“An old farmer who died some years ago in Tynron related his experience with a witch in Closeburn when he was a boy. He was carting freestone from a neighbouring quarry, when his horse came to a standstill at the witch’s door. Two other carters passed him, and only jeered both at the witch and the boy, when the former, to whom he had always been civil, came forward, and with a slight push adjusted the ponderous stone, which had slipped and was stopping the wheel. ‘Now, go,’ she said; ‘thou wilt find them at the gate below Gilchristland.’ At that very spot he found the perplexed carters standing, both horses trembling and sweating, so that he easily went past them and got to his goal first.”[(18)]
No reference to witchcraft in the south-west of Scotland would be complete without some reference to the witches of Crawick Mill, near Sanquhar. The following allusion is drawn from a recently published work on the folk-lore of Upper Nithsdale, and in it will be observed how the witch phenomenon of change into the form of a hare, and being shot at in that form, again repeats itself:—
“The village of Crawick Mill, near Sanquhar, was a noted place for witches, and appears to have been a sort of headquarters for the sisterhood. Their doings and ongoings have been talked of far and near, and many a tale is told of revels at the ‘Witches’ Stairs’—a huge rock among the picturesque linns of Crawick, where, in company of other kindred spirits gathered from all parts of the country, they planned their deeds of evil, and cast their cantrips to the hurt of those who had come under their displeasure. In many different ways were these inflicted. Sometimes the farmer’s best cow would lose its milk; a mare would miss foal; or the churn would be spellbound, and the dairymaid might churn and churn, and churn again, but no butter would come. No class of people was safe. The malignant power of the witches reached all classes of society; and even the minister’s churn on one occasion would yield no butter. Everything had been tried without effect. The manse of Sanquhar at that time was situated close to the river on the site now occupied by the farm-house of Blackaddie, and the good man told the servant girl to carry the churn to the other side of the Nith, thinking that the crossing of a running stream would break the spell. But it was to no purpose; neither was the rowan tree branch that was fixed in the byre, nor the horse-shoe nailed behind the door. The power of the witch was too strong for the minister; but his wife was more successful. She made up a nice roll of butter, part of a former churning, and, with a pitcher of milk, sent it as a present to the beldam at Crawick Mill, who was thought to have wrought the mischief. The gift was thankfully received, and the churn did well ever after.
“Robert Stitt, honest man, was the miller at Crawick Mill, and well respected by everybody. One day, however, he refused one of the Crawick witches a peck of meal; she was enraged at the refusal, and told him ‘he would rue that ere mony days passed.’ About a week afterwards, on a dark night, Crawick was rolling in full flood. The miller went to put down the sluice, missed his footing, fell into the water, and was carried off by the torrent and drowned. A young man going a journey started early in the morning, and, shortly after he set out, met one of the witches, when some words passed between them. She said to him, ‘Ye’re gaun briskly awa’, my lad, but ye’ll come ridin’ hame the nicht.’ The poor fellow got his leg broken that day, and was brought home in a cart as the witch predicted. An old woman named Nannie is said to have been the last of the uncanny crew that dwelt on the banks of the Crawick. She appears to have been a person superior in intelligence and forethought to her neighbours. She knew that she was considered a witch, and she rather encouraged the idea; it kept her neighbours in awe, and also helped her to get a living—many a present she got from the ignorant and superstitious to secure themselves from her spells.”[(19)]
“One of the most famous witches of tradition belonging to Corrie (Dumfriesshire) was the witch-wife of the Wyliehole, whose strange exploits and infernal doings were the subject of many a winter evening’s conversation around the farmer’s hearth.
“She was represented as having been terribly implacable in her resentments, and those who fell under her displeasure were certain to feel all the severity of her revenge. She pursued them incessantly with strange accidents and misfortunes, sometimes with nocturnal visits in the form of fierce wild cats and weasels, and not only disturbed their repose but kept them in constant terror of their lives. She seems also to have been somewhat peculiar in her movements, as she was seen, on one occasion, on the top of Burnswark crags switching lint by moonlight.”[(20)]
It may now be well to dwell for a little on the popular measures resorted to, to counteract witch influence and render it futile.
Relief and protection were sought in various ways. Charm and popular antidote had an abiding place in the domestic usage of the day, and faith, if wedded to empirical methods, was at all events all-prevailing. The mountain ash or rowan tree was believed to have a strong counter influence against unholy rite, and a very usual custom was to plait a branch and fasten it above the byre door to ensure the protection of their cows. Young women wore strings of rowan berries as beads on a string of the same colour, implicitly believing
“Rowan tree and red threid,
Put the witches to their speed”—
and Robert Heron, in his Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland (1792), further illustrates this point of superstitious observance by reference to an acquaintance:—“An anti-burgher clergyman in these parts, who actually procured from a person who pretended to skill in these charms, two small pieces of wood, curiously wrought, to be kept in his father’s cow-house as a security for the health of his cows. It is common (he adds) to bend into a cow’s tail a small piece of mountain ash-wood as a charm against witchcraft.”