THE SWEET SINGERS.
(Vol. v., p. 372.)
A. N. asks for some historical notices of the above fanatics: as he may not be satisfied with Timperley's meagre allusion, allow me to refer him to the Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee: London, 1714. The author of this, "An Officer of the Army," speaking of the stiff-necked Presbyterians, says:
"At this time (1681), about thirty of these deluded people left their families and business, and went to the hills, where they lived in rocks and caves for some weeks. John Gib, sailor in Borrowstowness, Walter Ker, in Trafritham, —— Gemmison, in Linlithgow, were their chief leaders. They called themselves the Sweet Singers of Israel, eat nothing that there was salt in or paid tax to the king, blotted the name of king out of their Bibles, and cohabited all together. When a party of dragoons took them at the Ouffins, in Tweeddale, they were all lying on their faces, and jumped up in a minute, and called out with an audible voice, that God Almighty would consume the party with fire from heaven, for troubling the people of God. On the road, as they went to Edinburgh, when any of their relations or acquaintances came to visit them, they spit at them, and threw themselves on their faces, and bellowed like beasts, whereof his Highness (the Duke of York, then in Scotland) being informed, ordered them immediately to be set at liberty."
A more detailed account of these Gibbites will be found in the curious Presbyterian biographies "collected by, and printed for Patrick Walker, in the Bristo-Port of Edinburgh," the early part of last century. In that entitled "Some remarkable Passages in the Life, &c. of Mr. Daniel Cargill:" 12mo. Edin. 1732, A. N. will find the original story of the crazy skipper and his band of "three men and twenty-six women," whom worthy Mr. Cargill endeavoured unsuccessfully to reclaim. From this it would appear that the sweet singers went far greater lengths than above described, and that Gib, after the dispersion of his followers, took himself off to America, "where," says the aforesaid Patrick, "he was much admired by the blind Indians for his familiar converse with the devil." For the further information of your correspondent, I would add that Walker's account of the Gibbites is very well condensed in that more accessible book Biographia Scoticana, better known as the Scots Worthies, where the deluded Gib figures under the head of "God's Justice exemplified in his Judgments upon Persecutors."
J. O.