Drumlanrig Castle and the Douglases

EARLY HISTORY OF CLOSEBURN & DALGARNOCK. 239
proof of the kind of madness which sometimes takes
possession of large numbers of the human race, such as
we have seen lately in the case of the Mormonites. Not
one of the inhabitants of Closeburn joined the sect, so
far as I have been able to discover, but the members of
it, who came from Ayrshire, took up their residence here
for some time. The founder of this sect of strange beings
was Mr. White, who was about the year 1770 incumbent
of a Relief Congregation at Irvine, in Ayrshire. He is
said to have been a popular preacher, broaching new-
fangled doctrines, and thus drawing crowds of ignorant
persons of the lower orders, who are easily tickled by
novelties, without reference to their sense. Among
others who came to hear him was Mrs. Buchan, from
Glasgow, who became his disciple, and when Mr. White
was removed from the ministry by his brethren, she and
her friends wandered forth to the number of a hundred,
settling at some houses in Closeburn, which acquired the
name of " Buchan Ha," from Luckie Buchan, as she was
called.
Sir Walter Scott says, " I never heard of alewife that
turned preacher except Luckie Buchan in the west."
She gave forth the most blasphemous pretensions,
maintaining that she was the Third Person of the God-
head, pretending to confer immortality on whomsoever
she breathed, and promising to translate direct to heaven
in a body, without their tasting death, all who put un-
limited faith in her divine mission. She also personified
the woman described in the Revelation of St. John,
as being clothed with the Sun and the Moon, and
pretended to have brought forth the Man-child who was
to rule all nations with a rod of iron (Rev. xii. 1), in the
person of the Rev. Hugh White.