Jak, in Lyne, in the Barony of Dalry, Ayrshire, was accused of sorcery
and witchcraft and abuse of the people. Her answers to the
interrogatories of the judges or prosecutors ran thus: It being required
of her by what art she could tell of lost goods or prophesy the event of
illness, she replied that of herself she had no knowledge or science of
such matters, but that when questions were asked at her concerning such
matters, she was in the habit of applying to one Thome Reid, who died at
the battle of Pinkie (10th September, 1547), as he himself affirmed, and
who resolved her any questions which she asked at him. This person she
described as a respectable elderly-looking man, grey-bearded, and
wearing a grey coat, with Lombard sleeves of the auld fashion. A pair of
grey breeches and white stockings gartered above the knee, a black
bonnet on his head, close behind and plain before, with silken laces
drawn through the lips thereof, and a white wand in his hand, completed
the description of what we may suppose a respectable-looking man of the
province and period. Being demanded concerning her first interview with
this mysterious Thome Reid, she gave rather an affecting account of the
disasters with which she was then afflicted, and a sense of which
perhaps aided to conjure up the imaginary counsellor. She was walking
between her own house and the yard of Monkcastle, driving her cows to
the common pasture, and making heavy moan with herself, weeping bitterly
for her cow that was dead, her husband and child that were sick of the
land-ill (some contagious sickness of the time), while she herself was
in a very infirm state, having lately borne a child. On this occasion
she met Thome Reid for the first time, who saluted her courteously,
which she returned. "Sancta Maria, Bessie!" said the apparition, "why
must thou make such dole and weeping for any earthly thing?" "Have I not
reason for great sorrow," said she, "since our property is going to
destruction, my husband is on the point of death, my baby will not live,
and I am myself at a weak point? Have I not cause to have a sore heart?"
"Bessie," answered the spirit, "thou hast displeased God in asking
something that thou should not, and I counsel you to amend your fault. I
tell thee, thy child shall die ere thou get home; thy two sheep shall
also die; but thy husband shall recover, and be as well and feir as ever
he was." The good woman was something comforted to hear that her husband
was to be spared in such her general calamity, but was rather alarmed to
see her ghostly counsellor pass from her and disappear through a hole in
the garden wall, seemingly too narrow to admit of any living person
passing through it. Another time he met her at the Thorn of Dawmstarnik,
and showed his ultimate purpose by offering her plenty of every thing if
she would but deny Christendom and the faith she took at the font-stone.
She answered, that rather than do that she would be torn at horses'
heels, but that she would be conformable to his advice in less matters.
He parted with her in some displeasure. Shortly afterwards he appeared
in her own house about noon, which was at the time occupied by her
husband and three tailors. But neither Andrew Jak nor the three tailors
were sensible of the presence of the phantom warrior who was slain at
Pinkie; so that, without attracting their observation, he led out the
good-wife to the end of the house near the kiln. Here he showed her a
company of eight women and four men. The women were busked in their
plaids, and very seemly. The strangers saluted her, and said, "Welcome,
Bessie; wilt thou go with us?" But Bessie was silent, as Thome Reid had
previously recommended. After this she saw their lips move, but did not
understand what they said; and in a short time they removed from thence
with a hideous ugly howling sound, like that of a hurricane. Thome Reid
then acquainted her that these were the good wights (fairies) dwelling
in the court of Elfland, who came to invite her to go thither with them.
Bessie answered that, before she went that road, it would require some
consideration. Thome answered, "Seest thou not me both meat-worth,
clothes-worth, and well enough in person?" and engaged she should be
easier than ever she was. But she replied, she dwelt with her husband
and children, and would not leave them; to which Thome Reid replied, in
very ill-humour, that if such were her sentiments, she would get little
good of him.
Although they thus disagreed on the principal object of Thome Reid's
visits, Bessie Dunlop affirmed he continued to come to her frequently,
and assist her with his counsel; and that if any one consulted her about
the ailments of human beings or of cattle, or the recovery of things
lost and stolen, she was, by the advice of Thome Reid, always able to
answer the querists. She was also taught by her (literally ghostly)
adviser how to watch the operation of the ointments he gave her, and to
presage from them the recovery or death of the patient. She said Thome
gave her herbs with his own hand, with which she cured John Jack's bairn
and Wilson's of the Townhead. She also was helpful to a waiting-woman of
the young Lady Stanlie, daughter of the Lady Johnstone, whose disease,
according to the opinion of the infallible Thome Reid, was "a cauld
blood that came about her heart," and frequently caused her to swoon
away. For this Thome mixed a remedy as generous as the balm of Gilead
itself. It was composed of the most potent ale, concocted with spices
and a little white sugar, to be drunk every morning before taking food.
For these prescriptions Bessie Dunlop's fee was a peck of meal and some
cheese. The young woman recovered. But the poor old Lady Kilbowie could
get no help for her leg, which had been crooked for years; for Thome
Reid said the marrow of the limb was perished and the blood benumbed, so
that she would never recover, and if she sought further assistance, it
would be the worse for her. These opinions indicate common sense and
prudence at least, whether we consider them as originating with the
_umquhile_ Thome Reid, or with the culprit whom he patronized. The
judgments given in the case of stolen goods were also well chosen; for
though they seldom led to recovering the property, they generally
alleged such satisfactory reasons for its not being found as effectually
to cover the credit of the prophetess. Thus Hugh Scott's cloak could not
be returned, because the thieves had gained time to make it into a
kirtle. James Jamieson and James Baird would, by her advice, have
recovered their plough-irons, which had been stolen, had it not been the
will of fate that William Dougal, sheriff's officer, one of the parties
searching for them, should accept a bribe of three pounds not to find
them. In short, although she lost a lace which Thome Reid gave her out
of his own hand, which, tied round women in childbirth, had the power of
helping their delivery, Bessy Dunlop's profession of a wise woman seems
to have flourished indifferently well till it drew the evil eye of the
law upon her.
More minutely pressed upon the subject of her familiar, she said she had
never known him while among the living, but was aware that the person so
calling himself was one who had, in his lifetime, actually been known in
middle earth as Thome Reid, officer to the Laird of Blair, and who died
at Pinkie. Of this she was made certain, because he sent her on errands
to his son, who had succeeded in his office, and to others his
relatives, whom he named, and commanded them to amend certain trespasses
which he had done while alive, furnishing her with sure tokens by which
they should know that it was he who had sent her. One of these errands
was somewhat remarkable. She was to remind a neighbour of some
particular which she was to recall to his memory by the token that Thome
Reid and he had set out together to go to the battle which took place on
the Black Saturday; that the person to whom the message was sent was
inclined rather to move in a different direction, but that Thome Reid
heartened him to pursue his journey, and brought him to the Kirk of
Dalry, where he bought a parcel of figs, and made a present of them to
his companion, tying them in his handkerchief; after which they kept
company till they came to the field upon the fatal Black Saturday, as
the battle of Pinkie was long called.
Of Thome's other habits, she said that he always behaved with the
strictest propriety, only that he pressed her to go to Elfland with him,
and took hold of her apron as if to pull her along. Again, she said she
had seen him in public places, both in the churchyard at Dalry and on
the street of Edinburgh, where he walked about among other people, and
handled goods that were exposed to sale, without attracting any notice.
She herself did not then speak to him, for it was his command that, upon
such occasions, she should never address him unless he spoke first to
her. In his theological opinions, Mr. Reid appeared to lean to the
Church of Rome, which, indeed, was most indulgent to the fairy folk. He
said that the _new law, i.e.,_ the Reformation, was not good, and that
the old faith should return again, but not exactly as it had been
before. Being questioned why this visionary sage attached himself to her
more than to others, the accused person replied, that when she was
confined in childbirth of one of her boys, a stout woman came into her
hut, and sat down on a bench by her bed, like a mere earthly gossip;
that she demanded a drink, and was accommodated accordingly; and
thereafter told the invalid that the child should die, but that her
husband, who was then ailing, should recover. This visit seems to have
been previous to her meeting Thome Reid near Monkcastle garden, for that
worthy explained to her that her stout visitant was Queen of Fairies,
and that he had since attended her by the express command of that lady,
his queen and mistress. This reminds us of the extreme doting attachment
which the Queen of the Fairies is represented to have taken for Dapper
in "The Alchemist." Thome Reid attended her, it would seem, on being
summoned thrice, and appeared to her very often within four years. He
often requested her to go with him on his return to Fairyland, and when
she refused, he shook his head, and said she would repent it.
If the delicacy of the reader's imagination be a little hurt at
imagining the elegant Titania in the disguise of a _stout_ woman, a
heavy burden for a clumsy bench, drinking what Christopher Sly would
have called very sufficient small-beer with a peasant's wife, the
following description of the fairy host may come more near the idea he
has formed of that invisible company:--Bessie Dunlop declared that as
she went to tether her nag by the side of Restalrig Loch (Lochend, near
the eastern port of Edinburgh), she heard a tremendous sound of a body
of riders rushing past her with such a noise as if heaven and earth
would come together; that the sound swept past her and seemed to rush
into the lake with a hideous rumbling noise. All this while she saw
nothing; but Thome Reid showed her that the noise was occasioned by the
wights, who were performing one of their cavalcades upon earth.
The intervention of Thome Reid as a partner in her trade of petty
sorcery did not avail poor Bessie Dunlop, although his affection to her
was apparently entirely platonic--the greatest familiarity on which he
ventured was taking hold of her gown as he pressed her to go with him to
Elfland. Neither did it avail her that the petty sorcery which she
practised was directed to venial or even beneficial purposes. The sad
words on the margin of the record, "Convict and burnt," sufficiently
express the tragic conclusion of a curious tale.
Alison Pearson, in Byrehill, was, 28th May, 1588, tried for invocation
of the spirits of the devil, specially in the vision of one Mr. William
Sympson, her cousin and her mother's brother's son, who she affirmed was
a great scholar and doctor of medicine, dealing with charms and abusing
the ignorant people. Against this poor woman her own confession, as in
the case of Bessie Dunlop, was the principal evidence.
As Bessie Dunlop had Thome Reid, Alison Pearson had also a familiar in
the court of Elfland. This was her relative, William Sympson aforesaid,
born in Stirling, whose father was king's smith in that town. William
had been taken away, she said, by a man of Egypt (a Gipsy), who carried
him to Egypt along with him; that he remained there twelve years, and
that his father died in the meantime for opening a priest's book and
looking upon it. She declared that she had renewed her acquaintance with
her kinsman so soon as he returned. She further confessed that one day
as she passed through Grange Muir she lay down in a fit of sickness, and
that a green man came to her, and said if she would be faithful he might
do her good. In reply she charged him, in the name of God and by the law
he lived upon, if he came for her soul's good to tell his errand. On
this the green man departed. But he afterwards appeared to her with many
men and women with him, and against her will she was obliged to pass
with them farther than she could tell, with piping, mirth, and good
cheer; also that she accompanied them into Lothian, where she saw
puncheons of wine with tasses or drinking-cups. She declared that when
she told of these things she was sorely tormented, and received a blow
that took away the power of her left side, and left on it an ugly mark
which had no feeling. She also confessed that she had seen before
sunrise the good neighbours make their salves with pans and fires.
Sometimes, she said, they came in such fearful forms as frightened her
very much. At other times they spoke her fair, and promised her that she
should never want if faithful, but if she told of them and their doings,
they threatened to martyr her. She also boasted of her favour with the
Queen of Elfland and the good friends she had at that court,
notwithstanding that she was sometimes in disgrace there, and had not
seen the queen for seven years. She said William Sympson is with the
fairies, and that he lets her know when they are coming; and that he
taught her what remedies to use, and how to apply them. She declared
that when a whirlwind blew the fairies were commonly there, and that her
cousin Sympson confessed that every year the tithe of them were taken
away to hell. The celebrated Patrick Adamson, an excellent divine and
accomplished scholar, created by James VI. Archbishop of St. Andrews,
swallowed the prescriptions of this poor hypochondriac with good faith
and will, eating a stewed fowl, and drinking out at two draughts a quart
of claret, medicated with the drugs she recommended. According to the
belief of the time, this Alison Pearson transferred the bishop's
indisposition from himself to a white palfrey, which died in
consequence. There is a very severe libel on him for this and other
things unbecoming his order, with which he was charged, and from which
we learn that Lethington and Buccleuch were seen by Dame Pearson in the
Fairyland.[34] This poor woman's kinsman, Sympson, did not give better
shelter to her than Thome Reid had done to her predecessor. The margin
of the court-book again bears the melancholy and brief record,
"_Convicta et combusta_."
[Footnote 34: See "Scottish Poems," edited by John G. Dalzell, p. 321.]
The two poor women last mentioned are the more to be pitied as, whether
enthusiasts or impostors, they practised their supposed art exclusively
for the advantage of mankind. The following extraordinary detail
involves persons of far higher quality, and who sought to familiars for
more baneful purposes.
Katherine Munro, Lady Fowlis, by birth Katherine Ross of Balnagowan, of
high rank, both by her own family and that of her husband, who was the
fifteenth Baron of Fowlis, and chief of the warlike clan of Munro, had a
stepmother's quarrel with Robert Munro, eldest son of her husband, which
she gratified by forming a scheme for compassing his death by unlawful
arts. Her proposed advantage in this was, that the widow of Robert, when
he was thus removed, should marry with her brother, George Ross of
Balnagowan; and for this purpose, her sister-in-law, the present Lady
Balnagowan, was also to be removed. Lady Fowlis, if the indictment had a
syllable of truth, carried on her practices with the least possible
disguise. She assembled persons of the lowest order, stamped with an
infamous celebrity as witches; and, besides making pictures or models in
clay, by which they hoped to bewitch Robert Munro and Lady Balnagowan,
they brewed, upon one occasion, poison so strong that a page tasting of
it immediately took sickness. Another earthen jar (Scotticè _pig_) of
the same deleterious liquor was prepared by the Lady Fowlis, and sent
with her own nurse for the purpose of administering it to Robert Munro.
The messenger having stumbled in the dark, broke the jar, and a rank
grass grew on the spot where it fell, which sheep and cattle abhorred to
touch; but the nurse, having less sense than the brute beasts, and
tasting of the liquor which had been spilled, presently died. What is
more to our present purpose, Lady Fowlis made use of the artillery of
Elfland in order to destroy her stepson and sister-in-law. Laskie
Loncart, one of the assistant hags, produced two of what the common
people call elf-arrow heads, being, in fact, the points of flint used
for arming the ends of arrow-shafts in the most ancient times, but
accounted by the superstitious the weapons by which the fairies were
wont to destroy both man and beast. The pictures of the intended victims
were then set up at the north end of the apartment, and Christian Ross
Malcolmson, an assistant hag, shot two shafts at the image of Lady
Balnagowan, and three against the picture of Robert Munro, by which
shots they were broken, and Lady Fowlis commanded new figures to be
modelled. Many similar acts of witchcraft and of preparing poisons were
alleged against Lady Fowlis.
Her son-in-law, Hector Munro, one of his stepmother's prosecutors, was,
for reasons of his own, active in a similar conspiracy against the life
of his own brother. The rites that he practised were of an uncouth,
barbarous, and unusual nature. Hector, being taken ill, consulted on his
case some of the witches or soothsayers, to whom this family appears to
have been partial. The answer was unanimous that he must die unless the
principal man of his blood should suffer death in his stead. It was
agreed that the vicarious substitute for Hector must mean George Munro,
brother to him by the half-blood (the son of the Katharine Lady Fowlis
before commemorated). Hector sent at least seven messengers for this
young man, refusing to receive any of his other friends till he saw the
substitute whom he destined to take his place in the grave. When George
at length arrived, Hector, by advice of a notorious witch, called Marion
MacIngarach, and of his own foster-mother, Christian Neil Dalyell,
received him with peculiar coldness and restraint. He did not speak for
the space of an hour, till his brother broke silence and asked, "How he
did?" Hector replied, "That he was the better George had come to visit
him," and relapsed into silence, which seemed singular when compared
with the anxiety he had displayed to see his brother; but it was, it
seems, a necessary part of the spell. After midnight the sorceress
Marion MacIngarach, the chief priestess or Nicneven of the company, went
forth with her accomplices, carrying spades with them. They then
proceeded to dig a grave not far from the seaside, upon a piece of land
which formed the boundary betwixt two proprietors. The grave was made as
nearly as possible to the size of their patient Hector Munro, the earth
dug out of the grave being laid aside for the time. After ascertaining
that the operation of the charm on George Munro, the destined victim,
should be suspended for a time, to avoid suspicion, the conspirators
proceeded to work their spell in a singular, impressive, and, I believe,
unique manner. The time being January, 1588, the patient, Hector Munro,
was borne forth in a pair of blankets, accompanied with all who were
entrusted with the secret, who were warned to be strictly silent till
the chief sorceress should have received her information from the angel
whom they served. Hector Munro was carried to his grave and laid
therein, the earth being filled in on him, and the grave secured with
stakes as at a real funeral. Marion MacIngarach, the Hecate of the
night, then sat down by the grave, while Christian Neil Dalyell, the
foster-mother, ran the breadth of about nine ridges distant, leading a
boy in her hand, and, coming again to the grave where Hector Munro was
interred alive, demanded of the witch which victim she would choose, who
replied that she chose Hector to live and George to die in his stead.
This form of incantation was thrice repeated ere Mr. Hector was removed
from his chilling bed in a January grave and carried home, all remaining
mute as before. The consequence of a process which seems ill-adapted to
produce the former effect was that Hector Munro recovered, and after the
intervention of twelve months George Munro, his brother, died. Hector
took the principal witch into high favour, made her keeper of his sheep,
and evaded, it is said, to present her to trial when charged at Aberdeen
to produce her. Though one or two inferior persons suffered death on
account of the sorceries practised in the house of Fowlis, the Lady
Katharine and her stepson Hector had both the unusual good fortune to be
found not guilty. Mr. Pitcairn remarks that the juries, being composed
of subordinate persons not suitable to the rank or family of the person
tried, has all the appearance of having been packed on purpose for
acquittal. It might also, in some interval of good sense, creep into the
heads of Hector Munro's assize that the enchantment being performed in
January, 1588, and the deceased being only taken ill of his fatal
disease in April, 1590, the distance between the events might seem too
great to admit the former being regarded as the cause of the latter.[35]
[Footnote 35: Pitcairn's "Trials," vol. i. pp. 191-201.]
Another instance of the skill of a sorcerer being traced to the
instructions of the elves is found in the confession of John Stewart,
called a vagabond, but professing skill in palmistry and jugglery, and
accused of having assisted Margaret Barclay, or Dein, to sink or cast
away a vessel belonging to her own good brother. It being demanded of
him by what means he professed himself to have knowledge of things to
come, the said John confessed that the space of twenty-six years ago, he
being travelling on All-Hallow Even night, between the towns of Monygoif
(so spelled) and Clary, in Galway, he met with the King of the Fairies
and his company, and that the King of the Fairies gave him a stroke with
a white rod over the forehead, which took from him the power of speech
and the use of one eye, which he wanted for the space of three years. He
declared that the use of speech and eyesight was restored to him by the
King of Fairies and his company, on an Hallowe'en night, at the town of
Dublin, in Ireland, and that since that time he had joined these people
every Saturday at seven o'clock, and remained with them all the night;
also, that they met every Hallow-tide, sometimes on Lanark Hill
(Tintock, perhaps), sometimes on Kilmaurs Hill, and that he was then
taught by them. He pointed out the spot of his forehead on which, he
said, the King of the Fairies struck him with a white rod, whereupon the
prisoner, being blindfolded, they pricked the spot with a large pin,
whereof he expressed no sense or feeling. He made the usual declaration,
that he had seen many persons at the Court of Fairy, whose names he
rehearsed particularly, and declared that all such persons as are taken
away by sudden death go with the King of Elfland. With this man's
evidence we have at present no more to do, though we may revert to the
execrable proceedings which then took place against this miserable
juggler and the poor women who were accused of the same crime. At
present it is quoted as another instance of a fortune-teller referring
to Elfland as the source of his knowledge.