The 'elrich well': How Arthur's Seat has a secret portal to the supernatural world

We have a long and familiar history with Satan and his troublesome little minions. In the past, every Scot lived with an entire ecosystem of supernatural beings at their elbow. They had to be kept sweet with offerings of dainty food and delicacies.

Terrible things could happen if the “fair folk” were unhappy. Milk could sour, chickens stop laying, or worse, children stolen away. It's all a far cry from Disney’s pastel-coloured fairies, flitting about dispensing glitter and sparkles from their wands.

Nothing Disney about Fairy Queen

Had Scotland’s Queen of the Fairies clocked Tinker Bell, she would have had a fit. She was no Disney cutie. She was powerful and regal, but one year she had a bit of a problem she hoped Andrew Man could help her with.

He told his interrogators in 1598 that he’d met the Queen when he was only ten. Her Majesty was trying to give birth. It wasn’t going well. In a slightly startling display of confidence in ten-year-old boys, she asked if Andrew, or Andro, could help her. He did, and delivered a fine baby.

In return, she gave Andrew a gift, the knowledge of healing. He claimed he could cure a man by winding him nine times with a yarn, and transferring the sickness to a cat. He could do more than cure. His gifts from the Queen included the ability to prevent oxen from running away by dipping an iron plough in ‘salmon water’.

Ghost of James IV

The Queen took quite the shine to Andrew. She carried him away under the Fairy Hill to her court, where the fairies played and danced, and their tables were ‘fair coverit' with food and wine. Like any good queen, she had celebrities around her, and Andrew met the ghost of James IV, the king slain at Flodden in 1513.

She and Andrew got on very well. So well, in fact, that she gave birth to several of his children.

Perhaps it was she in 1597 who sent the spirit Christonday to assure the now 70-year-old Andrew that the next year would be hard, but the next 14 would be good. Never trust a message from the Queen of the Fairies. He was executed in 1598. His ex never even lifted a wand to help.

Spirit emerges from Arthur’s Seat

The fairies were tricky friends to Jonet Boyman. When Allan Anderson fell ill, his wife begged Jonet for help. She made her way to what she called an “elrich well" on the south side of Arthur’s Seat.

It was a portal to the world of the supernatural. Using incantations and spells, she conjured up a whirlwind. A man stepped out of the cloud of swirling grit and sand. He gave Jonet highly specific details for the sick man's treatment. His shirt had to be washed in a very particular manner.

His concerned wife claimed she carried out the instructions to the letter. That night their house was shaken to its foundations by a ‘grit wind’. There was a ‘grit dyn’, like the sound of hammers banging on the walls. A thunderous herd of horses galloped around outside.

It worked, in part. The patient did improve, but only slightly. Jonet’s elvish consultant claimed the prescription had not been fully followed. They had to do it again. It worked.

But three years later, Allan fell ill again. Jonet could do nothing. It was after Hallowe’en. The chance to speak to the spirits was lost. The man died.

The witch hunters came for Jonet in 1571, and she told them about her fairy doctor. He was a good-looking man, when he faced you. When he turned away, she said, he was “wasted like a stick”, nothing but bone. She, too, was executed in 1572.

The case of the missing laundry

The devil himself was a tricky customer. He popped up everywhere, despite the fact that some of his witches said he didn’t actually have a body. He got around that little detail by hanging around kirkyards and ‘borrowing’ the bodies of the recently dead to inhabit. This explained his body odour issues.

He could be called upon, if you knew how to get a hold of him, and was surprisingly amenable to helping out with smaller household mysteries. In 1682, Margaret Dougal, in the household of Major-General Robert Montgomerie, was accused of nicking some valuable linens. Naturally, she decided to conjure up the Devil to find the missing gear.

His Dark Satanic Majesty appeared three times before her. Once as “a man with a cap upon his head; next in the shape of a black grim man in black clothing. And finally, as a naked man with a long tail, including a foot formed like a pig’s”.

Protection from the devil

This was long before the era of #Metoo. Slippery devil, Satan, and a bit handsy. He wanted a finders fee for the missing linen. No surprise, it was Margaret herself who should have footed the bill for this hellish service.

He tried to “seize her physically against her will” but Margaret had the measure of the old goat and had special devil-banishing protection, in the form of three tail feathers from a black cockerel. Each time he tried his tricks, she threw fresh feathers at him, presumably from different cockerels.

The linens were found, but she was still in trouble. The other servants dobbed her, and her assistant, in. Her final fate is unknown, but she must have been a spirited girl to fight off Old Nick with chicken feathers. It once took more than a fun-sized Snickers bar to protect you from devilish intent.