1728. May.
|1718.| sheets put to the green, among other people’s, which were all nipped to pieces, and none of the linens belonging to others troubled. A certain night several went to watch the house, and as one was praying, down falls the press, wherein was abundance of lime-vessels, all broke to pieces; also at one other time the spirits, as they call them, not only tore the clothes that were locked up in a coffer, to pieces, but the very laps of a gentlewoman’s hood, as she was walking along the floor, were clipped away, as also a woman’s gown-tail and many other things not proper to mention. A certain girl, eating some meat, turned so very sick, that, being necessitate to vomit, [she] cast up five pins. A stone thrown down the chimney wambled a space on the floor, and then took a flight out at the window. There was thrown in the fire the minister’s Bible, which would not burn; but a plate and two silver spoons melted immediately. What bread is fired, were the meal never so fine, it’s all made useless. Is it not very sad that such a godly family, that employ their time no otherwise but by praying, reading, and serious meditation, should be so molested, while others who are wicked livers, and in a manner avowedly serve the Wicked One, are never troubled?’[[522]]
Wodrow, who relates these particulars, soon after enters in his note-book: ‘I hear of a woman in Carstairs parish, that has been for some time troubled with apparitions, and needs much sympathy.’[[523]]
It seems to have been a season of unusual spiritual activity. During September, and for some time after, the house of William Montgomery, mason, at Burnside, Scrabster, near Thurso, in the extreme north of Scotland, was tormented in an unusual manner by cats, which flocked in great numbers in and about his dwelling, making a frightful noise. Montgomery himself was from home; but his wife was so much troubled by this unaccountable pest, as to be obliged to write to him requiring his return, as otherwise she would be obliged to remove to Thurso. The goodman did return, and became witness to the torment that was going on, as many as eight cats, totally unknown in the neighbourhood, being sometimes assembled about his fireside in a single evening, ‘making the night hideous.’ One servant-girl left service on account of the nightly disturbance. Another, who came in her place, called to her master one evening that ‘the cats |1718.| were speaking among themselves,’ for so it had appeared to her they were doing, so human-like were their cries.
On a particular night, the 28th of November, Montgomery became unusually exasperated by these four-footed tormentors, and resolved to attack them with lethal weapons. One having got into a chest which had a hole in it, he watched with his drawn sword till he saw the creature put her head out at the hole, when he struck hard, yet failed to effect decapitation. Opening the chest, a servant named Geddes struck the animal with his master’s dirk in her hinder quarter, pinning her to the timber; yet after all she got out. Ultimately, Montgomery battered this cat pretty effectually, and threw her out as dead; nevertheless, they found she had disappeared by the morning. Five nights thereafter, some of the cats coming in upon Geddes in his bed, Montgomery dirked one, and battered its head, till it appeared dead, when he flung it out of doors. Before morning, it too had disappeared. He remarked that the wounds he inflicted brought no blood.
As it had been threatened that none should thrive in his house, William Montgomery entertained no doubt that there was witchcraft in the visitation. When an old woman in the neighbourhood fell ill, he became confirmed in his surmise, and thought himself justified in seeking the interference of the sheriff, though without particularising any delinquent. By this officer, the case was slighted as a piece of popular credulity and ignorance, till, one day in the ensuing February, a certain old woman named Margaret Nin-Gilbert, living in Owst, about a mile and a half from Montgomery’s house, ‘was seen by some of her neighbours to drop at her own door one of her legs from the middle.’ So narrates the sheriff. He adds: ‘She being under bad fame for witchcraft, the leg, black and putrefied, was brought to me; and immediately thereafter I ordered her to be apprehended and incarcerated.’
When old ladies begin to unhook their legs, and leave them in public places, it is evident there must be something in it. On the 8th of February, Margaret was examined in presence of two ministers, a bailie, and four merchants of Thurso, and confessed that she was in compact with the devil, who sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse, sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes like a black hen. She owned to having been present as a cat in Montgomery’s house, along with other women similarly transformed, when two of the latter had |1718.| died of the wounds inflicted by Montgomery, and she had had her leg broken by him, so that in time it mortified and broke off. Margaret Olson, one of the women she accused, was examined for witch-marks; and several small coloured spots being detected, a needle was thrust in almost to the eye without exciting the least pain; but neither she nor any other person besides Nin-Gilbert could be induced to confess the practice of witchcraft.
Lord Advocate Dundas heard, some weeks after, what was going on in this remote corner of Scotland, and wrote a letter to the sheriff, finding fault with him for proceeding without consultation with the central authority. The local officer apologised on the ground, that he only acted for the Earl of Breadalbane and Mr Sinclair of Ulbster, and had deemed it proper to communicate directly with them. In the course of a short time, Nin-Gilbert died in prison, and this seems to have been an end to the affair.[[524]]
Hitherto, no sort of literary or scientific association had been formed in Scotland. For a long time bypast, almost the only learning that existed was theological, and there was but little of that. In this year, Thomas Ruddiman, who had distinguished himself in Edinburgh by editing the works of Buchanan, and composing the well-known Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, joined with the masters of the High School of the city in establishing there an association for improving each other in classical lore, ‘without meddling with the affairs of church or state.’ This body was afterwards joined by a young advocate, subsequently eminent as a judge and a philosophical writer under the name of Lord Kames; afterwards, Mr Archibald Murray and Mr James Cochran, advocates, and Mr George Wishart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, with some others, became members. ‘Whether their conversations were preserved, or their dissertations published, cannot now be ascertained.’[[525]]
Dec. 15.