It is consistent with the earnestness of the Scottish character that, so long as the light of intelligence was but feebly diffused in the land, there should be a strong tendency towards superstitious imagining in the minds of the people. For superstitious notions, be it noted, have not been wont to spring so much out of listless as out of restless ignorance. Each notion and theory they embrace, however wild and wide of the mark, has been a guess at the truth. In the dim days of the Middle Ages, ere yet the sunshine of science had lit the hilltops of our country, whatsoever came within the living experience of the people, and was not palpable to sense, was readily attributed to supernatural agency, good or bad—generally the latter. Thus it was that the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and even the waters under the earth, became peopled with fairies, brownies, hobgoblins, waterkelpies, warlocks, ghosts, and witches. The powers attributed to these—each monster and spirit in its place—afforded to the popular mind an explanation of what, in the circumstances, was otherwise inexplainable, and thus, so long as ignorance abounded, superstition did much more abound. As the world has grown older the people have, happily, grown wiser. The grosser superstitions of Scotland have entirely disappeared. No living mortal outside of Bedlam, nowadays, believes in witches’ cantrips—that ghosts walk the earth—or that fairies dance beneath the dim light of the moon. No; and the stories of faerie machinations, and of warlocks and witches, which our great-grandmothers related, in the light of the “oilie cruizie,” to the wide-mouthed horror and bewilderment of our youthful grandfathers and grandmothers, would excite the youth of the present generation only to laughter. While saying that the grosser superstitions are gone, however, it must be admitted that some of the milder forms of superstitious belief—such as “freits” and omens—still find acceptance among us. “Marry in May, an’ ye’ll rue’t for aye,” says an old “freit”; and an examination of the Registrar’s books, in town and country, will reveal that, comparatively, very few have the temerity yet to defy the ill-favoured prediction. It is an old “freit” that when children are brought to church for baptism, if the females receive sprinkling before the males, the latter will grow up effeminate, and the former will develop beards; and not very long ago I witnessed myself in a city church a rather unseemly scramble by a parent to have his boy brought to the front in preference to a neighbour’s girl. It is not half a dozen years since a friend of mine in the West of Scotland was advised to pass her children through below a donkey’s belly to cure them of whooping-cough. The night howling of a dog is still believed by many to betoken the early demise of some person in the near neighbourhood of that in which it occurs. “Dream o’ the dead and you’ll get news o’ the livin’,” is a prediction one may hear vented almost any day yet. The practice of “first-footing” at New Year time is a remnant of superstition; as is also the practice, still adhered to in country districts, of throwing a “bauchle” at the heels of a bride as she is quitting her father’s and mother’s house. An old rhyme has come down embracing a number of omens, thus—

And better confidence is inspired in many when the conditions of each case are favourably meted out.

But to get at the broader humours of superstition, we have to go back a hundred years or more, when the broader superstitions were in vogue; when fortune-tellers and dealers in incantations plied a roaring trade—when the devil—not figuratively, but really—went about like a roaring lion seeking whom he might devour; and when—

One’s journey through life was fairly beset with supernatural agents, excitements, and influences. Much, indeed, depended on what day in the week one made his or her “first appearance on any stage,” for, as that day was lucky or unlucky, so would their life be. Thus it was rhymed and written:—

During the period of infancy—particularly, prior to receiving the sacrament of baptism—the utmost watchfulness had to be maintained lest the fairies should steal away a healthy child and leave a weakly infant of their own in its stead. A fairy child, it seemed, when it fell ill could be restored to health only by human milk. When there was a suspicion that a substitution of the kind had been effected—and this was jaloused if a child became extra fractious—a common and effectual test was to hold the youngster over the fire. If it was a changeling it would disappear up the lum with a “puff.” If not, it would remain, perhaps to be burned, and be more fractious than before. Still there was satisfaction if it stood the test. Various superstitious rites were practised by the skilly wives to prevent catastrophe. The child immediately after birth might be turned three times contrary to the course of the sun. The bed containing the mother and child might be drawn to the centre of the floor, where the nurse would wave an open Bible over them three times—once for each person in the Holy Trinity—and adjure the evil spirits, by the name of all that was sacred, to depart to whatever place they came from. The sign of the cross made on the floor in front of the bed, or on the husband’s nether garments laid at the foot of it, might suffice also to keep the elves aloof.

After a birth the mother was not permitted to cross the threshold of the door after the hour of sunset till she was “kirkit,” lest the fairies should carry her off to nurse their children.

Baptismal customs were more ceremonious then than now. A young unmarried woman invariably carried the child to church. In her hand she took with her a slice of bread and cheese, wrapped up, and fastened with a pin taken from the child’s dress, and this she presented to the first male passer she met. This person constituted the child’s “first-foot”—it had not previously been allowed to cross the doorstep; and if he was a dark-haired man, there was good luck for the child; if fair, the reverse would happen to it.

Connected with this practice, Dr. Classon tells an amusing story. An English Duke had arrived in Glasgow on a Sunday, and was wandering in the streets during the time of afternoon service, when a young woman came up to him with a child in her arms, and offered him a piece of bread and cheese. In vain he protested that he did not know what she meant—that he had nothing to do with her or her child—that he was an entire stranger—that he had never been in Scotland before—that he knew nothing of the usages of the Presbyterian Kirk, being of the Church of England, and that she should give the “piece” to somebody else. The young woman was deaf to all his arguments, and held out authoritatively the bread and cheese. Thinking, probably, that the lass had not given him credit for what he had said, he told her in perfect simplicity that he was the Duke of —, and that he had just arrived at a hotel in the city, which he named. Her answer shut his mouth—“Though ye were the king on the throne, sir, ye maun tak’ that bread an’ cheese.”

Marriage was set about with rites and usages, some of which were peculiarly funny. First of all, in respect to date, the fateful month of May had to be avoided. If the “send,” or bridal party, in going to or from the manse, met a funeral procession or a hearse on the way, it was a bad omen. When the bride entered her house for the first time, she had to be careful to step over the threshold, if she would be lucky. An oaten cake, or a cake of shortbread, was broken over her head, usually by the mother of the bridegroom, as she entered. In some instances the bread was placed on a plate and thrown over her head. If the plate was broken, so much the better luck. Then the links of the crook were put round her neck, and she was led to the meal girnal and compelled to take up a handful of meal. On the morning after marriage, in some parts of the country, the youth of both sexes, or perhaps females, would assemble out of doors, along with the newly-married couple. A basket would be transmitted among them, and gradually filled with stones until it reached the bridegroom, when it would be suspended from his neck. On receiving some more additional load, his affectionate helpmate, to testify her sense of the caresses he had lavished on her, would cut the cord and relieve him of the oppressive burden. The person who declined to comply with the latter ceremony would have come under a certain degree of discredit.

Liable at all times to the malevolent influences of the “Evil Eye,” in addition to the many other ills already indicated, human life in the olden time was a serious matter. If a person died suddenly, or was laid aside by any sickness or disease, which the doctor might not readily comprehend the nature of, he was declared to have fallen the victim to an evil eye. When a death occurred the corpse was dressed and laid out in the manner still in practice, but with this addition—the friends laid on the breast of the deceased a wooden platter containing a small quantity of salt and earth, separate and unmixed—the earth an emblem of the corruptible body; the salt an emblem of the immortal spirit. No fire was allowed to be lit in a room where a corpse was kept; and it was reckoned so ominous for a dog or a cat to pass over it, that the poor animal was at once laid by the heels and killed without mercy. If a mourner’s tear falls on the shroud, the spirit of the deceased might in consequence be so disturbed that it could not rest in the grave. During the several nights that intervened betwixt death and interment, the friends and neighbours took their turn at “sittin’ up wi’ the corpse,” and were provided with a candle, a Bible, and a bottle of whisky. This practice was known as the “Lykewake,” and its main purpose was to protect the body of the deceased person from supernatural interference. If a funeral cortege proceeded to the kirkyard in an irregular and straggling manner, it was accepted as a portent that there would ere long be another funeral in the same family.

In a village in Aberdeenshire, we read in the Statistical Account, where it was believed that the ghost of the person last buried kept the gate of the churchyard till relieved by the next victim of death, a singular scene frequently occurred when two burials were to take place in one churchyard on the same day. Both parties hurried forward as fast as possible to consign their respective friend in the first place to the dust. If they met at the gate, the dead were thrown down till the living decided by blows whose ghost should be condemned to porter it. Suicides were denied the right of Christian burial, and were interred either within the crossing of two public roads, with a stake driven through the body to hold it down, or were deposited in the march or ditch dividing two lairds’ lands—as in the case of “Jenny Nettles,” the heroine of the old song—and had a huge cairn of stones raised over the spot for the same purpose of protection.

Ghosts, of course, were numerous enough, and there was little need to make reckless additions to their number. The floating ballads were studded with them, and each district had its tales of ghostly horror. Among the ghosts of national celebrity there was “Pearlin’ Jean,” of whom the traditional catch runs—

“In my youth,” says Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, “Pearlin’ Jean was the most remarkable ghost in Scotland, and my terror when a child. Our old nurse, Jenny Blackadder, had been a servant at Allanbank, and often heard her rustling in silks up and down stairs and along the passages. She never saw her, but her husband did. She was a French woman, whom the first Baronet of Allanbank, then Mr. Stuart, met with at Paris during his tour to finish his education as a gentleman. Some people said she was a nun; in which case she must have been a Sister of Charity, as she appears not to have been confined to a cloister. After some time young Stuart either became faithless to the lady, or was suddenly recalled to Scotland by his parents, and had got into his carriage, at the door of his hotel, when his Dido unexpectedly made her appearance, and, stepping on the fore-wheel of the coach to address her lover, he ordered the postillion to drive on, the consequence of which was that the lady fell, and one of the wheels going over her forehead, killed her.

“In a dusky autumnal evening, when Mr. Stuart drove under the arched gateway of Allanbank, he perceived Pearlin’ Jean sitting on the top, her head and shoulders covered with blood. After this, for many years, the house was haunted—doors shut and opened with great noise at midnight; the rustling of silks and pattering of high-heeled shoes were heard in bedrooms and passages. Nurse Jenny said there were seven ministers called in together at one time to lay the spirit; ‘but they didna muckle good, my dear.’ The picture of the ghost was hung up between those of the lover and his lady, and kept her comparatively quiet; but when taken away she became worse-natured than ever.”

Another was “Thrummy Cap,” a kindly ghost, celebrated in popular verse by John Burness, the cousin-german of the national poet. Then there were “Lady Greensleeves,” who haunted the castle of Huntingtower, in Perthshire; the “Ghost o’ Mause,” a Blairgowrie spectre, who revisited the glimpses of the moon in the shape of a fox; but such a fox as had the power of speech, and to which no farmer’s dog in the parish would be induced to give chase—and many besides. One of “Lady Greensleeves’” appearances was mercifully opportune. In a lone house on the estate of Huntingtower there lived an old man, the sole occupant of the building, and reputed to have hidden riches in some secret place in his dwelling. One night a number of masked villains broke in upon him and demanded, on pain of death, that he should show them where his money was concealed. In vain did he protest that he had no money in the house, save a few shillings, to which he made them welcome. Laying hands on him, dragging him to the floor, and brandishing their drawn knives over his hoary head, they swore that he must die for the lie which he had told them. As the oath was on their lips their intended victim uttered a wild shriek, and stretched out his hands imploringly towards a small two-paned window in the wall of the house. To that window the ruffians turned their eyes keenly, when lo! through the under pane a female face, pale as death, but with eyes sparkling like diamonds, stared in on them. “Oh, Lady Greensleeves,” cried the old man, “winna ye come an’ help me?” The name was as terror-striking as was the weird face at the window, and throwing down their knives, the robbers rushed from the house, and fled through the darkness, as if all the rogue-catchers of the shire had been at their heels.

Belief in the supernatural, it is worth noting, has not been confined exclusively to the ignorant classes. Lord Byron was sensitively superstitious. Sir David Brewster admitted it to have a certain power over him. James Thomson, the author of the “Seasons,” had a great horror of the supernatural; and his fear of ghosts and goblins afforded much amusement to his fellow-collegians at Edinburgh. His bedfellow, knowing that he was afraid to remain alone in the dark, quietly slipped away from him one night when he was asleep. On waking, he rushed out of the room like a frightened child, and called loudly on his landlady for assistance. Dr. Somerville, who relates this anecdote upon the authority of Mr. Cranston, late minister of Ancrum, who lodged in the same room with the poet at Edinburgh, attributes his weakness on this subject to the following circumstance:—

“The belief in ghosts, witches, fairies, etc., was so exceedingly prevalent at the beginning of this century that it would have been deemed heretical in any clergyman to have called in question their existence, or even their palpable interposition. One of the last appearances of these tremendous agents happened (I am speaking in the language of the vulgar) at Woolie, in the parish of Southdean, where Mr. Thomson was minister. Ever since I entered into life, it was necessary to speak guardedly upon the subject of the Woolie Ghost, as I myself have more than once given offence by my silence on the subject. The sequel of the story I heard, not at second-hand, but from the lips of a person, and that of rank and education, above the vulgar. Mr. Thomson, the father of the poet, in a fatal hour, was prevailed upon to attempt laying the evil spirit. He appointed his diet of catechising at Woolie, the scene of the ghost’s exploits, and behold, when he had just begun to pray, a ball of fire strikes him on the head. Overwhelmed with consternation, he could not utter another word, or make a second attempt to pray. He was carried home to his house, where he languished under the oppression of diabolic malignity, and at length expired. Only think what an impression this story—I do not say fact, I say this story, for of it there can be no doubt—must necessarily have made upon the vigorous imagination of the young poet.”

The ghost stories of Scotland would fill a large volume. Pennant tells of a poor visionary in Breadalbane who had been working in his cabbage garden, and imagined that he was suddenly raised into the air and conveyed over the fence into a corn field, where he found himself surrounded by a crowd of men and women, many of whom he knew to be dead. On his uttering the name of God they all vanished, except a female sprite, who obliged him to promise an assignation at the very same hour of the same day next week. Being left, he found his hair tied in double knots, and that he had almost lost the use of speech. However, he kept his appointment with the spectre, whom he soon saw coming floating through the air towards him; but she pretended to be in a hurry, bade him go on his way, and no harm should befall him. Such was the dreamer’s account of the matter. But it is incredible, adds the narrator, what mischief this story did in the neighbourhood. The friends and relatives of the deceased, whom the old dotard had named, were in the utmost distress in finding them in such bad company in the other world; and the almost extinct belief in ghosts and apparitions seemed for a time to be revived.

Next to ghosts, witches ranked as objects of preternatural dread; and “for ways that were dark, and tricks that were vain,” the witches, no doubt, were peculiar. And yet, surely most of the poor wretches who suffered and died at the stake because of the suspicion that they practised the forms of diablerie popularly attributed to warlocks and witches, were more sinned against than sinning.

The burning of witches—based, no doubt, on the command given in the twenty-second chapter of Exodus, namely—“Thou shall not suffer a witch to live”—forms a black chapter in the history of Scotland, and one in which we look in vain for the discovery of much humour. In the powers popularly assigned to these “withered beldams, auld and droll,” there was, however, a world of humour. They were accused of having intercourse with Satan, and making bargains with the Evil One to serve him—of attending meetings of witches—of raising storms at sea—of taking away milk—of blasting the corn—of spoiling the success of the fishing—of curing diseases, and of inflicting diseases, and of receiving money in payment for the one and the other. Among the warlocks and witches who danced to satanic strains in “Alloway’s auld haunted kirk,” the poet was careful to note—

“It is astonishing,” says one, “that the Reformed clergy could have believed that his sable majesty, to whom they ascribed so much cunning, should have employed only ignorant, old, and decrepit women as his instruments in carrying out his war against mankind.” It is equally matter for astonishment, surely, that many of these ignorant, old, and decrepit women themselves believed that they possessed the powers of diablerie popularly attributed to them. Isobel Gowdie, who was burned as a witch in 1662, gives the following as the charm which had to be repeated when she resolved to change into a hare—

This from her Confessions, as reported in the Appendix to Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, is of interest:—“He (the devil) would send me now and then to Auldern on some errands to my neighbours, in the shape of a hare, and Patrick Papley’s servants, in Kilhill, being going to their labouring, his hounds being with them, ran after me, being in the shape of a hare. I ran very long, but was forced, being weary, at last to take to my own house. The door being left open I ran in behind a chest, and the hounds followed in; but they went to the other side of the chest, and I was forced to run forth again, and ran into another house, and there took leisure to say—

and so I returned to my own shape, as I am at this instant, again. The dogs will sometimes get some bites of us when we are in hares, but will not get us killed. When we turn out of a hare’s likeness to our own shape we will have the bites and rives and scratches on our bodies. When we would be in the shape of cats we did nothing but cry and wraw, and riving, and, as it were, worrying one another; and when we come to our shapes again we will find the scratches and rives on our skin very sore. When one of us, or more, are in the shape of cats, and meet with any others, our neighbours, we will say—

and immediately they will turn into the shape of a cat and go with us. When we will be in the shape of crows we will be larger than ordinary crows, and will sit upon branches of trees.”

The spells, incantations, and cantrips, employed by witches when working out their diableries were quaint and curious enough. Students of Shakespeare are familiar with the

of the witches in the play of Macbeth, as well as the request of the first witch, to

making an uncouth mixture. But think of the following—one of two snatches of cantrip rhymes quoted by M’Taggart in the Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia—

By tugging at a hair-rope, in the usual manner of milking a cow—said rope being made up of tufts of hair drawn from cows’ tails, and having on it a knot for each cow—and chanting the following, or a similar charm—

it was vulgarly believed, as late as the beginning of the century, that a witch could draw away every drop of milk from the cattle in her neighbourhood. Only a horse-shoe nailed to the byre door, and sprigs of rowan-tree tied with red thread to the cow’s tail, was a certain protection here; for

Where such protection was neglected, to discover the witch, the gudeman’s breeks might be put upon the horns of the cow—a leg upon each horn—when, for certain, crummie being let loose, would run straight to the door of the guilty party.

When the late Reverend Dr. Andrew A. Bonar as a young man laboured in the position of assistant minister in Collace parish, less than half a century ago, I have been told, he found the practice of wearing horse-shoes on byre doors so prevalent there that he tried to reason the people out of the absurdity. He so far succeeded, but no further than this, that they took them off the outsides of the door and fastened them upon the insides—where, I believe, some are to be seen even to this day and hour.

“Scoring abune the breath” (executing with a rusty nail, to the effusion of blood, the sign of the Cross, on the upper parts of the face of a suspected witch) was another means of protection. Whoso performed this ceremony was henceforth secure against personal attack from the particular witch, or witches, he may have “scored.” An old joiner, or “wricht,” in a Perthshire village, with whom I was well acquainted in my boyhood, had a belief in witches which no human argument could dissolve. He suspected a neighbour’s wife of witchcraft, and lived in terror of her until, one day, finding a favourable opportunity of performing the operation, he “scored” her “abune the breath” with a rusty nail, which he carried with him concealed for the purpose; and, this done, he started back, and shaking his clenched fist in her face, bragged her to “do her warst noo.”

In Hogg’s tale of “The Witch of Fife,” is to be found the pleasantest stories of witches’ “ongauns” to be met with anywhere. Hogg had no peer in the delineation of the mysterious and uncanny, and the students of fairy mythology will ever esteem his picture of “Kilmeny,” as one of the most beautiful and perfect of its kind.

Like many another, before and since, she was taken possession of by the fairies, and led to a land where

Fairies were popularly believed to inhabit certain round grassy eminences, where they celebrated their nocturnal festivities by the light of the moon. It was believed that if, on Hallowe’en, any person should go round one of these hillocks nine times, contrary to the course of the sun, a door would open, by which he would be admitted into the realms of fairyland. Many, it has been said, of mortal race have been entertained in their secret recesses, there to have been received into the most splendid apartments, and regaled with the most sumptuous banquets and delicious wines. Their females surpassed the daughters of men in beauty, and fairy life was one eternal round of festivity and dancing. Unhappy was the mortal, however, who dared to join in the joys, or ventured to partake of their dainties, as, by this indulgence, he forfeited for ever the society of men, and was bound down irrevocably to the conditions of a Shi ich, or “man of peace.”

There is a Highland tradition to the effect that a woman, in days of yore, was conveyed into the secret recesses of the Daoine Shi, or men of peace. There she was recognised by one who had formerly been an ordinary mortal, but who had, by some fatality, became associated with the fairies. This acquaintance, still retaining some portion of human benevolence, warned her of her danger, and counselled her, as she valued her liberty, to abstain from eating and drinking with them for a certain space of time. She complied with the counsel of her friend; and when the period assigned was elapsed, she found herself again upon earth, restored to the society of mortals. It is added, that when she examined the viands which had been presented to her, and which had appeared so tempting to the eye, they were found, now that the enchantment was removed, to consist only of the refuse of the earth.

“It is the common opinion,” says Sir Walter Scott, “that persons falling under the power of the fairies, were only allowed to revisit the haunts of men after seven years had expired. At the end of seven years more, they again disappeared, after which they were seldom seen among mortals. The accounts they gave of their situation differ in some particulars. Sometimes they were represented as leading a life of constant restlessness, and wandering by moonlight. According to others, they inhabited a pleasant region, where, however, their situation was rendered horrible by the sacrifice of one or more individuals to the devil every seventh year. This circumstance is mentioned in Alison Pearson’s indictment, and in the ‘Tale of the Young Tamlane,’ where it is termed ‘The paying the kane to hell’; or, according to some recitations, ‘the teind,’ or tenth. This is the popular reason assigned for the desire of the fairies to abstract young children as substitutes for themselves in this dreadful tribute. Concerning the mode of winning or recovering persons abstracted by the fairies, tradition differs; but the popular opinion supposes that the recovery must be effected within a year and a day, to be held legal in the Fairy Court. This feat, which was reckoned an enterprise of equal difficulty and danger, could only be accomplished at Hallowe’en at the great annual procession of the Fairy Court.” Burns refers to this fairy pageant in the opening lines of his “Hallowe’en,” thus—

It was at Miles Cross, on Hallowe’en, that fair Janet succeeded in the rescue of her lover, “The Young Tamlane”:—

Hallowe’en as it is popularly observed in Scotland nowadays, is a “merry meeting,” and nothing more; but in the times from which Burns drew his inimitable picture of it, it was a festival pregnant with superstitious significance and prophetic awe, and some of the olden time customs are worth recounting:—The first ceremony of Hallowe’en was, pulling each a stock or plant of kail. The parties went out hand in hand with eyes shut, and pulled the first they met with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, was prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells—the husband or wife. If any yird or earth stuck to the root, that meant tocher or fortune, and the taste of the custock—that is the heart of the stem—indicated the temper or disposition. The “runts” were placed over the doorway; and the christian names of the people whom chance brought into the house, were, according to priority of placing the “runts,” the names in question. When burning the nuts, they named the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they laid them in the fire, and, according as they burned quietly together, or started from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship would be. Among various other charms to be practised were those:—To take a candle and go alone to the looking-glass, and eat an apple before it—combing your hair all the time—when the face of your conjugal companion would be seen in the glass as if peering over your shoulder. To steal out, unobserved, and sow a handful of hemp seed, harrowing it with anything you could conveniently draw after you—a grape or a rake or the like—repeating now and again—

and, on looking over your shoulder, you would see the appearance of the person invoked, in the attitude of reaping hemp. To take the opportunity of going unnoticed to a bean-stack, and in fathoming it three times round with both arms, in the last fathom of the last round you would embrace the appearance of your future yoke-fellow. To go to a south-running spring or rivulet, where “three lairds’ lands meet,” and dip your left shirt-sleeve. Go to bed in sight of a fire, before which you had previously hung the wet sleeve to dry. Lie awake, and about midnight an apparition having the exact figure of the grand object in question, would come and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it. Take three dishes: put clean water into one, foul water into another; leave the third empty. Blindfold a person (say a male) and lead him to the hearth where the dishes are ranged. If he dips the left hand by chance into clean water, his future wife will come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if into the empty dish, he will have no marriage at all; if into the foul, he will marry a widow. This charm had to be repeated three times, and every time the arrangement of the dishes had to be altered.

There are other decayed and rapidly decaying forms of popular superstition—such as those relating to animals and places, the characteristics of the Brownies, and the various, vast, and extravagant ideas which have been entertained concerning the personality and behaviour of that much abused party known as “Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie”—but these must suffice here.