The SIXTEENTH Century

 

 

1500

GLENCONIE MUIR BURNT BY DRAGON

Sir William Sinclair of Roslin reported the appearance of a fearsome beast in ‘Glenconie’ (a place whose location is not certain). A kinsman of Lord Lovat was out hunting on the hills ‘amang very rank heather’ when he heard a noise. It was

like the call of ane ratch [hunting dog] approaching near and near, while [till] at the last he saw it, and shot at it ane dead straik with ane arrow; where it lap and welterit up and down ane spear length of breadth and length. The heather and bent [grass] being mair nor ane foot of height, it being in the deidthraw, brint [burnt] all to the eird [earth], as it had been muirburn. It was mair nor twa eln [more than two metres] of length, as great as the coist [chest?] of ane man, without feet, having ane mickle fin on ilk side, with ane tail and ane terrible head. His great deer-dogs wald not come near it. It had great speed. They callit it ane dragon.

AN EXPERIMENT IN LANGUAGE DEPRIVATION

Around this time James IV conducted an experiment in language deprivation. His theory was that humanity’s ‘natural’ language was Hebrew, and to prove this he had two infant foundlings stranded on the small island of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth, accompanied only by a mute nursemaid. Some years later the children were brought back to the mainland, but rather than speaking Hebrew they could only utter nonsensical babble.

1507

ABBOT FLIES OFF WALLS OF STIRLING CASTLE

Father John Damian – the notorious quack, charlatan, alchemist and Abbot of Tongland Abbey – attempted to fly from the ramparts of Stirling Castle, apparently in an effort to impress his patron, James IV. Shortly after take-off Damian ended up in a dunghill with a broken thigh bone. He blamed this ignominious outcome on the feathers he had used in his wings (apparently based on a design by Leonardo da Vinci); he had chosen hens’ feathers, and realised too late that hens are creatures who ‘covet the middens and not the skies’.

1510

BEAST KILLS THREE MEN WITH ITS TAIL

Based on an account given to him by Sir Duncan Campbell, the historian Hector Boece described a ‘terrible beast’ that had recently been seen in a loch in Argyll. It was, Boece wrote,

of the bigness of a greyhound, and footed like a gander. Issuing out of the water early in the morning about midsummer [it] did very easily and without any force or straining of himself overthrow huge oaks with his tail, and therewith killed outright three men that hunted him with three strokes of his said tail, the rest of them saving themselves in trees thereabouts, whilst the aforesaid monster returned to the water. Those that are given to the observation of rare and uncouth sights, believe that this beast is never seen but against some great trouble and mischief to come upon the realm of Scotland.

HELL TO OPEN ITS GATES FOR BLUIDY BELL

At Redkirk on the Solway near Gretna there was once a kirkyard, now overwhelmed by sand and sea. In this kirkyard, one gravestone reputedly bore the following reiver’s epitaph:

Here lyeth I––N BELL, who died in ye yhere MDX, and of his age CXXX yheres.

Here bluidy Bell, baith skin and bane,
Lies quietly styll aneath this stane.
He was a stark moss-trooper bent,
As ever drave a bout o’er bent.
He brynt ye Lochwood tower and hall,
And flang ye lady o’er ye wall,
For whilk ye Johnstone, stout and wyte,
Set Blacketh a’ in low by nyght,
Whyle cry’d a voice, as if frae hell,
Haste, open ye gates for bluidy Bell.

However, the Scots of this supposed epitaph is not of the period claimed, and is likely to be the confection of an 18th- or 19th-century antiquary.

1513

NEVER ON A MONDAY

On their way to join King James’s army, the Sinclairs of Caithness crossed the Ord of Caithness, the pass that separates Caithness from Sutherland to the south. It was a Monday, and they all were dressed in green. It was said that barely a single Sinclair survived the subsequent Battle of Flodden, and for centuries no Sinclair would dress in green or dream of crossing the Ord of Caithness on a Monday.

1515

THE CLATTER OF CONSCIENCE

During the minority of James V, various factions strove to control the regency. Anxious to put an end to discord, Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, travelled to Edinburgh to beg Archbishop James Beaton to try to effect a reconciliation. Beaton, more politician than prelate, fully intended to play an active part in the contentions, and to this end wore a suit of armour underneath his clerical robes. But to Douglas he swore on his soul he knew nothing of the matter, and struck his chest emphatically. This caused his breastplate to ring out, prompting Douglas to observe, ‘My lord, your conscience is not guid, for I hear it clattering.’ Beaton went on to become Lord Chancellor of Scotland.

1523

LACHLAN THE SHAGGY AND THE STORY OF LADY’S ROCK

(10 November) Death in Edinburgh of Lachlan Cattanach (‘Lachlan the Shaggy’) Maclean, 11th Chief of Clan Maclean, murdered at the hands of an unknown assailant. The motive was clear, though. Many years before, Maclean had married Katherine Campbell, sister to the Earl of Argyll, in order to reinforce a Maclean– Campbell alliance, but the marriage was not a happy one. She tried to poison him, and he, for his part, stranded her on a small tidal rock in the Sound of Mull, off his seat at Duart Castle, fully expecting that the sea would rid him of his wife for ever. Accordingly, Maclean sent a message to the Earl of Argyll that his sister had met with a tragic accident. But when he next visited the Earl at Inverary Castle, he was dumbfounded to find his wife there before him, alive and well. She had been rescued by fishermen before the tide could claim her.

Although history does not record the name of Maclean’s assassin, it is known that he had been contracted by Sir John Campbell of Cawdor – revenge being a dish, as the saying goes, best eaten cold. The rock where Katherine Campbell was left to die can still be seen from the ferry between Oban and Craignure on Mull. It bears a name that remembers the story: Lady’s Rock.

1527

‘SCOT’ A TERM OF ABUSE IN NEWCASTLE

The deeds of incorporation of the Society of Weavers of Newcastle upon Tyne included an injunction to its members ‘To take no Scotsman born to apprentice’. Furthermore, ‘any brother calling another “Scot” in malice, should forfeit 6s. 8d. without any forgiveness’.

1544

THE BATTLE OF THE SHIRTS

(15 July) Some 800 Macdonalds and Camerons and Frasers fell on each other between Loch Lochy and Loch Oich. The fighting was so fierce and the day so hot that the clansmen shed their plaids and fought only in their shirts. Still suffering from the heat, they agreed to transfer the action to the shallows of the loch to cool down. By the end of the day, only a dozen men remained alive, while the waters of the loch ran red with blood. The encounter became known as Blar na Léine, ‘field of the shirts’. That, at least, is the story. The truth is more prosaic: Blar na Léine is in fact a corruption of Blar na Leana, ‘field of the marshy meadow’.

1545

LEGLESS LILLIARD, HEROINE OF ANCRUM MOOR

(27 February) Legend has it that at the Battle of Ancrum Moor a young woman known as ‘Fair Maiden Lilliard’, seeing her lover cut down by the English, seized his sword and set about to avenge his death. Her feats are recorded on a ‘grave’ at the battle site:

Fair Maiden Lilliard
Lies under this stane:
Little was her stature,
But muckle was her fame.

Upon the English loons
She laid monie thumps,
An’ when her legs were cuttit off
She fought upon her stumps.

The story is almost certainly apocryphal. The battle was fought at Lilliard’s Edge, a placename that long predates 1545. And the folklore of northwestern Europe is full of similar tales.

1546

‘STICKIT IS YOUR CARDINAL, AND SALTED LIKE A SOW’

(1 March) Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews, looked on as the popular reformer George Wishart was burnt at the stake. Before he died, Wishart told Beaton he would shortly appear ‘in as much shame as he now shows pomp and vanity’. And so it came to pass. On 29 May a party of Protestants seized St Andrews Castle and killed the cardinal, hanging his body over the battlements by an arm and a leg. Government forces besieged the castle, and the defenders preserved Beaton’s body by soaking it in brine – hence the popular chant, ‘For stickit is your cardinal, and salted like a sow.’ The defenders of the castle (who now included John Knox) were forced to surrender in June 1547, and were sent off to work as French galley slaves.

1547

THE ABBOT OF UNREASON DEFIES THE ARCHBISHOP OF ST ANDREWS

For some suspected heresy, John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, sent letters of excommunication to Lord Borthwick via an ‘apparitor’, one William Langlands. When Langlands arrived at Borthwick, he presented the letters to the parish priest and commanded him to publish them in church. At this time the inhabitants of Borthwick Castle were enjoying the festivities overseen by the Abbot of Unreason, the Scottish version of the Lord of Misrule. It was the role of the Abbot to subvert all authority, particularly that of the Church, and to mock its rituals. To this end the Abbot descended upon the parish church, seized the unfortunate Langlands and dragged him to the mill pond by the castle, and there forced him to jump in. But the Abbot concluded that the apparitor had not been sufficiently bathed, and so ordered his followers to ‘duck him in the most satisfactory and perfect manner’ in the mill stream. Langlands was then dragged back to the church, where the Abbot tore up the letters, dunked them in a bowl of wine, and obliged the apparitor to swallow them down. Langlands was then sent on his way, with the warning that if he should return with any more letters during the rule of the Abbot of Unreason, they would ‘a’ gang the same gait’.

1560

DEADLY TRANSVESTISM IN LEITH

As an English force laid siege to the French garrison of Leith, some of the French soldiers put on women’s clothing and made a sortie out of a side gate. Assuming that these dainty dames were ladies of the night, an English sentry strolled over to better make their acquaintance. Imagine his surprise, therefore, when the ladies drew their swords and struck off his head. They then stuck the head on top of a church spire as a warning to others.

1561

APPRENTICES RIOT IN DEFENCE OF LORD OF INOBEDIENCE

As noted above, in many parts of Scotland, May Day was traditionally celebrated with festivities under the direction of a Lord of Misrule, sometimes in the guise of an ‘Abbot of Unreason’, sometimes in the guise of Robin Hood. With the Reformation, such goings-on were frowned upon by the upper and middle classes, and a law was enacted to suppress them. However, the workers and tradespeople of the towns were defiant. In April 1561, for example, one George Dune was chosen in Edinburgh as Robin Hood and ‘Lord of Inobedience’. The Diurnal of Occurrents recounts that on Sunday, 12 May, Dune

and a great number of other persons came riotously into the city, with an ensign and arms in their hands, in disregard of both the Act of Parliament and an Act of the town-council. Notwithstanding an effort of the magistrates to turn them back, they passed to the Castle Hill, and thence returned at their own pleasure. For this offence a cordiner’s [shoemaker’s] servant, named James Gillon, was condemned to be hanged on the 21st of July.

Why Gillon should have been picked out for persecution is unclear, but when the day of his doom arrived, a crowd of apprentices and journeymen took up arms, locked the provost and the baillies in a booth, broke down the gallows at the Cross and then proceeded to the Tolbooth prison. Here they battered down the door with hammers, freeing not only Gillon but also the other prisoners in residence. Fighting between the crowd and the forces of authority – involving not only stone throwing but also gunfire – continued for some five hours, until the apprentices and journeymen agreed to disband in return for a promise that they would not face any charges, now or in the future, arising from the day’s events.

1562

LOVESICK POET FOUND UNDER QUEEN’S BED

The youthful French poet Pierre de Bocosel de Chastelard was among the French courtiers who accompanied Mary Queen of Scots on her voyage back to Scotland in 1561. According to the unreliable memoirs of Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantôme, the young poet and the Queen exchanged verses, and the Queen encouraged greater intimacy. Whether or not this was indeed the case, the English diplomat Thomas Randolph tells us that Chastelard was found hiding under the Queen’s bed at Holyroodhouse, and repeated the outrage on St Valentine’s Day 1562 at Rossend Castle in Burntisland. The Queen demanded on the second occasion that her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, kill Chastelard on the spot. However, the poet was taken instead to St Andrews for trial. Chastelard insisted he had been in the Queen’s privy, not under her bed. This nice distinction cut no ice with the court, and Chastelard was beheaded at the Market Cross in St Andrews.

EMBALMED CORPSE PUT ON TRIAL FOR TREASON

(28 October) At Corrichie, on the Hill of Fare in Aberdeenshire, the rebel Earl of Huntly met with the Queen’s army under the command of the Earl of Moray. Huntly was buoyed up by the prophecies of the witches of Strathbogie, who had told him he would that night lie in the Tolbooth of Aberdeen without a scratch on his body. The witches proved correct. After his defeat, while attempting to surrender, Huntly suffered a stroke and fell from his horse ‘stark dead’. His body was taken to Aberdeen in a couple of fish baskets, and that night laid out in the Tolbooth. The corpse was subsequently embalmed, and then put on trial for treason. It was another three years until the Earl was laid to rest in Elgin Cathedral.

CURES FOR BODIES RUN THROUGH WITH SWORDS

The Council awarded the sum of 20 merks to Robert Henderson, a surgeon, for some remarkable cures that he had wrought, ‘viz. on a person whose hands were cut off, a man and a woman run through their bodies with swords by the French, and a woman (said to have been worried [stabbed]) after she was buried, and lyen two days in the grave.’

1563

KNOX SEES HAND OF GOD IN FAMINE

Henry Sinclair, Bishop of Ross and President of the Court of Session, suffering terrible pain from ‘the stone’, travelled to France in order to seek relief at the hands of the renowned Parisian surgeon Laurentius. The removal of kidney or gall stones was one of the earliest internal operations undertaken by surgeons, and was sometimes successful (Samuel Pepys survived his lithotomy a century later), but in this case the bishop fell into a fever after the operation and died. John Knox noted with some satisfaction that ‘God strake him according to his deservings.’

Knox was a great one for noting the hand of God at work. This same year the harvest was poor, and hunger stalked the land. The famine was most severe in the north, where, Knox pointed out, the Catholic Queen Mary had gone on a royal progress the previous autumn. The connection was clear to the great reformer:

So did God, according to the threatening of his law, punish the idolatry of our wicked Queen, and our ingratitude, that suffered her to defile the land with that abomination [the mass] again . . . The riotous feasting used in court and country wherever that wicked woman repaired, provoked God to strike the staff of breid, and to give his malediction upon the fruits of the earth.

God’s displeasure extended to the whole of Scotland the following January, when Knox recorded:

God from heaven, and upon the face of the earth, gave declaration that he was offended at the iniquity that was committed within this realm; for, upon the twentieth day of January, there fell weet in great abundance, whilk in the falling freezit so vehemently, that the earth was but ane sheet of ice. The fowls both great and small freezit, and micht not flie: mony died, and some were taken and laid beside the fire, that their feathers might resolve. And in that same month, the sea stood still, as was clearly observed, and neither ebbed nor flowed the space of twenty-four hours.

1564

THE DEVIL GETS KNOX A TEENAGE WIFE

(26 March) John Knox, now in his 50s and so regarded as ‘ane auld decrepit creature’, married for a second time. This time his bride was the 17-year-old Margaret Stewart, a member of the royal house and a distant relative of the Queen. The disparity of ages and of social rank caused tongues to wag. The Catholic propagandist Nicol Burne, for example, speculated

that sic ane noble house could not have degenerate sae far, except John Knox had interposed the power of his master the Devil, wha, as he transfigures himself sometimes as ane angel of licht, sae he causit John Knox appear ane of the maist noble and lusty men that could be found in the warld.

Knox proved lusty enough, for Margaret bore him three children.

1567

ONE EARL POISONS ANOTHER

Death, by foul means, of the Earl and Countess of Sutherland, the lifelong enemy of George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness. Caithness had recruited his cousin, Isobel Sinclair, to poison Sutherland and his wife while they dined at Helmsdale in July 1567. This plot was successful, and Sutherland and the Countess died five days later. Apparently Isobel’s son John, unaware of her plan, called for a drink while his mother was preparing the poison, and a servant, equally unaware of what was afoot, brought him the poisoned wine, which he drank. He died two days later. Subsequently Caithness, in order to distract attention from his own guilt, arrested and executed some of the servants of the Earl of Sutherland, accusing them of the crime. However, the death of Isobel’s son pointed to her involvement, and she was sent to Edinburgh for trial. There she was found guilty and sentenced to death, but on the day of her execution she was found dead in her cell.

Caithness had not finished with the Sutherlands. He abducted the dead Earl’s successor, a 15-year-old boy, and married him to his 32-year-old daughter, Lady Barbara Sinclair. But his plan to kill off the young Earl and marry his second son William to the Earl’s elder sister came to naught when Sutherland escaped from Dunrobin Castle. In revenge, Caithness sent his eldest son John, Master of Caithness, to attack the Murrays of Dornoch, firm supporters of Sutherland. Besieged in Dornoch Castle, the Murrays capitulated, and agreed to leave Sutherland within three months, surrendering three hostages as surety. Caithness was furious with the leniency shown by his son; he had expected him to extirpate the entire population of Dornoch while he had the opportunity. The Earl not only beheaded the three hostages, but had a party of armed men seize his son John, who had dared to make a treaty with the Earl’s sworn enemies. The Master of Caithness was bound in irons and thrust into a dark dungeon in Castle Girnigoe (aka Castle Sinclair) near Wick, where he was kept for seven long years by his relatives David and Ingram Sinclair. Eventually his keepers decided to end his misery in as miserable a way as they could conceive. To this purpose they deprived him of food for some days, then gave him a large dish of salt beef, ‘and then withholding all drink from him, left him to die of raging thirst’.

LAIRD OFFERS HALF HIS LAND IN RETURN FOR ABOLITION OF HELL

Nigel Ramsay, laird of Dalhousie, went to hear a preacher expound on the new reformed faith. Afterwards the Regent Moray, who had listened to the same sermon, asked Ramsay how it had pleased him. ‘Passing well,’ replied Ramsay. ‘Purgatory he hath altogether ta’en away. If the morn he will take away the place of future punishment altogether as well, I will give him half the lands of Dalhousie.’

1568

LYON KING OF ARMS HANGED AS NECROMANCER

Sir William Stewart of Luthrie, Lyon King of Arms, was hanged in St Andrews ‘for divers points of witchcraft and necromancy’. He had, the charges against him stated, summoned up a spirit called Obirion, whose picture he had inscribed on a lead tablet alongside the words ‘servitus pulcher’, Latin for ‘beautiful servant’. He had also practised, the charges stated, various divination techniques, such as that involving a sieve and shears, which convinced him that the Regent Moray would shortly be dead, and that the deposed Mary Queen of Scots would escape from captivity, reassume the throne, and marry Stewart himself, whose children she would bear. Amongst the evidence brought against him was a letter in which he confessed to having consulted a prophet, perhaps Napier of Merchistoun (father of the mathematician). The fact that he was hanged rather than burnt suggests that he was convicted of treason rather than witchcraft. His trial was overseen by the Regent Moray himself, and during the latter’s circuit tour, according to the Diurnal of Occurrents, ‘he causit burn certain witches in Sanctandrois, and in returning he causit burn ane other company of witches in Dundee’. Stewart’s prognostications were partially correct: Mary did escape from Loch Leven Castle, and briefly reassumed power before her defeat at Langside and flight into England. However, she never did marry Stewart, or bear his children. Stewart was also right about Moray: in 1570 he was assassinated in Linlithgow.

1570

ABBOT BASTED IN THE BLACK VAULT OF DUNURE

The most notorious crime of the despotic Gilbert Kennedy, 4th Earl of Carrick, was that involving Master Allan Stewart, notional Abbot of Crossraguel Abbey. Stewart’s misfortune was that he had something Kennedy wanted: the revenues of the abbey. So Kennedy lured Stewart to Dunure Castle, where he was held against his will, although ‘honourably entertained’ – at least for a while. But when Kennedy’s blandishments and hospitality failed to achieve the desired result, Stewart was led to the secret chamber known as the Black Vault, which had nothing in it, according to Stewart’s own account, but ‘a great iron chimney, under it a fire’. Here Kennedy once more presented Stewart with the necessary papers for signature, which would give him the entire benefits of Crossraguel. Stewart again declined, and so Kennedy ‘commandit his cooks to prepare the banquet’:

And so first they flayit the sheep, that is, they took off the Abbot’s claithes, even to his skin; and next they band him to the chimney, his legs to the one end and his arms to the other; and so they began to beat the fire, sometimes to his buttocks, sometimes to his legs, sometimes to his shoulders and arms. And that the roast should not burn, but that it might roast in sop they spared not flamming with oil. (Lord, look thou to sic cruelty!) And, that the crying of the miserable man sould not be heard, they closed his mouth ... In that torment they held the poor man, while that ofttimes he cried for God’s sake to dispatch him; he had as meikle gold in his awn purse as wald buy powder eneugh to shorten his pain.

The Earl in this manner achieved his aim. Stewart complained to the Privy Council, but they were at this time weak, and the force of law did not extend to Carrick. So Kennedy kept the lands, though he gave his victim some money to live upon, ‘whilk contentit him all his days’.

MONSTROUS FISH SEEN WEARING TWO CROWNS

‘In this time there was ane monstrous fish seen in Loch Fyne, having great een in the head thereof, and at some times wald stand aboon the water as high as the mast of a ship,’ reported the Diurnal of Occurrents. The creature apparently bore two crowns on its head, ‘whilk was reportit by wise men, that the same was ane sign and taiken of ane sudden alteration within this realm’. The allusion was to the recent deposition of Queen Mary, and her replacement on the throne by her infant son James.

PRICKIT WITH THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD, MINISTER CONFESSES TO MURDERING WIFE

John Kello, minister of Spott in East Lothian, was hanged for murder. Presumably the parish provided but slim pickings, as Kello conceived a plan to kill his own wife, so enabling him to marry more advantageously. He pondered how to go about it for 40 days, tried poison unsuccessfully, then settled on strangulation. The deed having been done, he slipped out of the house and went to the church, where he delivered a sermon. On his way back home, he invited some neighbours to come and visit his wife, and when he came to the door of his house, he called for her to let them in, ‘but nae answer was made’:

Then he passed to another back passage with the neighbours, and that was fund open, and she hinging stranglit at the roof of the house. Then, with admiration, he cryit, as though he had knawn naething of the purpose, and they for pity in like manner cryit out. But, in [the] end, finding himself prickit with the judgments of God, of the grievous punishment wherewith transgressors have been plagued in time bygane, he thought gude to communicate his fact to ane of his brether in office, wha then was schoolmaster at Dunbar.

Plunged into contrition and misery, Kello was persuaded that his only salvation was to come clean. The consequence was inevitable:

Briefly, by his awn confession, being clearly convict, he was condemnit to be hangit, and his body to be casten in the fire and brynt to ashes, and so to die without any burial. And thus he departit this life, with an extreme penitent and contrite heart, baith for this and all other his offences in general, to the great gude example and comfort of all beholders.

MAIDEN’S LEAP SAVES HONOUR

Ruthven Castle near Perth, now known as Huntingtower, has two towers some ten feet apart, although this gap was closed by further building works in the 17th century. There is a story that a daughter of Lord Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, was enamoured with a young serving man, and one night visited him in the servants’ quarters in the Eastern Tower via the wooden bridge that linked the two. Her mother, the Countess, was alerted by another servant of this irregular conduct, and hastened across the bridge to interrupt the illicit tryst. The daughter, hearing her mother’s footsteps on the bridge, rushed to the roof of the Eastern Tower, and from there made a daring leap across the abyss to the Western Tower, and so returned to her own bed – where her mother found her a little later. The next night the young couple eloped together, and no more was ever heard of them.

1571

JOHN KNOX RAISES THE DEVIL

A rumour spread about that John Knox had been banished from St Andrews ‘because in his yard he had raised some sancts, among whom came up the Devil with horns’. This had so affrighted his servant Richard Bannatyne, it was said, that the poor man had ‘run mad’. The previous year another rumour had circulated regarding Knox, to wit he had been struck by apoplexy and had ‘become the most deformed creature that ever was seen; that his face was turned awry to his neck; and that he would never preach or speak again’.

1574

DR HANDIE DEPRIVES THE CROWD OF THEIR PLEASURES

Robert Drummond, known for reasons unknown as ‘Dr Handie’, had been ‘a great seeker and apprehender of papists’ in Edinburgh. But his own domestic arrangements fell short of expectations, and his abandonment of his wife to consort with another woman resulted in his exposure in church and his banishment from the city. His services against popery earned him a pardon, but his persistence in his adultery led to him being sentenced to be put in the stocks at the Mercat Cross, and to have his cheek burnt. But before this sentence could be carried out, the furious Drummond shouted out at the gawping crowd, ‘What wonder ye? I sall give you more occasion to wonder.’ And with that he drew out a knife and struck himself three or four times in the heart, to fatal effect.

1575

THE FOUR-EYED CALF OF ROSLIN

(30 March) At Roslin a calf was born with four eyes, three ears and two mouths. Four centuries later the Roslin Institute was to witness the birth of another prodigy, the world’s first cloned mammal, Dolly the Sheep.

1576

BESSIE DUNLOP AND THE GOOD FOLK OF ELFHAME

Bessie Dunlop, a married woman of a certain age from Monkcastle in Ayrshire, came under suspicion for her ability to recover lost or stolen items, and for her cures for difficult diseases. When brought to trial and interrogated as to where she had obtained these powers, she said it was from one Tom Reid, who had died at the Battle of Pinkie 29 years previously. It was, she said, when she was driving her cows to pasture that she had first encountered this respectable, elderly, grey-bearded (if ghostly) gentleman, who bore with him a white wand. She was, she said, in low spirits, crying for her cow that was dead, her husband and child that were lying sick, and she just risen out of child-bed. It was then that Tom Reid accosted her, and asked her what the trouble was. When she told him, he replied that she had irritated God by asking him for something she should not have done. He went on to tell her that her child would die, as would her two sheep, but her husband would recover. Reid, according to Bessie’s account, then slipped through a narrower hole in the wall than any earthly man could have gone through. It is not quite clear which of Tom Reid’s predictions came to pass, but it appears that at least her husband recovered.

The next time Bessie met Tom Reid, he asked her if she would not trust in him, and she replied that she would trust anybody who did her good. Tom then promised her all kinds of fine stuff, plus horses and cattle, if she would renounce her faith, but this she refused to do. At their next encounter, he introduced her to a group of gentlefolk, eight women and four men, who greeted her and asked her if she would go with them, but she declined. Then they departed, ‘and ane hideous ugly sough of wind followit them’, and she lay sick till Tom returned. When she asked him who they were, he answered that they were the good people of the Court of Elfhame, the home of the fairies, who had come to ask her to go with them. Tom urged her to follow their bidding, but she would not, as she could not leave her husband and children. At this, Tom ‘began to be very crabbit with her’, and told her she would ‘get little gude of him’.

Despite this threat, Tom continued to give her advice in the preparation of medicines, and Bessie seems to have had some success in treating a variety of cases. She also seems to have had a talent for recovering lost or stolen property, and was consulted on such matters by a variety of folk, including Lady Thirdpart in the barony of Renfrew and Burgess William Kyle of Irvine.

Tom persisted in his attempts to persuade Bessie to join him in Elfhame, and once she met him as she and her husband were riding to Leith to bring home meal. Just as they passed Restalrig Loch, a great company of riders hurtled past them ‘and incontinent they rade into the loch, with mony hideous rumble’. Tom told her ‘it was the gude wights that were riding in middle-eard’.

The court was clearly impressed by Bessie’s story, and sentenced her to die a witch’s death in the flames.

1577

THE MONK-LIKE MERMEN OF FORTH

In his Chronicles Ralph Holinshed describes how every now and again the Firth of Forth was visited by

sundry fishes of a monstrous shape, with cowls hanging over their heads like unto monks, and in the rest resembling the body of man. They shew themselves above the water to the navel, howbeit they never appear but against some great pestilence of men or murrain of cattle; wherefore their only sight doth breed great terror to the Scottish nation, who are very great observers of uncouth signs and tokens.

1579

A LAW AGAINST FOOLS, BARDS AND VAGABOND SCHOLARS

Parliament passed an act against the ‘undeserving’ poor, to wit:

Strang and idle beggars;

Sic as make themselves fules and are bards;

The idle people calling themselves Egyptians [i.e. gypsies], or any other that feigns them to have knowledge of charming, prophecy, or other abused sciences, whereby they persuade the people that they can tell their weirds [fates], deaths, and fortunes, and sic other fantastical imaginations;

Minstrels, sangsters, and tale-tellers, not avowed in special service by some of the lords of parliament or great burghs;

Vagabond scholars of the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen.

The ‘deserving poor’, on the other hand, were to return to their own parishes, where they were to be accommodated in almshouses. Except there were no almshouses.

1581

SINGING OF CAROLS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH

Parliament passed a law banning many traditional religious practices and observations, such as Christmas. In particular the ‘singing of carolis within and about kirkis at certain seasonis of the yeir’ was forbidden. Anyone enjoying themselves in such a manner would be fined, and if they repeated the offence they were ‘to suffer the pain of deid as idolatoris’.

1584

SATAN URGES BOY TO START FIRE

A contemporary chronicler relates how a boy called Robert Henderson

desperately put some powder and a candle in his father’s heather-stack, standing in a close opposite to the Tron of Edinburgh, and burnt the same, with his father’s house, which lay next adjacent, to the imminent hazard of burning the whole town. For which, being apprehended most marvellously, after his escaping out of the town, he was on the next day burnt quick at the Cross, as an example.

The chronicler says the boy was no doubt prompted ‘by the instigation of Satan’.

1585

BANISHMENT TO GLASGOW: A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH?

A tailor called David Duly was convicted of failing to report the death of his wife from the plague to the city authorities of Edinburgh. He was sentenced to be hanged outside his own house, but the rope broke. Taking this as a sign of heaven’s purpose in the matter, the court commuted Duly’s sentence, and rather than being hanged he was banished to Glasgow.

QUEEN’S LIPS MOVE AFTER HEAD CUT OFF

(8 February) Execution of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle. A certain ‘Ro. Wy.’ (probably Robert Wingfield) left an eyewitness account, in which he reported that ‘Her lips stirred up and down for a quarter of an hour after her head was cut off.’ He also relates how Mary’s little dog had crept under her clothes and ‘could not be got forth but by force, yet afterwards would not depart from the dead corpse but came and lay between her head and her shoulders’.

1590

DEAD MAN’S MOUTH STUFFED WITH BREAD AND CHEESE

John Drummond of Drummond-Ernoch, keeper of the royal forest in Glenartney, had the responsibility of dealing with the poaching activities of the neighbouring MacGregors, several of whose ears he had cut off. In retaliation, one day a band of MacGregors ambushed Drummond as he was gathering venison for the return of King James VI from Denmark with his new bride. They struck off his head, wrapped it in a plaid, and carried it off as a trophy. Passing the house of Drummond’s sister at Ardvorlich, they dropped in and were offered – as was the custom of the Highlands – bread and cheese by the lady of the house. As she went back to the kitchen to find more food to offer her guests, they placed their gruesome cargo on the table, unwrapped it, and placed a piece of bread and cheese in its mouth. ‘Go on and eat,’ one MacGregor mocked, ‘as you have often eaten in this house before.’ At that moment Drummond’s sister returned, saw the hideous relic of her brother, and fled from the house. She was only ‘recovered to her home and sanity with great difficulty’. The assassins meanwhile had taken the head back to their chief in Balquhidder. The chief then summoned all the menfolk of the clan to the church, where each man touched the head in turn, swearing that the slaughter had been carried out with their sanction and approval, and vowing to defend the actual murderers with all the strength at their disposal. When all this was reported to the Privy Council, letters of fire and sword were issued against the wrongdoers, who were soon afterwards captured and hanged.

1592

WARLOCK RAISES DEVIL FOR THE JUSTICE CLERK

Richard Graham, a noted warlock, was strangled and burnt at the Cross of Edinburgh. It had been widely reported that Sir Lewis Bellenden, the Justice Clerk, had requested Graham to raise the Devil. This Graham did, in Bellenden’s own yard in the Canongate, Edinburgh. According to The Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen written by Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit in the 1650s, Bellenden ‘was thereby so terrified, that he took sickness and there died’.

1593

END OF THE WORLD PREDICTED

Publication of A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St John by John Napier, better remembered today for his invention of logarithms. Napier himself regarded his most important work to be his study of the Book of Revelation, which, together with the Sibylline Books of ancient Rome, he used to predict the date of the end of the world. Satan’s bondage, he calculated, had begun in AD 300, and ended in 1300, and thereafter the Devil had been busy stirring up trouble between the armies of Gog (the Pope) and Magog (‘the Turkes and Mahometanes’). The seventh trumpet, he believed, had sounded in 1541, signalling the ‘Third woe’. From all this he calculated that the end of the world would take place sometime between 1688 and 1700.

1595

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE ORIGINAL LADY MACBETH

Death of Elizabeth Stewart, Countess of Arran, the possible model for Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. The daughter of the Earl of Atholl, she had six children by her first husband, Hugh Fraser, Lord Lovat, who died in 1577. She then married Robert Stewart, Earl of Lennox, then in his fifties, but in 1581 she had the marriage annulled on account of his reputed impotence. Less than two months later she married her lover, Captain James Stewart, who had just been made Earl of Arran, and by whom she was then pregnant.

During the minority of James VI, the Earl of Arran was one of the most powerful men in the country. This made Elizabeth the first lady at court, which attracted considerable envy and not a little hatred, not least because she had a manner that was at once coarse and haughty. Many rumours were circulated by her enemies: that she had pawned one of the crown jewels; that she and her husband were responsible for an outbreak of plague in Edinburgh and the failure of crops roundabout; that she would interfere in legal cases to her own benefit. One contemporary writer records that she offered pardons to condemned men in return for a suitable consideration; if they failed to comply, she would have them hanged. ‘What had they been doing all their days,’ she would say, ‘that had not so much as five punds to buy them from the gallows?’ The same writer calls her ‘the maistresse of all vice and villany’, and says she ‘infectit the air in his Hieness’ audience’. One of her husband’s principal enemies, the Earl of Gowrie, described her as ‘a vile and impudent woman, over famous for her monstrous doings, not without suspicion of the devilish magical art’. Indeed, one of the most persistent stories about the Countess was that she consorted with witches, and boasted that they had told her she would be the greatest woman in Scotland. The Lovat family chronicler recorded her death in 1595, somewhat gleefully observing that the witches’ prophecy had been fulfilled – for the Countess died with her body horribly swollen by the dropsy.

Arran himself was murdered that same year by Sir James Douglas of Parkhead, nephew of Regent Morton, in whose fall Arran had played a prominent part. Hearing that the Earl was travelling through his part of Lanarkshire, Parkhead set off in pursuit, caught up with his quarry, felled him from his horse and killed him. He then had one of his servants mount Arran’s head upon a spear, fulfilling another prophecy: that he would one day have the highest head in Scotland.

SCHOOLBOYS SHOOT BAILLIE DURING ARMED SIEGE

In September 1595 Hercules Rollock, the rector of the Royal High School in Edinburgh, upset the students under his charge. The council had given Rollock the task of instructing his pupils in ‘piety, good manners, doctrine and letters’, but the youths had been slack in their studies, and Rollock declined their request to grant the traditional autumn holiday. In retaliation, a group of pupils staged a sit-in, arming themselves with food, drink, hagbuts, pistols and swords. After they refused entry to Rollock, the authorities were called in, and Baillie John Macmorran led a party of men to force an entrance. As Macmorran approached, William Sinclair, one of the revolting youths, vowed to God that he would shoot a pair of bullets through his head, and with that blew out a window with one shot, and the brains of Macmorran with another. Sinclair and seven of his fellows were arrested and thrown into jail, but complained to King James VI that as they were the scions of noble and landowning families, the city magistrates had no jurisdiction over them. They requested that they instead be tried by their peers. This request appears to have been granted, as the boys were later released. Rector Rollock was not so lucky, being dismissed from his post. After his departure, in his own words, the High School sank once more ‘into the barbarism from which he recovered it’. As for Macmorran’s killer, in due course he became Sir William Sinclair of Mey.

1596

EDINBURGH ASTONISHED BY HORSE OF WONDERFUL CAPABILITIES

In April of this year, an Englishman called William Bankes and his horse Marocco put on a performance in Edinburgh. The performance was described by Patrick Henderson, one of the audience, in his History of Scotland:

. . . he made him to do many rare and uncouth tricks, such as never horse was observed to do the like before in this land. This man would borrow from twenty or thirty of the spectators a piece of gold or silver, put all in a purse, and shuffle them together; thereafter he would bid the horse give every gentleman his own piece of money again. He would cause him tell by so many pats with his foot how many shillings the piece of money was worth. He would cause him lie down as dead. He would say to him: ‘I will sell you to a carter:’ then he would seem to die. Then he would say: ‘Marroco, a gentleman hath borrowed you, and you must ride with a lady of court.’ Then would he most daintily hackney, amble, and ride a pace, and trot, and play the jade at his command when his master pleased. He would make him take a great draught of water as oft as he liked to command him. By a sign given him, he would beck for the King of Scots and for Queen Elizabeth, and when ye spoke of the King of Spain, would both bite and strike at you – and many other wonderful things. I was a spectator myself in those days. But the report went afterwards that he devoured his master, because he was thought to be a spirit and nought else.

Marocco had not devoured his master, and the two later toured France, where in Paris the horse’s uncanny abilities attracted accusation of sorcery against his master, obliging Bankes to reveal how the tricks were achieved. Moving on to Orléans, Bankes was found guilty of witchcraft and sentenced to burn at the stake, but obtained an acquittal when he persuaded Marocco to kneel before a cross held up by a priest, to show that neither horse nor master were of the Devil’s party.

WOMEN OBLIGED TO PAY FOR THEIR OWN EXECUTION

In Aberdeen two women, Janet Wishart and Isabel Crocker, prior to being burnt for witchcraft, were presented with a bill for £11 10s, to cover the expenses of their execution. The bill itemised such things as 20 loads of peat, four tar barrels, four fathoms of rope and a stake (dressed), plus transportation costs and the justice’s fee for overseeing the proceedings.

1597

DEVIL LEADS CATS AND HARES IN DANCE ROUND THE CROSSES

(23 February) Thomas Lees, the son of the convicted witch Janet Wishart (see above), was brought to trial in Aberdeen. It was alleged that he had been one of a great party of witches and sorcerers who had assembled at midnight on the previous Halloween at the Fish and Market Crosses, ‘under the guiding and conduct of the Devil . . . playing before you on his kind of instruments’. Some of the company were transformed into cats, others into hares, others into different guises, in which for a long space of time they danced around the Crosses. One of the participants, Catherine Mitchell, told the court how Lees had beat her to make her dance faster, while another woman testified that Lees had promised to marry her, and told her how he would raise a spirit to supply them with all that would be needed for their comfort. Like his mother, Lees was condemned to burn.

WOMEN SWOON AS ECLIPSE TAKEN FOR DAY OF JUDGEMENT

(25 February) A natural phenomenon caused widespread alarm, as recorded by David Calderwood in his Historie of the Kirk of Scotland (1646):

Betwixt nine and ten forenoon, began a fearful eclipse which continued about two hours. The whole face of the sun seemed to be covered and darkened about half a quarter of an hour, in such measure that none could see to read a book. The stars appeared in the firmament. Sea, land and air were still, and stricken dead as it were. The ravens and fowls flocking together, mourned exceedingly in their kind. Great multitudes of paddocks [frogs] ran together, making an uncouth and hideous noise; men and women were astonished, as if the day of judgement had been coming. Some women swooned. The streets of Edinburgh were full of cries. Some men ran off the streets to the kirk to pray.

THOUSANDS ATTEND BLACK SABBATH IN ATHOLL

Execution of Margaret Aiken, known as ‘the Great Witch of Balwery’. Under torture, she told her inquisitors how she had attended a black sabbath on a hill in Atholl along with ‘twenty-three hundred’ other persons, including the Devil. As a consequence, ‘There was many of them tried by swimming in the water, by binding of their two thumbs and their great toes together, for, being thus casten in the water, they floated ay aboon.’ Aiken said that those who were witches had a secret mark in their eyes, which she could detect, and thus she found her services much in demand by the gullible. She was taken around the country identifying witches, and as a consequence several innocent old women were put to death. Aiken was only exposed when certain persons whom she one day declared to possess the demonic mark appeared before her again the following day, in different clothes, and this time she proclaimed them innocent.

HUSBANDS BLAME WITCH FOR THEIR OWN ADULTERY

In Aberdeen, two men accused a certain Helen Fraser of having used the dark arts to transfer their affections from their own wives to other women. One of the men, Andrew Tullideff, testified that Helen ‘sae michtily bewitchit’ him that he fell for a certain Margaret Neilson, and that ‘he could never be reconceillit with his wife, or remove his affection frae the said harlot’. Another man, Robert Merchant, said that he had been married for two years to Christian White, but then he went to sow corn for a widow called Isobel Bruce at Muirhill of Foveran (where Helen Fraser was at that time living) and he ‘fand his affection violently and extraordinarily drawn away from the said Christian to the said Isobel’. The court agreed with this explanation of the unfaithfulness of the two husbands, and Helen Fraser was dispatched to the flames.

MEN DUEL TO THE DEATH OVER NUMBER OF SACRAMENTS

A disagreement broke out between James Hepburn of Moreham and an Edinburgh skinner called Birnie over the number of sacraments. Hepburn insisted there were seven, while Birnie held there were but two. A duel ensued, fought on 11 March at St Leonard’s Crags. Both men were killed, and were buried the following morning.