A prince, who subsequently became James VI., was born to the queen in
Edinburgh Castle, within that small irregularly shaped room, of about
eight feet each way, which is still to be seen in the angle of the old
palace. The wet-nurse of the royal babe was a certain Lady Reres, whose
name occurs unpleasantly in the subsequent history of Mary. At the
same time, the Countess of Athole, who was believed to have magical
gifts, was brought to bed in the Castle. In a conversation which took
place five years after, at Fallside in Fife, between one Andrew Lundie
and John Knox, the former related that, ‘when the queen was lying in
_gisson_ of the king, the Lady Athole, lying there likewise, baith
within the Castle of Edinburgh, he came there for some business, and
callit for the Lady Reres, whom he fand in her chalmer, lying bedfast,
and, he asking of her disease, she answerit that she was never so
troubled with no bairn that ever she bare, for the Lady Athole had
casten all the pyne of her childbirth upon her.’[36]
It was a prevalent belief of that age that the pains of parturition
could be transferred by supernatural art, and not merely to another
woman, but to a man or to one of the lower animals. Amongst the charges
against an enchantress of the upper ranks called Eupham M‘Calyean,
twenty-five years after this time, is one to the effect, that, for
relief of her pain at the time of the birth of her two sons, she had
had a bored stone laid under her pillow, and enchanted powder rolled
up in her hair--likewise ‘your guidman’s sark tane aff him, and laid
womplit under your bed-feet; the whilk being practisit, your sickness
was casten aff you unnaturally, upon ane dog, whilk ran away and was
never seen again.’[37]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: 1566.