This is the tale which Mr. Sinclair offers, without mentioning his authority.  He complains that Dr. Henry More had plagiarised it, from his book of Hydrostatics.  Two points may be remarked.  First:  modern Psychical Inquirers are more particular about evidence than Mr. Sinclair.  Not for nothing do we live in an age of science.  Next:  the stories of these “stirs” are always much the same everywhere, in Glenluce, at Tedworth, where the Drummer came, in Peru, in Wesley’s house, in heroic Iceland, when Glam, the vampire, “rode the roofs.”  It is curious to speculate on how the tradition of making themselves little nuisances in this particular manner has been handed down among children, if we are to suppose that children do the trick.  Last autumn a farmer’s house in Scotland was annoyed exactly as the weaver’s home was, and that within a quarter of a mile of a well-known man of science.  The mattress of the father was tenanted by something that wriggled like a snake.  The mattress was opened, nothing was found, and the disturbance began again as soon as the bed was restored to its place.  This occurred when the farmer’s children had been sent to a distance.

One cannot but be perplexed by the problem which these tales suggest.  Almost bare of evidence as they are, their great number, their wide diffusion, in many countries and in times ancient and modern, may establish some substratum of truth.  Scott mentions a case in which the imposture was detected by a sheriff’s officer.  But a recent anecdote makes me almost distrust the detection.

Some English people, having taken a country house in Ireland, were vexed by the usual rappings, stone-throwings, and all the rest of the business.  They sent to Dublin for two detectives, who arrived.  On their first night, the lady of the house went into a room, where she found one of the policemen asleep in his chair.  Being a lively person, she rapped twice or thrice on the table.  He awakened, and said:  “Ah, so I suspected.  It was hardly worth while, madam, to bring us so far for this.”  And next day the worthy men withdrew in dudgeon, but quite convinced that they had discovered the agent in the hauntings.

But they had not!

On the other hand, Scott (who had seen one ghost, if not two, and had heard a “warning”) states that Miss Anne Robinson managed the Stockwell disturbances by tying horsehairs to plates and light articles, which then demeaned themselves as if possessed.

Here we have vera causa, a demonstrable cause of “stirs,” and it may be inferred that all the other historical occurrences had a similar origin.  We have, then, only to be interested in the persistent tradition, in accordance with which mischievous persons always do exactly the same sort of thing.  But this is a mere example of the identity of human nature.

It is curious to see how Mr. Sinclair plumes himself on this Devil of Glenluce as a “moliminous rampier” against irreligion.  “This one Relation is worth all the price that can be given for the Book.”  The price I have given for the volume is Ten Golden Guineas, and perhaps the Foul Thief of Glenluce is hardly worth the money.