nother in his Memorialls (p.
162). He calls 'Babigni'--'Barbigno,' and 'Balbegno'. According to
Law, it was not the laird's ghost that appeared, but 'the devil in
his lykness'. Law and Aubrey make the spirit depart after uttering
a couplet, which they quote variously.

For a haunted house, Wodrow provides us with that of Johnstone of
Mellantae, in Annandale (1707). The authority is Mr. Cowan, who had
it from Mr. Murray, minister of St. Mungo's, who got it from
Mellantae himself, the worthy gentleman weeping as he described his
misfortunes. His daughter, Miss Johnstone, was milking a cow in the
byre, by daylight, when she saw a tall man, almost naked, probably a
tramp, who frightened her into a swoon. The house was then
'troubled and disturbed' by flights of stones, and disappearance of
objects. Young Dornock, after a visit to Mellantae, came back with
a story that loud knockings were heard on the beds, and sounds of
pewter vessels being thrown about, though, in the morning, all were
found in their places. The ghost used also to pull the medium, Miss
Johnstone, by the foot, and toss her bed-clothes about.

Next, at first hand from Mr. Short, we have a death-wraith beheld by
him of his friend Mr. Scrimgeour. The hour was five a.m. on a
summer morning, and Mr. Scrimgeour expired at that time in
Edinburgh. Again, we have the affair of Mr. Blair, of St. Andrews,
the probationer, and the devil, who, in return for a written
compact, presented the probationer with an excellent sermon. On the
petition of Mr. Blair, the compact fell from the roof of the church.
The tale is told by Increase Mather about a French Protestant
minister, and, as Increase wrote twenty years before Wodrow, we may
regard Wodrow's anecdote as a myth; for the incident is of an
unusual character, and not likely to repeat itself. We may also set
aside, though vouched for by Lord Tullibardine's butler, 'ane litle
old man with a fearful ougly face,' who appeared to the Rev. Mr.
Lesly. Being asked whence he came, he said, 'From hell,' and, being
further interrogated as to _why_ he came, he observed: 'To warn the
nation to repent'. This struck Mr. Lesly as improbable on the face
of it; however, he was a good deal alarmed.

Lord Orrery is well known in ghostly circles, as the evidence for a
gentleman's butler being levitated, and floating about a room in his
house. It may be less familiar that his lordship's own ghost
appeared to his sister. S