XIV.

THE LEGEND OF THE BURNING OF MISTRESS JAMPHRAY.

I.

From the dark old times that have gone before, We have got in our day some little relief; We don't think of doing what they did of yore, To saw a man through for a point of belief; We do not believe in old women's dreams, And devils and ghosts we can do without; Nor do we now set an old woman in flames, But rather endeavour to put them out.

She has ta'en her lang staff in her shaky hand, And gaen up the stair of Will Mudie's land; She has looked in the face of Will Mudie's wean, And the wean it was dead that very same e'en. Next day she has gane to the Nethergate, And looked ower the top of Rob Rorison's yett, Where she and his wife having got into brangles, Rob's grey mare Bess that night took the strangles. It was clear when she went to Broughty Ferry, She sailed in an egg-shell in place of a wherry; And when she had pass'd by the tower of Claypots, John Fairweather's gelding was seized with the bots, And his black horse Billy was seized the same even, Not by the bots, but the "spanking spavin." And as she went on to Monifieth, She met an auld man with the wind in his teeth— "Are you the witch o' Bonnie Dundee?" "You may ask the wind, and then you will see!" And, such was the wickedness of her spite, The man took the toothache that very night. With John Thow's wife she was at drawing of daggers, And twenty of John's sheep took the staggers. With old Joe Baxter she long had striven,— Joe set his sponge, but it never would leaven; And as for Gib Jenkinson's cow that gaed yeld, It was very well known that Crummie was spelled. When Luckie Macrobie's sweet milk wouldna erne, The reason was clear—she bewitched the concern. True! no man could swear that he ever saw Her flee on a broomstick over North Berwick Law; But as for the fact, where was she that night When the heavens were blue with the levin-light? The broom wasna seen ahint the door; It had better to do than to sweep the floor. Then, sure there was something far worse than a frolic, When the half of Dundee was seized with the cholic. True! nobody knew that she gaed to the howf For dead men's fat to bring home in her loof, To brew from the mixture of henbane and savin, Her hell-broth for those who were thirsting for heaven. For the sexton, John Cant, could be prudent and still— He knew she would send him good grist to his mill. Ere good Provost Syme was ta'en by a tremor, It was known that the provost had called her a limmer; And when Bailie Nicholson broke his heugh-bane, Had she not been seen that day in the lane? It was certain, because Cummer Gibbieson swore That the bairn she had with the whummel-bore Leapt quick in her womb one day the witch passed her, And she was the cause of the bairn's disaster. When the ferry-boat sank in crossing the Tay, She was on the Craig pier the very same day. It was vain to conceal it, and vain to deny it, She kept in her house an auld he-pyet: That bird was the devil, and she fed him each day With the brimstone she bought from Luckie Glenday. In truth, the old pyet was daintily treated, Because her black soul was impignorated. And these were the reasons—enough, I trow— Why she should be set in a lunting lowe.

II.

The barrels are brought from Noraway, Well seasoned with plenty of Noraway pitch; All dried and split for that jubilee day, The day of the holocaust of a witch. The prickers are chosen—hang-daddy and brother— And fixed were the fees of their work of love; To prick an old woman who was a mother, And felt still the yearnings of motherly love For she had a son, a noble young fellow, Who sailed in a ship of his own the sea, And who was away on the distant billow For a cargo of wine to this bonnie Dundee. Some said she was bonnie when she was a lassie, Ah! fair the young blossom upon the young tree; But winter will come, and summer will pass aye, And youth is not always to you or to me. A true loving daughter, with God to fear, A dutiful wife, and a mother dear; With a heart to feel and a bosom to sigh, She had tears to weep, she had tears to dry.

III.

All was joyful—all delectation, In creatures who prayed to their Maker each morn, That there was to be a grand incremation Of a poor fellow-creature, old, weary, and worn. All pity is drowned in a wild devotion, A grim savage joy within every breast; The streets are all in a buzzing commotion, Expectant of this worse than cannibal feast. From the provost down to the gaberlunzie, From fat Mess John to half-fed Bill, From hoary grand-dad to larking loonie, From silken-clad dame to scullion Nell; The oldest, the youngest, the richest, the poorest, The milky-breasted, the barren, the yeld, The hardest, the softest, the blithest, the dourest, Are all by the same wild passion impelled. If her skin it is wrinkled—ah, God forefend her! The wild lapping flame will soon make it shrink; If her eyes are dim and rheumy and tender, The adder-tongued flames will soon make her wink. If brown now her breasts—once globes of beauty! The roasting will char them into a black heap; If trembling her limbs, the prickers' loved duty Will be to compel her to dance and to leap. The harlequin Man has doffed his jacket, No pity to feel—he has none to give; The Bible has said it, and so thou must take it, "Thou shalt not allow a witch to live."

IV.

On the long red sands of old Dundee, Out at the hem of the ebbing sea, They have fixed a long pole deep in the sand, And around it have piled with deftly hand The rosined staves of the Noraway wood, Four feet high and four feet broad, To burn, amidst flames of burning pitch, So rare a chimera yclept a witch— Born of a fancy wild and camstary, Like ghost or ghoul, brownie or fairy. The prickers are there, each with long-pronged fork, Yearning and yape for their hellish work, And the priests and friars, black, white, or grey, All ready to preach the black devil away. Yea, devils are there, more than they opine. Even one under every gabardine; And there is a crowd of every degree: The urchins, all laughing with mirth and glee; And pipers and jangleurs might there be seen, And cummers and mummers in red and green, All cheery and merry and void of care, As if they were going to Rumbollow Fair.

V.

Ho! yonder comes from the emptying town A crowd of five thousand all rushing down; They hurry, they scurry, they buzz, they brize, And all to see this witch in a blaze. Deep in the midst of the jubilant throng A harmless woman is hurried along,— She is weary, and wheezing for lack of breath, And o'er all her face is the pallor of death; And she says, as they push her, in grim despair, "Ye needna hurry yoursel's sae sair— Nae sport there will be till I am there."[A]

[Footnote A: These words are the old tradition which has been handed down in Dundee for generations.]

VI.

They have doffed her clothes till all but stark; They have tied her with ropes in her cutty sark; They have torn the snood from her silvery hair, And her locks they fall on her shoulders bare, Or stream in the cold and piercing breeze Blowing muggy and moist from the eastern seas. Hush! silence is over all that crowd, Then an echoing shout both long and loud; The fagots flare up with a lurid glare— In the middle shines bright that white figure there, Like those sad spirits of endless woe 'Midst eternal fires in the shades below! There lances and glances each long-pronged fork,[A] As through the wild flames it is quick at work, Till the red blood squirts and seethes and sings, As through the red flame each squirtlet springs, The flames lap round her like forkèd levin; The priests send up their prayers to heaven; But what these prayers are to do when there, It is likely they could not themselves declare Yet all this while, in her agony, She made no murmur, she uttered no cry, As if she would show by a silent ban Her scorn of the great wise creature Man. Lo! the pole breaks over with creaking crash, The body falls down in the flaming mass; Up a cloud of sparks with a flesh-burnt smell Rises and swirls like vomit of hell.

[Footnote A: There is in the records of the town the account of the expenses attending the execution, and the sums in Scots money paid for the tar barrels, and for prickers' fees, etc.]

VII.

There's a ship in the Tay on the rising tide— She has come that day from a distant land; The captain stands there the helm beside, A telescope holding in his left hand. "What, ho! my lads," he loudly exclaims, "Yonder's a fire on the hem of the sea— It is some good ship that is there in flames: Good faith! and it blazes right merrily." And there is a boat comes from the pier, And it comes and comes still nigher and nigher— "What is the ship that is burning there?" "No ship, sir, it is that is yonder on fire, But a pile of burning barrels of pitch, On which all, amidst a deafening cheer, They are burning an old woman for a witch; And the woman she is thy mother dear." Then Captain Jamphray silent stood, And a sad and sorrowful man was he; He turned the helm in a gloomy mood— "Farewell for ever to Bonnie Dundee." And away and away to the Spanish Main, Where he turned a jolly buccaneer; And he has ta'en "Yeaman," his mother's name— A name which he held for ever dear.

VIII.

When twenty long years had come and gone, He was laden with Spanish golden prey; And he yearned and sighed for his native home, Then turned his prow for the rolling Tay; And he has bought all, for a handsome fee, On its bonnie banks where the trees are tall— The lordly lands of old Murie,[A] Where he built for himself a noble hall; And long, long down till a recent time, There dwelt the Yeaman's honoured line.

[Footnote A: This tradition has always been in the Yeaman family, and very likely to be true, for the reason that an origin not gratifying to the pride of an old house would not have been accepted on the dubious authority of hearsay.]