devil, but any feeling he had of him was in the dark.  He received sentence of death, which he suffered 12th April, 1670, at the Gallow-hill, between Leith and Edinburgh.  He died so stupidly sullen and impenitent as to justify the opinion that he was oppressed with a kind of melancholy frenzy, the consequence perhaps of remorse, but such as urged him not to repent, but to despair.  It seems probable that he was burnt alive.  His sister, with whom he was supposed to have had an incestuous connexion, was condemned also to death, leaving a stronger and more explicit testimony of their mutual sins than could be extracted from the Major.  She gave, as usual, some account of her connexion with the queen of the fairies, and acknowledged the assistance she received from that sovereign in spinning an unusual quantity of yam.  Of her brother she said that one day a friend called upon them at noonday with a fiery chariot, and invited them to visit a friend at Dalkeith, and that while there her brother received information of the event of the battle of Worcester.  No one saw the style of their equipage except themselves.  On the scaffold this woman, determining, as she said, to die “with the greatest shame possible,” was with difficulty prevented from throwing off her clothes before the people, and with scarce less trouble was she flung from the ladder by the executioner.  Her last words were in the tone of the sect to which her brother had so long affected to belong:  “Many,” she said, “weep and lament for a poor old wretch like me; but alas! few are weeping for a broken Covenant.”

The Scottish prelatists, upon whom the Covenanters used to throw many aspersions respecting their receiving proof against shot from the devil, and other infernal practices, rejoiced to have an opportunity, in their turn, to retort on their adversaries the charge of sorcery.  Dr. Hickes, the author of “Thesaurus Septentrionalis,” published on the subject of Major Weir, and the case of Mitchell, who fired at the Archbishop of St. Andrews his book called “Ravaillac Redivivus,” written with the unjust purpose of attaching to the religious sect to which the wizard and assassin belonged the charge of having fostered and encouraged the crimes they committed or attempted.

It is certain that no story of witchcraft or necromancy, so many of which occurred near and in Edinburgh, made such a lasting impression on the public mind as that of Major Weir.  The remains of the house in which he and his sister lived are still shown at the head of the West Bow, which has a gloomy aspect, well suited for a necromancer.  It was at different times a brazier’s shop and a magazine for lint, and in my younger days was employed for the latter use; but no family would inhabit the haunted walls as a residence; and bold was the urchin from the High School who dared approach the gloomy ruin at the risk of seeing the Major’s enchanted staff parading through the old apartments, or hearing the hum of the necromantic wheel, which procured for his sister such a character as a spinner.  At the time I am writing this last fortress of superstitious renown is in the course of being destroyed, in order to the modern improvements now carrying on in a quarter long thought unimprovable.