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.

The rite of baptismal entry, which all novitiates had to undergo, was also a regular part of the weird proceedings of this witches' Sabbath.

A magic circle was drawn round the top of the meeting mound, across which none but the initiated and those about to be initiated, dare pass. In the centre of this circle a fire emitting a thick, dense, sulphurous smoke sprang up, round which the assembled company of witches and warlocks danced with joined hands and wild abandon. Into the charmed circle the converts, naked and terror-stricken, were brought and dragged to the fire, which now sent forth even thicker clouds as if in a measure to screen the secrecy of the rites even from those participating, and scream after scream arose as their naked bodies were stamped with the hellish sign-manual of the order. A powerful soothing ointment was, however, immediately poured on the raw wounds, giving instant relief and almost effacement to the ordinary eye, the well-concealed cicatrix becoming the "witch-mark." The grim nature of the ordeal now gave place to proceedings more in keeping with a festival, and dancing of the "better the worse" order and general hilarity and high revelry followed, the Prince of Darkness joining in the dance, giving expert exhibitions with favoured partners.

Next in importance to Satan himself at these "Walpurgis" night festivals at Locharbriggs tryst, was the celebrated witch "Gyre Carline," who possessed a wand of great creative and destructive power. It is told how in the days when Lochar Moss was an open arm of the Solway Firth, an extra large tide swept up and washed away several of the witch steeds from the Locharbrigg hill. This so enraged the "Gyre Carline" that over the unruly waters she waved her magic wand, and what was "once a moss and then a sea" became "again a moss and aye will be." At other meetings of less consequence the more important carlines of different districts met together, when schemes of persecution and revenge were evolved, and where philtres and charms were brewed and concocted for distribution amongst their inferior sisters whose office it was to give them effect. A concoction of virulent power was in the form of a bannock or cake, better known as the "witch cake," whose uncannie preparation and potency has been so quaintly described in verse by Allan Cunningham:--