Part 54
The Privy Council issued a commission to certain gentlemen in Irvine, to try two persons of that burgh accused of witchcraft. In the recital on which the commission proceeds, it is set forth--‘that John Stewart, vagabond, and Margaret Barclay, spouse to Archibald Deane, burgess of Irvine, were lately apprehendit upon most probable and clear presumption of their practising of witchcraft agains John Deane, burgess of Irvine, and procuring thereby the destruction of the said John, and the drowning and perishing of the ship called the _Gift of God_, of Irvine, and of the haill persons and goods being thereintill: likeas the said John Stewart, upon examination, has clearly and _pounktallie_ confessit the said devilish practices, and the said Margaret, foolishly presuming by her denial to eschew trial and punishment, doeth most obdurately deny the truth of that matter, notwithstanding that the said John constantly avows the same upon her,’ &c.[380]
It appears that Margaret Barclay had conceived and expressed violent hatred of her brother-in-law, John Deane, and his wife, in consequence of their raising or propagating a scandal against her. John Deane’s ship having been lost at Padstow, on the English coast, and John Stewart, a _spaeman_, having spoken of this fact before it was known by ordinary means, a suspicion arose that the latter had been concerned in some sorcery by which the vessel had suffered. On his being taken up, a confession was extorted from him, that he had taught magical arts to Margaret Barclay, by which she had brought about the loss of the vessel; and he narrated a ridiculous scene of enchantment as having occurred on the shore, with the devil present in the form of a lady’s lapdog, Margaret Barclay being the principal actor. Margaret was then apprehended, as also one Isobel Tosh, whom Stewart described as an assistant at the evil deed. Margaret’s servant-girl, a child of eight years of age, and Isobel Tosh, were, apparently through terror, induced to make admissions supporting Stewart’s statement. A most tragical series of incidents followed. Isobel Tosh, trying to escape from prison, fell and hurt herself so much that she died in a few days. Stewart hanged himself in prison. Margaret Barclay, tortured by the laying of weights upon her limbs, confessed what was laid to her charge; and though she denied all when relieved, yet was she condemned and executed, finally returning to an acknowledgment of guilt, which can only be attributed to hallucination. Throughout all this affair--to all appearance consisting of a series of forced accusations and confessions, till reason at length gave way in the principal party--the Earl of Eglintoun, so noted afterwards as a Covenanter, took part along with the commissioners; while the assistant parish clergyman, Mr David Dickson, and several other ministers, most of them noted in the annals of the time as men of extraordinary piety, assisted in working on the religious feelings of the accused to induce confession. It does not seem ever to have occurred to any of these well-meaning persons, lay or clerical, that a worthy duty in the case would have been to inquire into the facts, and judge by collating them, whether there was any ground whatever for the accusation.[381]
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[Sidenote: JUNE 11.]
[Sidenote: 1618.]
The Privy Council was informed of ‘an abuse lately taken up by a number of young boys and pages, servants to noblemen, barons, and gentlemen.’ It was represented that these persons, ‘whenever they fund ony boy newly enterit in service, or pagerie, as they term it, lay hands upon him, and impose upon him [the payment of] some certain pieces of gold, to be spent in drinking, riot, and excess, for receiving of him in their society and brotherheid.’ It was further alleged that, ‘if ony of thir new enterit boys refuse to condescend to them in this point, they do then shamefully misuse them, awaiting all occasions to harm and disgrace them;’ so that many open disturbances were the consequence. The Council issued a proclamation against these practices, threatening heavy punishment to all who might be guilty of the like in future.--_P. C. R._
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[Sidenote: JUNE 20.]
‘At twa afternoon, David Toshach of Monyvaird, younger, [was] slain in the south gate of Perth by Lawrence Bruce, younger of Cultmalindy, his brother, and divers others their associates; the twa that was with Monyvaird, ane deadly hurt, but died not; the other [David Malloch], his right hand clean stricken fra him. This done in a moment of time. All the committers thereof eschewit out of the town, before any of the townsmen heard of ony such thing.’[382]
No one seems to have immediately suffered for this outrage; but, four years after, the Privy Council informed the king that Cultmalindy, besides banishing his two sons and a servant, had offered a thousand crowns by way of assythment to the friends of the slaughtered man, and £2000 to the two men who had been mutilated. ‘This feid,’ it is added, ‘has altogether undone auld Cultmalindy; for his estate is exhausted and wracked, and he is become very waik of his judgment and understanding, by the grief that thir troubles has brought upon him; whilk were the occasion of his wife’s death, and of the exile and banishment of his sons and friends, now by the space of four years; in the whilk exile twa of his friends of good rank and quality has departed this life.’--_Pit._
Mr Pitcairn quotes a local proverb as having apparently taken its rise with reference to the misfortune of one of Monyvaird’s servants:
‘Hands aff’s fair-play: Davie Malloch says nay.’
[Sidenote: 1618.]
It was rather a bitter jest for David. This person, from the locality, may be presumed to have been an ancestor, or near collateral relation, of David Malloch, subsequently called Mallet, the poet.
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[Sidenote: JUNE.]
The king’s declaration regarding sports on the Sunday and other holidays came to Edinburgh. It commenced with a judicious allusion to the abundance of papists in Lancashire. He had there found, too, the people complaining that they were prevented from indulging in their ancient sports. One effect of this must be that they would think papistry a better religion, since it allowed of sports. Another inconvenience is, ‘that this prohibition barreth the common and meaner people from using such exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them, and, in place thereof, sets up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their ale-houses; for when shall the common people have leave to exercise, if not upon the Sundays and holidays, seeing they must apply their labour, and win their living in other days,’ The king therefore willed that no lawful recreation be barred to the people--‘such as dancing, either men or women; archery for men, leaping, vaulting ... nor from having of May-games, Whitsun-ales, and Morris-dances, and the setting up of May-poles;’ seeing, however, that no one was allowed so to indulge who had not previously attended service in church.
[Sidenote: 1618.]
When James Somerville of Drum was at school at the village of Dalserf in Lanarkshire, about 1608, it was customary ‘to solemnise the first Sunday of May with dancing about a May-pole, firing of pieces, and all manner of revelling then in use.’ His grandson tells an anecdote _apropos_: ‘There being at that time few or no merchants in this petty village, to furnish necessaries for the scholars’ sports, this youth resolves to furnish himself elsewhere, that so he may appear with the bravest. In order to this, by break of day, he rises and goes to Hamilton, and there bestows all the money that for a long time before he had gotten from his friends, or had otherwise purchased, upon ribbons of divers colours, a new hat and gloves. But in nothing he bestowed his money more liberally than upon gunpowder, a great quantity whereof he buys for his own use, and to supply the wants of his comrades. Thus furnished with these commodities, but with ane empty purse, he returns to Dalserf by seven o’clock (having travelled that Sabbath morning above eight miles), puts on his ... clothes and new hat, flying with ribbons of all colours; in this equipage, with his little fusee upon his shoulder, he marches to the churchyard where the May-pole was set up, and the solemnity of that day was to be kept. There first at the foot-ball he equalled any that played; but for handling of his piece in charging and discharging, he was so ready, that he far surpassed all his fellow-scholars, and became a teacher of that art to them before the thirteenth year of his own age.... The day’s sport being over, he had the applause of all the spectators, the kindness of his condisciples, and the favour of the whole inhabitants of that little village.’--_Mem. Som._
In June 1625, the presbytery of Lanark exercised discipline upon John Baillie, William Baillie, John Hirshaw, John and Thomas Prentices, and Robert Watt, a piper, ‘profaners of the Sabbath in fetching hame a May-pole, and dancing about the same, on Pasch Sunday.’--_R. P. L._
It is manifest from the church-registers of that time, that the universal external observance of the Sunday as a Sabbath, for which Scotland has long been remarkable, was not yet established. In August 1628, the minister of Carstairs regretted to the presbytery of Lanark the breach of the Sabbath ‘by the insolent behaviour of men and women in foot-balling, dancing, and barley-breaks.’ About the same time, two tailors were libelled before the same court for working on Sunday. Such things could not have happened a few years later, or at any time since.
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[Sidenote: JULY.]
[Sidenote: 1618.]
A mysterious affair occupied the attention of the state-officers. While the servants of one Kennedy, a notary, residing in Galloway, were ‘filling muck in beir-seed time,’ they had found a withered human hand amongst some dung. No person having lately been murdered or missed in the country, it was impossible to tell whence this severed member had come or to whom it had belonged. Kennedy, who had lately come to the house, professed to know nothing of the matter. It seemed to him that the hand had been there many years. This affair might have passed over with little notice, if it had not been followed up by a series of marvellous occurrences. As his wife was sitting with some gossips at supper in her husband’s absence, some blood was observed upon the candlestick, and afterwards some more matter resembling gore was found on the threshold of the cellar door. It was also stated that, as Kennedy was walking one day with the minister, near the parish church, some drops of blood were seen upon the grass. All these things being reported to the authorities in Edinburgh, they gave orders for Kennedy’s apprehension, and he was accordingly brought thither, and kept six weeks in the Tolbooth. When examined, he could assign no cause for the above facts, but ‘complained that his cattle and horses had died in great number, and that his wife had long been vexed with extraordinary sickness; all which he ascribed to witchcraft used against them.’ It being impossible to bring anything home against the man, he was dismissed.--_M. S. P._
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[Sidenote: AUG. 11.]
That eccentric genius, John Taylor, the Thames waterman, commonly called the WATER-POET, set out from his native London on the 14th of July, on a journey to Scotland--‘because,’ says he, ‘I would be an eye-witness of divers things which I had heard of that country.’ He called it a Pennyless Pilgrimage, because he intended to attempt making his way without any funds of his own, and entirely by the use of what he might get from friends by the way. Having traversed the intermediate distance on horseback in about a month, he entered Scotland by the western border, walking, while a guide rode with his baggage on a gelding. Somewhat to his surprise, he observed no remarkable change on the face of nature.
‘There I saw sky above, and earth below, And as in England, there the sun did shew; The hills with sheep replete, with corn the dale, And many a cottage yielded good Scotch ale.’
As he passed along Annandale, he counted eleven hundred neat at as good grass as ever man did mow. At Moffat, where he arrived much wearied by his walk from Carlisle, he ‘found good ordinary country entertainment; my fare and my lodging was sweet and good, and might have served a far better man than myself.’ He travelled next day twenty-one miles to a sorry village called Blyth, in Peeblesshire, where his lodging was less agreeable. Next again, passing through a fertile country for corn and cattle, he entered Edinburgh.
[Sidenote: 1618.]
A gentleman named Mr John Maxwell, whom he casually encountered, conducted him to see the Castle, which he deemed impregnable, and where he noted the extraordinary piece of antique ordnance which still exists there under the name of Mons Meg. ‘I crept into it, lying on my back, and I am sure there was room enough and to spare for a greater than myself.’ He describes the principal street of the city as the fairest and goodliest he had ever seen, ‘the buildings on each side of the way being all of squared stone, five, six, and seven stories high.’ ‘I found entertainment beyond my expectation or merit, and there had fish, flesh, bread, and fruit in such variety, that I think I may without offence call it superfluity. The worst was,’ he adds waggishly, ‘that wine and ale were so scarce, and the people there such misers of it, that every night before I went to bed, if any man had asked me a civil question, all the wit in my head could not have made him a sober answer.’
At Leith, he met a bountiful friend in Bernard Lindsay, one of the grooms of his majesty’s bed-chamber, and was informed that ‘within the compass of one year, there was shipped away from that port fourscore thousand bolls of wheat, oats, and barley, into Spain, France, and other foreign parts, and every boll contains the measure of four English bushels ... besides some hath been shipped away from St Andrews, Dundee, Aberdeen, Dysart, Kirkcaldy, Kinghorn, Burntisland, Dunbar, and other portable towns.’
[Sidenote: 1618.]
In good time, Taylor commenced a progress through the country, entertained everywhere by hospitable gentlemen, who probably considered his witty conversation ample recompense. At Dunfermline, he viewed with pleasure the palace and remains of the abbacy, and the surrounding gardens, orchards, and meadows. Then he went to visit at Culross the enterprising coal-proprietor, Sir George Bruce, who entertained him hospitably and sent three of his men to guide him over the works. The imagination of the Water-poet was greatly excited by the singular mine which Sir George had here formed, partly within the sea-mark. ‘At low-water, the sea being ebbed away, and a great part of the sand bare--upon this same sand, mixed with rocks and crags, did the master of this great work build a circular frame of stone, very thick, strong, and joined together with bituminous matter, so high withal that the sea at the highest flood, or the greatest rage of storm or tempest, can neither dissolve the stones so well compacted in the building, nor yet overflow the height of it. Within this round frame, he did set workmen to dig ... they did dig forty foot down right into and through a rock. At last they found that which they expected, which was sea-coal. They, following the vein of the mine, did dig forward still; so that in the space of eight-and-twenty or nine-and-twenty years, they have digged more than an English mile, under the sea, [so] that when men are at work below, a hundred of the greatest ships in Britain may sail over their heads. Besides, the mine is most artificially cut like an arch or vault, all that great length, with many nooks and by-ways; and it is so made that a man may walk upright in most places.’
‘All I saw was pleasure mixed with profit, Which proved it to be no tormenting Tophet; For in this honest, worthy, harmless hall, There ne’er did any damnèd devil dwell.’
‘The sea at certain places doth leak or soak into the mine, which by the industry of Sir George Bruce is conveyed to one well near the land, where he hath a device like a horse-mill, with three great horses and a great chain of iron, going downward many fathoms, with thirty-six buckets attached to the chain, of the which eighteen go down still to be filled, and eighteen ascend still to be emptied, which do empty themselves without any man’s labour into a trough that conveys the water into the sea again.... Besides, he doth make every week ninety or a hundred tons of salt, which doth serve most part of Scotland; some he sends into England, and very much into Germany.’
The pennyless pilgrim proceeded to Stirling, of whose castle and palace he speaks in terms of high admiration; stating, moreover, that at his host Mr John Archibald’s, his only difficulty was for ‘room to contain half the good cheer that he might have had.’ Advancing to St Johnston (Perth), he lodged at an inn kept by one Patrick Pitcairn. It was his design to visit Sir William Murray of Abercairny; but he here learned that that gentleman had left home on a hunting excursion. It was suggested that he might overtake him at Brechin; but on reaching that city, he found that Sir William had left it four days before.
[Sidenote: 1618.]
Taylor now made a journey such as few Englishmen had any experience of in that age. Proceeding along Glen Esk, and passing by a road which lay over a lofty precipice, he lodged the first night at a poor cot on the Laird of Edzell’s land, where nothing but Erse was spoken, and where he suffered somewhat from vermin--the only place, however, in Scotland where he met any such troubles. With immense difficulty, he next day crossed Mount Skene by an uneven stony way, full of bogs, quagmires, and long heath, ‘where a dog with three legs would outrun a horse with four,’ and came in the evening to Braemar. This he describes as a large county, full of lofty mountains, compared with which English hills are but ‘as a liver or a gizzard below a capon’s wing.’ ‘There I saw Benawne [Ben Aven], with a furred mist upon his snowy head, instead of a night-cap.’
He here found his friend, Sir William Murray, engaged in Highland sports, along with the Earl of Mar, the Earl of Enzie (afterwards second Marquis of Huntly), the Earl of Buchan, and Lord Erskine, accompanied by their countesses, and a hundred other knights and squires, with their followers, ‘all in general in one habit, as if Lycurgus had been there.’ ‘For once in the year, which is the whole month of August, and sometimes part of September, many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, for their pleasure, come into these Highland countries to hunt, where they conform to the habit of the Highlandmen, who for the most part speak nothing but Irish.... Their habit is shoes with but one sole apiece; stockings which they call short hose, made of a warm stuff of divers colours, which they call tartan: as for breeches, many of them, nor their forefathers, never wore any, but a jerkin of the same stuff that their hose is of, their garters being bands or wreaths of hay or straw, with a plaid about their shoulders, which is a mantle of divers colours, [of] much finer and lighter stuff than their hose; with flat blue caps on their heads, a handkerchief knit with two knots about their neck; and thus they are attired.... Their weapons are long bows and forked arrows, swords and targets, harquebusses, muskets, durks, and Lochaber axes. With these arms, I found many of them armed for the hunting. As for their attire, any man of what degree soever that comes amongst them, must not disdain to wear it; for if they do, they will disdain to hunt, or willingly to bring in their dogs; but if men be kind to them, and be in their habit, then they are conquered with kindness, and the sport will be plentiful. This was the reason that I found so many noblemen and gentlemen in those shapes.’
[Sidenote: 1618.]
Taylor allowed himself to be invested by the Earl of Mar in Highland attire, and then accompanied the party for twelve days into a wilderness devoid of corn and human habitations--probably the district around the skirts of Ben Muicdhui. He found temporary lodges called _lonchards_, designed for the use of the sportsmen, and he himself received a kind of accommodation in that of Lord Erskine. The kitchen, he tells us, was ‘always on the side of a bank, many kettles and pots boiling, and many spits turning and winding, with great variety of cheer, as venison--baked, sodden, roast, and stewed beef--mutton, goats, kid, hares, fresh salmon, pigeons, hens, capons, chickens, partridge, moorcoots, heath-cocks, cappercailzies, and termagants; good ale, sack, white and claret, tent (or Alicant), with most potent _aquavitæ_.’ Thus a company of about fourteen hundred persons was most amply fed.
‘The manner of the hunting is this: five or six hundred men rise early in the morning, and disperse themselves divers ways, and seven, eight, or ten miles compass, they bring or chase in the deer in many herds (two, three, or four hundred in a herd), to such or such a place, as the noblemen shall appoint them. Then, when day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middle, through burns and rivers; and then they, being come to the place, lie down on the ground, till those foresaid scouts, who are called the Tinchel-men, bring down the deer.... After we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us (their heads making a show like a wood), which, being followed close by the Tinchel, are chased down into the valley where we lay. Then, all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose, as occasion serves, upon the herd of deer, [so] that with dogs, guns, arrows, durks, and daggers, in the space of two hours, fourscore fat deer were slain, which after are disposed, some one way and some another, twenty or thirty miles, and more than enough left for us to make merry withal at our rendezvous’.
[Sidenote: 1618.]