inations of the
Evil One. The note of fear being once sounded, the visitors, as is
generally the case in all tales of wonder, strove with each other who
should witness the most extraordinary occurrences; and within a week, it
was generally believed in the parishes of Banchory-Ternan, Drumoak,
Durris, Kincardine-O'Neil, and all the circumjacent districts of Mearns
and Aberdeenshire, that the devil had been seen in the act of hammering
upon the house-top of Baldarroch. One old man asserted positively that,
one night, after having been to see the strange gambols of the knives and
mustard-pots, he met the phantom of a great black man, "who wheeled round
his head with a whizzing noise, making a wind about his ears that almost
blew his bonnet off," and that he was haunted by him in this manner for
three miles. It was also affirmed and believed, that all horses and dogs
that approached this enchanted ground were immediately affected; that a
gentleman, slow of faith, had been cured of his incredulity by meeting the
butter-churn jumping in at the door as he himself was going out; that the
roofs of houses had been torn off, and that several ricks in the corn-yard
had danced a quadrille together, to the sound of the devil's bagpipes
re-echoing from the mountain-tops. The women in the family of the
persecuted farmer of Baldarroch also kept their tongues in perpetual
motion; swelling with their strange stories the tide of popular wonder.
The goodwife herself, and all her servants, said that, whenever they went
to bed, they were attacked with stones and other missiles, some of which
came below the blankets and gently tapped their toes. One evening, a shoe
suddenly darted across a garret where some labourers were sitting, and one
of the men, who attempted to catch it, swore positively that it was so hot
and heavy he was unable to hold it. It was also said that the bearbeater
(a sort of mortar used to bruise barley in)--an object of such weight that
it requires several men to move it--spontaneously left the barn and flew
over the house-top, alighting at the feet of one of the servant-maids, and
hitting her, but without hurting her in the least, or even causing her any
alarm; it being a fact well known to her, that all objects thus thrown
about by the devil lost their specific gravity, and could harm nobody,
even though they fell upon a person's head.

Among the persons drawn to Baldarroch by these occurrences were the
heritor, the minis