Buchanites

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Buchanites or Presbytry Relief were late 18th century followers of Elspeth Buchan, a Scottish woman who claimed to be one of the figures named in the Book of Revelation.

In 1783, Mrs Buchan, in her late 40s and the daughter of an inn owner, declared herself to be a prophet and a Biblical figure in her own right, and claimed to be immortal and able to give immortality to her followers by breathing on them. She gathered a group of followers in Irvine (North Ayrshire), who are reputed to have practiced a number of socially ill-accepted behaviours, including orgies in the woods. They were expelled from Irvine and eventually moved to Closeburn (north of Dumfries) in 1784. They were expelled from Dumfriesshire in 1787 and then settled in the Crocketford area (Stewartry of Kirkcudbright).

The Buchanites are remembered in Scottish literature in the works of John Galt, who was a four year old child in Irvine when the Buchanites were expelled. According to Galt's autobiography, he "with many children also accompanied her, but my mother in a state of distraction pursued, and drew me back by the lug and the horn. [...] [T]he scene, and more than once the enthusiasm of [their] psalm singing, has risen in my remembrance, especially in describing the Covenanters in Ringan Gilhaize."

They are also mentioned - quite negatively - in a letter by Robert Burns: "[A]bout two years ago, a Mrs Buchan from Glasgow came among them, & began to spread some fanatical notions of religion among them, [...] till in spring last the Populace rise & mobbed the old leader Buchan. & put her our of the town; on which all her followers voluntarily quitted the place likewise, & with such precipitation, that many of them never shut their doors behind them [...] Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon, among others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures & practices that are scandalously indecent, they have likewise disposed of all life, carrying on a great farce of pretended devotion in barns, & woods, where they lodge and lye all together, & hold likewise a community of women, as it is another of their tenets that they can commit no moral sin. [...] This My Dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly in leaving the guidance of sound reason, & common sense in matters of Religion." ^[1]

Mrs Buchan died of natural causes in 1791, disproving her claim to immortality. The end of the Buchanite saga came in 1846, when the last "adherent" Andrew Innes, died. Andrew Innes, who lived in the (still existing) Buchanite last abode, "Newhouse", Crocketford, had expected a "resurrection" of the mummified body of Mother Buchan on March 29th 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death. Innes was disappointed and died at "Newhouse" in 1846, which coincided with the discovery of Mother Buchan's hidden, mummified body. Many Buchanites were buried (or reburied) in a graveyard next to the northwest wall of "Newhouse" in the expectation that they would "ascend" eventually with "Lucky" Buchan. John Train, the biographer of Sir Walter Scott, wrote about the Buchanites in "The Buchanites from first to last" (1846). This was followed by "The Buchanite Delusion 1783-1846" by John Cameron, pub. by R.G.Mann, Dumfries (1904)

[edit] References

1. ^ Letter to James Burness, August 3 1784