TO the north of the
churchyard of Tranent, and separated from it only by a road, stands
an old dove-cot, now empty; but which had been constructed to
accommodate 1122 pairs of pigeons. Supposing it had contained only
half that number, what a curse it must have been to the
neighbourhood about the end of the 16th century, when farmers were
ignorant of their trade, when land was swampy and undrained, when
implements were of the rudest description, and when consequently the
crops must have been scanty and precious! One can picture the
desperate look, with which the poor husbandman, with the sickle in
his hand and the sweat on his brow, regarded the flocks of voracious
pigeons that fluttered amongst and devoured the oats and bere that
he had raised with such bitter toil. Above the now door!ess doorway
of the dovecot a tablet of sandstone is still to be seen, which at
one time bore a shield, now all but effaced by time and the weather,
and still bears the name of DAVID SETOUN, and the date, 1587,
distinct and legible.
On reading the inscription, one remembers with a shudder that this
was the name of the deputy bailiff in Tranent under Lord Seton,
afterwards Earl of Winton, who, in the year 1591, was the prime
mover in the crusade against witchcraft, which, before it ended,
resulted in 17,000 people in Scotland being tortured and burned to
ashes for an imaginary crime. David Seton (who probably resided in a
quaint old house commonly called the Royal George, which was
recently demolished), had a servant maid whose name was Gellie
Duncan. She was young and comely, and distinguished for her
readiness to attend the sick and infirm, and for her wonderful skill
in curing diseases. Seton, being himself destitute .of the divine
sentiment of compassion, could not understand why any one would take
so much trouble to alleviate the sufferings of others, or how a
person in a humble station could have acquired a knowledge of
leechcraft. He was astounded on hearing the extraordinary cures she
had performed, and his base mind was filled with the most
preposterous suspicions. He interrogated Gellie as to how and by
what means she had learned to treat cases of such importance, and
her answers not being satisfactory, he with the assistance of others
endeavoured to wring the truth from her by torture. He crushed her
fingers in an instrument called the pilliwmkis, or thumb-screws, and
that failing he bound and wrenched her head with a cord or rope,
which produced excruciating agony. But Gellie remained obdurate and
would confess nothing.
Then her body was examined and the mark of the Devil found upon her
throat. It was believed that Satan put a mark upon all who had
enlisted into his service, which mark was recognisable by the part
being bloodless and insensible to pain. It is related that Gellie,
on the discovery of the mark, made a full and complete confession.
She admitted that her attention to the sick had been done at the
wicked suggestion of the Devil, and that her cures were effected by
witchcraft. She disclosed the names of thirty accomplices, some of
them the wives of respectable citizens of Edinburgh, whose conduct
had till then been irreproachable. These were all apprehended and
lodged in prison.
On the Tst of May 1590, James the 6th arrived at Leith after a very
stormy passage from Copenhagen, and it had been observed that the
ship that carried the King and his young Protestant bride was more
furiously buffeted by the tempest than any other vessel in the
fleet. Often when the others had fair breezes, she had to contend
with contrary winds. This singular circumstance was noticed by many,
but none could explain it until the confessions of Gellie Duncan and
her accomplices unlocked the mystery. An elderly woman called Agnes
Sampson, who lived at Keith, in the parish of Humbie, was one of
those whom Gellie informed on. She was arrested and tried before the
Court of Justiciary. Amongst other crimes, she was accused of having
been assiduous in her attendance on the sick, and of having repeated
the creed and the Lord’s Prayer in monkish rhyme over them. She
denied having any dealings with the Devil, or any knowledge of
witchcraft; but on being horribly tortured, stripped naked, and the
Devil’s mark discovered on her person, she confessed the truth of
Gellie Duncans’ disclosures.
She admitted she was a witch, and related that she had attended a
meeting of witches, numbering upwards of two hundred, which was held
at the Kirk of North Berwick on Hallowe’en. The Devil presided, and
a young man called Cunningham, alias Dr. Fian, acted as Secretary,
and an old fellow named Grey Meal, who resided at the Meadow-mill,
was the Door-keeper. The meeting had been called to devise a plan
for the destruction of the ship that carried the King and Queen. On
this being arranged, the whole crew of witches and wizards set sail
in riddles or sieves to meet the Royal Squadron. On the voyage they
boarded a ship, and, after helping themselves to meat and drink,
sunk her. When the Kings’ vessel was sighted the Devil handed a cat
to Dr. Fian, and ordered him to throw it into the sea and to cry
halo! The cat had been previously drawn nine times across the fire.
This being done a tremendous tempest arose, and nothing but a
miracle could have saved the Royal ship from destruction.
The Devils’ fleet then put about and returned to North Berwick. On
reaching the shore the witches marched with their sieves in their
hands in a procession to the Kirk, Gellie Duncan tripping in the
front and playing a quick-step on the trump or jew’s-harp. On
reaching the Kirk, they marched three times around it wither shuts,
that is in the direction opposite to the apparent course of the sun,
and when they tried to enter the sacred edifice they found the door
was locked; but it sprang open when Dr. Fian blew into the keyhole.
When the infernal congregation entered the Kirk all was darkness;
but the Docter blew in the lights, as other people blow them out,
and lo ! the Devil was seen standing in the pulpit dressed in a
black gown.
His first proceeding was to call the Roll. He then enquired whether
they had been his faithful servants, and on their answering ‘Aye,
Maister,’ he preached a short sermon with his usual ability. He
enjoined them to do all the evil in their power, and promised to
take care that they should be handsomely rewarded. At the conclusion
of his service, he put his tail over the pulpit and requested them
to kiss it, as a token of their allegiance, which they all did. The
congregation then retired to the churchyard, where they feasted on
the dead, and received joints of human bodies from the Devil, to
‘make a charm of powerful trouble.’ The convocation was concluded
with a dance, to which Gellie Duncan played a reel on the trump,
called:
‘Cummer, go ye before Cummer, go ye.’
Such is the essence
of the confessions emitted by these poor wretches under torture, and
some have expressed surprise that there should have been such a
close agreement between them; but as they were probably all prompted
by the prosecution, no surprise need be felt.
Cunningham, commonly known as Dr. Fian, was a schoolmaster in
Preston, and his superior education would have exposed him to
suspicion in those dark days. He was one of those whom Gellie Duncan
informed on. He was accused, amongst other things, of having chased
a cat in a street in Tranent, and of having leaped a wall as lightly
as the cat herself—a wall so lofty that no mortal man, without the
help of the Devil, could have cleared it. It was believed that he
was collecting cats for Satan, who required a supply for the purpose
of raising storms. On being interrogated, Dr. Fian denied that he
knew anything of sorcery, and to compel him to confess his guilt he
was subjected to the most grevious torments that the mind of man
could invent. His legs were put into the bootike?is, and crushed
with wedges until the blood and marrow spouted out. But he
maintained a stubborn silence. In this crippled condition he managed
in some way to escape from prison; but unfortunately, returning to
Prestonpans, he was again arrested and brought back to Edinburgh. He
was again tortured by the bootikens, and in addition his finger
nails were torn off with pincers, and pins thrust into the tips of
his fingers. But nothing would make him confess his guilt; and
finally, he, as well as Gellie Duncan, and the thirty whose names
she had in her agony disclosed, were strangled and burned to ashes
on the Castlehill of Edinburgh.
Some people, ashamed that such atrocities should have been
perpetrated in Scotland, when the radiant sun of the Reformation had
arisen in the sky, and the dark night of Popery had sunk below the
horizon, are willing to believe that although these miserable
victims of superstition were innocent of the impossible crimes with
which they were charged, yet they were guilty of real crimes which
merited all the punishment they received. Fian, it is said, ‘was a
man who had led an infamous life, was a compounder of and dealer in
poisons, and a pretender to magic, and he deserved all the misery he
endured.’ But there is nothing to support the view excepting
evidence given under torture, and the ignorant and malignant gossip
of the times, both of which ought now to be rejected with
indignation. Fian must be held as an innocent man, who suffered the
cruelest torments and death at the stake for crimes he never
committed, and whose character has been blackened, without a shadow
of reason, to this date. The same verdict must be passed on Agnes
Sampson, whom the very indictment shows to have been a woman of a
pious and benevolent disposition.
His Majesty, believing that an attempt had been made on his own life
by Satan and his servants, felt a deep interest in these trials, and
attended to see the witnesses examined and put to the torture. He
sent for Gellie Duncan to Holyrood, and made her play the reel she
had performed to the Devil and the witches at North Berwick.
‘Cummer go ye before, Cummer go ye,
Gif ye will not go before,
Cummer let me.’
But her compliance
failed to soften the heart of that superstitious and ruthless
tyrant. In 1597 he published a treatise, on Demonology, and in it he
says that witches ought to be put to death according to the law of
God, the civil and imperial law, and the municipal law of all
Christian nations— that witchcraft is a crime so abominable that it
may be proved' by evidence, which would not be received in other
cases— that the testimony of young children and infamous characters
ought to be sufficient, but to make sure the Devils’ mark should be
looked for, and the suspected person be put into the water to try
whether she would sink or swim. If she floated it would be a proof
that she was guilty—if she sank she would be drowned, but her
innocence would be apparent.
The trials of the Tranent witches and the extraordinary confessions
that had been wrung from them, threw all Scotland into a state of
inconceivable excitement. Superstitious terror spread like an
epidemic, and James on his accession to the throne of England
carried the infection with him. During the first eighty years of the
seventeenth century, it has been calculated that 40,000 people were
executed for witchcraft there, which added to those judicially
murdered in Scotland, makes the fearful total of 57,000! It is
curious to reflect that it was David Seton of Tranent, whose pigeon
house is still to be seen on the Dove-cot Brae there, who struck the
spark that caused this appalling explosion of national insanity.
Prosecutions for witchcraft had not indeed been unknown before he
got Gellie Duncan brought to the stake; but they had been
comparatively few and far between. It was his venomous tooth that
gave the bite that set the whole pack in Scotland, and in England
too, into such a state of outrageous madness, as had never been
paralleled before and has never been equalled since.
In 1591 the dread and abhorrence of sorcery, fostered by the King,
the Privy Council, and the Clergy, grew into a chronic mania which
raged without any abatement until the year 1665. During this period
a number of cruel villains made witch-finding a trade. They were
called ‘common-prickers’ or witch-finders. One of these scoundrels
resided in Tranent, and he must have been a pleasant person for old
women to meet at a party. His name was John Kincaid. Although
Tranent was his head-quarters, he, accompanied by his man servant,
roamed the country in search of employment, and from the skill he
was believed to possess in discovering the Devils’ mark, he was held
in high repute and carried on a prosperous business. His method of
testing witches was to stick a brad-awl, or a pin three inches long,
into various parts of their bodies, until he found a spot where no
pain was felt by the puncture, and no blood came forth, which spot
was an infallible sign of guilt. Probably his awl, like the dagger
blades of modern jugglers, could be retracted into the hilt when the
operator pleased, so as to deceive the eye of spectators. The
following certificate will give the reader an idea as to the way in
which John conducted business:
Dalkeith, 17 Jun 1661. The quhilk day Janet Peaston being delaitit
as is aforesaid the magistrate and minister caused John Kincaid in
Tranent, the cotmnon-pricker to prick her, and found two marks upon
her which he called the Devill his marks, which apeared indeed to be
so, for she did nather find the prein when it was put into any of
the said marks nor did they blood when they were taken out again.
And quhan she was asked ‘ Quhair. shoe thoght the preins were put
in?’ Shoe pointed at a part of her body distant from the place
quhair the preins were put in they being preins of thrie inches or
thairabout in length. Quhilk Johne Kinkaid declaris upon his oath
and verifies by his subscription to be true. Witnesses thairto Mr.
Wm. Calderwood, Minister at Dalkeith and Williame Scott, Bailzie;
Martin Stevinsone and Thomas Calderwood, Elders; Major Archibald
Waddell, Johne Hunter, David Douglas.
From an account of the expenses of executing a witch named Margaret
Denholm at Burncastle, near Lauder, one ascertains the fee received
by Kincaid. He was paid six pounds Scots ‘for brodding of her’
besides ‘meat and drink and wyne to him and his man’ which cost four
pounds—total ten pounds Scots, whilst the hangman of Haddington
received nine pounds, fourteen shillings Scots, which included
charge for ‘meit and drink and wyne for his intertinge’ and
travelling expenses—a man with a led horse having been sent for him.
Two men, who watched the woman for a month, were paid forty-five
pounds. Probably their duty was to prevent the witch from falling
asleep, which experience had proved to be an unendurable torture,
and an excellent method of forcing a confession. Iron collars, with
spikes turned inwards, which could be tightened with a strap, were
sometimes used for the same purpose. Margaret Denholm possessed
enough property to defray the expense of her execution, and to leave
a balance of sixty-five pounds Scots.
Where John Kincaid was born, and where, when, or in what manner he
died, I have as yet been unable to discover; but I have read
somewhere that he got into trouble at last by wishing to search for
the Devils’ mark on a lady of quality.
Ministers of the Gospel, Presbyterian as well as Episcopalian, were
the firmest believers in witchcraft, and the most pitiless and
active persecutors of the miserable wretches who^were suspected of
that imaginary crime. The Rev. Allan Logan, Minister of Torryburn,
Fife, in 1709 often preached a sermon against it. He prided himself
on his penetration in detecting witches, and on one occasion he
cried out, ‘You witch-wife, get up from the Lord’s table.’ The last
execution for witchcraft which occurred in Scotland, took place in
Sutherlandshire in 1722, when an old woman was accused of having
transformed her daughter into a pony, of having got her shod by the
Devil, and of have ridden upon her back. Her daughter was said to
have been crippled in her hands and feet in consequence, an injury
that was entailed upon her son. Weakened in mind by the misery she
had suffered, the poor old woman, it is related, sat warming
herself, the weather being cold, in perfect composure at the fire
which had been kindled to consume her. She was burned at the stake
at Dornoch.
It is worthy of mention that when a bill for the repeal of the Act
against Witchcraft was introduced into Parliament in 1735, it was
opposed by Lord Grange, whose estate of Preston-grange is near
Tranent. He was a Judge of the Court of Session, and is ‘damned to
everlasting fame’ chiefly for having, through the instrumentality of
Fraser of Lovat, and MacLeod of MacLeod, sent his wife to St. Kilda,
where she resided in what to her must been great misery for the
period of seven years. She must have been on that lonely island when
her brutal husband opposed the bill for the repeal of the Act
referred to.
It is probable that Shakespere (and it is sad to think that all we
know of that transcendent genius amounts to little more than a
probability), was well acquainted with the trials of the Tranent
witches, and he might have obtained his information from an account
called ‘Newes from Scotland' and ‘The Life of Dr. Fian,’ both
published at the time. Some of the scenes in Macbeth (which is
conjectured to have been written after the accession of James to the
English throne), sound like a poetical echo of the confessions of
Gellie Duncan and Agnes Sampson. It is probable that the English
poet intended to compliment the Scotch King, not only by selecting a
subject from the History of Scotland for a drama, but by introducing
allusions to characters and events in which his Majesty was
personally and deeply interested. It is also probable that Burns had
these trials in his recollection when he wrote ‘Tam o’ Shanter. The
witches in that immortal poem meet, like those of Tranent, in a kirk
and dance on a cromach or burial place. The dead are raised in their
coffins, not to be eaten, for Burns was a poet and never overstepped
the line that divides the horrible from the disgusting, but to hold
candles. The holy table is loaded with fearful materials for the
manufacture of charms. The Devil is also present as he was at North
Berwick, but in the character of a piper and not of a preacher, and
the tunes he performs are of the same homely sort as those which
Gellie Duncan played upon the trump. To complete the resemblance,
Burns’ heroine, like Gellie, is a
Winsome wench and waly,
That nicht enlisted in the corps.
It is difficult for
us to imagine the state of superstitious terror in which our
forefathers lived for more than a century and a half after the
Reformation. Young women prayed that they would not live till they
were old, and the aged often accused themselves of witchcraft that
they might be burned at the stake, and so escape the pitiless
persecution of their neighbours. The whole earth seemed to be
abandoned to the Devil and his satellites. The laws of nature were
suspended, and all the ills that flesh is heir to were attributed to
sorcery. Consumption was caused by an evil eye or ‘ some secret
black and midnight hag ’ having made an image of the sufferer in wax
and roasted it before a slow fire. Epilepsy or rheumatism was the
result of the venom of toads having been dropped on some rag of
linen that had been stolen from the patient. Everything and
everybody were enveloped in doubt. A man’s wife might not be his
wife, but a three-footed stool, or heather-besom, which she had made
assume her appearance, whilst she flew through the air on a
pitch-fork to attend a convocation of witches. The cat was not a
cat, but an imp of Satan who could raise storms by scratching the
leg of a table, or by being drawn nine times across the fire and
tossed into the sea. The hare you fired at might not be a hare, but
an old woman in the shape of one. Stories about witches having been
shot in that disguise are current in all parts of Scotland, and I
shall conclude this chapter with one (thrown for the sake of variety
into rhyme), that used to be told to shivering hearers at the
firesides of Fife.
The Witch and the Wabster
There was a wabster wonned in Fife
Wha, whan his wark was done,
Thocht it the greatest joy in life
To daunder wi’ his gun.
And on a windy Autumn nicht,
Whan a’ the fields were bare,
He had the luck to his delicht
To shoot a bonnie hare.
He seized the maukin in a crack
And slung it on his gun,
And wi’ it dangling at his back
Awa for hame did run.
And as he nimbly ran, quo he,
‘This beast my wife will cook,
And it will gie my bairns and me
A banquet for an ook.’
But ere a hundred ells he went
He slackened in his pace,
And stachered on wi body bent
And sweat upon his face.
‘What cantrup trick is this!’ he said
Wi’ open een and mou’
‘The hare I shot has turned to lead,
Or to a calf or coo.
He turned his head in eerie awe,
To try and solve the puzzle,
When, Lord! a neighbour’s wife he saw
Sit grinning on the muzzle.
He shook her aff in wrath and dread,
And at her cursed and swore, '
And to Sanct Andros toun he gaed
Whilst she limped on before.
The people there were weel aware
She lang had served the deevil,
And in the shape of cat and hare,
Had wrocht them muckle evil.
And now the tale frae ilka lip
Gaed circling round the spot,
That she was crippled on the hip
Whar maukin had been shot. |