Part 6

MY LORD, after narrow Inquisition, hath delivered many true and remarkable observes on this Subject; yet to encourage a further Scrutiny, I crave leave to say,

THAT 1. But a few Women are endued with this Sight in respect of Men, and their Predictions not so certane.

2. This Sight is not criminal, since a Man can come by it unawares, and without his Consent; but it is certaine he sie more fatall and fearfull Things than he do gladsome.

3. THE Seers avouch, that severalls who go to the Siths, (or People at Rest, and, in respect of us, in Peace,) before the natural Period of their Lyfe expyre, do frequently appear to them.

4. A VEHEMENT Desyre to attain this Airt is very helpfull to the Inquyrer; and the Species of ane Absent Friend, which appears to the Seers, as clearly as if he had sent his lively Picture to present it selfe before him, is no phantastick Shaddow of a sick Apprehension, but a reality, and a Messinger, coming for unknown Reasons, not from the originall Similitude of it selfe, but from a more swift and pragmantick People, which recreat them selves in offering secret Intelligence to Men, tho generally they are unacquainted with that Kind of Correspondence, as if they had lived in a different element from them.

5. THO my Collections were written long before I saw My Lord of Tarbett’s, yet I am glad that his descriptions and mine correspond so nearly. The Maid my Lord mentions, who saw her Image still before her, suteth with the CO-WALKER named in my Account; which tho some, at first Thought, might conjecture to be by the Refraction of a Cloud or Mist, as in the Parelij, (the whole Air and every Drop of Water being a Mirrour to returne the Species of Things, were our visive Faculty sharpe enough to apprehend them,) or a naturall Reflexion, from the same Reasons that an Echo can be redoubled by Airt; yet it were more fasable to impute this Second Sight to a Quality infused into the Eye by ane Unction: for Witchies have a sleepie Oyntment, that, when applyed, troubles their Fantasies, advancing it to have unusuall Figures and Shapes represented to it, as if it were a Fit of Fanaticism, Hypocondriack Melancholly, or Possession of some insinuating Spirit, raising the Soul beyond its common Strain, if the palpable Instances and Realities seen, and innocently objected to the Senses did not disprove it, make the Matter a palpable Verity, and no Deception; yet since this Sight can be bestowed without Oyntment, or dangerous Compact, the Qualification is not of so bad an Originall. Therefore,

6. BY my Lord’s good Leave, I presume to say, that this Sight can be no Quality of the Air nor of the Eyes; becaus, 1. such as live in the same Air, and sie all other Things as farr off and as clearly, yet have not the SECOND SIGHT. 2. A SEER can give another Person this Sight transiently, by putting his Hand and Foot in the Posture he requires of him. 3. The unsullied Eyes of Infants can naturally perceave no new unaccustomed Objects, but what appear to other Men, unless exalted and clarified some Way, as Ballaam’s Ass for a Time; tho in a Witches Eye the Beholder cannot sie his own Image reflected, as in the Eyes of other People; so that Defect of Objects, as well as Diversities of the Subject, may appear differently on severall Tempers and Ages. 4. Tho also some are of so venemous a Constitution, by being radicated in Envy and Malice, that they pierce and kill (like a Cockatrice) whatever Creature they first set their Eye on in the Morning; so was it with Walter Grahame, some Time living in the Paroch wherein now I am, who killed his own Cow after commending its Fatness, and shot a Hair with his Eyes, having praised its swiftness, (such was the Infection of ane evill Eye;) albeit this was unusuall, yet he saw no Object but what was obvious to other Men as well as to himselfe. 5. If the being transported to live in another Countrey did obscure the Second Sight, nather the Parson nor the Maid needed be much troubled for her Reflex-selfe; a little Peregrination, and going from her wonted Home, would have salved her Fear. Wherefore,

7. SINCE the Things seen by the Seers are real Entities, the Presages and Predictions found true, but a few endued with this Sight, and those not of bad Lyves, or addicted to Malifices, the true Solution of the Phænomenon seems rather to be, the courteous Endeavours of our fellow Creatures in the Invisible World to convince us, (in Opposition to Sadduce’s, Socinians, and Atheists,) of a Deity; of Spirits; of a possible and harmless Method of Correspondence betwixt Men and them, even in this Lyfe; of their Operation for our Caution and Warning; of the Orders and Degrees of Angells, whereof one Order, with Bodies of Air condensed and curiously shap’t, may be nixt to Man, superior to him in Understanding, yet unconfirmed; and of their Region, Habitation, and Influences on Man, greater than that of Starrs on inanimat Bodies; a Knowledge (be-like) reserved for these last atheistick Ages, wherein the Profanity of Mens Lives hath debauched and blinded their Understanding, as to MOSES, JESUS, and the Prophets, (unless they get Convictions from Things formerly known,) as from the Regions of the Dead: nor doth the ceasing of the Visions, upon the Seers Transmigration into forrein Kingdoms, make his Lordship’s Conjecture of the Quality of the Air and Eye a white the more probable; but, on the Contrary, it confirms greatly my Account of ane Invisible People, guardian over and care-full of Men, who have their different Offices and Abilities in distinct Counterey’s, as appears in Dan. 10. 13. viz. about Israels, Grecia’s, and Persia’s assistant Princes, whereof who so prevaileth giveth Dominion and Ascendant to his Pupills and Vassalls over the opposite Armies and Countreys; so that every Countrey and Kingdom having their topical Spirits, or Powers assisting and governing them, the SCOTTISH SEER banished to America, being a Stranger there, as well to the invisible as to the visible Inhabitants, and wanting a Fimiliarity of his former Correspondents, he could not have the Favour and Warnings, by the severall Visions and Predictions which were wont to be granted him by these Acquantances and Fayourites in his own Countrey. For if what he wont to sie were Realities, (as I have made appear,) ’twere too great ane Honour for Scotland to have such seldom-seen Watchers and predominant Powers over it alone, acting in it so expressly, and all other Nations wholly destitute of the lyke; tho, without all peradventure, all other People wanted the right Key of their Cabinet, and the exact Method of Correspondence with them, except the sagacious active Scots, as many of them have retained it of a long Time, and by Surpryses and Raptures do often foirtell what in Kyndness is really represented to them at severall Occasions. To which Purpose the learned lynx-ey’d Mr. Baxter, on Rev. 12. 7. writting of the Fight betwixt Michaell and the Dragon, gives a verie pertinent Note, viz. That he knows not but ere any great Action (especiall tragicall) is don on Earth, that first the Battell and Victory is acted and atchieved in the Air betwixt the good and evill Spirits: Thus he. It seems these were the mens Guardians; and the lyke Battells are oft tymes perceav’d in a Loaft in the Nycht-time; the Event of which myght easily be represented by some one of the Number to a Correspondent on Earth, as frequently the Report of great Actions have been more swiftly caried to other Countreys than all the Airt of us Mortals could possibly dispatch it. St. Austine, on Mark, 9. 4. giveth no small Intimation of this Truth, averring that Elias appeared with Jesus on the Mount in his proper Bodie, but Moses in ane aereall Bodie, assumed like the Angels who appeared, and had Ability to eat with Abraham, tho no Necessity on the Account of their Bodies. As lyke wise the late Doctrine of the Pre-existence of Souls, living into aereall Vehicles, gives a singular Hint of the Possibility of the Thing, if not a direct Prooff of the whole Assertion; which yet moreover may be illuminated by diverse other Instances of the lyke Nature, and as wonderfull, besides what is above said. As,

8. THE invisible Wights which haunt Houses seem rather to be some of our subterranean Inhabitants, (which appear often to Men of the Second Sight,) than evill Spirits or Devills; because, tho they throw great Stones, Pieces of Earth and Wood, at the Inhabitants, they hurt them not at all, as if they acted not malitiously, like Devills at all, but in Sport, lyke Buffoons and Drolls. All Ages have affoorded some obscure Testimonies of it, as Pythagoras his Doctrine of Transmigration; Socrates’s Dæmon that gave him [Warning] of future Dangers; Platoe’s classing them into various vehiculated Specieses of Spirits; Dionisius Areopagita’s marshalling nyne Orders of Spirits, superiour and subordinate; the Poets their borrowing of the Philosophers, and adding their own Fancies of Fountain, River, and Sea Nymphs, Wood, Hill, and Montain Inhabitants, and that every Place and Thing, in Cities and Countreys, had speciall invisible regular Gods and Governours. Cardan speaks of his Father his seeing the Species of his Friend, in a moon-shyn Night, riding fiercely by his Window on a white Horse, the verie Night his Friend dy’d at a Vast Distance from him; by which he understood that some Alteration would suddenly ensue. Cornelius Aggrippa, and the learned Dr. Mor, have severall Passages tending that Way. The Noctambulo’s themselves would appear to have some forrein joquing Spirit possessing and supporting them, when they walk on deep Waters and Topes of Houses without Danger, when asleep and in the dark; for it was no way probable that their Apprehension, and strong Imagination setting the Animal Spirits a work to move the Body, could preserve it from sinking in the Deepth, or falling down head-long, when asleep, any more than when awake, the Body being then as ponderous as before; and it is hard to attribute it to a Spirit flatelie evill and Enemy to Man, because the Noctambulo returns to his own Place safe. And the most furious Tribe of the Dæmons are not permitted by Providence to attacke Men so frequently either by Night or by Day: For in our Highlands, as there may be many fair Ladies of this aereal Order, which do often tryst with lascivious young Men, in the quality of Succubi, or lightsome Paramours and Strumpets, called Leannain Sith, or familiar Spirits (in Dewter. 18. 11.); so do many of our Hyghlanders, as if a strangling by the Night MARE, pressed with a fearfull Dream, or rather possessed by one of our aereall Neighbours, rise up fierce in the Night, and apprehending the neerest Weapons, do push and thrust at all Persons in the same Room with them, sometymes wounding their own Comerades to dead. The lyke whereof fell sadly out within a few Miles of me at the writting hereof. I add but one Instance more, of a very young Maid, who lived neir to my last Residence, that in one Night learned a large Peice of Poesy, by the frequent Repetition of it, from one of our nimble and courteous Spirits, whereof a Part was pious, the rest superstitious, (for I have a Copy of it,) and no other Person was ever heard to repeat it before, nor was the Maid capable to compose it of herself.

9. He demonstrated and made evident to Sense this extraordinary Vision of our Tramontain Seers, and what is seen by them, by what is said above, many haveing seen this same Spectres and Apparitions at once, haveing their visive Faculties entire; for non est disputandum de gustu. Itt now remaines to shew that it is not unsutable to Reason nor the Holy Scriptures.

FIRST, That it is not repugnant to Reason, doeth appear from this, that it is no less strange for Immortal Sparks and Souls to come and be immersed into gross terrestrial elementary Bodies, and be so propagated, so nourished, so fed, soe cloathed as they are, and breathe in such ane Air and World prepared for them, then for Hollanders or Hollow-cavern Inhabitants to live and traffick among us, in another State of Being, without our Knowledge. For Raymond de Subinde, in his 3d Booke, Chap. 12. argues quaintly, that all Sorts of Living Creatures have a happie rational Politie of there own, with great Contentment; which Government and mutual Converse of theirs they all pride and pluim themselves, because it is as unknown to Man, as Man is to them. Much more, that the Sone of the HIGHEST SPIRIT should assume a Bodie like ours, convinces all the World that no other Thing that is possible needs be much wondered at.

2. The Manucodiata, or Bird of Paradise, living in the highest Region of the Air; common Birds in the second Region; Flies and Insects in the lowest; Men and Beasts on the Earth’s Surface; Worms, Otters, Badgers, in Waters; lyke wise Hell is inhabited at the Centre, and Heaven in the Circumference: can we then think the middle Cavities of the Earth emptie? I have seen in Weems, (a Place in the Countie of Fyfe, in Scotland,) divers Caves cut out as vast Temples under Ground; the lyke is a Countie of England; in Malta is a Cave, wherein Stons of a curious Cut are thrown in great Numbers every Day; so I have had barbed Arrow-heads of yellow Flint, that could not be cut so small and neat, of so brittle a Substance, by all the Airt of Man. It would seem therefoir that these mention’d Works were done by certaine Spirits of pure Organs, and not by Devills, whose continual Torments could not allow them so much Leasure. Besides these, I have found fyve Curiosities in Scotland, not much observ’d to be elsewhere. 1. The Brounies, who in some Families are Drudges, clean the Houses and Dishes after all go to Bed, taking with him his Portion of Food and removing befor Day-break. 2. The Mason Word, which tho some make a Misterie of it, I will not conceal a little of what I know. It is lyke a Rabbinical Tradition, in way of Comment on Jachin and Boaz, the two Pillars erected in Solomon’s Temple, (1 Kings, 7. 21.) with ane Addition of some secret Signe delyvered from Hand to Hand, by which they know and become familiar one with another. 3. This Second Sight, so largely treated of before. 4. Charmes, and curing by them very many Diseases, sometimes by transferring the Sicknes to another. 5. A being Proof of Lead, Iron, and Silver, or a Brieve making Men invulnerable. Divers of our Scottish Commanders and Souldiers have been seen with blue Markes only, after they were shot with leaden Balls; which seems to be an Italian Trick, for they seem to be a People too currious and magically inclyned, Finally Iris-men, our Northern-Scotish, and our Athole Men are so much addicted to and delighted with Harps and Musick, as if, like King Saul, they were possessed with a forrein Spirit, only with this Difference, that Musick did put Saul’s Pley-fellow a sleep, but roused and awaked our Men, vanquishing their own Spirits at Pleasure, as if they were impotent of its Powers, and unable to command it; for wee have seen some poor Beggers of them, chattering their Teeth for Cold, that how soon they saw the Fire, and heard the Harp, leapt thorow the House like Goats and Satyrs. As there paralell Stories in all Countries and Ages reported of these our obscure People, (which are no Dotages,) so is it no more of Necessitie to us fully to know their Beings and Manner of Life, then to understand distinctly the Politie of the nyne Orders of Angels; or with what Oyl the Lamp of the Sun is maintained so long and regularlie; or why the Moon is called a great Luminary in Scripture, while it only appears to be so; or if the Moon be truly inhabited, because Telescopes discover Seas and Mountains in it, as well as flaming Furnishes in the Sun; or why the Discovery of America was look’t on as a Fairie Tale, and the Reporters hooted at as Inventors of ridiculous Utopias, or the first probable Asserters punished as Inventures of new Gods and Worlds; or why in England the King cures the Struma by stroaking, and the Seventh Son in Scotland; whither his temperat Complexion conveys a Balsome, and sucks out the corrupting Principles by a frequent warme sanative Contact, or whither the Parents of the Seventh Child put furth a more eminent Virtue to his Production than to all the Rest, as being the certain Meridian and hight to which their Vigour ascends, and from that furth have a graduall declyning into a feebleness of the Bodie and its Production. And then, 1. Why is not the 7th Son infected himselfe by that Contagion he extracts from another? 2. How can continual stroaking with a cold Hand have foe strong a natural Operation, as to exhale all the Infections warming corroding Vapours. 3. Why may not a 7th Daughter have the same Vertue? So that it appears, albeit, a happie natural Constitution concurre, yet something in it above Nature. Therefore every Age hath left some secret for its Discoverie; who knows but this Entercourse betwixt the two Kinds of rationall Inhabitants of the same Earth may be not only beleived shortly, but as friely entertain’d, and as well known, as now the Airt of Navigation, Printing, Limning, riding on Saddles with Stirrups, and the Discoveries of Microscopes, which were sometimes a great a Wonder, and as hard to be beleived.

10. THO I will not be so curious nor so peremptorie as he who will prove the Posibility of the Philosopher’s Stone from Scripture, Job, 28. 1. 2. Job, 22. 24. 25.; or the Pluralitie of Worlds, from John, 14. 2. and Hebrews ij. 3.; nor the Circulation of Blood from Eccles. 12. and 6.; nor the Tanismanical Airt, from the Blind and Lame mentioned in 2d of Samuel, 5. 6. yet I humblie propose these Passages which may give some Light to our Subject at least, and show that this Polity and Rank of People is not a Thing impossible, nor the modest and innocent Scrutiny of them impertinent or unsafe. The Legion or Brigad of Spirits (mentioned Mark, 5. 10.) besought our Saviour not to send them away out of the Countrey; which shows they were DÆMONES LOCI, Topical Spirits, and peculiar Superintendents and Supervisors assign’d to that Province. And the Power over the Nations granted (Rev. 2. 26.) to the Conquerors of Vice and Infidelitie, Sound somewhat to that Purpose. Tobit had a Dæmon attending Marriage, Chap. 6. Verse, 15; and in Matth. 4. and 5. ane evill Spirit came in a Visible Shape to tempt our Saviour, who himselfe denyed not the sensible appearing of Ghosts to our Sight, but said, their Bodies were not composed of Flesh and Bones, as ours, Luke, 24. 39. And in Philip. 2. 10. our verie Subterraneans are expressly said to bow to the Name of JESUS. Elisha, not intellectually only, but sensibly, saw Gehazi when out of the Reach of ane ordinary View. It wants not good Evidents that there are more managed by God’s Spirits, good, evill, and intermediate Spirits, among Men in this World, then we are aware of; the good Spirits ingesting fair and heroick Apprehensions and Images of Vertue and the divyne Life, thereby animating us to act for a higher Happines, according to our Improvement; and relinquishing us as strangely upon our Neglect, or our embraceing the deceatfull syrene-like Pictures and Representations of Pleasures and Gain, presented to our Imaginations by evill and sportfull Angells, to allure to ane unthinking, ungenerous, and sensual Lyfe; non of them having power to compell us to any Misdemeanour without our flat Consent. Moreover, this Life of ours being called a Warfair, and God’s saying that at last there will be no Peace to the Wicked, our bussie and silent Companions also being called Siths, or People at Rest and Quiet, in respect of us; and withall many Ghosts appearing to Men that want this Second Sight, in the very Shapes, and speaking the same Language, they did when incorporate and alive with us; a Matter that is of ane old imprescriptible Tradition, (our Highlanders making still a Distinction betwixt Sluagh Saoghalta and Sluagh Sith, averring that the Souls goe to the Sith when dislodged;) many real Treasures and Murders being discovered by Souls that pass from among our selves, or by the Kindness of these our airie Neighbours, non of which Spirits can be altogither inorganical. No less than the Conseits about Purgatory, or a State of Rescue; the Limbus Patrum et Infantum, Inventions, [which] tho misapplyed, yet are not Chimæras, and altogither groundless. For ab origine, it is nothing but blansh and faint Discoveries of this SECRET REPUBLICK of ours here treated on, and additional Fictions of Monks doting and crazied Heads, our Creed saying that our Saviour descended εἰς ᾅδου, to the invisible Place and People. And many Divines supposing that the Deity appear’d in a visible Shape seen by Adam in the Cooll of the Day, and speaking to him with ane audible voice. And Jesus, probably by the Ministery of invisible Attendants, conveying more meat of the same Kind to the fyve Thowsand that wes fed by him with a very few Loaves and Fishes, (for a new Creation it was not.) The Zijmjiim and Ochim, in Isa. 13. 21. 22. Thes Satyres, and doolfull unknown Creatures of Islands and Deserts, seem to have a plain Prospect that Way. Finally, the eternal Happiness enjoyed in the 3d Heavens, being more mysterious than most of Men take it to be. It is not a sense whollie adduced to Scripture to say, that this SIGHT, and the due Objects of it, hath some Vestige in holy Write, but rather ’tis modestly deduced from it.

11. It only now remains to ansear the obvious Objections against the Reality and Lawfullness of this Speculation.

QUESTION 1. How do you salve the Second Sight from Compact and Witchcraft?

ANSWER. Tho this Correspondence with the Intermediate Unconfirm’d People (betwixt Man and Angell) be not ordinary to all of us who are Superterraneans, yet this SIGHT falling some Persons by Accident, and its being connatural to others from their Birth, the Derivation of it cannot always be wicked. A too great Curiositie, indeed, to acquyre any unnecessary Airt, may be blameworthy; but diverse of the SECRET COMMONWEALTH may, by Permission, discover themselves as innocently to us, who are in another State, as some of us Men do to Fishes, which are in another Element, when we plunge and dive into the Bottom of the Seas, their native Region; and in Process of Time we may come to converse as familiarly with these nimble and agile Clans (but with greater Pleasure and Profit,) as we do now with the Chino’s Antipodes.

QUESTION 2. Are they subject to Vice, Lusts? Passion, and Injustice, as we who live on the Surface of the Earth?

ANSWER. The Seers tell us that these wandering Aereal People have not such an Impetus and fatall Tendency to any Vice as Men, as not being drenched into so gross and dregy Bodies as we, but yet are in ane imperfect State, and some of them making better Essays for heroick Actions than others; having the same Measures of Vertue and Vice as wee, and still expecting advancement to a higher and more splendid State of Lyfe. One of them is stronger than many Men, yet do not incline to hurt Mankind, except by Commission for a gross Misdemeanour, as the destroying Angell of Ægypt, and the Assyrians, Exod. 12. 29. 2 Kings, 10. 35. They haunt most where is most Barbaritie; and therefoir our ignorant Ancestors, to prevent the Insults of that strange People, used as rude and course a Remedie; such as Exorcisms, Donations, and Vows: But how soon ever the true Piety prevailed in any Place, it did not put the Inhabitants beyond the Reach and Awthoritie of these subtile inferiour Co-inhabitants and Colleagues of ours: The FATHER OF ALL SPIRITS, and the Person himselfe, having the only Command of his Soul and Actions, a concurrance they may have to what is virtuously done; for upon committing of a foul Deed, one will find a Demure upon his Soul, as if his cheerfull Collegue had deserted him.

QUESTION 3. Do these airie Tribes procreate? If so, how are they nourished, and at what period of Time do they die?

ANSWER. Supposing all Spirits to be created at once in the Beginning, Souls to pre-exist and to circle about into several States of Probationship; to make them either totally unexcusable, or perfectly happie against the last Day, solves all the Difficulties. But in very Deed, and speaking suteable to the Nature of Things, there is no more Absurditie for a Spirit to inform ane Infant in Bodie of Airs, than a Bodie composed of dull and drusie Earth; the best of Spirits have alwayes delyghted more to appear into aereal, than into terrestrial Bodyes. They feed most what on Quintessences, and aetheriall Essences. The Pith and Spirits only of Women’s Milk feed their Children, being artificially conveyed, (as Air and Oyl sink into our Bodies,) to make them vigorous and fresh. And this shorter Way of conveying a pure Aliment, (without the usuall Digestions,) by transfusing it, and transpyring thorow the Pores into the Veins, Arteries, and Vessells that supplie the Bodie, is nothing more absurd, than ane Infant’s being fed by the Navel before it is borne, or than a Plant, which groweth by attracting a livelie Juice from the Earth thorow many small Roots and Tendons, whose courser Pairts be adapted and made connatural to the Whole, doth quickly coalesce by the ambient Cold; and so are condens’d and bak’d up into a confirm’d Wood in the one, and solid Bodie of the Flesh and Bone in the other. A Notion which, if intertained and approv’d, may shew that the late Invention of soaking and transfusing (not Blood, but) athereal virtuall Spirits, may be usefull both for Nourishment and Health, whereof is a Vestige in the damnable Practise of evill Angells, their sucking of Blood and Spirits out of Witches Bodys (till they drew them into a deform’d and dry Leanness,) to feid their own Vehicles withall, leaving what we call the Witches Mark behind; a Spot that I have seen, as a small Mole, horny, and brown-coloured; throw which Mark, when a large Brass Pin was thrust (both in Buttock, Nose, and Rooff of the Mouth,) till it bowed and become crooked, the Witches, both Men and Women, nather felt a Pain, nor did bleed, nor knew the precise Time when this was adoing to them, (there Eyes only being covered.) Now the Air being a Body as well as Earth, no Reason can be given why there may not be Particles of more vivific Spirit form’d of it for Procreation, then is possible to be of Earth, which takes more Time and Pains to rarify and ripen it, ere it can come to have a prolific Virtue. And if our Aping Darlings did not thus procreate, there whole Number would be exhausted after a considerable Space of Time. For tho they are of more refyned Bodies and Intellectualls than wee, and of far less heavy and corruptive Humours, (which cause a Dissolution,) yet many of their Lives being dissonant to right Reason and their own Laws, and their Vehicles not being wholly frie of Lust and Passion, especially of the more spirituall and hautie Sins they pass (after a long healthy Lyfe) into one Orb and Receptacle fitted for their Degree, till they come under the general Cognizance of the last Day.

QUESTION 4. Doth the acquiring of this Second Sight make any Change on the Acquirers Body, Mind, or Actions?

ANSWER. All uncouth SIGHTS enfeebles the SEER. Daniel, tho familiar with divyne Visions, yet fell frequently doun without Strength, when dazzled with a Power which had the Ascendant of, and passed on him beyond his Comprehension, Chap. 10. 8. 17. So our SEER is put in a Rapture, Transport, and sort of Death, as divested of his Body and all its Senses, when he is first made participant of this curious Peice of Knowledge: But it maketh no Wramp or Strain in the Understanding of any; only to the Fancy’s of clownish or illiterate Men, it creates some Affrightments and Disturbances, because of the Strongness of the Showes, and their Unacquaintedness with them. And as for their Lyfe, the Persons endued with this Rarity are, for the most Part, candid, honest, and sociable People. If any of them be subject to Immoralities, this obstruse Skill is not to be blamed for it; for unless themselves be the Tempters, the Colonies of the Invisible Plantations, with which they intercommune, do provoke them by no Villainy or Malifice, nather at their first Acquaintance nor after a long Familiarity.

QUESTION 5. Doth not Sathan interpose in such Cases by many subtile unthought Insinuations, as to him who let the Fly, or Familiar, go out of the Box, and yet found the Fly of his own putting in, as serviceable as the other would have been?

ANSWER. The Goodness of the Lyfe, and Designs of the ancient Prophets and Seers, was one of the best Prooffs of their Mission.

NOTE.

In trying to collect evidence as to the Rerrick “evil spirit” from Kirk-Session Records, I have been most kindly assisted by the Rev. Mr. M‘Conachie, Minister of Rerrick. Mr. M‘Conachie finds that only two parishes in the Stewartry, Kells and Girthon, have records containing the years 1695, 1696. The records of Rerrick do not go so far back. We are therefore left to the pamphlet of 1696, by Telfair, which is an unusually business-like statement, the names of attesting witnesses being added in the marginal notes. For phenomena singularly similar to those of Rerrick, Obeah, by Mr. H. J. Bell, may be consulted. (Obeah, Sampson Low & Co., London, 1889, p. 93.)

NOTES.

INTRODUCTION.