The Buchanites and Crocketford. 291 



calmly proceeded to take a smoke ! The significant corollary 

 to this anti-climax must be added ; that in the morning the 

 collection of watches, rings, and jewellery fell into the hands 

 of the watchful treasurer, who speedily converted them into 

 coin of the realm in the town of Dumfries ! 



It was now alleged that nothing less than a fast of forty 

 days could properly prepare the Buchanites for the long- 

 wished-for ascension ! A fast was therefore proclaimed and 

 begun. Many fainted and failed, but a few wrestled through. 

 And so it befell one fine morning at early dawn after forty 

 weary days that the passing stranger was enabled to hear 

 weird music on the summit of the Templand Hill and to see 

 the crowning struggle of the poor wretches who thus sought 

 to wrest victory from the common enemy of Death. There 

 they stood, a wan-looking company outlined against the sky, 

 with arms outstretched to the Rising Sun, and singing and 

 shouting for the Great Uplifting that somehow failed to come. 

 There also stood their leaders : — White, " with gloves on and 

 in full canonicals," studying the unheeding sky with growing 

 doubt upon his brow ; Mrs Buchan, high above the others, 

 but phnnp and rosy, " for she partook of earthly sustenance 

 during the fast merely to prevent her tabernacle becoming 

 too transparent for human eyes to behold !" But the sun 

 rose, and the sky was as brazen and heedless as ever. Sorrow 

 and doubt now filled the famished band, and many disbelieved 

 in Mother Buchan from that hour. 



It was inevitable that sooner or later funds should fail so 

 long as the Buchanites had no wealthy recruits, and lived 

 up to their principle of either not working at all or working 

 for nothing. Their downward course towards starvation was 

 much hastened by the fast — (naturally !) — for it led the 

 moneyed members of the sect to abandon the cause altogether. 

 In January, 1787, therefore, the county magistrates sum- 

 moned White to a meeting at Brownhill, near Closeburn, and 

 asked him to satisfy them that none of his sect would become 

 chargeable to the parish at the end of their three years of 

 residence. On his confession of inability to satisfy them, the 

 magistrates informed him that he and his entire following 

 must quit the parish within two months. Lucky was it for 



