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ePaper created 2014-04-08, 18:05:31 | version 1.29.01
13 Accordingly on the 20th Feb. 1677, we find that four witches and a warlock were burnt at the Gallowgreen of Paisley for this horrid crime. This case has been amply enough detailed in various publications and we will not dwell longer on it than merely to mention the names of the unfortunate creatures whose lives were sacrificed on the gloomy altar of popular superstition. They were Janet Mathie, Bessie Weir, Margaret Jackson, John Stewart, Marjory Craig and Annabel Stewart. “Annabel, the maid witch among them, about the age of 14, albeit penitent and confessing, yet throw pitty was throw order of the secret council reprived from burning”. Of this execution, Mr. Robert Law, minister of Kilpatrick, in his memorials, furnishes us with these details:- “The four witches and warlock foresaid that were burnt at Paisley on the 20th February (for the young one was reprieved for a tyme because of her age) dyed obduredly except the man who appeared penitent, whose mother Janet Mathie, was first hanged without any confession of her guilt and effigies both of wax and clay being put in a napkin and dashed in pieces, were thrown in the fire with her.14 Her son and daughter confessed that when the devil first appeared to them in her house, that she (their mother) called him a gentleman to them and a good man that would not hear the Lord’s name mentioned, for fear it should be taken in vain. There was also one Bessie Weir hanged up, the last of the four (one that had been taken before in Ireland and was condemned to the fyre for malefice before and when the hangman there was about to cast her to the gallows, the devil takes her away from them out of their sight; her dittay was sent over here to Scotland) who, at this tyme when she was cast off the gallows there appears a raven and approaches the hangman within an ell [sic] of him and flyes away again. All the people observed it and cried out at the sight of it!” We now come to the famous Bargarran case, in which some four and twenty individuals, male and female, were implicated. One of these, Jean Fulton, an aged woman, appears to have died in jail and another, John Reid, a smith in Inchinnan, succeeded in strangling himself in the prison of Renfrew and a third, Alexander Anderson, also died in prison. On the 10th of June 1697, three men and four women were burned on the Gallowgreen for bewitching Christian Shaw and being habit and repute witches. The men were John Lindsay in Barloch, alias Bishop James Lindsa, alias Curate; both of these had been delatit witches in 1687 but got off through their ingenuity; and another man whose name has escaped memory. 14 It was believed that the efficacy of image magic such as this was nullified by fire.