“Jean Stot (Ingleston) confessed before the Session that she blessed God if Jean Grier’s prayings had any pith that they lighted on a kow and not on a person, and did say that Jean Kirkpatrick did gather root grown briers on a Saboth day, and nominat Agnes Patton for a witness.”
The Session found “wrath and malice among the inhabitants of Ingleston,” and the minister was sent as peacemaker. “Jean Stot obeyed the minister and forgave Jean Grier, and also required forgiveness of her, which she refused till further advisement.”[(46)]
Parish of Irongray.—Traditional account of the sacrifice of a reputed witch by enclosing her in a tar-barrel, setting it alight, and rolling it into the Water of Cluden:—
“In the reign of James VI. of Scotland, or under the early Government of his son Charles, tradition tells of a woman that was burnt as a witch in the Parish of Irongray, about seven miles west from Dumfries. In a little mud-walled cottage, in the lower end of the Bishop’s Forest, and nigh the banks of the Water of Cluden, resided a poor widow woman, who earned her bread by spinning with a pole, and by weaving stockings from a clue of yarn depending from her bead-strings. She lived alone, and was frequently seen on a summer’s eve, sitting upon a jagged rock, which overhung the Routing burn, or gathering sticks, late in a November evening, among the rowan-tree roots, nigh the dells which signalise the sides of that romantic stream. She had also, sometimes, lying in her window a black-letter Bible, whose boards are covered with the skin of a fumart, and which had two very grotesque clasps of brass to close it with when she chose. Her lips were sometimes seen to be moving when she went to church, and she was observed to predict shower or sunshine at certain periods, which predictions often came to be realised....
“The Bishop of Galloway was repeatedly urged to punish this witch; and lest it should be reported to the king that he refused to punish witches, he at last caused her to be brought before him, nigh to the spot. She was rudely forced from her dwelling, and several neighbours of middle or of old age were cited to declare all the wicked things she had done.
“She was sentenced to be drowned in the Routing burn, but the crowd insisted that she should be shut up in a tar-barrel and hurled into the Cluden. Almost against the Bishop’s consent, this latter death was consummated. The wretched woman was enclosed in a barrel, fire was set to it, and it was rolled, in a blaze, into the waters of Cluden.
“Such, says the tradition of no very doubtful date, was the savage end of one who was reputed a witch. The spot where, ’tis said, the prelate sat, is yet called Bishop’s Butt. The well from which she drew the water for her domestic use, and where the young rustic belles washed their faces, still retains the name of the Witch’s Well; and a pool in the Cluden, nigh to the well, often bears the name of the Witch’s Pool. Even some rocks nigh to the Routing Bridge are still pointed out, where she was wont to sit; and a hollow into which, say some, she used to throw an elfin clue. That wood yet feathering the hill side west from Drumpark, always bears the name of the Bishop’s Forest; and the sylvan ravine, furrowed by a brawling brook, has been, by some now in their graves, named the Warlock’s Glen.”[(47)]
Parish of Closeburn.—Janet Fraser, called before the Presbytery of Dumfries, 1691. Her remarkable revelations:—
“The person is a young woman, unmarried, of the age of about twenty years, whose name is Jonet Fraser, or, as we in the south used to pronounce it, Frissel, who then lived, and yet lives, with her father, Thomas Frissell, a weaver to his trade, a man of unblamed conversation, in the sheriffdome of Dumfries, in the countrey thereof called Nithisdale, and parochin of Closeburn, six miles, or thereby, from the town of Dumfriece.
