The latest instance of the popular panic occasioned by a house supposed to be haunted, occurred in Scotland, in the winter of the year 1838. On the 5th of December, the inmates of the farm-house of Baldarroch, in the district of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, were alarmed by observing a great number of sticks, pebble-stones, and clods of earth flying about their yard and premises. They endeavoured, but in vain, to discover who was the delinquent; and the shower of stones continuing for five days in succession, they came at last to the conclusion that the devil and his imps were alone the cause of it.
The rumour soon spread over all that part of the country, and hundreds of persons came from far and near to witness the antics of the devils of Baldarroch. After the fifth day, the shower of clods and stones ceased on the outside of the premises, and the scene shifted to the interior. Spoons, knives, plates, mustard-pots, rolling-pins, and flat-irons appeared suddenly endued with the power of self-motion, and were whirled from room to room, and rattled down the chimneys in a manner which nobody could account for. The lid of a mustard-pot was put into a cupboard by the servant-girl in the presence of scores of people, and in a few minutes afterwards came bouncing down the chimney, to the consternation of every body.
There was also a tremendous knocking at the doors and on the roof, and pieces of stick and pebble-stones rattled against the windows and broke them. The whole neighbourhood was a scene of alarm; and not only the vulgar, but persons of education, respectable farmers, within a circle of twenty miles, expressed their belief in the supernatural character of these events, and offered up devout prayers to be preserved from the machinations of the Evil One. The note of fear being once sounded, the visitors, as is generally the case in all tales of wonder, strove with each other who should witness the most extraordinary occurrences; and within a week, it was genearally believed in the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Drumoak, Durris, Kincardine-O’Neill, and all the circumjacent districts of Mearns and Aberdeenshire, that the devil had been seen in the act of hammering upon the house-top of Baldarroch.
One old man asserted positively that, one night, after having been to see the strange gambols of the knives and mustard-pots, he met the phantom of a great black man, “who wheeled round his head with a whizzing noise, making a wind about his ears that almost blew his bonnet off,” and that he was haunted by him in this manner for three miles.
It was also affirmed and believed, that all horses and dogs that approached this enchanted ground were immediately affected; that a gentleman, slow of faith, had been cured of his incredulity by meeting the butter-churn jumping in at the door as he himself was going out; that the roofs of houses had been torn off, and that several ricks in the corn-yard had danced a quadrille together, to the sound of the devil’s bagpipes re-echoing from the mountain tops. The women in the family of the persecuted farmer of Baldarroch also kept their tongues in perpetual motion; swelling with their strange stories the tide of popular wonder. The goodwife herself, and all her servants, said that, whenever they went to bed, they were attacked with stones and other missiles, some of which came below the blankets and gently tapped their toes.
One evening, a shoe suddenly darted across a garret where some labourers were sitting, and one of the men, who attempted to catch it, swore positively that it was so hot and heavy he was unable to hold it. It was also said that the bearbeater (a sort of mortar used to bruise barley in) – an object of such weight that it requires several men to move it – spontaneously left the barn and flew over the house-top, alighting at the feet of one of the servant-maids, and hitting her, but without hurting her in the least, or even causing her any alarm; it being a fact well known to her, that all objects thus thrown about by the devil lost their specific gravity, and could harm nobody, even though they fell on a person’s head.
Among the persons drawn to Baldarroch by these occurrences were the heritor, the minister, and all the elders of the Kirk, under whose superintendence an investigation was immediately commenced. Their proceedings were not promulgated for some days; and, in the mean time, rumour continued to travel through all the Highlands, magnifying each mysterious incident the farther it got from home. It was said, that when the goodwife put her potato-pot on the fire, each potato, as the water boiled, changed into a demon, and grinned horribly at her as she lifted the lid; that not only chairs and tables, but carrots and turnips, skipped along the floor in the merriest manner imaginable; that shoes and boots went through all the evolutions of the Highland fling without any visible wearers directing their motions; and that a piece of meat detached itself from the hook on which it hung in the pantry, and placed itself before the fire, whence all the efforts of the people of the house were unable to remove it until it was thoroughly roasted; and that it then flew up the chimney with a tremendous band.
At Baldarroch itself the belief was not quite so extravagant; but the farmer was so convinced that the devil and his imps were alone the cause of all the disturbance, that he travelled a distance of forty miles to an old conjuror, named Willie Foreman, to induce him, for a handsome fee, to remove the enchantment from his property. There were, of course, some sensible and educated people, who, after stripping the stories circulated of their exaggeration, attributed all the rest to one or other of two causes: first, that some gipsies, or strolling mendicants, hidden in the neighbouring plantation, were amusing themselves by working on the credulity of the country people; or secondly, that the inmates of Baldarroch carried on this deception themselves, for some reason or other, which was not very clear to anybody. The last opinion gained but few believers, as the farmer and his family were much respected; and so many persons had, in the most open manner, expressed their belief in the supernatural agency, that they did not like to stultify themselves by confessing that they had been deceived.
At last, after a fortnight’s continuance of the noises, the whole trick was discovered. The two servant lasses were strictly examined, and then committed to prison. It appeared that they were alone at the bottom of the whole affair, and that the extraordinary alarm and credulity of their master and mistress, in the first instance, and of the neighbours and country people afterwards, made their task comparatively easy. A little common dexterity was all they had used; and, being themselves unsuspected, they swelled the alarm by the wonderful stories they invented. It was they who loosened the bricks in the chimneys, and placed the dishes in such a manner on the shelves, that they fell on the slightest motion. In short, they played the same tricks as those used by the servant girl at Stockwell, with the same results, and for the same purpose – the gratification of a love of mischief. They were no sooner secured in that county gaol than the noises ceased, and most people were convinced that human agency alone had worked all the wonder. Some few of the most devoutly superstitious still held out in their first belief, and refused to listen to any explanation.
Memoirs of extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds. Charles Mackay, 1856.
Story of “The Deil o’ Baldarroch.”
Can any one of your correspondents interested in folklore tell me anything concerning the story of “The Deil o’ Baldarroch.” Baldarroch is a farm in the parish of Banchory-Ternan, and is one of the places in Scotland in which the “black art” seems to have had full sway. I have heard the story from one who actually witnessed it, and it seems to be well known by the common people for miles around, but I can find no account of it in any guide book of Deeside I have seen yet. Niether Black nor Anderson nor Patterson mention the fact, and there is no word of it in the famous Deeside Guide by Brown. A similar story is told about a farm in the parish of Lonmay, named Boodie Brae, which was the cause of the proprietor leaving his farm. I shall be glad if anybody will tell me where I can obtain a written account of the story. Sydney C. Couper, Lausanne, Switzerland.
By favour of a correspondent, I have before me a small f’cap 8vo pamphlet of 16 pages, entitled, The Dance of Baldarroch. No author’s name is given, and there is no title, but the colophon bears “Printed by J. Daniel, 48 Castle Street, Aberdeen.” There is a very quaint incised woodcut, by way of frontispiece of the “Dance of Baldarroch,” and it is dated 1839, which is presumably the date of the publication. Ten and a half pages are devoted to the general question of superstition, and the remainder of the pamphlet to the particular occurrence at Baldarroch.
That was neither more nor less than a Battle-royal among the household utensils and furniture, whereby every article became endowed with the powers of locomotion, although it is solemnly denied that the churn went out to meet the farmer and danced round him like a Newfoundland dog. Empty shoes travelled about the house, “the dish ran after the spoon” – the spurtle and roller… marched hand in hand as if they had been two batons in search of justices of the peace and constables to take them in their hands to quell the uproar. The de’il got the credit of the whole ado, and would have been arraigned before the law, as the lawyers had done greater rogues than he, but that would have required a special act of parliament. The author is a clever well-informed wag, and treats the whole question of such superstition and witchcraft as folly in the last degree. I have little doubt that the pamphlet thus described is “the Story of the Deil of Baldarroch” referred to the circumstance of which took place in 1838.
Further reference to this subject will be found in Banchory Ternan 60 years ago, by an old Residenter, Aberdeen, 1870. the averments are to much the same effect, but the author on making the subject one of personal observation reduces them to the prosaic agency of a somewhat tricksy servant lass.
Sir Robert Burnett of Crathes, in the same locality, reported the circumstances, which had obtained some degree of notoriety to the Procurator Fiscal, who summoned the girl along with another young woman, her accomplice, to Court at Stonehaven. whatever was the nature of the evidence led in the course of this investigation, or whatever was the decision of the Court, certain it is that the Deil was laid, and his cantrips ceased. It is asserted that the girl’s object had been as to work on the superstitious fears of the farmer of Baldarroch, as to oust him from it, in order to gratify the spleen of some members of his family who thought that the possession of the farm should have fallen to an older brother. ED.
John Milne, the poet of Livet’s Glen, describes the deil’s freaks in a piece called “The Banchory Ghaist,” and contained in the selections from his songs and poems, printed at the Aberdeen Free Press office, 1871. X.
Scottish notes and Queries 341. December 1889.
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Edingurgh: W. Blackwood and Sons.
There is a smart rap for spirit-rappers in the article “seeinng is believing.” The subject is treated temperately and philosophically; and not even those who believe in spirit rapping can deny the truth of the arguments adduced. What we see, says the writer, we have a right, nay we are bound, to believe; but we should carefully distinguish facts from inferences. Raps may be heard on a table; the sound is impressed on one of our senses; there is no doubt of the fact; but how these raps are caused is another question. In the absence of knowledge we are as much, indeed far more, entitled, to attribute them to human than to spiritual agency. How believers in extra-human interference are often deceived may be gathered from the following case, quoted curiously enough by Mr Robert Dale Owen, one of the chief of spiritualists:-
Hoaxing Spirit Rappers.
The credulity which spiritualists display in the absence of evidence, is not more surprising than their credulity in presence of adverse evidence. Here is a specimen. Mr Owen quotes the following:-
On the 5th of December, 1838, the inmates of the farm-house of Baldarroch, in the district of Banchory, Aberdeenshire, were alarmed by observing a great number of sticks, pebble-stones, and clods of earth flying about their yard and premises. They endeavoured, but in vain, to discover who was the delinquent, and, the shower of stones continuing for five days in succession, they came at last to the conclusion that the devil and his imps were alone the cause of it.
The rumour soon spread all over that part of the country, and hundreds of persons came from far and near to witness the antics of the devils of Baldarroch. After the fifth day, the showers of clods and stones ceased on the outside of the premises, and the scene shifted to the interior. Spoons, knives, plates, mustard-pots, rolling-pins, and flat-irons appeared suddenly enbued with the power of self-motion, and were whirled from room to room, and rattled down the chimneys, in a manner nobody could account for. The lid of a mustard-pot was put into a cupboard by a servant girl, in the presence of scores of people, and in a few minutes afterwards came bouncing down the chimney, to the consternation of everybody.
There was also a tremendous knocking at the doors and on the roof, and pieces of stick and pebble-stones rattled against the windows and broke them. The whole neighbourhood was a scene of alarm; and not only the vulgar, but persons of education, respectable farmers, within a circle of twenty miles, expressed their belief in the supernatural character of these events.
The excitement, Mackay goes on to state, spread, within a week, over the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Drumoak, Durris, Kincardine O’Neil, and all the adjacent district of Mearns and Aberdeenshire. It was affirmed and believed that all horses and dogs that apprached the farm-house were immediately affected. The mistress of the house and the servant girls said that whenever they went to bed they were pelted with pebbles and other missiles.
The farmer himself travelled a distance of forty miles to an old conjuror, named Willie Foreman, to induce him, for a handsome fee, to remove the enchantment from his property. The heritor, the minister, and all the elders of the kirk, instituted an investigation, which, however, does not appear to have had any result.
After a fortnight’s continuance of the noises, says Mackay, the whole trick was discovered. The two servant lasses were strictly examined, and then committed to prison. It appeared that they were alone at the bottom of the whole affair, and that the extraordinary alarm and credulity of their master and mistress in the first instance, and of the neighbours and country people afterwards, made their task comparatively easy. A little common dexterity was all they had used; and, being themselves unsuspected, they swelled the alarm by the wonderful stories they invented. It was they who loosened the bricks in the chimneys, and placed the dishes in such a matter on the shelves that they fell on the slightest motion.
Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 6th October 1860.
The Guyra Ghost.
By A. Meston.
The recent apparently mysterious events at a place called Guyra have fluttered the spiritualistic [Volserians?] in a manner unusual in recent years, though more or less common in early Australian history.
Guyra is a small and unromantic place which bears the mis-spelled aboriginal word for gyarra, or kyarra, a widely spread name of the white cockatoo. Near it is a big swamp where I shot ducks on my first visit to New England, as a boy of 16, in the year of meeting Thunderbolt, the bushranger; but that has no concern with the present subject.
The Guyra girl, who apparently acted unconsciously as the medium of the invisible forces which threw stones and caused various noises and levitation of numerous articles, is an ordinary character in the history of unexplained spiritualistic phenomena common in the literature of all nations, in all historic ages; and the Guyra manifestations and many others of a similar character, or very much more astonishing, are recorded from hundreds of places, even in comparatively recent times.
A knowledge of the “Borderland” between the seen and the unseen is still a more or less profound mystery to us all. Those who have earnestly investigated what is called “Spiritualism,” with the spirit in which it ought to be examined, will be in no sense surprised at the Guyra conundrum. Modern readers of Madam Blavatsky and her “Isis Unveiled,” the works of Epes Serjeant, Andrew Jackson Davis, Hudson Tuttle, Judge Edmonds, Professor Dentone, and other occult writers, or those who have followed the Theosophical Journal and the “Banner of Light,” will at least have some reasonable knowledge of the subject. Those for whom I am not writing this article are those whose ignorance shrouds them in a black darkness in which they are not capable of discerning the definite shape of anything.
Either the hundreds of recorded cases of material manifestations clearly authenticated by human testimony of undoubted sincerity and unquestioned honesty, were actual facts, or human testimony is useless in an attempt to prove anything at all. When Scepticism exceeds a wise caution and reserved judgment and becomes a mere bigoted unreasoning unbelief in everything it does not see, or cannot understand, it is beyond the power of logic, and outside the realm of common sense.
John Wesley, the famous preacher, referring to some manifestation which had no reason to doubt, expressed, in his journal the opinion that “the well-known character of the person excludes all suspicion of frauds, adn the nature of the circumstances themselves excludes the possibility of delusion. It is true there are several of them which I do not comprehend, but this is with me a very slender objection, for what do I really comprehend even of the things which I see daily? Truly, not the smallest grain of sand or spire of grass, for I know not how the one grows or the particles of the other cohere together.”
Wesley regretted that the belief in witchcraft had been nearly abandoned, and he says in one remarkable passage, “Unbelievers know, whether Christians know it or not, that giving up witchcraft is in effect giving up the Bible, and they know, on the other hand, that if but one account of the intercourse of men with separate spirits be admitted, their whole castle in the air of Deism, Atheism and Materialism falls to the ground.” Wesley was clearly not a bigot. He would calmly have investigated what was ignorantly called “witchcraft,” instead of consigning thousands of innocent young and old harmless women to the fire or scaffold for reasons which no human intellect understood.
Certainly the “girl of Guyra” would have gone into a bonfire in old witch-burning days. It is a remarkable fact that women have in a vast majority of cases been held responsible for manifestations similar to those of Guyra. In the year 1836 there happened in the North of Scotland astounding phenomena known ever after as the “Witchcraft of Banchory.” In that year he, who in after time became my father, was a man 33 years of age, and was one of the hundreds of people who rushed from all quarters of Scotland to see the amazing demonstrations which continued every day for a fortnight.
The locality showed a house and farm on the slope of a ridge, with a forest of fir trees at the back. Since a child of six when leaving Scotland for Australia very clear is my recollection of the house being pointed to as the “place where the witchcraft of Banchory was,” duly impressing my juvenile imagination. When my father went there were various clergymen, stern old Puritanic Presbyterians, preaching in the fields, the barns, the cow sheds, and even in the house and kitchen, to allay what they believed to be the diabolical work of “Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie / Oh thou whatever title suit ye,” but with no perceptible effect.
When the disturbance started the farmer and all his people fled with great rapidity, but day after day the whole work of the farm went on as usual, even to the cooking in the kitchen, and all the field work: the whole appearing to be an optical illusion, for when it all stopped, there was nothing done, everything being what we may call “status quo ante Clootie”!
My father said when he went into the kitchen, the plates, spoons, knives, and forks, and other missiles appeared to be flying about the room, and apparently striking the praying minister on the head, but nobody felt anything and nobody was hurt. All sorts of things were thrown about in many directions, and ploughs, harrows, carts, and other implements were apparently all fully engaged as on ordinary days.
Men were saying all the prayers they could remember, even in Gaelic, a language in itself enough to scare three Clooties, and women were shrieking and amusing themselves with hysterics and other eccentric gymnastics and freak evolutions peculiar to the sex, while dogs, cats, horses, cows, remained about two miles away, and positively and firmly declined to come any nearer. They had no stock in Clootie!
Now this was a business whose magnitude makes the Guyra drama look a very small transaction, and yet the Banchory phenomena were either real and apparent to the senses of some thousands of intelligent cool-headed Scots, or there is nothing at all real, and the whole universe is merely a limitless phantasmagoria, which is purely an eternal series of beautiful dreams and awful nightmares beginning and ending in nothing!
Or, in the words of the Arabic sceptic, “Nothing is nothing, all is nothing, enough”! It was the belief of Confucius, the great Chinese sage, that “we are surrounded by an ocean of invisible Intelligences,” and that belief runs through the sacred writings of all the ancient nations, and especially the Old and New Testament, and the Buddhist and Brahminic Vedas, Puranas, and Zend Avesta. To me it seems that there are disembodied spirits all around us, and that certain of those spirits, given the necessary medium, have power to manifest themselves to certain people, either in actual visible form, or in material displays, such as those of Banchory, or in the many clearly authenticated cases quoted by Katharine Crowe in that remarkable and most interesting book on the “Nightside of Nature.”
At Banchory the disturbance was credited to one of the farm servant girls who was, however, quite unconscious how or why she was the medium. In the Guyra business, assuming it to be the work of unseen forces, the idea of investigation by armed police and civilians was about as intelligent as sending your watch to be repaired by a blacksmith with a sledge hammer and a pair of tongs!
In many Australian families, Queensland included, there are hundreds of records of facts quite inexplainable by any known natural laws, but all these mysterious manifestations by the Spirit World are purely the effect of some perfectly natural law which we do not understand, but which it is our solemn duty to endeavour to comprehend, as even one conclusively proved case of spirit communion, one tangible proof of a life hereafter, one continuous chain of evolution continued into the Spirit World, will do more to destroy Materialism and Atheism, and establish healthy religion on a solid basis, than all the dogmatic creeds which rest chiefly on unquestioning faith and unreasoning credulity.
[continues…]
The Daily Mail (Brisbane, Queensland), 16th May 1921.
When the De’il played his capers on Deeside.
Superstition, like King Charles of merry memory, takes “an unconscionable time a-dying.” I am not sure that even yet belief in the Black Airt is wholly extinct. For my own part, I would rather go a long way round than step underneath a ladder; and – though one day is possibly as unlucky as another for this purpose – I have heard tell that there are twentieth century flappers who would rather go through life as old maids than face the risks of marrying on Friday. the de’il, despite the scoffers and the poetasters, is not dead yet!
Last nicht my grannie, honest woman / Amang the bushes heard him bummin’.
All this is merely preliminary, some pertinent reflections suggested by the perusal of a caustic comment in a little “bookie,” “The Dance of Baldarroch,” on which I chanced the other day; to wit: “This is placed here to point out Baldarroch as the spot where superstition and witchcraft were last believed in in Scotland, anno. 1838.”
I hae my doots on that point, as I have said. The insinuation that superstition died in the Nor’-East nearly a hundred years ago must, I am afraid, be taken with a fairly substantial pinch of salt; but all the same the incidents which made Baldarrochc notorious in the late ‘thirties of last century stand out as one of the most amazing series of escapades in the annals of spook-craft. And of spoof-craft, too!
Even when I began to “ser’ the fremt” between forty and fifty years ago, the story of the “De’il o’ Baldarroch” was one of the cherished traditions of rural Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire, for the hair-raising escapades really took place just across the borderland of the Mearns; and, with appropriate embellishment, the story was told many a time and oft in farm kitchen and bothy.
I first heard the tale in the early ‘eighties from the lips of an aged farmer’s wife who had spent her childhood’s days in the Baldarroch country, and even after the lapse of many years she was more than half convinced that the de’il had a share in the extraordinary happenings on Dee-side. As she waxed eloquent over the story, her husband, a worthy elder of the kirk, interjected an occasional scandalised remark: “Hoots, woman, I wonder to hear ye!”
The farm of Baldarroch is situated near Crathes, on Deeside; and the story of how twa servant lassies “raised the De’il” was the clash of the countryside for many a day. Doubtless the jauds, having once begun their ploys, were compelled – partly by sheer bravado, and partly by force of other circumstances – to carry on their cantrips; but certain it is that when they first conceived their doings would be handed down to posterity in prose and verse, and that their own share in the hair-raising and De’il-raising escapades woudl be used for many a day to point a moral and adorn a tale.
The trouble first began in the byre. Probably the cow baillie – a bit of a scallywag, I think – was partly to blame, but, anyhow, the lassies determined to “have their own back” on their fellow servant. Thus it was that the halflin who tended the cows was astonished one evening to see the succulent swedes which he had carefully placed in the fore-stalls lying in the “greep” beyond the reach of the cattle. He said nothing, but replaced the turnips in the manger. A few minutes later, when he returned to the byre, the turnips were again in the gutter.
This happened not once or twice, but several nights in succession. The kitchen lassies sympathised with the young baillie in his troubles, and with solemn mien gravely hinted that “Auld Clootie” had a hand in the ongauns. This suggestion fell on fertile soil, and, meeting with his cronies at night, the superstitious baillie hinted that there had been queer happenings at Baldarroch – happenings about which he could only speak with bated breath.
Encouraged by the success of their cantrips, the lassies became more daring. In the kitchen, too, uncanny happenings were disturbing the harmony of the household. One day the farmer’s wife – “a workin’ body” – had placed on the kitchen fire a big potful of potatoes for the mid-day dinner. Then she turned her attention to one or two other little “jots” – and, when she returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, she saw to her dismay that every one of the potatoes had jumped out of the pot of their own accord and were scattered on the kitchen floor. The story afterwards got about that the bedevilled tatties would not stay in the pot and had actually been seen dancing the reel of Tulloch on the hearthstone!
And so the story of the eerie happenings grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, each chronicler no doubt adding a little to the tale as it was told to him. Johnny Milne, the bard of Glenlivet, celebrated in rhyme the doings of the Deil of Baldarroch, and his merry chronicle gives some indication of the wild tales that found currency regarding the extraordinary series of events which made the little Deeside farm notorious over the whole Nor’-East of Scotland. Thus Johnny –
Some time ago, I heard a story telled / About some folks that had amaist been felled, / At Baldarroch, west frae Aberdeen / The like for mony a year there hasna been. / The evil spirit, to his name rebuke, / Took up a hauntskip in the folk’s peat-neuk; / Afore the fire, fowk couldna sit for fear, / For peats and clods cam’ bungin’ ben the fleer.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 22nd October 1930.
Deils at Baldarroch and elsewhere. By A.K.
I little thought that when I made inquiries about the Deil of Baldarroch, I would raise half of the citizens of whatever locality deils prefer to inhabit. The letter which I inserted in the “Press and Journal” a fortnight ago has brought replies from a score of kind and obliging people, some friends of mine and some quite unknown to me. I leave the above two sentences as I wrote them. The deil can play cantrips with a pen as well as a spurtle. I did not mean to suggest that my informants are, or should be, frequenters of the nether regions! I cannot thank them all individually, but two I feel I must mention. One is my old colleague, Mr William Diack, who wrote an article (which I shall draw on a lot in the following paragraphs) on the deil some years ago, which with characteristic heartiness he has told me to do with as I please. The other is Mr William Milne, of Glasgow, whose grandfather , John Milne of Glenlivet, wrote a poem on the Baldarroch phenomenon of which he sends me a copy.
Just a little over a hundred years ago, in the autumn of 1838, strange happenings began to occur at the farm of Baldarroch, near Crathes, tenanted by a family of the name of Leighton. Apparently one of the first manifestations of an uncanny and unchancy presence was observed by a halflin in the byre. He had put the neeps in the foresta’s for the cattle, and departed for more. On his return the neeps were in the greep. He replaced them but the same thing recurred several times and for several nights.
Then in the kitchen the potatoes jumped out of the boiling-pot on the swye and were scattered about the room. Rural invention, letting its fancy roam, soon had the tatties dancing the Reel o’ Tullich on the floor.
There were other ferlies, including the mysterious behaviour of pieces of wood lying ready for kindling which skipped up the lum. They continued to practise this unconventional exit even when the top of the chimney was “stappit.”
The poets got busy. The already mentioned John Milne, of Livetsglen, who was then residing in the neighbouring parish of Durris, contributed this racy account: –
The Banchory Ghost
Some time ago I heard a story telled / About some fouk that had amaist been felled / At Baldarroch, west frae Aberdeen, / The like for mony a year there hasna been.
The evil spirit, to his name rebuke, / Took up a hauntskip in the fouk’s peat neuk; / Afore the fire fouk couldna sit for fear, / For peats and clods cam’ bungin’ ben the fiear.
The bere beater, of great weight and size, / Aff like a bird into the air did rise; / It flew ower the houses like a lark, / And down on the fouk’s taes fell wi’ a yark.
The fouk gave out that everything was lost, / The vera cheese ran to the fire to roast. / The fouk were terrified where nought was seen, / For ilka thud was like to blin’ their een.
An’ cause they daured him wi’ the Word o’ Gweed / He drave the vera house maist heels ower heid. / He split and bursted every pot an’ pan. / The fouk through fear got to their legs and ran;
The stools an’ chairs in heaps of boords were ca’d. / The vera wheels got tee, and ran like mad; / Baith out an’ in the fouk were clean bombased. / An’ far and near the country was amazed.
The awful cloddin’ scarcely e’er devauled, / Until at last the parson he was called; / The person came, an’ sained the house wi’ prayer. / But still the clods were thudding here and there;
And when the sun went down they grew mair thick, / The fouk saw naething till they faun the lick.
Yet another bard, Alexander Walker, a Peterculter weaver, in 1839 published a bookle of verse, “The Deil o’ Baldarroch,” which contains, among others, the following lines: –
The tither nicht some Deil cam creepin’, / When a’ the folks secure were sleepin’, / An’ laid their toon a’ in disorder, / Frae centre till its utmost border.
An’ ilka think, baith in and out, / Determined for a dancin’ bout. / Potatoes frae the pot were boilin’, / They jumpit up as heich’s the ceilin’. / The speens an’ dishes, knives an’ forks / They frisk’d about as light as corks.
The barn utensils a’ were dancin’. / An’ thro’ the barn were stootly prancin’, / Flails and pitchforks did lightly trip it, / When the bere beater in he slippit, / The barrows thecht they were behind, / For they to dance were sair inclined.
As Mr John Milne’s lines indicate, the minister was called in, but his efforts at laying or casting out the evil spirits were futile. He was in the midst of his ministrations when missiles began dirling and dunting on the roof as fast as ever. The farmer took advice from skeely friends, and apparently called in, or rather waited upon, a celebrated layer of ghosts in Aberdeenshire, about whom I should like to have more information. This seems to be the deduction from a sentence in one report, which upbraids the credulous thus: –
Who but the ignorant would ever dream of travelling some sixty miles for the opinion of the prophetic Foreman of Buchan, and solicit his aid in conjuring witches, or search the country round for a white cock to frighten them away?
The Baldarroch phenomena belong to the order of queer happenings ascribed to poltergeists, perhaps better known as kelpies and hobgoblins in this country. There was the case of Skairy, the Wizard of Wartle, and I heard of another in Aberdeenshire recently.
The poltergeist has attracted a good deal of attention from those interested in psychical research, but for our purposes it is unnecessary to go into that aspect of the question. In any case the Deil o’ Baldarroch was effectually exorcised, after the minister’s failure, by a doughty member of another profession, the Procurator-Fiscal at Kincardineshire.
In the “Aberdeen Journal” of February 6, 1839, we read under the heading of “The Witches at Baldarroch” that Ann Leighton (32), the farmer’s sister, and Catherine Mackie (16), the farm maid, had been “ordered to find caution, to the amount of 200 merks Scots, that they will appear, at any time within six months, to answer to any libel that may be brought against them” in regard to certain “crimes.”
These crimes were described in the Fiscal’s formula as “of wickedly, maliciously, and wantonly throwing about the peats, or pieces of peats, stones, spoons, knives, or other missiles, or articles, and striking therewith, or with part thereof, her Majesty’s lieges; and the removing, in a secret and concealed manner, articles of furniture, or other articles, from the place in which they were usually kept, and causing them unexpectedly to appear in other places, and then asserting and giving out to the lieges that such occurrences had been seen to take place when no person was present by whom they were occasioned.”
“All this,” the formidable indictment concludes, “they are charged to have done, to the great annoyance, molestation, and disturbance of others, and with the intent to produce an impression and belief that the same was the result of some supernatural or invisible agency, and with the intent of creating fear, terror, and alarm to the lieges; as also assault; as also malicious mischief, or the wilful destruction of the property of others.”
All this deluge of juridical language was too much for the poor Deil. He slunk away and his misdemeanours nevermore troubled the douce folk of Baldarrock.
The curious will find the story variously recounted in McConnachie’s “Deeside,” in Charles Ogg’s “Banchory-Ternan Sixty years ago,” in “The Witch of Baldarroch,” a pamplet of 1870, in “Footsteps on the Boundaries of Another World,” and in Scottish Notes and Queries, III, pp 78, 96 and 107, and VIII, 175.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 30th November 1940.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/213209769?searchTerm=guyra%20ghost Banchory apparent eyewitness