The Bargarran Impostor: the possession of Christian Shaw and the Paisley witch trial

Late summer, 1696. Christian Shaw was about eleven, the daughter of John Shaw, Laird of Bargarran, at Bargarran House near Erskine in Renfrewshire. She told her mother that a servant, Katherine Campbell, had stolen milk. Campbell answered with a curse: "The Devil harle your soul through Hell." Christian later met Agnes Naismith, a local woman with a reputation as a witch.

22 August 1696. Christian suddenly started up with a great cry, calling, "Help! help!" She would become "as stiff as a corpse." She stood like a bow on her feet and neck. Hair came from her mouth, then straw, cinders, feathers and pins. Dr Matthew Brisbane of Glasgow reported a cinder "not only dry, but hot."

She said invisible tormentors pinched, bit and choked her, and she named them: Katherine Campbell, Agnes Naismith, Alexander and James Anderson. A letter of 18 February 1697 recorded deep bites on her hands while those present saw nothing. The Devil came too, as a pig, a black man or a finely dressed gentleman. She argued with him and recited Scripture.

Around the eleventh of January 1697, she was carried away from her parents "with a sudden flight." Through the chamber and hall. Down a long winding stair. Nobody could stop her. "Her Feet did not touch the Ground, so far as any of the Beholders could discern." The narrative called these her flying fits.

Brisbane found no natural cause. Mr Blackwood, minister of Paisley, led the church inquiry. On 5 February 1697 a Privy Council commission under Lord Blantyre opened hearings. Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Anderson and the brothers James and Thomas Lindsay confessed to meetings with the Devil. At Paisley, seven accused were tried. Defence advocate James Robertson argued that natural causes had to be ruled out first. The jury was warned that acquittal would make them "accessory to all the blasphemies, apostacies, murders, tortures, and seductions." All seven were found guilty.

10 June 1697. Gallow Green, Paisley. The condemned were hanged, then burned. Agnes Naismith laid a dying woman's curse on everyone present. It is remembered as the last mass execution for witchcraft in western Europe.

The nickname came later. The Bargarran Impostor. In 1839 a hole was found in the wall behind her bed, perhaps a route for an accomplice to pass her the objects. In 1996, S. W. McDonald, A. Thom and A. Thom proposed conversion disorder brought on by anxiety after the curse. Others see Salem's influence on the printed account, or a country strained by famine and political crisis. At the time, James Johnstone wrote that it was "impossible to distinguish possession from nature in disorder." Hugh McLachlan argues she has been "unfairly maligned."

Christian Shaw later founded Renfrewshire's fine thread industry, sold as Bargarran thread, and died on 8 September 1737. The ashes of the executed lie at Maxwellton Cross. A horseshoe once marked the spot, said to hold back the witches' curse. In May 2008 a bronze tondo by Sandy Stoddart replaced it, inscribed "Pain Inflicted, Suffering Endured, Injustice Done."