Domestic annals of Scotland : $b from the revolution to the rebellion of 1745Chambers, Robert
History
Domestic annals of Scotland : $b from the revolution to the rebellion of 1745
Chambers, Robert
Scotland -- History -- 1689-1745
discoursing with her, she gave me a cinder out of her mouth, not only
dry, but hot, much above the degree of the natural warmth of a human
body.’ ‘Were it not,’ he adds, ‘for the hairs, hay, straw, and other
things wholly contrary to human nature, I should not despair to reduce
all the other symptoms to their proper classes in the catalogue of human
diseases.’ Thereafter, as we are further informed, there were put out of
her mouth bones of various sorts and sizes, small sticks of candle-fir,
some stable-dung mingled with hay, a quantity of fowl’s feathers, a
gravel-stone, a whole gall-nut, and some egg-shells.
[Sidenote: 1697.]
Sometimes, during her fits, she would fall a-reasoning, as it were, with
Catherine Campbell about the course she was pursuing, reading and
quoting Scripture to her with much pertinence, and entreating a return
of their old friendship. The command which she shewed of the language of
the Bible struck the bystanders as wonderful for such a child; but they
easily accounted for it. ‘We doubt not,’ says the narrator of the case,
‘that the Lord did, by his good spirit, graciously afford her a more
than ordinary measure of assistance.’
Before leaving Glasgow for the second time, she had begun to speak of
other persons as among her tormentors, naming two, Alexander and James
Anderson, and describing other two whose names she did not know.
Returned to Bargarran about the 12th of December, she was at ease for
about a week, and then fell into worse fits than ever. She now saw the
devil in various shapes threatening to devour her. Her face and body
underwent frightful contortions. She would point to places where her
tormentors were standing, wondering why others did not see them as well
as she. One of these ideal tormentors, Agnes Naismith, came in the body
to see the child, spoke kindly, and prayed God to restore her health;
after which Christian always spoke of her as her defender from the rest.
Catherine Campbell was of a different spirit. She could by no means be
prevailed on to pray for the child, but cursed her and all her family,
imprecating the devil to let her never grow better, for all the trouble
she had brought upon herself. This woman being soon after imprisoned, it
seemed as if from that time she also disappeared from among the child’s
tormentors. We are carefully informed that in her pocket was found a
ball of hair, which was thrown into the fire, and after that time the
child vomited no more hair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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