Whether he had been fortified from above, on his devout
supplication, as is customary with people when they suspect the
immediate presence of Satan; or whether, according to another custom,
he had got courageously drunk at the smithy, I will not pretend to
determine; but so it was that he ventured to go up to, nay, into, the
very kirk. As luck would have it, his temerity came off unpunished.
The members of the infernal junto were all out on some midnight
business or other, and he saw nothing but a kind of kettle or
cauldron, depending from the roof over the fire, simmering some heads
of unchristened children, limbs of executed malefactors, &c., for the
business of the night. It was in for a penny, in for a pound, with the
honest ploughman; so, without ceremony, he unhooked the cauldron from
off the fire, and pouring out the damnable ingredients, inverted it
on his head, and carried it fairly home, where it remained long in the
family, a living evidence of the truth of the story.
Another story, which I can prove to be equally authentic, was as
follows: On a market day, in the town of Ayr, a farmer from Carrick,
and consequently whose way lay by the very gate of Alloway Kirkyard,
in order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about
two or three hundred yards further on than the said gate, had been
detained by his business, till by the time he reached Alloway it was
the wizard hour between night and morning.
Though he was terrified with a blaze streaming from the kirk, yet
as it is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occasions is
running by far the greatest risk of mischief, he prudently advanced
on his road.
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