On the following morning, the wandering shepherds of the neighbourhood perceived a new-made grave in the churchyard of Saint Catherine, and a wretched being in female attire seated beside it. Hers was a grief “too deep for tears”—a sorrow too mighty for mortal alleviation. She spoke to no one, replied to no one, but continued, with her head resting on her lap, to spend the livelong day by the side of the unfortunates whom her well-meant treachery had stretched so untimely there. As the winter advanced, she grew weaker and weaker, but still she abstained not from her daily vigil. Even when, from debility, she was unable to walk, she prevailed on some one to carry her to the lonely cemetery; and her dying words to her pitying neighbours were—“Bury me at the feet of Lady Lilias—remember, at the feet.”—Edinburgh Literary Gazette.
TRADITIONS OF THE CELEBRATED MAJOR WEIR.
By Robert Chambers, LL.D.
In one of the most ancient streets of Edinburgh, called the West Bow, stood the house formerly inhabited by Major Weir, whose name is scarcely more conspicuous in the Criminal Records of Scotland, than it is notorious in the mouth of popular tradition. The awful tenement was situated in a small court at the back of the main street, accessible by a narrow entry leading off to the east, about fifty yards from the top of the Bow. It was a sepulchral-looking fabric, with a peculiarly dejected and dismal aspect, as if it were conscious of the bad character which it bore among the neighbouring houses.
It is now about one hundred and fifty years since Major Weir, an old soldier of the civil war, and the bearer of some command in the City Guard of Edinburgh, closed a most puritanical life, by confessing himself a sorcerer, and being burnt accordingly at the stake. The scandal in which this involved the Calvinistic party seems to have been met, on their part, by an endeavour to throw the whole blame upon the shoulders of Satan; and this conclusion, which was almost justified by the mystery and singularity of the case, has had the effect of connecting the criminal’s name inalienably with the demonology of Scotland.
Sundry strange reminiscences of Major Weir and his house are preserved among the old people of Edinburgh, and especially by the venerable gossips of the West Bow. It is said he derived that singular gift of prayer by which he surprised all his acquaintance, and procured so sanctimonious a reputation, from his walking-cane! This implement, it appears, the Evil One, from whom he procured it, had endowed with the most wonderful properties and powers. It not only inspired him with prayer, so long as he held it in his hand, but it acted in the capacity of a Mercury, in so far as it could go an errand, or run a message. Many was the time it went out to the neighbouring shops for supplies of snuff to its master! And as the fact was well known, the shopkeepers of the Bow were not startled at the appearance of so strange a customer. Moreover, it often “answered the door,” when people came to call upon the Major, and it had not unfrequently been seen running along before him, in the capacity of link-boy, as he walked down the Lawnmarket. Of course, when the Major was burnt, his wooden lieutenant and valet was carefully burnt with him, though it does not appear in the Justiciary Records that it was included in the indictment, or that Lord Dirleton subjected it, in common with its master, to the ceremony of a sentence.
It is also said that the spot on which the Major was burnt,—namely, the south-east corner of the esplanade on the Castle-Hill,—continued ever after scathed and incapable of vegetation. But we must beg to suggest the possibility of this want of verdure being occasioned by the circumstance of the esplanade being a hard gravel-walk. We are very unwilling to find scientific reasons for last-century miracles,—to withdraw the veil from beautiful deceptions,—or to dispel the halo which fancy may have thrown around the incidents of a former day. But a regard for truth obliges us to acknowledge, that the same miracle, attributed to the burning-place of Wishart, at St Andrews, may be accounted for in a similar way, the spot being now occupied by what the people thereabouts denominate, in somewhat homely phrase, “a mussel midden.”
For upwards of a century after Major Weir’s death, he continued to be the bugbear of the Bow, and his house remained uninhabited. His apparition was frequently seen at night flitting, like a black and silent shadow, about the purlieus of that singular street. His house, though known to be deserted by everything human, was sometimes observed at midnight to be full of lights, and heard to emit strange sounds, as of dancing, howling, and, what is strangest of all, spinning. It was believed, too, that every night, when the clock of St Giles tolled twelve, one of the windows sprung open, and the ghost of a tall woman in white, supposed to be the Major’s equally terrible sister, came forward, and bent her long figure thrice over the window, her face every time touching the wall about three feet down, and then retired, closing the window after her with an audible clang.
Some people had occasionally seen the Major issue from the low “close,” at the same hour, mounted on a black horse without a head, and gallop off in a whirlwind of flame. Nay, sometimes the whole of the inhabitants of the Bow together were roused from their sleep at an early hour in the morning, by the sound as of a coach-and-six, first rattling up the Lawnmarket, and then thundering down the Bow, stopping at the head of the terrible “close” for a few minutes, and then rattling and thundering back again,—being neither more nor less than Satan come in one of his best equipages, to take home to his abode the ghosts of the Major and his sister, after they had spent a night’s leave of absence in their terrestrial dwelling. In support of these beliefs, circumstances, of course, were not awanting. One or two venerable men of the Bow, who had, perhaps, on the night of the 7th September 1736, popped their night-capped heads out of their windows, and seen Captain Porteous hurried down their street to execution, were pointed out by children as having actually witnessed some of the dreadful doings alluded to. One worthy, in particular, declared he had often seen coaches parading up and down the Bow at midnight, drawn by six black horses without heads, and driven by a coachman of the most hideous appearance, whose flaming eyes, placed at an immense distance from each other in his forehead, as they gleamed through the darkness, resembled nothing so much as the night-lamps of a modern vehicle.
About forty years ago, when the shades of superstition began universally to give way in Scotland, Major Weir’s house came to be regarded with less terror by the neighbours, and an attempt was made by the proprietor to find a person who would be bold enough to inhabit it. Such a person was procured in William Patullo, a poor man of dissipated habits, who, having been at one time a soldier and a traveller, had come to disregard in a great measure the superstitions of his native country, and was now glad to possess a house upon the low terms offered by the landlord, at whatever risk. Upon it being known in the town that Major Weir’s house was about to be re-inhabited, a great deal of curiosity was felt by people of all ranks as to the result of the experiment; for there was scarcely a native of the city who had not felt since his boyhood an intense interest in all that concerned that awful fabric, and yet remembered the numerous terrible stories which he had heard told respecting it. Even before entering upon his hazardous undertaking, William Patullo was looked upon with a flattering sort of interest—an interest similar to that which we feel respecting a culprit under sentence of death, a man about to be married, or a regiment on the march to active conflict. It was the hope of many that he would be the means of retrieving a valuable possession from the dominion of darkness. But Satan soon let them know that he does not ever tamely relinquish the outposts of his kingdom.