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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._




[Illustration]

_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.

    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.

                                                             _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 <DW72>
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."

[Illustration: "THE WITCHES' RIDE." Sketch by J. Copland, Dundrennan.]

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 poss