The Buchanites were the late 18th-century followers of
Elspeth Buchan
Elspeth Buchan (1738–1791) was the founder of a Scotland, Scottish religious sect known as the Buchanites.
Early life
She was born in 1738, the daughter of John Simpson and Margaret Gordon, who kept a wayside inn at Fatmacken, between Banff, Abe ...
, a Scottish woman who claimed to be the
Woman Clothed with the Sun
The Woman of the Apocalypse (or the woman clothed with the sun, el, γυνὴ περιβεβλημένη τὸν ἥλιον; Latin: ) is a figure, traditionally believed to be the Virgin Mary, described in Chapter 12 of the Book of Revelatio ...
, one of the figures named in the
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of R ...
.
History
In 1783, Mrs Buchan, in her late 40s and the daughter of an inn owner, declared herself 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 in
Irvine, Ayrshire
Irvine ( ; sco, Irvin, gd, Irbhinn, IPA: Relief Church when Hugh White, minister at Irvine, declared Elspeth Buchan (1739-1791) to be a special saint identified with the woman described in Revelation 12.J. F. C. Harrison, ''The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850'' (London: Taylor & Francis, 1979), , p. 33.
Elspeth Buchan was born in Fordyce, Banff, Elspeth Simpson daughter of John Simpson and Margaret Gordon and married Robert Buchan and hence the name.
The Buchanites were expelled from Irvine, residents even threatening to drown them in the town's Scott's Loch. Eventually they made their way to Closeburn (north of
Dumfries
Dumfries ( ; sco, Dumfries; from gd, Dùn Phris ) is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is located near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth about by road from the ...
) in 1784, where they prepared to ascend ''en bloc'' at short notice to Heaven. As with many controversial sects in various times and places, they were rumoured by a disapproving society to have practised behaviour that contravened social norms – "a community of wives" or "orgies in the woods"; but there is no conclusive proof that they did either. They were expelled from Dumfriesshire in 1787 and then settled in various farms in the
Crocketford
Crocketford (, also frequently ) also known as Ninemile Bar ( gd, Ath Crogaid), as it is approximately equidistant between Castle Douglas and Dumfries, is a village in the historical county of Kirkcudbrightshire in the Dumfries and Galloway coun ...
area ( Stewartry of Kirkcudbright) before finally settling at Newhouse in the village of Crocketford.
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. Innes, who lived in the (still existing) Buchanite last abode, "Newhouse", Crocketford, had expected a "resurrection" of the mummified body of Mother Buchan on 29 March 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death. He was disappointed and died at "Newhouse" in 1846 - a death which coincided with the discovery of Mother Buchan's hidden mummified body. Many Buchanites were buried (or reburied) in a graveyard next to the north-west wall of "Newhouse", in the expectation that they would "ascend" eventually with "Lucky" Buchan.
References in literature
The Buchanites are remembered in Scottish literature in the works of John Galt, who was a four-year-old child in Irvine when the sect was 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. ..e scene, and more than once the enthusiasm of
heir
Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Officiall ...
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: " out 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 rose & mobbed the old leader Buchan & put her out of the town; on which all her followers voluntarily quit 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."
The Buchanites are the subject of a 1937 novella by
F. L. Lucas
Frank Laurence Lucas (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, political polemicist, Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during ...
, ''
The Woman Clothed with the Sun
''The Woman Clothed with the Sun; being The Confession of John McHaffie concerning his sojourn in the Wilderness among the folk called the Buchanites'', is a historical novella by the British writer F. L. Lucas. It purports to be an account, writ ...
'', which takes the form of an account, written by a Scottish minister in middle age, of his youthful bewitchment by Elspeth Buchan and of his curious sojourn in the Buchanite communes of Dumfriesshire and Kirkcudbrightshire. They are also the subject of a 2002 short story by Emma Donoghue, "Revelations".
Robert Burns in his ''Interleaved Scots Musical Museum'' noted for the song "The Beds of sweet Roses" that ''This song, as far as I know, for the first time appears here in print --- When I was a boy, it was a very popular song in Ayrshire, I remember to have heard those fanatics, the Buchanites, sing some of their nonsensical rhymes, which they dignify with the name of hymns, to this air''.