The Royal Burgh
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THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR Seven Hundred and Fifty Years of History Edited by ANNIE I. DUNLOP 1 O.B.E., LL.D., \ WITCHCRAFT sulters of witches and sorcerers should be punished capitally' .1 Henceforth the appellation 'witch' had many meanings, from old poverty-stricken widows unwanted by the bailies, to shadowle�s, cloven-footed Episcopalians unwanted by the CHAPTER IO Presbyterians. But among all such cross-currents of opinion, the basic idea of a witch was that of a person in league with WITCHCRAFT the devil, baptised by the devil, and holding frequent appoint ments with the devil. Satan himself was conceived as completely _ WILLIAM J. DILLON, M.A. r�al, a physical presence, appearing under many guises, some times as a black cloud, or a black horse, or even as a wee black OWARDS the close of the sixteenth century Ayr began the h n. Sat nic co rts were held in graveyards, especially those ost gruesome and ghastly period in its history, the period � � � n_i _ with a rumed kirk therein, where the foul fiend could say a ofT w1tch-burnmg. The shadowy figure of Maggie Osborne black mass, and preach a black sermon from a black pulpit, Ayr's best known witch, no longer rouses fear of her as a� _ arkly ht by black candles. When a new witch-aspirant was evil-doer, but pity as a victim, and, indeed, to-day Maggie and ? mtroduced to the devil, he lay with her carnally, he drew off her death at the Cross are becoming almost as unreal as the some blood from her, and he baptised her with this blood. people and events of a fairy-tale. From th t day on the witch bore the devil's mark, the spot But to our forefathers witches were very real. As far as the � from which the blood had been drawn. This mark was people, hi h and low, rich and poor, cleric and lay, were con � insensible of pain, and could always be found by prodding cerned, witches there were-the Bible said so and the Bible methodically with a 'prin' all over the suspect's body. Expert did not err. So sorcerers, charmers, necromancers and all of mark-finders existed, and although the profession was frowned Satan's in sible kingdom had to be vigorously se�rched out, � upon by the General Assembly after 1643, we find Ayr Presby and mercilessly exterminated. For, though Burns and his tery tempted to employ a professional witchfinder from Gallo ontemporaries could laugh at the cantrips of Cutty Sark, and 2 � way in I 644. Je t at the very devil himself as chief bagpipe-player to the � King James the Saxt had been much troubled by witches wizened beldames at Kirk Alloway, their great-grandfathers and, for the guidance of his subjects, had compiled a compre had taken all such unchancy creatures as personal menaces, hensive classification of them in a royal volume on Demonology, and for their own individual safety and for the safety of the realm, and from this book sprang most of the witch trials in Scotland. 3 had f ught t e witches' de il:ries wit blazing bonfires, and � , � _ � � Surely if the witches danced against King James in the kirk the witches mcantat10ns with the silencing tortures of the yaird at North Berwick, they could dance against the bailies 'spurr', the branks and the stake. of Ayr at Alloway Kirk. And so legal machinery for 'justifying' There had always been witches in Scotland, at least since s ch undesirables was set up, connecting the justices in Ayr the days when the thwarted emissaries of Satan hurled Dum � with the royal justiciars in Edinburgh. The procedure was barton Rock at the fleeing St. Patrick. After that many witches this. If a woman was suspected of being a witch, she was h d been punished at the stake, usually for getting their � eported to the Presbytery and examined by the ministers, who, witchcraft mixed up with politics. However, it was witchcraft : if they found evidences of guilt, haled her before the burgh mixed up with religion that brought persecution to a climax magistrates. If the provost and bailies also found grounds for in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. suspicion, an application was made by the kirk-session to the In I 563 the Scottish Parliament formally constituted witch craft a capital offence, enacting that, 'all who used witchcraft, 1 Erskine's Institutes, p. 706 2 D. M. Lyon, Ayr in Olden Times, p. 91 3 sorcery, necromancy, or pretended skill therein, and all con- G. F. Black, A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland, 1938, p. 12 166 THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR WITCHCRAFT 169 Lords of Council in Edinburgh for a commission to try the find things lost, was in trouble with the magistrates in our town.^ suspect as a witch. Many such applications are recorded in But Ayr's records do not spare us the details of the horrors Ayr's local records. Two are sufficient to demonstrate the inflicted upon greater trespassers. In 1595 Agnes Hucheon process. The first, of 1643, reads: 'in respect of sundry deposi• escaped a charge of witchcraft and was adjudged simply an tions given before the Presbytery against Susanna Shang, abuser of the people. Yet she was scourged mercilessly in a wherein were found great presumptions of the sin of witchcraft; punitive procession to all the most public places in the burgh, therefore the Presbytery ordained a letter to be directed to the set up in the cruel, mouth-tearing 'branks' during two full Lords of Council for purchasing ane warrant to try the said market days, and made to do countless satisfactions, before Susanna.'i the Presbytery would accept her repentance.^ The second letter seeks wider powers, for it shows, in 1650, Another suspect, Margaret Reid, was held for six weeks in Mr. Hugh Eccles, Moderator of Ayr, writing to the Estates jail on bread and water, then banished the shire.^ for a general commission against witches, and also exhorting But some there were who paid the penalty in full. It seems the Carrick ministers to make a similar application.^ With impossible to find the total of burnings in Ayr, but judged by such general commissions mass executions of witches could be the number of references to applications for 'commissions', it carried out, but there is no evidence of this in Ayr although must have been high. In grim little cash payments some many single executions are recorded. executions are recorded in the burgh Book of Accounts: Writing in Ayr in Olden Times, Murray Lyon makes an 1586—In expenses sustained in burning the witch of Barn- unusual error when he states the only authentic record of weill, to candles, to meat and drink, to pitch barrels, to witchcraft in our burgh took place at a time when the parish coals, roset, hedir, treis and 'uther necessaris', £•] 3s. 8d.* was served by the Episcopalian minister, Mr. William Annand.^ 1595—-For coals, cords, tar-barrels, and other graith that This is just not true; there are at least half a dozen records of burnt Marion Grief, witch, ^4 4s. od.^ witch-burnings, and in many of the applications for commis• 1599—For coal to burn Jonet Young, witch—for rope, 7s. 8d.; sions appear the names of Mr. Eccles and Mr. Adair, both for a tar-barrel, £1; to Barquhill the hangman, for exe• Presbyterian clergymen. cuting her, ^4.6 All over Scotland bailies and magistrates expended great 1613—To Barquhill for doing his office upon Bessie Bell and energy in seeking evidence against suspects, and in using torture others, £4 i is. 4d.'' to obtain evidence. There is no trace in Ayr of 'capsicaws' to 1618—To James Gilmour, lokman, for executing Maly crush the victim's legs, or of other instruments of torture Wilson, £6 13s. 4d.^ common to the period, but a Gestapo-like technique of sleep- prevention is suggested in a minute of i ith June 1650, wherein Probably the list is not complete, for elsewhere are to be found the kirk-session ordained that elders and deacons were to references to witchcraft in Ayr during the period of the Burgh 'oversee the said persons in turn, and exhort them to confession Accounts. In 1582 a William Gilmour of Polquhairn, appearing . and to take all pains for the furtherance of so good a work'.* in Edinburgh before the Lords of Council on a charge of witch• Many of these offenders were not major criminals, so the craft and sorcery, was forwarded for trial to the Justice-ayre of punishments were not capital. In 1623 Michael, a spaeman, Ayr, but there is no account locally." In 1618 Janet McAllister was sentenced to a period of excommunication; in 1651 the was executed for witchcraft, but no details appear in the session banished John Muir, a palmister and reader of fortunes; Accounts.^" About 1650, during the peak period of persecution, and in 1684 a dumb man, who pretended to tell fortunes and 1 J. H. Pagan, Annals of Ayr, p. io6 ^ ib., p. 107 2 D. M. Lyon, Ayr in Olden Times, p. 9 * Ayr Burgh Accounts, p. 156 D. M. Lyon, Ayr in Olden Times, p. 90 ^ ib. ^ ib. <• ib., p. 183 « ib., p. aoo ' ib., p. 58 « ib., p. 267 * Kirk-Session Records, nth June 1650 » Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. i, p. loi "J. H. Pagan, Annals of Ayr, p. 108 170 THE ROYAL BURGH OF AYR WITCHCRAFT 171 many persons must have been punished by death, but further Osborne of whom so very little is known, except in local legend.