printed by
Sir Egerton Brydges, in the "Censura Literaria."]

_Dumfries, 1792._

Among the many witch stories I have heard, relating to Alloway kirk, I
distinctly remember only two or three.

Upon a stormy night, amid whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts
of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take
the air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing
homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting
some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk
of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look-out in approaching a
place so well known to be a favourite haunt of the devil and the
devil's friends and emissaries, he was struck aghast by discovering
through the horrors of the storm and stormy night, a light, which on
his nearer approach plainly showed itself to proceed from the haunted
edifice. 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 caldron,
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 caldron 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 kirk-yard, in
order to cross the river Doon at the old bridge, which is about two or
three hundred yards farther 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 it
is a well-known fact that to turn back on these occ