One of the most notorious of all Scottish Witches was in fact a man, and until his true colours were revealed, he had been regarded as one of the most upright & devout men of his age.  Less surprising, however, is that for decades after his death he was seen & heard in the streets & closes around his former home, in the Old Town of Edinburgh, and that only once - with terrifying consequences - was an attempt made to re-occupy the house as a dwelling place.  "So great was the horror entertained for Major Weir", wrote Hugh Arnot in 1812, in his Celebrated Criminal Trials in Scotland, "so general was the belief that his house was possessed by Devils, that almost for a hundred years no person would inhabit it."

     Thomas Weir was born around 1600 at Kirkton, near Carluke in Lanarkshire.  He served as a Captain-Lieutenant in Ireland during the Rebellion there of 1641, and subsequently held the rank of Major in the Earl of Lanark's regiment.  In 1649-50 he commanded the City Guard of Edinburgh, retaining the rank by which he was ever after to be known.  He had been a leading light of strict Presbyterianism in Lanarkshire, and in his new office he lost no opportunity to demonstrate his hatred of the 'loyal' party in his dealings with Royalist prisoners.  It was his particular pleasure to insult & gloat over them, goading them even on their last journey to public execution with all manner of sarcasms & cruelties.  He it was who led James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, to his execution, with the calm, dignified figure of the condemned man in striking contrast to the malicious taunts of "Dog, Atheist, Traitor, Apostate, Excommunicate Wretch", from Major Weir.

     Weir was described in 1660 as a tall, dark man, who went about in a cloak, carrying a black thorn wood staff "carved with heads like those of Satyrs", and looking down his big nose to the ground with a grim countenance.  At length he became so notoriously regarded among the Presbyterian strict sect that if four met together, you could be sure Major Weir was one of them, and at private meetings he prayed to admiration, which made many of that stamp "count his converse", however it was noted that he never went anywhere without his staff; that the strange Satyr heads on it seemed to change & sometimes could not be seen at all; that he could not pray without it in his hand; and that he never knelt when at prayer.  These oddities notwithstanding, he was so well thought of among the godly that he "got himself the privilege, under a pretence of praying & exhortation, to go into their homes, and into their bed chambers when he pleased; and it was his practice to visit married women at such times especially as their husbands were not at home."

     On his first arrival in Edinburgh he lodged in the Cowgate, sharing accommodation for a time with another zealot, James Mitchell, who in 1668 would attempt the assassination of the oppressive Archbishop James Sharp.  Subsequently Weir moved with his unmarried sister Jean, to a house in the West Bow, an ancient thoroughfare which ran in a zigzag bend from Castlehill down to the place of Public Execution in the Grassmarket.  Very little remains of this street (apart from Upper Bow), which was largely replaced in the 19th Century by Victoria Street (the house itself was demolished in 1878).  But in the 1660's it was a veritable den of sanctimoniousness, the most rigid Presbyterians resided here & were known as the 'Bowhead Saints', of whom Major Weir, or 'Angelical Thomas' as he was called, was considered the purest.

     Much of what follows was written up in 1685 by George Sinclair, a minister & professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University, in his book 'Satan's Invisible World Discovered', and also by the Reverend Robert Law in his 'Memorials: or the Memorable Things that Fell Out within this island of Britain from 1638 to 1684.'  According to Sinclair, some time early in 1670, a woman returning home at about midnight from the Castlehill, where she had been attending her husband's niece, who was in labour:

"Perceived about the Bowhead three women in windows, shouting, laughing & clapping their hands.  The gentlewoman came forward, till at Major Weir's door there arose, as from the street, a woman about the length of two ordinary females, and stepped forward.  The gentlewoman, not as yet excessively feared, bid her maid step on, if, by the lantern, they could see what she was; but, haste what they could, this long legged spectre was still before them, moving her body with a vehement cachinnation, and great immeasurable laughter.  At this rate the two strove for place, till the giant came to a narrow lane in the Bow, commonly called the Stinking Close, into which she turning, and the gentlewoman looking after her, perceived the close full of flaming torches (she could give them no other name) and as it had been a great number of people strenuously laughing, and gaping with tahees of laughter."

     Sick with fear, for no lights showed in any of houses in the close, the women hurried home & told what they had seen.  The next morning, retracing her footsteps, the gentlewoman ascertained that the house at the close entrance was indeed that of Major Weir.  This 'Stinking Close', correctly named 'Anderson's Close', gained for some years, on account of this apparition, the alternative name of the 'Haunted Close'.  The present day 'Anderson's Close' does not follow quite the same route through to Cowgatehead, but until very recently it still retained its particularly insalubrious odour (Jock's note - the modern one still does - the wino's use it as a toilet!!).

     A few days after this incident, the whole edifice of Major Weir's marvellous righteousness came crashing down.  At one of their regular prayer meetings, seemingly driven to the brink of insanity by guilt if not remorse, Weir began to confess to the other Bowhead Saints a series of the most awful crimes, beginning with the incestuous relationship he had had with his sister Jean for nearly forty years.  He admitted also to twenty two years of fornication with his servant Bessie Weimis; fornication with other women; bestiality; and numerous other sins of a lesser nature.  "Before God," he concluded, "I have not told you the hundred part of what I can say more, and am guilty of."

     The appalled Saints heard his confession in horror, and with a mounting suspicion that his last declaration might imply crimes of an unearthly nature.  Realising what mockery & scandal the whole sect would be subjected to, should the hypocrisy of one of their most eminent professors should become known, they 'did with all possible care & industry strive to conceal the Major's condition, which they did for several months, till one of their own ministers, whom they esteemed more forward than wise, revealed the secret to Sir Andrew Ramsay, Lord Abbotshall, then Lord Provost of Edinburgh.'  Ramsay at first could not believe any human, far less a man like Major Weir, capable of such deeds, but he was at length compelled to act, and the Bailies were sent to arrest the aged (and by this time no doubt deranged) man.

     It was no coincidence, perhaps, that this was once more a time of trial for the Presbyterians.  Charles II's government was forcing bishops & archbishops - including the tyrannical James Sharp - upon an unwilling populace, and in April 1670 all Presbyterian ministers still residing in Edinburgh, which was a hot bed of illegal Coventicles, were ordered to leave the City.  It was precisely at this juncture that the crimes of Major Weir became known, and in the prevailing atmosphere of bitterness & persecution it was perhaps inevitable that there would also be a degree of hysteria.  Before long, Thomas & Jean Weir were on trial, not just for the sins of the flesh but also for being servants of the Devil.

     When the Bailies came to arrest the Major, they asked him if he had any money in the house that they should secure.  None, he replied.  Yes, interjected his sister, there was some, and she helped them to find several packages of money wrapped in old clouts.  Jean went on to warn them to be sure to take his black staff, and to keep him & it well apart.  He had got it from the Devil, she said, and it was his source of strength: if he chanced to get it into his hands he would certainly drive them all out of the doors, however hard they might resist.

     Once they had the pair of them locked in the Tolbooth, the Bailies returned to a Tavern in the West Bow.  They unwrapped the money & put it all together in a bag, and the clouts were thrown on the fire, where they made a strange dancing in the flames.  They found that one of the rags contained 'some hard thing', which they also threw into the fire: 'it being a certain root which circled & sparked like gun powder, and passing from the tunnel of the chimney, it gave a crack like a little cannon, to the amazement of all who were present'.  One of the Bailies then took the bag of money home with him, and went to put it away in a closet.  While he was there, his wife was terrified by a horrendous din, 'like the falling of a house, about three times together'.  She knocked at the door & called out if he was alive.  The Bailie came out, quite unconcerned, and asked what was the matter.  He had heard nothing.

     The stories about Major Weir, as he went on trial, now came thick & fast.  It was recalled that, back in Lanarkshire, a young woman had once reported coming upon him engaged in an unnatural act with an animal, while on his way to a meeting at Newmills.  But she had had no other witness, and had been whipped through the streets of Lanark by the public hangman 'as a slanderer of such an eminent Holy Man'.  Years later, in Edinburgh, the Major had apparently used the powers of his staff to gain entrance, at dead of night, into the locked bedchamber of a woman he lusted after, 'but her prayers & cries scared away the wizard before the completion of his wicked purpose'.  It was also remembered that he had previously had charge of the waiters (watchmen) at the ports (gates) of the City.  On one occasion he had found several of them, who he though should have been on duty at the West Port, drinking in a cellar.  He remonstrated with them, and they replied that others were on duty at the gates, while they had a drink with their old friend & acquaintance Mr Burn.  At this, the Major was seen to start back, repeating the word 'Burn' four or five times.  He had also been known to shrink from crossing the Liberton Burn to the South of the City.  These incidents were said to relate to his pact with the Devil which had rendered him skaithless (unharmed) from all but one burn: confronted with the word in these different contexts he seemed confused & filled with a sense of foreboding, as if the burn from which he would really suffer was close at hand.

     At the time of his arrest the Major was a man of seventy.  He repeated his confession of crimes of the flesh in prison & to the judge.  Only once did he ever admit any knowledge of Satan & then vaguely to a visiting Minister who asked him if he had seen the Devil to which Major Weir replied, "Any feeling he ever hade of him was in the dark; and this is truth.  The same Minister later repeated this wafer thin evidence in court.  By this time Major Weir had rejected all ministrations from all clergymen.  "Torment me no more" he shouted at them "for I am tormented already".  They urged him however to cleanse his conscience before God, but he only repeated, "Torment me not before the time!!"  When pressed further he said that since he was bound for the Devil anyway he would not anger him.  It was his sister's testimony that sealed both their fates.  She said they had first committed incest on the road to Kirkcaldy, near to Kinghorn.  She was asked if she ever had a child by him, but denied this saying that she had taken steps abominate to make sure this could not be.  Many wanted her to elaborate on that but the minister questioning her would not let her & instead she was encouraged to tell as much as she knew about the Major's Satanic practices.

     By her account, Weir inherited his powers from their mother whom Jean said had been a Witch.  "The most secret thing that either I myself, or any of the family could do, when once a mark appeared on her brow, she could tell it them, though done at great distance!"

     "What kind of mark was this?" the minister asked her.

     "I have some such mark myself, when I please, on my forehead," she replied & even though the minister was overruled she made a frown of her face & there in her wrinkles was the shape of an exact horseshoe.  There was no stopping Jean.  She recounted how when she kept a school in Dalkeith, a tall woman with two children at her feet & another on her back, offered to barter on her behalf with the Queen of the Fairies.  The next day, a little woman came to Jean & gave her a piece of wood, or the root of a tree or herb, and told her that as long as she kept it she would be able to do whatever she desired.  She laid a cloth on the floor & had Jean put her foot on it, put her hand on her head & had her repeat three times 'All my cross & troubles go to the door with thee'.  Thus completed Jean gave her all the silver she had & some food & returned to spinning.  She was amazed to find that she was able to spin more yarn in a short space of time than she ever thought possible.  Since that time she had become acclaimed for the speed of her spinning, but she denied Satanic help, and only said she was skilled at it.  Later however she admitted that when she had been out she would come home to find more yarn spun than previously there had been & that no weaver was able to make cloth from this yarn as it simply broke & fell from the loom.  These & other crazy stories were enough to condemn the pair to death.

     Weir was tried on 9th April 1670 & sentenced to die on the 14th of that month at Gallowlea, a place of execution outside the City walls a little way down what is now Leith Walk.  Normal practice was for the victim to be throttled to death - or at least unconsciousness - before burning, but this was waived for Weir.  Tied to the stake with a rope around his neck he was urged to ask the Lord for Mercy but he refused saying "Let me alone, I have lived like a beast & I must die like a beast."  Weir was duly burnt alive, with his staff, which, according to witnesses, danced in the fire & was, like him, a long time in the burning.

     When Jean was told of her brother's execution she did not believe it at first, until the burning of the staff was recounted, whereupon she fell in a fit to her knees, spouting insanities & finishing in agony with the words, "I know that he is with the Devils; for with them he lived!!"  Despite being obviously insane, there was no mercy for Jean & she was sentenced to hang in the Grassmarket.  "Then I will die with all the shame I can" she told the clergyman attending her.  On the scaffold it became clear what she meant when she said to the people assembled to watch her die,  "I see a great crowd here this day, wondering & crying for me, but alas, few mourn for a broken Covenant".  It was assumed with these words she was mocking the spot where so many, both Covenanter & Royalist, had died for their faith.  The officials were outraged, but her words have a  strange poignancy even now over 300 years later.  She was duly hanged.

     Before his ashes were even cold Weir's ghost was back in the West Bow.  The house in which he had lived was shunned as a place of evil, and for more than a hundred years nobody would consider inhabiting it.  "Bold was the urchin from the High School who dared to approach the gloomy ruin at risk of seeing the Major's enchanted staff parading through the apartments", wrote Sir Walter Scott recalling his own childhood.  The staff it seemed had returned & waited as a porter at the door.  Sometimes it was seen going on errands, just as - it was now maintained for certainty - it had done when he was alive, entering shops & tapping its way down closes, sometimes with a lantern hoisted upon its Satyrs heads.  There was a stair next to Weir's house which older citizens said he had cast a spell upon, so that those who climbed it had the uncanny sensation that they were actually going down.  Sometimes the deserted house was seen all ablaze with lights, and there was the sound of many voices laughing, or the hum of Jean's necromantic spinning wheel could be heard.  There were even those who claimed to have seen the Major riding out of the Haunted Close at night, mounted for some reason on a headless black charger; and Robert Louis Stevenson's father was often told as a child how the whole of the West Bow was sometimes awakened by the sound of the Devil's coach, drawn by six coal-black horse with fiery eyes, coming to collect the wizard & his sister for their ride to Dalkeith.  Exaggerated as these stories undoubtedly were the house's reputation & notoriety was enough to stop anyone risking setting up residence there, though it was at times used as a shop, no-one would stay through the night.

     Then according to Robert Chambers in his Traditions of Edinburgh, as the shades of superstition began to fall away in the latter half of the 18th century, the proprietor tried to find a new tenant for the house.  A former soldier & traveller who had been away from Scotland for many years & was therefore fairly immune to the persistence of local folk memory, took the place on at a favourable rent.  Huge interest was aroused amongst the City populace at the news that the Major's house was once again to be lived in, and there was a general feeling that the new circumstances would be marked in some appropriate way.  It was not long before these expectations were fulfilled:

     'On the very first night after Patullo & his spouse had taken up their abode, as the worthy couple were lying awake in their bed, not unconscious of a certain degree of fear - a dim uncertain light proceeding from the embers of their fire, and all being silent around them - they suddenly saw a form like that of a calf, which came forward to the bed, and, setting its fore-feet upon the stock, looked steadfastly at the unfortunate pair.  When it had contemplated them thus for a few minutes, to their great relief it took itself away, and slowly retiring, gradually vanished from sight.  As might be expected, they deserted the house next morning; and for another half century no other attempt was made to embank this part of the world of light from the aggressions of the world of darkness.'

     What was left of the building finally disappeared during reconstruction work in the 1870's, and with it, as far as is known, any likelihood of meeting the Black Major, Jean or any of their associates.