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IN the beginning of the
eighteenth century, notwithstanding the formal acceptance of the truths
of Christianity, gross superstition still continued to hold in thrall
large numbers, if not the majority, of the peasant population of
Scotland. Faith in God Almighty who rules on earth and in heaven, and
whose presence and providence guides and guards every believer,
struggled for existence in competition with faith in charms, omens and
incantations as defences against the fell powers of the great satanic
Adversary, which, as was believed, were exercised, not only by the great
arch enemy himself, but mediated also through his agents in the form of
witches and wizards or warlocks, of whom there would seem to have been
not a few in every locality. These, I understand, were belied yet to
have been, in consideration of a certain stipulated reward, self-sold
and self-devoted, each to the hellish service of the great deceiver.
Around the victims of
superstition in every circumstance or operation of daily life, from
birth to life's ending were malign and sinister agencies, whose
machinations could only be counteracted by some charm, incantation,
senseless observance or performance. Even if they cherished faith in, or
fear of, the Lord, they trusted more to the creatures of their own
imagination. To utter aloud the name chosen for an infant, until first
declared by the officiating clergyman accompanied with the name of the
glorious Trinity in the sacrament of baptism, would give opportunity to
malignant spirits or fairies to substitute for the child a changling or
bring upon it some other fell misfortune. To express praise of child or
chattel without adding, "God bless the bairn." or "Luck fare the beast,"
was regarded as almost equivalent to a curse, and when misfortune
followed, the omission of the prescribed formula was regarded as the
procuring cause.
The evil eye, productive
of much evil as it was supposed to be seems to have been regarded less
as something blameworthy than as a misfortune.
Sometimes such possession
was believed to injure the fortunes of the possessor not less than those
of his neighbours.
To the man obsessed with
the idea of being himself the unwilling possessor of such an eye, life
must have become indeed a dreary burden. One such is represented as
finding it necessary to avert his eye as the milk was being carried from
the byre, lest his gaze should turn it sour, and while passing his own
lambs, as deeming it a necessary precaution to shut his eyes lest his
unlucky vision should affect his flock. So careful was he of his
neighbour's prosperity that he dared not look him in the face lest some
evil should follow.
To others of less
scrupulous character the reputation of such a possession or faculty
became a source of profit to be taken advantage of for the purpose of
playing upon the fears of the credulous for the extortion of
compensation or reward for restraint of malign potency. This is also
true of old hags and others, the reputed possessors of the potency of
witchcraft, who before, as well as after, the laws forbidding witchcraft
had ceased to operate contrived to make the popular superstition
contribute to their means of subsistence. I have not learned the date of
the repeal of the laws against witchcraft (if indeed they ever were
formally repealed), but I believe the last execution thereunder in
Scotland, took place in 1722.
One unfortunate victim of
these laws, from the parish of Coldstone, named Katharine Ferusche was
burned at the stake in the city of Aberdeen in 1597, having been first
tried by the kirk session of the said parish, on the 10th of April of
that year. A copy of the minutes of that meeting and trial is given in
Mr. Michie's "Coldstone." The several charges found proved against her
to the satisfaction of the session are set forth in full, but no hint is
given as to how the evidence was taken, or as to whether witnesses were
examined in the presence of the accused or not. Whatever her character,
and however conscientious the session may have been, there can be no
doubt whatever that her execution was a judicial murder.
Among educated people,
the grosser forms of superstition had largely lost their hold before the
commencement of the 19th century, but notwithstanding the teaching of
the church to the contrary, the ridiculous beliefs and practices both
pagan and so called Christian which had been received from their
ignorant ancestry, still clung to the peasantry. for need we he
surprised, for at the present day, even in circles calling themselves
intelligent there are to be found in Canada those men, for instance,
regard Friday as unlucky, or dread to be included in a party of
thirteen. That our fathers of over a century ago regarded it as an
unlucky omen to meet a hare, or to first behold the new moon over the
left shoulder with empty hands, need not therefore cause surprise.
HALLOWE'EN EARLIER AND LATER
In pre-Christian days, the Beltain festivals on the
first of May and the first of November in each year, seem to have been
occasions of special religious observances. The latter, entirely
dissociated from religious observance, is still preserved to us in the
festival of Hallowe'en. In Aberdeenshire, I understand, the observance
of that festival has continued to enshrine ancient forms more closely
than elsewhere in Scotland. It seems to have been a night among the
ancient Celts in which witches and spirits were much at large. It
occurred at a time of the year when the harvest, if any, had been
secured for winter use. Then something of the joy of harvest would fill
the hearts of the rude denizens of the forests of Caledonia. Besides,
here was the evening of the year, the sun was rapidly receding, and
perhaps by some ceremonial acceptable to the great lord of day he might
be induced to retrace his steps and to provide light, life and fertility
for another year.
So, on every hearth must the fire be extinguished,
and, in response to priestly invitation, every householder prepared a "sounock"
or torch, and all repaired to the central place, probably some high and
approved eminence, where a new and holy fire would be lighted by the
priest. Having thus assembled, fire was produced by rubbing one dry
piece of wood upon another, or by means of what was called a fire churn.
At the fire so produced every sounock was lighted, and a new fire,
betokening the returning sun, and consequent joy and peace and plenty,
was lighted on every hearth.
Down to my day came the tradition that in earlier
times the flaming sounock had been carried around every farm as a sure
antidote against the malign potency of witches and all the unseen powers
of darkness, though long before my day its use had dwindled down to a
gleeful sport around the central fire. It was customary also to run
through the remains of the fire when the risk of injury was not great,
but that custom which had become a mere freak, or an exhibition of
bravado, is supposed lo be the attenuated remains of what originally had
been a human sacrifice.
The festival had a
variety of sports peculiarly its own. First, in my day, came the great
bonfire and the sounocks. Then the whole company of the young folks
marched into the kail-yard or garden, blind-folded. Each was in that
condition, required to pull a "kale Mock." Every plant so pulled was
then deposited on a shelf or recess over the main door of the house in
regular consecutive order, and the christian names of the callers of the
next following week as they respectively synchronised with the kale-Mock
number represented by a depositor of the opposite sex, would determine
the name of the future life-partner of the person so represented. In
such ways, with much fun and make-believe, the young people tried to
follow the time-honoured injunction! "Crack your nuts and pu' your
stocks and haud your Hallowee'en."
There were other games
played which had no place at any other time of the year, which also, no
doubt, owed their origin to ancient superstition. In the generation
before mine, it was said that a girl, probably accompanied by one of her
own companions, would carry a ball of blue worsted to the top of a
limekiln and there unwinding the thread, would allow its weighted end to
sink down to the bottom of the kiln and then rewind the thread,
repeating as she did so, the words "Wind, wind the blue clew. Wha hands
the end?" I never heard of any result, but can imagine that a response
may sometimes have come from a very substantial spirit.
A strange story was
vouched for by my Aunt Jane Farquharson of Dingwall, which was as
follows. At Grandfather's home at Tillymutton, a boy of the name of
Geordie Sherris had been hired as a herd and chore-boy. He had come from
a very poor home, and during his first meal was observed to cry. To an
enquiry as to the cause, he replied "Maun I eat a' this?" He had never
before found it necessary to leave a remnant, and did not know what
under the circumstances was the proper thing to do. When hallowe'en
came, a game was being played which was no doubt a relic of pure
heathenism. It made pretence of being a means of ascertaining one's
career or fate. The prescribed ordeal, was to go out alone in the dark,
carrying the coal-rake, a wooden rake used for scraping into the "ess
backet" (the ash bucket) each morning, the peat ashes accumulated during
the previous day. How the implement was to be carried I do not know, but
the aspirant had to carry it around the house if not the farm, which, in
either case, in a day when the tracks of the retreating goblins and
fairies were still fresh, would be, to a boy of tender years, no light
matter.
Poor Geordie went the
round, but returned white as a sheet, and terror-stricken. In answer to
enquiry he said he had been met by a great red bull. What had given him
that impression is not known. Possibly he had been actually met by such
an animal, though none such was known to be around, or possibly it was
merely his own imagination highly excited at the time and working along
the lines of his own cattle-herding experiences and associations. Be
that as it may, the poor boy was afterwards, and as I understood during
the same year, on another farm, gored to death by a bull such as he had
described. Such a coincidence could not fail to have its effect on the
community, and may have helped to put a stop in the district to eager
prying into that future which, for wise reasons, is hid from mortal
eyes.
REMNANTS IN MY OWN DAY
When it is remembered
that in the first quarter at least of the eighteenth century, the belief
in witchcraft, from the king downwards, was universal, it is little
wonder that in remote places, unsunned by the ever advancing light and
untouched by the tides of commerce and modem intercommunication,
vestiges of superstition should continue to linger for some time. Of
course, even in my day it may have had a limited influence upon some
who, because of its growing unpopularity, refused to admit it, but I
have to say for my native parish that I cannot think of a single person
not older than myself, who admitted faith in what is now regarded as
superstition,— Friday and the number thirteen both included. That was
not true of all the older people. Among them still lingered stories of
"dead candles," and funeral processions, and of men yet older would
still be found some who would tell of witches who would turn themselves
into hares or other animals, in which form they could be shot only by
the use of a crooked sixpence instead of lead. Cases were reported in
all seriousness in which a shot at a hare in that orthodox fashion,
manifested its results in a gun wound on the person of an old woman who
was known to be a witch.
As already remarked, I have reason to believe that my
paternal grandfather was more free than most of the peasantry of his
time from the superstitious of the day, but it would seem that the old
leaven had not been purged from his household in the early years of the
19th century.
This is illustrated by
the following incident which my father was wont to relate with great
mirth. The pig had got sick, and as in those days only one or two were
kept at a time, their care devolved chiefly upon the women folk. Several
of the neighbour women had come to visit, or possibly for consultation
as to the proper remedy for the sick porker. Their medical skill was not
great and, with Scotch caution, they might have regarded as a safe
prescription, a drink of cold water, which, according to an old proverb
then current, "never did a sick soo ony ill." But to give the remedy
special potency, my father's step-mother and the other ladies resolved
to try a drink of "unspoken water." My father, who at the time was a
little fellow, was accordingly despatched across a field for a jugful of
the prescribed element. Whether or not any injunction in restraint of
speech had been impressed upon the little messenger I do not know, but
unfortunately he was met on the way by a neighbour who accosted him with
the question "Where are you going, Charlie?" to which he replied. "For a
drink of unspoken water for a sick soo." "O, then you may just as vveel
come back hame wi' me," she replied. How it fared with the sick animal I
never heard, but the efficacy of the prescription was not, on that
occasion at any rate put to the test.
In the early days it was
well known that "The rantry and the red threed ca's a' the witches tae
their speed," and accordingly care had been taken to have rowan trees
planted around or near every home.
Mrs. Anderson, a good
neighbour of ours had made arrangements for a party of young folk around
the Christmas time. Although in comfortable circumstances, she had no
farm or cows of her own, and therefore arranged with Mother to provide
butter for the feast. Poor Mother prepared the cream and in good time,
commenced the churning process, and applied with all diligence both
skill and muscle, but that butter would not come. The day wore on and
Mother began to fear that she would be unable to implement her
agreement. Toward evening the good lady appeared, and seeing the
situation, immediately explained it as a case of witchcraft, and
solemnly prescribed as a long tried and unfailing remedy, a little piece
of the rowan tree in the churn. Much to her friend's disgust, Mother
spurned her advice and bravely and persistently plied the churn, and
succeeded just in time to secure the long expected product, and
incidentally to snatch from her friend an added proof of the potency of
her favourite remedy. So far as I remember, that was the only occasion
on which I was witness of an actual suggestion of a defence by magical
means, against the powers of darkness in the material world. That I
consider a wonderful record of progress, considering the conditions
prevailing less than a century before.
Stories of ghosts I have reason to believe were common in Cromar in my
younger days, but in our home we as youngsters were protected as much as
possible from their recital, and for that reason I am less acquainted
with local lore of that kind than I otherwise might have been. The only
real ghost story of local origin that I can recall, relates to a murder
that seems to have taken place in the long ago.
The murderer had himself
gone to his final reward, though his crime had not been discovered on
earth. He had buried his victim secretly near what was known as "McRob's
Cairn" in the woods of Blelack, and had no doubt congratulated himself
on his escape from the human penalty attached to such a crime. But in
the other world he discovered that his sin had found him out. From the
consciousness of his guilt, and the terrible remorse that harrowed his
soul, there was no escape, nor had he hope of the remission of his
terrible penalty. But, if he could with the help of some one on this
side have the remains of his victim transferred to consecrated ground,
he imagined that his trying thus to do something to make amends might
bring him some sense of relief. Accordingly, in some way, he got
approach to a man living near the scene of his crime, to whom he
confided the heavy secret that had proved to him so terrible a burden,
and promised rich reward if he would disinter his victim's remains and
bury them again in consecrated ground. With much reluctance the man
undertook the task, engaging to set about it after dark at an appointed
hour. Armed with the necessary implements he kept his appointment and
commenced his eerie task. Soon he reached a depth beyond which he deemed
it unreasonable to expect success, and resolved to quit his job without
further effort. Immediately the ghost was at his elbow, and, giving his
arm a shove that might have implied ability on the Dart of the ghost to
accomplish the work himself, urged him in sepulchral tones: 'Dig
deeper." Thus prompted, the man pursued his work until he found the
remains, which, as instructed, he carried to the cemetery and buried in
consecrated ground. The ghost expressed gratitude, and asked the man
what reward would be acceptable.
The man replied that he
would like to obtain the favour of God. "That," replied the ghost "I
cannot give, for alas, I have lost it myself." |
