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Updated: May 26, 2025
Lord Middleton's ghost-story Wodrow got from the son of a man who, as Lauderdale's chaplain, heard Middleton tell it at dinner. He had made a covenant with the Laird of Babigni that the first who died should appear to the survivor. Babigni was slain in battle, Middleton was put in the Tower, where Babigni appeared to him, sat with him for an hour by the clock, and predicted the Restoration.
Hist. of England," i. 225, note ^m. Knox to Mrs. Locke, 6th April, 1559. Works, vi. 14. Knox to Sir William Cecil, 10th April, 1559. Works, ii. 16, or vi. 15. Knox to Queen Elizabeth, July 20th, 1559. Works, vi. 47, or ii. 26. Ibid., August 6th, 1561. Works, vi. 126. Knox's Works, ii. 278-280. Calderwood's "History of the Kirk of Scotland," edition of the Wodrow Society, iii. 51-54.
On the rest of the story each must make up his mind as seems best to him. With the death of Peter Gillies and John Bryce Claverhouse is not directly charged by Wodrow. Walker, however, quotes an epitaph said to have been inscribed on the grave of these men, who, with three others, were hanged, without trial, at Mauchline by
Wodrow was an industrious antiquarian, a student of geology, as it was then beginning to exist, a correspondent for twenty years of Cotton Mather, and a good-hearted kind man, that would hurt nobody but a witch or a Papist. He had no opportunity to injure members of either class, but it is plain, from his four large quarto volumes, called Analecta, that he did not lack the will.
The Kirk, he said, "abounded in furious zeal and endless debates about the empty name and shadow of a difference in government, in the meanwhile not having of solemn and orderly public worship as much as a shadow." Wodrow, the historian of the sufferings of the Kirk, declares that through the riotous proceedings of the religious malcontents "the country resembled war as much as peace."
It is difficult to believe that a story so well and widely recorded, and so firmly implanted in the hearts of so many generations of men, can have absolutely no foundation in fact. It is indeed possible that time has embellished the bald brutality of the deed, though the graphic narrative of Macaulay is practically that which Wodrow took from the records of Penninghame.
For instance, his name is found on a list of proscribed rebels and resetters of rebels, appended to a royal proclamation of May 5th, 1684, which will naturally account for his "having been a long time upon his hiding in the hills," as Wodrow ingenuously confesses. In other words, this Brown was an outlaw and a marked man.
This may well have been the case, for history shows that a very strong and indomitable covenanting spirit prevailed among the parishioners of Irongray as well as among the people of the South and West of Scotland generally. Indeed Wodrow, the historian, says that the people of Irongray were the first to offer strenuous opposition to the settlement of the curates.
Wodrow did not find a single supernatural occurrence which was worth investigating by the curious. Every tale was old, or some simple natural cause was at the bottom of the mystery, or the narrative rested on vague gossip, or was a myth. Today, at any dinner party, you may hear of bogles and wraiths at first or at second hand, in an abundance which would have rejoiced Wodrow.
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 . The authority is Mr. Cowan, who had it from Mr. Murray, minister of St.
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