The daughter of Bargarran's successor and heir was probably a
hysterical child, who was led, by the prevailing superstition, to
believe that witches caused her malady. How keen the apprehensions
were among children, we learn from a document preserved by Wodrow.
An eminent Christian of his acquaintance thought in boyhood that an
old woman looked crossly at him, and he went in dread of being
bewitched for a whole summer. The mere terror might have caused
fits, he would then have denounced the old woman, and she would
probably have been burned. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his
preface to Law's Memorialls (p. xcii.), says that Miss Shaw was
'antient in wickedness,' and thus accounts for her 'pretending to be
bewitched,' by way of revenging herself on one of the maid-servants.
Twenty people were finally implicated, several were executed, and
one killed himself. The child, probably hysterical, and certainly
subject to convulsions, was really less to blame than 'the absurd
credulity of various otherwise worthy ministers, and some topping
professors in and about Glasgow,' as Sharpe quotes the MS. 'Treatise
on witchcraft' of the Rev. Mr. Bell. Strangely enough the great
thread manufactories of Renfrewshire owed their origin to this Miss
Shaw, aided by a friend who had acquired some technical secrets in
Holland. She married a minister in 1718, and probably her share in
an abominable crime lay light on her conscience. Her fellow-
sufferer from witchcraft, a young Sandilands, son of Lord Torphichen
(1720), became a naval officer of distinguished gallantry.
Wodrow does not appear to have witnessed the execution at Paisley,
one of the last in Scotland, but he had no doubt that witches should
be put to death. In 1720, when the son of Lord Torphichen exhibited
some curious phenomena, exaggerated by report into clairvoyance and
flying in the air, nobody was punished. In spite of his
superstition in regard to witches, Wodrow (September 20, 1697)
sensibly explains a death-wraith by the anxiety of the lady who
beheld it. He also, still in the diary, records a case of second
sight, but that occurred in Argyleshire. It will be found, in fact,
that all the second-sighted people except some ministers during the
sufferings (and they reckoned as prophets) were Highlanders.
Considering his avidity for ghost-stories, it is remarkable that he
scarcely ever receives them at even second hand, and that most of
them are remote in point of time. On the other side, he secures a
few religious visions, as of shining lights comforting devout
ladies, from the person concerned. His narratives fall into regular
categories, Haunted Houses, Ghosts, Wraiths, Second Sight,
Consolatory Divine Visions. Thus Mr. Stewart's uncle, Harry, 'ane
eminent Christian, and very joviall,' at a drinking party saw
himself in bed, and his coffin at his bed-foot. This may be
explained as a case of 'the horrors,' a malady incident to the
jovial. He died in a week, In vino veritas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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