The West BOW.] MAJOR WEIR.
even to this day, a deep-rooted impression on the
popular mind.
A powerful hand at praying and expounding,
46 ? he became so notoriously regarded among the
Presbyterian sect, that if four met together, be sure
Major Weir was one,?? says Chambers, quoting
Fraser?s MS. in the Advocate?s Library ; ? ?at private
meetings he prayed to admiration, which
He
never married, but lived in a private lodging with
his sister Grizel Weir. Many resorted to his
house to join with him, and hear him pray; but it
was observed that he could not officiate in any
holy duty without the black staff, or rod, in his
hand, and leaning upon it, which made those who
heard him pray, admire his flood in prayer, his
ready extemporary expression, his heavenly gesture,
so that he was thought more an angel than a
man, and was termed by some of the holy sisters,
ordinarily Angelid Tho?nas.? ??
? Holy sisters,? in those days abounded in the
major?s quarter ; and, indeed, during all the latter
part of the 17th century the inhabitants of the Bow
enjoyed a peculiar fame for piety and zeal in the
cause of the National Covenant, and were frequently
subjected to the wit of the Cavalier faction;
Dr. Pitcairn, Pennycook, the burgess bard, stigmatised
them as the (? Bow-head Saints,? the ? godly
plants of the Bow-head,? &c. ; and even Sir Walter
Scott, in describing the departure of Dundee,
sings :-
? As he rode down the sanctified bends of the Bow,
Ilka carline was flyting and shaking her POW i?
and it was in this quarter that many of the polemical
pamphlets and sermons of Presbyterian
divines have since been published.
after a life characterised externally
by all the graces of devotion, but polluted in secret
by crimes of the most revolting nature, and which
little needed the addition of wizardry to excite the
horror of living men, fell into a severe sickness,
which affected his mind so much that he made
open and voluntary confession of all his wickedness.?
According to Professor Sinclair, the major had
made a compact with the devil, who of course outwitted
his victim. The fiend had promised, it was
said, to keep him scatheless from all peril, but a
single ? burn ; hence the accidental naming of a
man named Bum, by the sentinels at the NetheI
Bow Port, when he visited them as commande1
of the Guard, cast him into a fit of terror; and
on another occasion, finding Libberton Burn
?before him, was sufficient to make him turn back
trembling.
. made many of that stamp court his converse.
.
Major Weir,
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His sick-bed confession, when he was now
verging on his seventieth year, seemed at first so
incredible that Sir Andrew Ramsay of Abbotshall,
who was Lord Provost from 1662 to 1673, refused
for a time to order his arrest. Eventually, however,
the major, his sister (the partner of one of his
crimes), and the black magical staff, were all taken
into custody and lodged in the Tolbooth.
The staff was secured by the express request of
his sister, and local superstition still records how it
was wont to perform all the major?s errands for any
article he wanted from the neighbouring shops ;
that it answered the door when ?the pin was
tirled,? and preceded him in the capacity of a linkboy
at night in the Lawnmarket. In his house
several sums of money in dollars were found
wrapped up in pieces of cloth. A fragment of the
latter, on being thrown on the fire by the bailie in
charge, went up the wide chimney with an explosion
like a cannon, while the dollars, when the
magistrate took them home, flew about in such a
fashion that the demolition of his house seemed
imminent.
While in prison he confessed, without scruple,
that he had been guilty of crimes alike possible
and impossible. Stung to madness by conscience,
the unfortunate wretch seemed to feel some comfort
in sharing his misdeeds with the devil, yet he
refused to address himself to Heaven for pardon.
To all who urged him to pray, he answered by
wild screams. ?Torment me no m o r e 1 am tortured
enough already !?, was his constant cry ; and
he declined to see a clergyman of any creed, saying,
acdording to ? Law?s Memorials,? that ?? his
condemnation was sealed; and since he was to go
to the devil, he did not wish to anger him !?
When asked by the minister of Ormiston if he
had ever seen the devil, he answered, (? that any
fealling he ever hade of him was in the dark.?
He and his sister were tried on the 9th of April,
1670, before the Justiciary Court; he was sentenced
to be strangled and burned, between Edinburgh
and Leith, and his sister Grizel (called Jean
by some), to be hanged in the Grassmarket.
When hi?s neck was encircled by the fatal rope
at the place of execution, and the fire that was to
consume his body-the ?burn to which, as the
people said the devil had lured him-he was bid
to say, ?Lord, be merciful to me!? but he only
replied fiercely and mournfully, ? Let me alone-
I will not ; I have lived as a beast and must die
like a beast.? When his lifeless body fell from the
stake into the flaming pyre beneath, his favourite
stick, which (according to RavaiZZm Rediuivus)
?? was all of one piece of thornwood, with a crooked
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