Terrible enough, I assure you, to the
stoutest beholder!"
Most modern readers will believe that both the luckless Major and his
sister were religious maniacs. Poverty, solitude, and the superstition
of their time were the true demon of Major Weir, burned at the stake in
April 1670. Perhaps the most singular impression made by "Satan's
Invisible World Discovered" is that in Sinclair's day, people who did not
believe in bogies believed in nothing, while people who shared the common
creed of Christendom were capable of believing in everything.
Atheists are as common as ghosts in his marvellous relations, and the
very wizards themselves were often Atheists.
NOTE.--I have said that Scott himself had seen one ghost, if not two, and
heard a "warning." The ghost was seen near Ashestiel, on an open spot of
hillside, "please to observe it was before dinner." The anecdote is in
Gillis's, "Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," p. 170. The vision of
Lord Byron standing in the great hall of Abbotsford is described in the
"Demonology and Witchcraft ." Scott alleges that it resolved itself into
"great coats, shawls, and plaids"--a hallucination. But Lockhart remarks
("Life," ix. p. 141) that he did not care to have the circumstance
discussed in general. The "stirs" in Abbotsford during the night when
his architect, Bullock, died in London, are in Lockhart, v. pp. 309-315.
"The noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards and
furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody on
the premises at the time.
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