This is only Jamie Esdon’s third web this month.
Wee Jamie, barely two weeks old, suckles at Janet’s breast. His brother Billy snivels by the smouldering grate. The gale shrieks and rattles above the thatch, threatening to rip the roof apart. Rain batters against the shutters.
The storm is so ferocious, Jamie has to set up the loom by precious candle-light. The chill and dampness slows the drying of the paste as he smears it on the linen threads. The thin brown threads are tacky on his fingertips.
Since the Lord began to send His new judgement on their sinfulness, the price of thread in Paisley has risen, due to scarcity of flax and the fact that starvation leaves the women and children with no stamina for spinning. To make cloth these days, spun thread must be bought in from Ireland or Hamburg at a premium. Janet is too frail with hunger, birth and suckling to spin and Billy is only two years old. Jamie has no alternative.
As he attaches the threads to the bar, he wonders if there is such a thing as national guilt? And, if it does, is it like this new-fangled joint-stock company they rave about? The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies? Great men subscribe thousands and the middling sort only hundreds? Poor men, like Jamie, have no share in it all. So, what of National guilt? Does a nation’s guilt compound? Do the sins of the great and powerful (but few) account for more than the small infractions of the multitude? Mony a mickle maks a muckle, after all. Did his decision to name their firstborn after the new King, William, attract some unintended stain?
And why would the Lord object to the boy having the Defender of the True Faith as his namesake?
He ties off a last thread onto the cloth bar then starts again at the far side of the loom, attaching new threads to the warp roller.
Besides, King William sat on the Scottish throne before the boy was born.
Should he and Janet have seen something in those years to warn them of God anger? The French ban on wool exports? The war in Europe? The taxes raised from ordinary folk to pay for soldiers?
Were those signs?
The fog came on an August afternoon. He and Janet were still courting then. The fog stank of sulphur. A snell East wind blew across the ripening bere and oats and flax. The half-filled corn shrank and whitened in the sun when the fog cleared. The fields seemed as if sprinkled with flour. The effects were more disastrous where the fog remained longest.
Since that autumn, every winter has been bitter cold and every summer wet. The hairst failed for three years in succession and the price of corn rose.
Though the Papist Stuarts reigned and Paisley’s magistrates hanged innocent Christians for refusing the Oath of Abjuration, times were better when he was a child. They buried Algie and Park in unhallowed ground at the foot of the gallows when he was 9; wouldn’t that sin be enough to bring down Divine Wrath?
So why now and why not then?
Janet has fallen asleep with the boy still at her breast.
“Billy. Come here and watch,” he says, as he begins to pass another thread through the heddle, carefully leading each thread out towards the business end of the loom.
The toddler, barefoot and in two layers of rags, reluctantly gets up and steps closer to watch his father working. These days, cloth is too precious to clothe the bairns.
“You see? This goes through here and, in a minute, we’ll tie it to the cloth beam there.”
The candle-light glistens on the snotters that flow from Billy’s nose to his upper lip. The lad is shivering.
Jamie wishes the warp was set and he could enjoy the warming exertion of weaving. But with exertion will come hunger. Hunger which cannot be satisfied until Jamie sells these webs.
It is, surely, a mark of Scotland’s sinfulness that, amidst so many starving, the better and the middling sort plan to escape the confines of this benighted country. A great expedition is planned, with the King’s blessing. Ships have already taken on goods at Cartsdyke, destined for a New World. This new Company will, they say, trade with Africans and Indians. They say it will raise the status of ‘the Nation’ in the World and bring the good Protestant Faith to the sons of Ham.
Jamie hopes the Africans and Indians appreciate home-spun wool and linen.
One more hank of threads and then, the business will commence. The shuttle will start its to and fro. There is no bread to comfort Billy and only a few more coals to feed the fire. The boy would be better off beneath the blanket in their bed but hunger keeps him watching.
Of course, added to the lynching of the martyrs, Algie and Park, there are the curses of Agnes Naismith to consider. Saints or witches? Saints and witches? The town and the times have not served Him well.
But the Lord God’s plan is ineffable so what is time to Him, not a thing in sequence but foreseen. The martyrdom, the war and famine, the witches hanged and burned on the say so of a febrile lass. Were these His agents?
Jamie stood witness that February morning. The two shivering lads were just eleven and fourteen. They held hands as they dropped from the gallows. The Highland lass, Katherine Cambell, cursed the child who accused them all; it would have been better if she had cursed the lass in Gaelic or held her tongue. But it was Agnes Naismith who cursed the town and all in it before she dropped.
Jamie watched.
They weren’t dead before the pyre was set. The baillies poked their writhing limbs back into the blaze. Sickening.
The shuttle begins to shoot left to right, right to left, as Jamie treads the pedals, shoves the heddle front and back and the web evolves out of the warp and weft. Plain brown cloth. No ornament. Bare covering. But worth a pound of meal.
©John Bolland 2026
Notes:
[i] Trade with France and the Spanish Netherlands was banned.
[ii] Company of Scotland – Wikipedia
[iii] 1694. Hekla (on Iceland) had begun erupting in 1693.
[iv] Hugh Miller in How Fair and Foul the Day, Alastair Dawson
[v] John Algie and John Park, farmers from Eastwood were charged in Paisley gaol on 3rd February, 1685. Tried at 10 a.m. and hanged at 2 p.m. of the same day.
[vi] Paisley’s Enchanted Threads | The Story | The People | The Victims | Agnes Naismith | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697 (paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk)
[vii] Christian Shaw, daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, was 11 years old. Paisley’s Enchanted Threads | The Story | The Events | Christian Shaw’s torment | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697 (paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk)
[viii] 1697
[ix] John and James Lindsay, from Houston,
[x] Paisley’s Enchanted Threads | The Story | The People | The Victims | Katherine Campbell | Paisley Witch Hunt of 1697 (paisleysenchantedthreads.co.uk)