
"At this time (1681), about thirty of these deluded people left
their families and business, and went to the hills, where they
lived in rocks and caves for some weeks. John Gib, sailor in
Borrowstowness, Walter Ker, in Trafritham, ---- Gemmison, in
Linlithgow, were their chief leaders. They called themselves the
_Sweet Singers_ of Israel, eat nothing that there was salt in or
paid tax to the king, blotted the name of king out of their
Bibles, and cohabited all together. When a party of dragoons
took them at the Ouffins, in Tweeddale, they were all lying on
their faces, and jumped up in a minute, and called out with an
audible voice, that God Almighty would consume the party with
fire from heaven, for troubling the people of God. On the road,
as they went to Edinburgh, when any of their relations or
acquaintances came to visit them, they spit at them, and threw
themselves on their faces, and bellowed like beasts, whereof his
Highness (the Duke of York, then in Scotland) being informed,
ordered them immediately to be set at liberty."
A more detailed account of these Gibbites will be found in the curious
Presbyterian biographies "collected by, and printed for Patrick Walker,
in the Bristo-Port of Edinburgh," the early part of last century. In
that entitled "Some remarkable Passages in the Life, &c. of Mr. Daniel
Cargill:" 12mo. Edin. 1732, A. N. will find the original story of the
crazy skipper and his band of "three men and twenty-six women," whom
worthy Mr. Cargill endeavoured unsuccessfully to reclaim. From this it
would appear that the _sweet singers_ went far greater lengths than
above described, and that Gib, after the dispersion of his followers,
took himself off to America, "where," says the aforesaid Patrick, "he
was much admired by the blind {362} Indians for his familiar converse
with the devil." For the further information of your correspondent, I
would add that Walker's account of the Gibbites is very well condensed
in that more accessible book _Biographia Scoticana_, better known as the
_Scots Worthies_, where the deluded Gib figures under the head of "God's
Justice exemplified in his Judgments upon Persecutors."