Thou shalt, in spite of critics live,
Still grateful to each lover.’
[121] Monday, the 29th March, 1652, when an eclipse of the sun took place, there being complete darkness for about eight minutes. Law, in his Memorials, says:—‘The like, as thought by astrologers, was not since the darkness at our Lord’s Passion. The country people, tilling, loosed their ploughs, and thought it had been the latter day.... The birds clapped to the ground.’ According to the Burgh Records of Peebles, the people began to pray to God. This was how the day came to be named ‘the mirk Munonday.’
[122] Historically a true description of the manner in which the Sabbath day was observed immediately before the Reformation. Janet, however, must surely have been speaking more from tradition than personal knowledge.
[123] The popular, but mistaken, notion of the mercheta mulierum. Cosmo Innes, in his Lectures on Scottish Legal Antiquities, pp. 52-53, gives what seems to be the true meaning:—‘Mercheta is the older form of the maritagium or marriage-tax, in the charters of Robert I., and not only the servile class, but the free tenants also paid a maritagium on the marriage of their daughters.... Some learning has been brought to show that, on the Continent, this tax—mercheta mulierum—represented an ancient seignorial right—the jus primae noctis. I have not looked carefully into the French authorities; but I think there is no evidence of a custom so odious existing in England; and in Scotland, I venture to say that there is nothing to ground a suspicion of such a right. The merchet of women with us was simply the tax paid by the different classes of bondmen and tenants and vassals, when they gave their daughters in marriage, and thus deprived the lord of their services, to which he was entitled jure sanguinis.’ The reader may also find the matter very learnedly discussed in the appendix to Lord Hailes’ Annals of Scotland. It need only be remarked that prelates, being spiritual peers, and holding lands from the Crown on the same footing as their brethren of the civil estate, were entitled like them to levy the maritagium.
[124] See text and first note on [p. 94] of the present volume.
[125] A reference to Episcopacy.
[126] This paragraph in itself contains an almost complete commentary on the superstition of which it treats. According to the legend of Thomas the Rhymer the devil levied tribute from the king of Fairy-land.
[127] A scriptural veneration for old age was long a characteristic of the common people of Scotland; but this remark betrays one of the tenets of the belief in witchcraft hardly consistent with the outward profession of the people. In a curious and interesting work, entitled the History of the Devil, the author says:—‘I think it was a mean, low-priced business for Satan to take up with; below the very Devil: below his dignity as an angelic, though condemned creature; below him even as a Devil, to go to talk to a parcel of ugly, deformed, spightful, malicious old women; to give them power to do mischief, who never had a will, after they entered into the state of old womanhood, to do anything else.’
[128] Another illustration of the ignorance of the common people of the time about foreigners, or the manners of life among the upper classes. This is not exaggerated, and could find parallels from more recent times. Janet’s answer is more enlightened, but she is shown all through the narrative as a well-informed woman.