78 Report of the Meetings for 1892. 



The followinor is a list of the Ministers of Duas since the Reformation. — 



1568. Johnn Young, minister. 



1574. Johns Straquhyn, reader. 



(1581. James Bennet, minister of Heriot, presented by James VI., but 

 demitted before January of the following year.) 



1582. Patrick Gaittis. 



1585. Peter Danielstoun. He received from James VI. on 2nd Feby. 

 1588, a feu charter of the ecclesiastical lands of the rectory and vicarage 

 of Duns called Preistisheid (Priestside), extending to 2 husbandlands, 

 with 4 aci-es of arable land, etc., and a right of pasturage on the lands, 

 moors and marshes of Realismaynes and Samsonswallis, belonging to 

 George Home of Spott. (Regist. Mag. Sig., vol. v., No. 1447.) There is a 

 charter of the same subjects, 24th June 1606, in favour of Sir George Home 

 of Wedderburn and his son David. (Ibid-, vol. vi., No. 1761.) 



1607. James Gaittis. During his incumbency there was a proposal to 

 create a second charge at Birkenside, near which was the pre-Reformation 

 chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, but it was not carried into effect. 



1613. John Weemse, A.M. In his time, there lived near the town of 

 Dunse, a poor woman, generally believed to be possessed by an evil spirit. 

 The Earl (afterwards Duke) of Lauderdale, when a prisoner in Windsor 

 Castle in 1659, sent an account of her to Mr Richard Baxter, who has 

 published it in his Certainty of the World of Spirits. The earl, then a boy 

 at school, used to hear conversations about the possessed woman, between 

 his father and the minister of Dunse, who was fully convinced of the fact 

 of the possession. This clergyman and some other clergymen proposed to 

 the Privy Council a fast for her benefit ; but it was not allowed by the 

 bishops. ' I will not,' said the earl, ' trouble you with many circumstances ; 

 one only I shall tell you. which. I think will evince a real possession. The 

 report being spread in the country, a knight of the name of Forbes, who 

 lived in the north of Scotland, being come to Edinburgh, meeting there 

 with a minister of the north, and both of them desirous to see the woman, 

 the northern minister invited the knight to my father's house (which was 

 within ten or twelve miles of the woman) whither they came, and next 

 morning went to see the woman. They found her a poor ignorant creature, 

 and seeing nothing extraordinary, the minister says in Latin to the knight : 

 " Nondum audicimus spiritum loquentem .'" Presently a voice comes out of 

 the woman's mouth: "Audis loquentem, audis loquentem." This put the 

 minister into some amazement (which I think made him not mind his own 

 Latin); he took off his hat and said : "Misereatur Deus peccatoris." The 

 voice pi-esently out of the woman's mouth said : " Die peccatricis, die 

 pecr.atricis :" whereupon both of them came out of the house fully satisfied, 

 took horse immediately, and returned to my father's house at Thirlestane 

 Castle, in Lauderdale, where they related this passage. This I do exactly 

 remember. Many more particulars might be got in that part of the 

 country; but this Latin criticism, in a most illiterate ignorant woman, 

 where there was no pretence to dispossessing,i3 enough,! think." — Chambers' 

 Dom. Annals, vol. ii., pp. 43-4. 



