We are not told the ultimate fate of Isobell Gowdie and Janet Braidhead, but they had confessed enough to burn half Scotland, and it is not likely that they escaped the doom assigned to their order.
THE SECRET SINS OF MAJOR WEIR.[57]
On the 4th of April, 1670, one Major Thomas Weir, an old man of seventy, expiated his crimes on the Gallowlie of Edinburgh. A bad man, surely; a canting, loose-lived hypocrite, who made his puritanism the cloak for his secret crimes, serving sin with his body in daily and most detestable service, while his lips spoke only of zeal to God and the soul’s devoutest exercise. Still, it was a terrible fate for nothing more heinous than an unclean life; a purification by fire in truth, but not for the sanctification of souls. Perhaps he would have got off altogether, had he not been charged with witchcraft. Incest and the foulest vices were bad enough, but witchcraft was worse. Yet no intelligible charge of sorcery was brought against this man save the fact that he got the love of all manner of women, poor and old though he was; and the testimony of a frightened woman who gave a rambling account of shapes, and lights, and women, all gathered down in Stinking-close, near to where the major lived; all of which were, of course, phantoms, spectres, or devils, conjured up by his magical and devilish arts. This, and the frantic saying of his poor old sister, when she heard of his death, that if they had burnt his staff they had destroyed his power, formed about the sum of the witchcraft evidence against him. He was arrested on his own confession. Unable to bear the weight of his secret vices, he gave himself up to the authorities, who at first were disposed to think him mad, but who afterwards, reporting him sane and collected enough, set him on his trial. After he had once spoken he would say no more, would make no defence and no further confession: he would not pray, he would not appeal to God. Like a beast he had lived, like a beast he would die, and “since he was going to the devil,” he said, “he did not wish to anger him.” He would have no paltering with an outraged God by the way; so the fire and the faggot came as the culmination of a life which in its mildest phase was infamous, but which belonged to no lawful tribunal of man to punish.
If he died sullenly and in mute and dumb despair, his sister’s anguish found wild and desperate expression. She told her judges all about her horrible life with him, and how he had been long given up to sorcery and magic, as well as to things not now to be mentioned; and how his power lay in that staff of his which had been burnt along with him. That thornwood staff, with its crooked head and carved figures like satyrs running through, seems to have heavily burdened the poor creature’s mind, for she told her judges that when she wished to plague her brother she would hide it, and give it back to him only when he threatened to reveal her nameless infamy if she did not restore it. On the morning of her execution she said that she would expiate the most shameful life that had ever been lived by dying the most shameful death; but no one knew exactly what she meant. When she came to the place of execution—she was mercifully hung—she began to talk wildly of the Broken Covenant, and exhort the people back to their old faith, and then she attempted to throw off all her clothes that she might die “naked and ashamed.” This was the lowest depth of degradation of which her crazed old brain could conceive, and was what she meant in the morning when alluding to the manner of her death. The executioner had to struggle mightily with her before he was able to overmaster her, she smiting him on the cheek the while; but at last he flung her “open-faced” on the ground, and threw some linen cloths over her; but “her hands not being tyed when she was throwen over, she laboured to recover hirselfe, and put in her head betwixt two of the steps of the leather, and keiped that powster for a tyme, till she was put from itt.” It is curious to mark the little bit of sanity in all this mournful lunacy, when the familiar things of life were spoken of. She had always been a great spinner, and the fame now went abroad that the devil had helped her in this. Asked if it was not so, she at the first denied disdainfully; use only and industry, she said, had made her so deft at her work, and the devil had done nothing for her; but afterwards she maundered off into some nonsense about her yarn, and how her distaff was often found full when she had left it empty; and how the weaver could never weave the thread spun from this yarn, which, of course, was “devil’s dust” of the true kind. She was mad enough, the wretched being, and could not fail to trip if stones were laid in her path. But her first instincts respecting her every-day occupation were right, and are singularly illustrative of some of the phenomena of madness, and of how intimately with one’s life is interwoven common sense, even in the fibres of a diseased brain. She said further that she was persuaded “her mother was a witch, for the secretest thing that either I myself or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared upon her brow, she could tell it them, though done at a great distance! Being demanded what sort of a mark it was, she answered, ‘I have some such like mark myself when I please, on my forehead.’ Whereupon she offered to uncover her head for visible satisfaction; the minister refusing to behold it, and forbidding any discovery, was earnestly requested by some spectators to allow the freedom: he yielded. She put back her head-dress, and, seeming to frown, there was an exact horse-shoe, shaped for nails, in her wrinkles—terrible enough, I assure you, to the stoutest beholder.” Her further confessions were curious, involving, as they did, a visit from a tall woman who had one child at her back and one or two at her feet; and who came to her, wanting her to speak to the Queen of Fairy, and to strike and do battle with the said queen on her behalf. The next day came “ane little woman,” with a piece of a tree, or the root of some herb, and she told her that so long as she kept the same she should do well, and should attain all she might desire. So she spun at her yarn, and found more yarn on the “pirn” than she thought to find; which frightened her. This took place when she “keeped a school at Dalkeith, and teached childering.” She also rambled on about a fiery chariot in which she and her brother had paid visits, and of his mysterious visitors and his thornwood staff; and when nothing more was to be got out of her she was hung, and the world was all the cleaner for the loss of so much folly and wickedness from out the general mass.
THE DUMB GIRL OF POLLOK.[58]
On the 14th of October, Sir George Maxwell, of Pollok, and his household were much agitated and disturbed. He had been taken suddenly and dangerously ill, with pains which read like the pains of pleurisy; and though he got partially well, had still some awkward symptoms remaining. A young deaf and dumb girl, of unknown origin, signified that “there is a woman whose son has broke his fruit yeard that did prick him in the side.” This was found to mean that Jennet Mathie, relict of John Stewart, under-miller in Schaw Mill, had formed a wax picture with pins in its side, which “Dumby” said was to be found in her house in a hole behind the fire, and which she further offered to bring to them at Pollok, provided certain two of the men servants might accompany her to protect her. The young daughters of Sir George did not believe the story, but the two servants, Laurence Pollok and Andrew Martine, professed themselves converts, and insisted on seeing the thing to an end. So they went to Jennet’s house, and into the kitchen, all standing on the floor near the fire; “when little Dumby comes quickly by, slips her hand into a hole behind the fire, and puts into Andrew Martine’s hand, beneath his cloak, a wax picture with two pins in it,” that in the right side very long, and that in the left shorter: which corresponded with the severity of the laird’s pains. The picture was brought to Sir George; so was Jennet Mathie, who was apprehended on the spot and whom Sir George then sent to prison. When questioned, she denied all knowledge of the picture or the pins, and said it was the work of the dumb girl; but on its being shown that her son Hugh had once robbed Sir George’s orchard—which was what Dumby meant by “broke his fruit yeard”—and that Sir George, when told that he was no longer in Pollokland, but had gone to Darnlie, had said, “I hope my fingers may be long enough to reach him in Darnlie”—these circumstances were held quite sufficient evidence that the Stewart family would do the laird all the mischief they could. The prosecution wanted no stronger proof, and the affair went on.
Jennet was obstinate, and would confess nothing; upon which they searched her and found the devil’s mark. After this, Sir George got better for a short space, but soon the pains returned, and then the dumb girl said that John Stewart, Jennet’s eldest son, had made another clay image, four days since, and that it was now in his house beneath the bolster among the bed straw. So she and the servants went there again, and sure enough they found it; but as it was only lately made, it was soft and broke in their hands. John said simply he did not know who had put it there; but he and his young sister Annabel were apprehended: and the next day Annabel confessed.
She said, that on the 4th of January last past, while the clay picture was being formed, a black gentleman had come into her mother’s house, accompanied by Bessie Weir, Marjorie Craig, Margaret Jackson, and her own brother John. When confronted with John she wavered, but John was no nearer release for that. He was searched, and many marks were found on him; and when found the spell of silence was broken, and he confessed his paction with the devil as openly as his sister, giving up as their accomplices the same women as those she had named. Of these, Margaret Jackson, aged fourscore or so, was the only one to confess; but as she had many witch marks she could not hope for mercy, so might as well make a clean breast of it at once. On the 17th of January a portion of clay was found under Jennet Mathie’s bolster, in her prison at Paisley. This time it was a woman’s portrait, for Sir George had recovered by now, and the witches were against the whole family equally. On the 27th Annabel made a fuller deposition. She said that last harvest the devil, as a black man, had come to her mother’s house, and required her, the deponent, to give herself to him; promising that she should want for nothing good if she did. She, being enticed by her mother and Bessie Weir, did as was desired—putting one hand on the crown of her head, and another on the soles of her feet, and giving over to him all that lay between; whereupon her mother promised her a new coat, and the devil made her officer at their several meetings. He gave her, too, such a nip on the arm that she was sore for half an hour after, and gave her a new name—Annippy, or an Ape according to Law. Her mother’s devil-name was Lands-lady; Bessie Weir was called Sopha; Marjorie Craig was Rigeru; Margaret Jackson Locas; John Stewart, Jonas; and they were all present at the making of the clay image which was to doom Sir George to death. They made it of clay, then bound it on a spit and turned it before the fire, “Sopha” crying “Sir George Maxwell! Sir George Maxwell!” which was repeated by them all. Another time, she said, there was a meeting, when the devil was dressed in “black cloathes and a blew band, and white hand cuffs, with hoggers on his feet, and that his feet were cloven.” The black man stuck the pins into the picture, and his name was Ejoall, or J. Jewell. For the devil delighted in giving himself various names, as when he caused himself to be called Peter Drysdale, by Catherine Sands and Laurie Moir, and Peter Saleway by others.
John now followed suit. He confessed to his own baptism; to the hoggers on the black man’s legs, who had no shoes, and spoke in a voice hollow and ghousty; to the making the clay image; and to his new name of Jonas. On the 15th of February, 1677, John Stewart, Annabel Stewart, and Margaret Jackson all adhered to these depositions, but Jennet and Bessie and Margerie denied them. Jennet’s feet were fixed in stocks, so that she might not do violence to her own life: and one day her gaoler declared that he had found her bolster, which the night before was laid at least six yards from the stocks, now placed beneath her; the stocks being so heavy that two of the strongest men in the country could hardly have carried them six yards. He asked her “how she had win to the bolster,” and she answered that she had crept along the floor of the room, dragging the stocks with her. Before the court she said that she had got one foot out of the hole, and had drawn the stocks with her, “a thing altogether impossible.” Then John and Annabel exhorted their mother to confess, reminding her of all the meetings which she had had with the devil in her own house, and that “a summer’s day would not be sufficient to relate what passages had been between the devil and her.” But Jennet Mathie was a stern, brave, high-hearted Scotch woman, and would not seal her sorrow with a lie. “Nothing could prevail with her obdured and hardened heart,” so she and all, save young Annabel, were burnt; and when she was bound to the stake, the spectators saw after a while a black, pitchy ball foam out of her mouth, which, after the fire was kindled, grew to the size of a walnut, and flew out into sparks like squibs. This was the devil leaving her. As for Bessie Weir, or Sopha, the devil left her when she was executed, in the form of a raven; for so he owned and dishonoured his chosen ones.