celebrated John Clerk of Eldin, had the honour to be amongst the first
to decline acting as a commissioner on the trial of a witch, to which he
was appointed so early as 1678,[81] alleging, drily, that he did not
feel himself warlock (that is, conjurer) sufficient to be a judge upon
such an inquisition. Allan Ramsay, his friend, and who must be supposed
to speak the sense of his many respectable patrons, had delivered his
opinion on the subject in the "Gentle Shepherd," where Mause's imaginary
witchcraft constitutes the machinery of the poem.
[Footnote 81: See Fountainhall's "Decisions," vol. i. p. 15.]
Yet these dawnings of sense and humanity were obscured by the clouds of
the ancient superstition on more than one distinguished occasion. In
1676, Sir George Maxwell, of Pollock, apparently a man of melancholic
and valetudinary habits, believed himself bewitched to death by six
witches, one man and five women, who were leagued for the purpose of
tormenting a clay image in his likeness. The chief evidence on the
subject was a vagabond girl, pretending to be deaf and dumb. But as her
imposture was afterwards discovered and herself punished, it is
reasonably to be concluded that she had herself formed the picture or
image of Sir George, and had hid it where it was afterwards found in
consequence of her own information. In the meantime, five of the accused
were executed, and the sixth only escaped on account of extreme youth.
A still more remarkable case occurred at Paisley in 1697, where a young
girl, about eleven years of age, daughter of John Shaw, of Bargarran,
was the principal evidence. This unlucky damsel, beginning her practices
out of a quarrel with a maid-servant, continued to imitate a case of
possession so accurately that no less than twenty persons were condemned
upon her evidence, of whom five were executed, besides one John Reed,
who hanged himself in prison, or, as was charitably said, was strangled
by the devil in person, lest he should make disclosures to the detriment
of the service. But even those who believed in witchcraft were now
beginning to open their eyes to the dangers in the present mode of
prosecution. "I own," says the Rev. Mr. Bell in his MS. "Treatise on
Witchcraft," "there has been much harm done to worthy and innocent
persons in the common way of finding out witches, and in the means made
use of for promoting the discovery of such wretches and bringing them to
justice; so that oftentimes old age, poverty, features, and ill-fame,
with such like grounds not worthy to be represented to a magistrate,
have yet moved many to suspect and defame their neighbours, to the
unspeakable prejudice of Christian charity; a late instance whereof we
had in the west, in the business of the sorceries exercised upon the
Laird of Bargarran's daughter, anno 1697--a time when persons of more
goodness and esteem than most of their calumniators were defamed for
witches, and which was occasioned mostly by the forwardness and absurd
credulity of diverse otherwise worthy ministers of the gospel, and some
topping professors in and about the city of Glasgow."[82]
[Footnote 82: Law's "Memorialls," edited by C.K. Sliarpe, Esq.:
Prefatory Notice, p. 93.]
Those who doubted of the sense of the law or reasonableness of the
practice in such cases, began to take courage and state their objections
boldly. In the year 1704 a frightful instance of popular bigotry
occurred at Pittenweem. A strolling vagabond, who affected fits, laid an
accusation of witchcraft against two women, who were accordingly seized
on, and imprisoned with the usual severities. One of the unhappy
creatures, Janet Cornfoot by name, escaped from prison, but was
unhappily caught, and brought back to Pittenweem, where she fell into
the hands of a ferocious mob, consisting of rude seamen and fishers. The
magistrates made no attempts for her rescue, and the crowd exercised
their brutal pleasure on the poor old woman, pelted her with stones,
swung her suspended on a rope betwixt a ship and the shore, and finally
ended her miserable existence by throwing a door over her as she lay
exhausted on the beach, and heaping stones upon it till she was pressed
to death. As even the existing laws against witchcraft were transgressed
by this brutal riot, a warm attack was made upon the magistrates and
ministers of the town by those who were shocked at a tragedy of such a
horrible cast, There were answers published, in which the parties
assailed were zealously defended. The superior authorities were expected
to take up the affair, but it so happened; during the general
distraction of the country concerning the Union, that the murder went
without the investigation which a crime so horrid demanded. Still,
however, it was something gained that the cruelty was exposed to the
public. The voice of general opinion was now appealed to, and in the
long run the sentiments which it advocates are commonly those of good
sense and humanity.
The officers in the higher branches of the law dared now assert their
official authority and reserve for their own decision cases of supposed
witchcraft which the fear of public clamour had induced them formerly to
leave in the hands of inferior judges, operated upon by all the
prejudices of the country and the populace.
In 1718, the celebrated lawyer, Robert Dundas of Arniston, then King's
Advocate, wrote a severe letter of censure to the Sheriff-depute of
Caithness, in the first place, as having neglected to communicate
officially certain precognitions which he had led respecting some recent
practices of witchcraft in his county. The Advocate reminded this local
judge that the duty of inferior magistrates, in such cases, was to
advise with the King's Counsel, first, whether they should be made
subject of a trial or not; and if so, before what court, and in what
manner, it should take place. He also called the magistrate's attention
to a report, that he, the Sheriff-depute, intended to judge in the case
himself; "a thing of too great difficulty to be tried without very
deliberate advice, and beyond the jurisdiction of an inferior court."
The Sheriff-depute sends, with his apology, the _precognition_[83] of
the affair, which is one of the most nonsensical in this nonsensical
department of the law. A certain carpenter, named William Montgomery,
was so infested with cats, which, as his servant-maid reported, "spoke
among themselves," that he fell in a rage upon a party of these animals
which had assembled in his house at irregular hours, and betwixt his
Highland arms of knife, dirk, and broadsword, and his professional
weapon of an axe, he made such a dispersion that they were quiet for the
night. In consequence of his blows, two witches were said to have died.
The case of a third, named Nin-Gilbert, was still more remarkable. Her
leg being broken, the injured limb withered, pined, and finally fell
off; on which the hag was enclosed in prison, where she also died; and
the question which remained was, whether any process should be directed
against persons whom, in her compelled confession, she had, as usual,
informed against. The Lord Advocate, as may be supposed, quashed all
further procedure.
[Footnote 83: The _precognition_ is the record of the preliminary
evidence on which the public officers charged in Scotland with duties
entrusted to a grand jury in England, incur the responsibility of
sending an accused person to trial.]
In 1720, an unlucky boy, the third son of James, Lord Torphichen, took
it into his head, under instructions, it is said, from a knavish
governor, to play the possessed and bewitched person, laying the cause
of his distress on certain old witches in Calder, near to which village
his father had his mansion. The women were imprisoned, and one or two of
them died; but the Crown counsel would not proceed to trial. The noble
family also began to see through the cheat. The boy was sent to sea, and
though he is said at one time to have been disposed to try his fits
while on board, when the discipline of the navy proved too severe for
his cunning, in process of time he became a good sailor, assisted
gallantly in defence of the vessel against the pirates of Angria, and
finally was drowned in a storm.
In the year 1722, a Sheriff-depute of Sutherland, Captain David Ross of
Littledean, took it upon him, in flagrant violation of the then
established rules of jurisdiction, to pronounce the last sentence of
death for witchcraft which was ever passed in Scotland. The victim was
an insane old woman belonging to the parish of Loth, who had so little
idea of her situation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was
destined to consume her. She had a daughter lame both of hands and feet,
a circumstance attributed to the witch's having been used to transform
her into a pony, and get her shod by the devil. It does not appear that
any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the
person of a creature so helpless; but the son of the lame daughter, he
himself distinguished by the same misfortune, was living so lately as to
receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of
Sutherland in her own right, to whom the poor of her extensive country
are as well known as those of the higher order.
Since this deplorable action there has been no judicial interference in
Scotland on account of witchcraft, unless to prevent explosions of
popular enmity against people suspected of such a crime, of which some
instances could be produced. The remains of the superstition sometimes
occur; there can be no doubt that the vulgar are still addicted to the
custom of scoring above the breath[84] (as it is termed), and other
counter-spells, evincing that the belief in witchcraft is only asleep,
and might in remote corners be again awakened to deeds of blood. An
instance or two may be quoted chiefly as facts known to the author
himself.
[Footnote 84: Drawing blood, that is, by two cuts in the form of a cross
on the witch's forehead, confided in all throughout Scotland as the most
powerful counter charm.]
In a remote part of the Highlands, an ignorant and malignant woman seems
really to have meditated the destruction of her neighbour's property, by
placing in a cow-house, or byre as we call it, a pot of baked clay
containing locks of hair, parings of nails, and other trumpery. This
precious spell was discovered, the design conjectured, and the witch
would have been torn to pieces had not a high-spirited and excellent
lady in the neighbourhood gathered some of her people (though these were
not very fond of the service), and by main force taken the unfortunate
creature out of the hands of the populace. The formidable spell is now
in my possession.
About two years since, as they were taking down the walls of a building
formerly used as a feeding-house for cattle, in the town of Dalkeith,
there was found below the threshold-stone the withered heart of some
animal stuck full of many scores of pins--a counter-charm, according to
tradition, against the operations of witchcraft on the cattle which are
kept within. Among the almost innumerable droves of bullocks which come
down every year from the Highlands for the south, there is scarce one
but has a curious knot upon his tail, which is also a precaution lest an
evil eye or an evil spell may do the animal harm.
The last Scottish story with which I will trouble you happened in or
shortly after the year 1800, and the whole circumstances are well known
to me. The dearth of the years in the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of this century was inconvenient to all, but distressing to
the poor. A solitary old woman, in a wild and lonely district, subsisted
chiefly by rearing chickens, an operation requiring so much care and
attention that the gentry, and even the farmers' wives, often find it
better to buy poultry at a certain age than to undertake the trouble of
bringing them up. As the old woman in the present instance fought her
way through life better than her neighbours, envy stigmatized her as
having some unlawful mode of increasing the gains of her little trade,
and apparently she did not take much alarm at the accusation. But she
felt, like others, the dearth of the years alluded to, and chiefly
because the farmers were unwilling to sell grain in the very moderate
quantities which she was able to purchase, and without which her little
stock of poultry must have been inevitably starved. In distress on this
account, the dame went to a neighbouring farmer, a very good-natured,
sensible, honest man, and requested him as a favour to sell her a peck
of oats at any price. "Good neighbour," he said, "I am sorry to be
obliged to refuse you, but my corn is measured out for Dalkeith market;
my carts are loaded to set out, and to open these sacks again, and for
so small a quantity, would cast my accounts loose, and create much
trouble and disadvantage; I dare say you will get all you want at such a
place, or such a place." On receiving this answer, the old woman's
temper gave way. She scolded the wealthy farmer, and wished evil to his
property, which was just setting off for the market. They parted, after
some angry language on both sides; and sure enough, as the carts crossed
the ford of the river beneath the farm-house, off came the wheel from
one of them, and five or six sacks of corn were damaged by the water.
The good farmer hardly knew what to think of this; there were the two
circumstances deemed of old essential and sufficient to the crime of
witchcraft--_Damnum minatum, et malum secutum_. Scarce knowing what to
believe, he hastened to consult the sheriff of the county, as a friend
rather than a magistrate, upon a case so extraordinary. The official
person showed him that the laws against witchcraft were abrogated, and
had little difficulty to bring him to regard the matter in its true
light of an accident.
It is strange, but true, that the accused herself was not to be
reconciled to the sheriffs doctrine so easily. He reminded her that, if
she used her tongue with so much license, she must expose herself to
suspicions, and that should coincidences happen to irritate her
neighbours, she, might suffer harm at a time when there was no one to
protect her. He therefore requested her to be more cautious in her
language for her own sake, professing, at the same time, his belief that
her words and intentions were perfectly harmless, and that he had no
apprehension of being hurt by her, let her wish her worst to him. She
was rather more angry than pleased at the well-meaning sheriffs
scepticism. "I would be laith to wish ony ill either to you or yours,
sir," she said; "for I kenna how it is, but something aye comes after my
words when I am ill-guided and speak ower fast." In short, she was
obstinate in claiming an influence over the destiny of others by words
and wishes, which might have in other times conveyed her to the stake,
for which her expressions, their consequences, and her disposition to
insist upon their efficacy, would certainly of old have made her a fit
victim. At present the story is scarcely worth mentioning, but as it
contains material resembling those out of which many tragic incidents
have arisen.
So low, in short, is now the belief in witchcraft, that perhaps it is
only received by those half-crazy individuals who feel a species of
consequence derived from accidental coincidences, which, were they
received by the community in general, would go near, as on former
occasions, to cost the lives of those who make their boast of them. At
least one hypochondriac patient is known to the author, who believes
himself the victim of a gang of witches, and ascribes his illness to
their charms, so that he wants nothing but an indulgent judge to awake
again the old ideas of sorcery.
LETTER X.
Other Mystic Arts independent of Witchcraft--Astrology--Its
Influence during the 16th and 17th Centuries--Base Ignorance of
those who practised it--Lilly's History of his Life and
Times--Astrologer's Society--Dr. Lamb--Dr. Forman--Establishment of
the Royal Society--Partridge--Connexion of Astrologers with
Elementary Spirits--Dr. Dun--Irish Superstition of the
Banshie--Similar Superstition in the
Highlands--Brownie--Ghosts--Belief of Ancient Philosophers on that
Subject--Inquiry into the respect due to such Tales in Modern
Times--Evidence of a Ghost against a Murderer--Ghost of Sir George
Villiers--Story of Earl St. Vincent--Of a British General
Officer--Of an Apparition in France--Of the Second Lord
Lyttelton--Of Bill Jones--Of Jarvis Matcham--Trial of two
Highlanders for the Murder of Sergeant Davis, discovered by a
Ghost--Disturbances at Woodstock, anno 1649--Imposture called the
Stockwell Ghost--Similar Case in Scotland--Ghost appearing to an
Exciseman--Story of a Disturbed House discovered by the firmness of
the Proprietor--Apparition at Plymouth--A Club of
Philosophers--Ghost Adventure of a Farmer--Trick upon a Veteran
Soldier--Ghost Stories recommended by the Skill of the Authors who
compose them--Mrs. Veal's Ghost--Dunton's Apparition
Evidence--Effect of Appropriate Scenery to Encourage a Tendency to
Superstition--Differs at distant Periods of Life--Night at Glammis
Castle about 1791--Visit to Dunvegan in 1814.
While the vulgar endeavoured to obtain a glance into the darkness of
futurity by consulting the witch or fortune-teller, the great were
supposed to have a royal path of their own, commanding a view from a
loftier quarter of the same _terra incognita_. This was represented as
accessible by several routes. Physiognomy, chiromancy, and other
fantastic arts of prediction afforded each its mystical assistance and
guidance. But the road most flattering to human vanity, while it was at
the same time most seductive to human credulity, was that of astrology,
the queen of mystic sciences, who flattered those who confided in her
that the planets and stars in their spheres figure forth and influence
the fate of the creatures of mortality, and that a sage acquainted with
her lore could predict, with some approach to certainty, the events of
any man's career, his chance of success in life or in marriage, his
advance in favour of the great, or answer any other horary questions, as
they were termed, which he might be anxious to propound, provided always
he could supply the exact moment of his birth. This, in the sixteenth
and greater part of the seventeenth centuries, was all that was
necessary to enable the astrologer to erect a scheme of the position of
the heavenly bodies, which should disclose the life of the interrogator,
or Native, as he was called, with all its changes, past, present, and to
come.
Imagination was dazzled by a prospect so splendid; and we find that in
the sixteenth century the cultivation of this fantastic science was the
serious object of men whose understandings and acquirements admit of no
question. Bacon himself allowed the truth which might be found in a
well-regulated astrology, making thus a distinction betwixt the art as
commonly practised and the manner in which it might, as he conceived, be
made a proper use of. But a grave or sober use of this science, if even
Bacon could have taught such moderation, would not have suited the
temper of those who, inflamed by hopes of temporal aggrandizement,
pretended to understand and explain to others the language of the stars.
Almost all the other paths of mystic knowledge led to poverty; even the
alchemist, though talking loud and high of the endless treasures his art
was to produce, lived from day to day and from year to year upon hopes
as unsubstantial as the smoke of his furnace. But the pursuits of the
astrologer were such as called for instant remuneration. He became rich
by the eager hopes and fond credulity of those who consulted him, and
that artist lived by duping others, instead of starving, like others, by
duping himself. The wisest men have been cheated by the idea that some
supernatural influence upheld and guided them; and from the time of
Wallenstein to that of Buonaparte, ambition and success have placed
confidence in the species of fatalism inspired by a belief of the
influence of their own star. Such being the case, the science was little
pursued by those who, faithful in their remarks and reports, must soon
have discovered its delusive vanity through the splendour of its
professions; and the place of such calm and disinterested pursuers of
truth was occupied by a set of men sometimes ingenious, always forward
and assuming, whose knowledge was imposition, whose responses were, like
the oracles of yore, grounded on the desire of deceit, and who, if
sometimes they were elevated into rank and fortune, were more frequently
found classed with rogues and vagabonds. This was the more apt to be the
case that a sufficient stock of impudence, and some knowledge by rote of
the terms of art, were all the store of information necessary for
establishing a conjurer. The natural consequence of the degraded
character of the professors was the degradation of the art itself.
Lilly, who wrote the history of his own life and times, notices in that
curious volume the most distinguished persons of his day, who made
pretensions to astrology, and almost without exception describes them as
profligate, worthless, sharking cheats, abandoned to vice, and imposing,
by the grossest frauds, upon the silly fools who consulted them. From
what we learn of his own history, Lilly himself, a low-born ignorant
man, with some gloomy shades of fanaticism in his temperament, was
sufficiently fitted to dupe others, and perhaps cheated himself merely
by perusing, at an advanced period of life, some of the astrological
tracts devised by men of less cunning, though perhaps more pretence to
science, than he himself might boast. Yet the public still continue to
swallow these gross impositions, though coming from such unworthy
authority. The astrologers embraced different sides of the Civil War,
and the king on one side, with the Parliamentary leaders on the other,
were both equally curious to know, and eager to believe, what Lilly,
Wharton, or Gadbury had discovered from the heavens touching the fortune
of the strife. Lilly was a prudent person, contriving with some address
to shift the sails of his prophetic bark so as to suit the current of
the time, and the gale of fortune. No person could better discover from
various omens the course of Charles's misfortunes, so soon as they had
come to pass. In the time of the Commonwealth he foresaw the perpetual
destruction of the monarchy, and in 1660 this did not prevent his
foreseeing the restoration of Charles II. He maintained some credit even
among the better classes, for Aubrey and Ashmole both called themselves
his friends, being persons extremely credulous, doubtless, respecting
the mystic arts. Once a year, too, the astrologers had a public dinner
or feast, where the knaves were patronised by the company of such fools
as claimed the title of Philomaths--that is, lovers of the mathematics,
by which name were still distinguished those who encouraged the pursuit
of mystical prescience, the most opposite possible to exact science.
Elias Ashmole, the "most honourable Esquire," to whom Lilly's life is
dedicated, seldom failed to attend; nay, several men of sense and
knowledge honoured this rendezvous. Congreve's picture of a man like
Foresight, the dupe of astrology and its sister arts, was then common in
society. But the astrologers of the 17th century did not confine
themselves to the stars. There was no province of fraud which they did
not practise; they were scandalous as panders, and as quacks sold
potions for the most unworthy purposes. For such reasons the common
people detested the astrologers of the great as cordially as they did
the more vulgar witches of their own sphere.