Witchcraft and Superstitious Record in the South-Western District of Scotland

Part 1

Witchcraft and Superstitious Record

Witchcraft and Superstitious Record IN THE South-Western District of Scotland

Witchcraft Witch Trials Fairy Lore Brownie Lore Wraiths Warnings Death Customs Funeral Ceremony Ghost Lore Haunted Houses

BY J. MAXWELL WOOD, M.B.

Author of "Smuggling in the Solway and Around the Galloway Sea-board"

Editor of "The Gallovidian," 1900-1911

Illustrated from Special Drawings by John Copland, Esq., Dundrenna

DUMFRIES: J. MAXWELL & SON 1911

"For she's gathered witch dew in the Kells kirkyard, In the mirk how of the moon, And fed hersel' wi' th' wild witch milk With a red-hot burning spoon." --M'Lehan.

To Alison Jean Maxwell Wood

A "witch" of my most intimate acquaintance

PREFACE.

Throughout Dumfriesshire and Galloway remnants of old-world customs still linger, suggesting a remoter time, when superstitious practice and belief held all-important sway in the daily round and task of the people.

In gathering together the available material bearing upon such matters, more particularly in the direction of witchcraft, fairy-lore, death warnings, funeral ceremony and ghost story, the author trusts that by recording the results of his gleanings much as they have been received, and without at all attempting to subject them to higher analysis or criticism, a truer aspect and reflection of the influence of superstition upon the social life of those older days, may be all the more adequately presented.

112 GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH, August 9th, 1911.

CONTENTS.

Page.

CHAPTER I.

Traditional Witchcraft Described 1

CHAPTER II.

Witch Narrative 21

CHAPTER III.

Witchcraft Trials and Persecution 66

CHAPTER IV.

Fairies and Brownies 142

CHAPTER V.

Wraiths and Warnings 198

CHAPTER VI.

Part 2

Death Customs and Funeral Ceremony 216

CHAPTER VII.

Ghost Lore and Haunted Houses 244

APPENDIX.

(a) Surprising Story of the Devil of Glenluce 302

(b) A True Relation of an Apparition which Infested the house of Andrew Mackie, Ringcroft of Stocking, Parish of Rerwick, etc. 321

(c) The Laird o' Coul's Ghost 344

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page.

The Witches' Ride 4

"And Perish'd Mony a Bonny Boat" 12

The Carlin's Cairn 35

A Witch-Brew and Incantation 38

"A Running Stream they dare na cross" 69

A Witch Trial 85

The Burning of the Nine Women on the Sands of Dumfries, April 13th, 1659 114

Penance 125

"In Fairy Glade" 152

"Riddling in the Reek" 167

An Eerie Companion 206

"Deid Lichts" 211

Funeral Hospitality 222

A Galloway Funeral of Other Days 238

The Headless Piper of Patiesthorn 266

The Ghost of Buckland Glen 271

"To Tryst with Lag" 280

Ringcroft of Stocking 324

TAIL-PIECES.

Part 3

Page.

A Threefold Charm 'gainst Evil 20

Witch Stool and Brooms 65

Witch Cauldron, Ducking Stool, and Stake 141

To Kep Skaith 197

A Midnight Revel 215

Haunted 243

WITCHCRAFT AND SUPERSTITIOUS RECORD IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN DISTRICT OF SCOTLAND.

CHAPTER I.

TRADITIONAL WITCHCRAFT DESCRIBED.

"When out the hellish legion sallied." --Tam o' Shanter.

In the far-off days, when Superstition, in close association with the "evil sister" of Ignorance, walked abroad in the land, the south-western district of Scotland shared very largely in the beliefs and terrors embraced under the general descriptive term of witchcraft. Active interference in the routine of daily life on the part of the Prince of Darkness and his agencies was fully believed in. The midnight ride, the power of conversion into animal semblance and form, mystic rite and incantation, spells and cantrips, as well as the presence on earth of the Devil himself, who generally appeared in some alluring form--all had a firmly-established place in the superstitious and impressionable minds of the people who dwelt in the land of those darker days.

In approaching the whole matter for descriptive purposes, the traditional, or as it may perhaps be fittingly termed, the "ideal" form of witchcraft, falls naturally first to be considered, and here the existence of a secret society or unholy order of witches and warlocks meeting together at certain appointed times, figures as an outstanding feature, qualification to belong to which, confessed rare powers of affinity with the powers of evil and darkness. The more these witches and warlocks were feared in their ordinary guise as human mortals by the country-side or district to which they belonged, the higher the rank accorded to them in secret conclave, and the special notoriety of having been branded or "scored," at the hands of an angry populace, with the sign of the cross on the forehead, carried with it special recognition of itself. Reputed gatherings or witch-festivals were celebrated periodically, the most important and outstanding taking place at Hallowmass, and such eerie places of meeting as the lonely ruins of Sweetheart Abbey and Caerlaverock Castle, were the appropriate scenes of their midnight rites and revels; but most of all in this south-western district was it to the rising slope of Locharbriggs Hill, not many miles from Dumfries, that the "hellish legion" repaired.

There is a remnant extant of an old song called the "Witches' Gathering," that with quaint and mystic indication tells of the preliminary signals and signs, announcing that a midnight re-union or "Hallowmass rade" as it was aptly termed, had been arranged and appointed:--

"When the gray howlet has three times hoo'd, When the grimy cat has three times mewed, When the tod has yowled three times i' the wode, At the red moon cowering ahin the cl'ud; When the stars ha'e cruppen' deep i' the drift, Lest cantrips had pyked them out o' the lift, Up horsies a' but mair adowe, Ryde, ryde for Locher-briggs-knowe!"

On such a night the very elements themselves seemed in sympathy. The wind rose, gust following gust, in angry and ever-increasing intensity, till it hurled itself in angry blasts that levelled hay-rick and grain-stack, and tore the thatched roof from homestead and cot, where the frightened dwellers huddled and crept together in terror. Over and with higher note than the blast itself, high-pitched eldritch laughter, fleeting and mocking, skirled and shrieked through the air. Then a lull, with a stillness more terrifying than even the wild force of the angry blast, only to be almost immediately broken with a crash of ear-splitting thunder, and the flash and the glare of forked and jagged flame, lighting up the unhallowed pathway of the "witches' ride."

The journey itself, or rather the mode of progression in passing to the "witch gathering," was itself steeped in "diabolerie" of varying degree. The simple broomstick served the more ordinary witch for a steed. Another vehicle was the chariot of "rag-wort" or ragweed, "harnessed to the wind;" for sisters of higher rank, broomsticks specially shod with the bones of murdered men, became high mettled and most spirited steeds; but the possession of a bridle, the leather of which was made from the skin of an unbaptised infant, and the iron bits forged at the "smithy" of the Evil One himself, gave to its possessor the power of most potent spell. Only let a witch shake this instrument of Satan over any living thing, man or beast, and at once it was transformed into an active witch steed in the form generally of a gray horse, with the full knowledge and resentment that a spell had been wrought, to compass this ignoble use. This was familiarly known and described as being "ridden post by a witch."

No better picture was ever drawn of the wild witch diabolerie and abandon than in "Tam o' Shanter," but it may be claimed for Galloway that in the possession of the powerful poem of "Maggie o' the Moss," Ayrshire is followed very closely, as the following quotation bearing upon this particular point brings out:--

"But Maggie had that nicht to gang Through regions dreary, dark, and lang, To hold her orgies.

* * * * *

Then cross his haunches striding o'er, She gave him the command to soar: At first poor Simon, sweir to yield, Held hard and fast the frosty field; His body now earth's surface spurn'd, He seem'd like gravitation turned; His heels went bickering in the air, He held till he could haud nae mair, Till first wi' ae han', syne the tither, He lost his haud o't a' thegither; And mounted up in gallant style, Right perpendicular for a mile.

* * * * *

For brawly ken'd she how to ride, And stick richt close to Simon's hide; For aft had Maggie on a cat Across the German Ocean sat; And wi' aul' Nick and a' his kennel, Had often crossed the British Channel, And mony a nicht wi' them had gone To Brussels, Paris, or Toulon; And mony a stormy Hallowe'en Had Maggie danced on Calais Green!"

Like a swarm of bees in full flight they passed, all astride of something, be it rag-wort, broomstick, kail-runt, hare, cat, or domestic fowl, or even as indicated riding post on a human steed.

Assembled at the Dumfriesshire or Galloway "Brocken," tribute to Satan, who presided in person, had to be paid for the privilege of exercising their unholy licence over their several districts and neighbourhoods. This took the form of unchristened "Kain Bairns," the witches' own by preference, but failing this, the stolen offspring of women of their own particular neighbourhood.

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