[Illustration: Major Weir’s House.]
It must have been a sad scandal to this peculiar community when
Major Weir, one of their number, was found to have been so wretched
an example of human infirmity. The house occupied by this man still
exists, though in an altered shape, in a little court accessible by
a narrow passage near the first angle of the street. His history is
obscurely reported; but it appears that he was of a good family in
Lanarkshire, and had been one of the ten thousand men sent by the
Scottish Covenanting Estates in 1641 to assist in suppressing the Irish
Papists. He became distinguished for a life of peculiar sanctity,
even in an age when that was the prevailing tone of the public mind.
According to a contemporary account: ‘His garb was still a cloak, and
somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black
man, and ordinarily looked down to the ground; _a grim countenance,
and a big nose_. At length he became so notoriously regarded among the
Presbyterian strict sect, that if four met together, be sure Major
Weir was one. At private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made
many of that stamp court his converse. He never married, but lived in
a private lodging with his sister, Grizel Weir. Many resorted to his
house, to join him and hear him pray; but it was observed that he could
not officiate in any holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his
hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who heard him pray admire
his flood in prayer, his ready extemporary expression, his heavenly
gesture; so that he was thought more angel than man, and was termed
by some of the holy sisters ordinarily _Angelical Thomas_.’ Plebeian
imaginations have since fructified regarding the staff, and crones
will still seriously tell how it could run a message to a shop for
any article which its proprietor wanted; how it could answer the door
when any one called upon its master; and that it used to be often seen
running before him, in the capacity of a link-boy, as he walked down
the Lawnmarket.
After a life characterised externally by all the graces of devotion,
but polluted in secret by crimes of the most revolting nature, and
which little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the horror of
living men, Major Weir fell into a severe sickness, which affected his
mind so much that he made open and voluntary confession of all his
wickedness. The tale was at first so incredible that the provost, Sir
Andrew Ramsay,[24] refused for some time to take him into custody. At
length himself, his sister (partner of one of his crimes), and his
staff were secured by the magistrates, together with certain sums
of money, which were found wrapped up in rags in different parts of
the house. One of these pieces of rag being thrown into the fire by
a bailie, who had taken the whole in charge, flew up the chimney,
and made an explosion like a cannon. While the wretched man lay in
prison, he made no scruple to disclose the particulars of his guilt,
but refused to address himself to the Almighty for pardon. To every
request that he would pray, he answered in screams: ‘Torment me no
more—I am tormented enough already!’ Even the offer of a Presbyterian
clergyman, instead of an established Episcopal minister of the city,
had no effect upon him. He was tried April 9, 1670, and being found
guilty, was sentenced to be strangled and burnt between Edinburgh and
Leith. His sister, who was tried at the same time, was sentenced to be
hanged in the Grassmarket. The execution of the profligate major took
place, April 14, at the place indicated by the judge. When the rope
was about his neck, to prepare him for the fire, he was bid to say:
‘Lord, be merciful to me!’ but he answered as before: ‘Let me alone—I
will not—I have lived as a beast, and I must die as a beast!’ After
he had dropped lifeless in the flames, his stick was also cast into
the fire; and, ‘whatever incantation was in it,’ says the contemporary
writer already quoted,[25] ‘the persons present own that it gave rare
turnings, and was long a-burning, as also himself.’
The conclusion to which the humanity of the present age would come
regarding Weir—that he was mad—is favoured by some circumstances;
for instance, his answering one who asked if he had ever seen the
devil, that ‘the only feeling he ever had of him was in the dark.’ What
chiefly countenances the idea is the unequivocal lunacy of the sister.
This miserable woman confessed to witchcraft, and related, in a serious
manner, many things which could not be true. Many years before, a fiery
coach, she said, had come to her brother’s door in broad day, and a
stranger invited them to enter, and they proceeded to Dalkeith. On the
way, another person came and whispered in her brother’s ear something
which affected him; it proved to be supernatural intelligence of the
defeat of the Scotch army at Worcester, which took place that day. Her
brother’s power, she said, lay in his staff. She also had a gift for
spinning above other women, but the yarn broke to pieces in the loom.
Her mother, she declared, had been also a witch. ‘The secretest thing
that I, 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.’
This mark could also appear on her own forehead when she pleased. At
the request of the company present, ‘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.’[26]
At the place of execution she acted in a furious manner, and with
difficulty could be prevented from throwing off her clothes, in order
to die, as she said, ‘with all the shame she could.’
The treatise just quoted makes it plain that the case of Weir and his
sister had immediately become a fruitful theme for the imaginations
of the vulgar. We there receive the following story: ‘Some few
days before he discovered himself, a gentlewoman coming from the
Castle-hill, where her husband’s niece was lying-in of a child, about
midnight perceived about the Bowhead three women in windows shouting,
laughing, and clapping their hands. The gentlewoman went forward,
till, at Major Weir’s door, there arose, as from the street, a woman
about the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward. The
gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step on, if
by the lantern they could see what she was; but haste what they could,
this long-legged spectre was still before them, moving her body with a
vehement cachinnation and great unmeasurable laughter. At this rate the
two strove for place, till the giantess came to a narrow lane in the
Bow, commonly called the Stinking Close, into which she turning, and
the gentlewoman looking after her, perceived the close full of flaming
torches (she could give them no other name), and as if it had been a
great number of people stentoriously laughing, and gaping with tahees
of laughter. This sight, at so dead a time of night, no people being
in the windows belonging to the close, made her and her servant haste
home, declaring all that they saw to the rest of the family.’
For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to
be the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His
apparition was frequently seen at night, flitting, like a black and
silent shadow, about the street. His house, though known to be deserted
by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of
lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and,
what is strangest of all, spinning. Some people occasionally saw the
major issue from the low close at midnight, mounted on a black horse
without a head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes
the whole of the inhabitants of the Bow would be roused from their
sleep at an early hour in the morning by the sound as of a coach and
six, first rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the
Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible close for a few minutes, and
then rattling and thundering back again—being neither more nor less
than Satan come in one of his best equipages to take home the major and
his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their
terrestrial dwelling.
About fifty years ago, when the shades of superstition began
universally to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be
regarded with less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made
by the proprietor to find a person who should be bold enough to
inhabit it. Such a person was procured in William Patullo, a poor man
of dissipated habits, who, having been at one time a soldier and a
traveller, had come to disregard in a great measure the superstitions
of his native country, and was now glad to possess a house upon the
low terms offered by the landlord, at whatever risk. Upon its being
known that Major Weir’s house was about to be reinhabited, a great deal
of curiosity was felt by people of all ranks as to the result of the
experiment; for there was scarcely a native of the city who had not
felt, since his boyhood, an intense interest in all that concerned that
awful fabric, and yet remembered the numerous terrible stories which
he had heard respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous
undertaking, William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort
of interest, similar to that which we feel respecting a regiment on
the march to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would
be the means of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion
of darkness. But Satan soon let them know that he does not tamely
relinquish any of the outposts of his kingdom.
On the very first night after Patullo and his spouse had taken up their
abode in the house, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed,
not unconscious of a certain degree of fear—a dim, uncertain light
proceeding from the gathered embers of their fire, and all being silent
around them—they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came
forward to the bed, and, setting its forefeet upon the stock, looked
steadfastly at the unfortunate pair. When it had contemplated them thus
for a few minutes, to their great relief it at length took itself away,
and, slowly retiring, gradually vanished from their sight. As might
be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another
half-century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world
of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.
It may here be mentioned that, at no very remote time, there were
several houses in the Old Town which had the credit of being haunted.
It is said there is one at this day in the Lawnmarket (a flat), which
has been shut up from time immemorial. The story goes that one night,
as preparations were making for a supper-party, something occurred
which obliged the family, as well as all the assembled guests, to
retire with precipitation, and lock up the house. From that night it
has never once been opened, nor was any of the furniture withdrawn:
the very goose which was undergoing the process of being roasted at
the time of the occurrence is still at the fire! No one knows to whom
the house belongs; no one ever inquires after it; no one living ever
saw the inside of it; it is a condemned house! There is something
peculiarly dreadful about a house under these circumstances. What
sights of horror might present themselves if it were entered! Satan is
the _ultimus hæres_ of all such unclaimed property!
Besides the many old houses that are haunted, there are several endowed
with the simple credit of having been the scenes of murders and
suicides. Some contain rooms which had particular names commemorative
of such events, and these names, handed down as they had been from
one generation to another, usually suggested the remembrance of some
dignified Scottish families, probably the former tenants of the houses.
There is a common-stair in the Lawnmarket which was supposed to be
haunted by the ghost of a gentleman who had been mysteriously killed,
about a century ago, in open daylight, as he was ascending to his own
house: the affair was called to mind by old people on the similar
occasion of the murder of Begbie. A deserted house in Mary King’s
Close (behind the Royal Exchange) is believed by some to have met
with that fate for a very fearful reason. The inhabitants of a remote
period were, it is said, compelled to abandon it by the supernatural
appearances which took place in it on the very first night after they
had made it their residence. At midnight, as the goodman was sitting
with his wife by the fire reading his Bible, and intending immediately
to go to bed, a strange dimness which suddenly fell upon his light
caused him to raise his eyes from the book. He looked at the candle,
and saw it burning blue. Terror took possession of his frame. Turning
away his eyes, there was, directly before him, and apparently not two
yards off, the head as of a dead person, looking him straight in the
face. There was nothing but a head, though that seemed to occupy the
precise situation in regard to the floor which it might have done had
it been supported by a body of the ordinary stature. The man and his
wife fainted with terror. On awaking, darkness pervaded the room.
Presently the door opened, and in came a hand holding a candle. This
came and stood—that is, the body supposed to be attached to the hand
stood—beside the table, whilst the terrified pair saw two or three
couples of feet skip along the floor, as if dancing. The scene lasted
a short time, but vanished quite away upon the man gathering strength
to invoke the protection of Heaven. The house was of course abandoned,
and remained ever afterwards shut up. Such were grandams’ tales at no
remote period in our northern capital:
‘Where Learning, with his eagle eyes,
Seeks Science in her coy abode.’