July 4.
Sir Thomas Dalyell of Binns—grandson of the old bearded persecutor of the times of the Charleses—had for a long time past been ‘troubled with a sore disease which affects his reason, whereby he is continually exposed to great dangers to his own person, by mobs, and others that does trouble him.’ It was also found that ‘by the force of his disease, he is liable to squander away and dilapidate his best and readiest effects, as is too notourly known.’ Such is the statement of Sir Thomas’s nephew, Robert Earl of Carnwath; his sister, Magdalen Dalyell; and her husband, James Monteith of Auldcathie, craving authority, ‘for the preservation of his person and estate, and also for the public peace,’ to take him into custody in his house of Binns, ‘till means be used for his recovery;’ likewise power to employ a factor ‘for uplifting so much of his rents as may be necessar for his subsistence, and the employing doctors and apothecaries, according to the exigence of his present condition.’
The Council not only granted the petition, but ordained that the petitioners might order up a soldier or two at any |1704.| time from Blackness, to assist in restraining the unfortunate gentleman.
This Sir Thomas Dalyell died unmarried, leaving his estates and baronetcy to a son of his sister Magdalen, grandfather of the present baronet. The case is cited as shewing the arrangements for a lunatic man of rank in the days of Queen Anne.
July.
The central authorities were now little inclined to take up cases of sorcery; but it does not appear that on that account witches ceased to be either dreaded or punished. Country magistrates and clergy were always to be found who sympathised with the popular terrors on the subject, and were ready to exert themselves in bringing witches to justice.
At the village of Torryburn, in the western part of Fife, a woman called Jean Neilson experienced a tormenting and not very intelligible ailment, which she chose to attribute to the malpractices of a woman named Lillias Adie. Adie was accordingly taken up by a magistrate, and put in prison. On the 29th July, the minister and his elders met in session, called Lillias before them, and were gratified with an instant confession, to the effect that she had been a witch for several years, having met the devil at the side of a ‘stook’ on the harvest-field, and renounced her baptism to him, not without a tender embrace, on which occasion she found that his skin was cold, and observed his feet cloven like those of a stirk. She had also joined in midnight dances where he was present. Once, at the back of Patrick Sands’s house in Valleyfield, the festivity was lighted by a light that ‘came from darkness,’ not so bright as a candle, but sufficient to let them see each other’s faces, and shew the devil, who wore a cap covering his ears and neck. Several of the women she saw on these occasions she now delated as witches. The session met again and again to hear such recitals, and to examine the newly accused persons. There was little reported but dance-meetings of the alleged witches, and conversations with the devil, the whole bearing very much the character of what we have come to recognise as hallucinations or spectral illusions. Yet the case of Adie was considered sufficient to infer the pains of death, and she was burned within the sea-mark. There were several other solemn meetings of the session to inquire into the cases of the other women accused by Adie; but we do not learn with what result.
The extreme length to which this affair was carried may be partly attributed to the zeal of the minister, the Rev. Allan |1704.| Logan, who is said to have been particularly knowing in the detection of witches. At the administration of the communion, he would cast his eye along, and say: ‘You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord,’ when some poor creature, perhaps conscience-struck with a recollection of wicked thoughts, would rise and depart, thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards. He used to preach against witchcraft, and we learn that, in 1709, a woman called Helen Key was accused before the Torryburn session of using some disrespectful language about him in consequence. She told a neighbour, it appears, that on hearing him break out against the witches, she thought him ‘daft’ [mad], and took up her stool and left the kirk. For this she was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.[[358]]
Rather earlier in the year, there was a remarkable outbreak of diablerie at the small seaport burgh of Pittenweem, in the eastern part of Fife. Here lived a woman named Beatrix or Beatie Laing, described as ‘spouse to William Brown, tailor, late treasurer of the burgh,’ and who must therefore be inferred to have been not quite amongst the poorer class of people. In a petition from the magistrates (June 13, 1704) to the Privy Council, it was stated that Patrick Morton was a youth of sixteen, ‘free of any known vice,’ and that, being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship belonging to one of the merchants in Pittenweem, he was engaged at that work in his father’s smithy, when Beatrix Laing came and desired him to make some nails for her. He modestly refused, alleging that he was engaged in another job requiring haste, whereupon she went away ‘threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch.’
Next day, as he passed Beatrix’s door, ‘he observed a timber vessel with some water and a fire-coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effects of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs, that he could hardly stand or walk.’ He continued for many weeks in a languishing condition, in spite of all that physicians could do for him, ‘still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated. About the beginning of May, his case altered to the worse by his having |1704.| such strange and unusual fits as did astonish all onlookers. His belly at times was distended to a great height; at other times, the bones of his back and breast did rise to a prodigious height, and suddenly fell,’ while his breathing ‘was like to the blowing of a bellows.’ At other times, ‘his body became rigid and inflexible, insomuch that neither his arms nor legs could be bowed or moved by any strength, though frequently tried.’ His senses were ‘benumbed, and yet his pulse [continued] in good order.’ His head sometimes turned half about, and no force could turn it back again. He suffered grievous agonies. His tongue was occasionally drawn back in his throat, ‘especially when he was telling who were his tormentors.’ Sometimes the magistrates or minister brought these people to his house, and before he saw them, he would cry out they were coming, and name them. The bystanders would cover his face, bring in the women he had accused of tormenting him, besides others, and cause them to touch him in succession; when he expressed pain as the alleged tormentors laid their hands upon him, and in the other instances ‘no effect followed.’ It seemed to the magistrates that the young man was in much the same condition with ‘that of Bargarran’s daughter in the west.’