The spirit I have seen
May be the devil. And the devil has power
To assume a pleasing shape.
Hamlet.
Withcraft and demonology, as we have already had occasion to remark, were at
this period believed in by almost all ranks, but more especially among the stricter
classes of Presbyterians, whose government, when their party were at the head
of the state, had been much sullied by their eagerness to inquire into and
persecute these imaginary crimes. Now, in this point of view, also, Saint
Leonard's Crags and the adjacent Chase were a dreaded and ill-reputed district.
Not only had witches held their meetings there, but even of very late years the
enthusiast or impostor, mentioned in the Pandaemonium of Richard Bovet,
Gentleman,* had, among the recesses of these romantic cliffs, found his way into
the hidden retreats where the fairies revel in the bowels of the earth.
* Note I. The Fairy Boy of Leith.
With all these legends Jeanie Deans was too well acquainted to escape that
strong impression which they usually make on the imagination. Indeed, relations
of this ghostly kind had been familiar to her from her infancy, for they were the
only relief which her father's conversation afforded from controversial argument,
or the gloomy history of the strivings and testimonies, escapes, captures,
tortures, and executions of those martyrs of the Covenant, with whom it was his
chiefest boast to say he had been acquainted. In the recesses of mountains, in
caverns, and in morasses, to which these persecuted enthusiasts were so
ruthlessly pursued, they conceived they had often to contend with the visible
assaults of the Enemy of mankind, as in the cities, and in the cultivated fields,
they were exposed to those of the tyrannical government and their soldiery. Such
were the terrors which made one of their gifted seers exclaim, when his
companion returned to him, after having left him alone in a haunted cavern in
Sorn in Galloway, "It is hard living in this world-incarnate devils above the earth,
and devils under the earth! Satan has been here since ye went away, but I have
dismissed him by resistance; we will be no more troubled with him this night."
David Deans believed this, and many other such ghostly encounters and
victories, on the faith of the Ansars, or auxiliaries of the banished prophets. This
event was beyond David's remembrance. But he used to tell with great awe, yet
not without a feeling of proud superiority to his auditors, how he himself had been
present at a field-meeting at Crochmade, when the duty of the day was
interrupted by the apparition of a tall black man, who, in the act of crossing a ford
to join the congregation, lost ground, and was carried down apparently by the
force of the stream. All were instantly at work to assist him, but with so little
