“Penance.”
(Sketch by J. Copland, Dundrennan.)
“She is, and hath been for a long time, a person in the judgment of all that know her a serious Christian; and was for a good time before this befell her, more then ordinary exercised in private condition with God, as the relation after-specified gives the reader a little touch.
“She can read print, but cannot write herself; but whatever she saw in vision, was at times able to give ane exact account of it, after all was over; and accordingly did give the relation following to some creditable gentlemen, and some country people, her acquaintance:—
“The time of my exercise was eight years, and all this time was troubled with the appearance of a thing like a bee, and other times like a black man, and that also at severall times, and in severall places.
“Then at the end of the eight year, I being at prayer, the black man did appear as at other times, he being upon the one side of me, and there appearing upon the other side a bonny hand and a rod in it, and the rod was budding; and I said, ‘Is that Thy hand and Thy rod, O Lord?’ And I was content to embrace the one, and flee the other. Then, upon that night eight nights, I was coming home near hand unto my dwelling, I grew very drowsie, and fell asleep, and there was a voice said to me, ‘Awake, why sleepest thou?’ And there was lightning round about me; and I looking up to the top of a bush that was at my hand, there was the shape of a dove that went alongst with me in company to the house.
“Then, about three quarters of a year thereafter, the rod appeared again to be a double rod, or a rod that was springing and forthcoming, and after that time I was never troubled with the black man any more.”
Her first revelation was on the 4th of June, 1684, but it is very difficult to make out what her visions portended:—“On the 5th day of November, 1684, I being at prayer, there appeared unto me, in a bodily shape, three persons (as to my sight all in white), and they goe round about me the way the sun goeth; their coming was still after one manner, when I was at my duty, only I discern he that spoke first at one time, spoke first at all times, and so continued to speak by course, with Scripture notes, naming books, chapter, and verse—sometimes all the verse, sometimes a part.”
She was greatly concerned about the suffering remnant, and had many mysterious responses as to that. This intercourse with spirits continued for some years, and is very circumstantially detailed in the MS., at the conclusion of which is this additional miracle:—
“Besides what the reader has had formerly, he has likewise this following account of a passage that befell this holy woman, the 1st May, 1687, which was Sunday. This Jonet Frazer, and a young lass, a sister daughter of hers, about 17 or 18 years of age, having gone out into the fields, and both of them lying down on the grass near the water of Nith, which is but a bow-draught from her father’s house, and both of them reading their Bibles, and lying about the distance of four yards the one from the other, this Jonet Frazer is taken with a great drouth, and goes to the water of Nith to take a drink, leaving her Bible open at the place where she was reading, which was the 34th chap. of Esaiah, from verse 5 to 11, inclusive, which begins—‘For my sword shall be bathed in heaven; behold it shall come down on the people of Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment,’ etc. And when she had returned immediately as shoon as she could take a drink of water, she sees her Bible is coloured with bloud, as she thought, though afterwards, upon inspection and tryall it was not bloud, but red as bloud, and such as no person by the colour could discern from bloud; upon which she asks the other lass, ‘If any thing had been near her Bible?’ And she answered, ‘Nothing that she saw.’ She asks, ‘How could it then be that her Bible was covered over with bloud?’ Which both of them going near, found to be the very same place where Jonet was reading, viz., from verse 5 to 11, and some farther of the 34th chap., so as the print was not at all legible. The other lass would have her wipe off the blood, but she could not, but carried it as it was to her father, and a brother of hers, a godly young man, who is dead since, and some others, and did show it to them, who were curious to taste it, and it had a welsh taste, as if it had been some metear; the hens and birds would not pick it up.