The haunting of Blantyre Craig.
There is a remarkable and
well-authenticated tale of ghostly perambulations attached to the old
buildings. The story dates from the time of the 4th Lord Blantyre and
his good wife, Margaret Shaw, a daughter of the Laird of Greenock. It is
told by a contemporary in the old Scottish vernacular with much detail
and unction.
The couple were married in or about the year
1649, and for a time, so far as history tells, they appear to have lived
no happier a life than most couples do. My Lord was a restless,
feckless spirit, easy-going perhaps, and good-natured, but burdened with
debts and a wife for whom he had ceased to care. In the year 1663 he
deserted her, and retired to another of his residences at Cardonald in
Renfrewshire, where he passed the time of day with the officers in the garrison of Dumbarton Castle. His wife with her four children, continued to live in Blantyre Priory, to all intents and purposes forgotten by her flighty husband. But as may later appear, Lord Blantyre still bore his wife in mind.
Not long after Lord Blantyre had left the house, unchancy things began to take place in the old Priory to the horror of the whole household. At first from apparently nowhere large stones and lumps of coal would come flying through the air, and several people about the house were struck by these mysterious missiles. To make matters worse the inhabitants were appalled to see “apples and pears fleeing up and down the house in daylight.” These things, of course, might have had a very simple and natural explanation; but nerves were becoming a little frayed, and no one doubted for a moment that these strange happenings were a manifestation of the Devil. It was a cruelly superstitious age in Scotland, and however much we may now laugh at the credulity of our ancestors, it must be remembered that their fear of the supernatural was very real indeed.
The final blow came one moonlight night. “There cam downe watter from a chimneyheid and almost slockened on the fire, to which chimneyheid nane could have gone without a ladder and nae ladder was near.” Terror had done its worst, and the next morning Lady Blantyre departed hurriedly with the children to Greenock, firmly convinced that the house was “troubled with ane evill spirit or somewhat of the kind.”
The terrible intelligence caused much misgiving at Greenock, and the Shaw family’s “doer” or agent was sent post-haste to Blantyre to try and discover the cause of the trouble. But even before he could arrive, another servant had been struck unconscious by a flying stone. Nothing daunted, however, by this fresh outburst, he stayed alone in the old Priory for two nights, for the servants although they remained in the house during the day, insisted on retiring to an adjacent farm-house before dusk every night.
Reading between the lines, we can gather that the agent was a dour, unemotional, religious fanatic, with no sense of humour. Practical joking never entered his head, and from the beginning he never for a moment questioned that he was not in the presence of the Devil’s work. In all seriousness he set about laying the Devil’s agent by the heels, and he had not far to seek, for he almost immediately pinned as the author of the trouble one John Mathie, Lord Blantyre’s cook. This Mathie, he characterised as “a most prophane, godless, rude and drunken fellow,” who upon several occasions had treated Lady Blantyre with great disrespect. Worse still he was entirely unrepentant, and when challenged with throwing stones, flippantly admitted that it was his doing.
The joke, if joke it were, had now gone to far, and Mathie was in a serious position. He was denounced as a warlock, since beyond all doubt, said the agent, he had “inter-assurance and conversation with familiar spirits and devills”; and it was suggested in no uncertain tone that he was unfit to live among Christian people, and that he should have his last “tryall.“
Here the story ends abruptly, and no more is ever heard of uncanny ongoings in the old Priory. Of Mathie’s fate nothing is known, so it is probable that he escaped being burnt as a warlock, and lived to enjoy a ripe old age. In conclusion, Lady Blantyre refused to return, so my Lord, slyly chuckling, no doubt, over the success of his scheme, came back to the old house on the Craig, and there were never any more “apples and peers fleeing up and downe in daylight.“
Hamilton Advertiser, 2nd August 1930.