WHAT’S THE STORY?

FROM the fearsome Hundeprest of Melrose Abbey to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Thrawn Janet, the undead have been lumbering through Scottish history and fiction spreading terror, pestilence and supernatural dread for centuries.

They were the zombies of medieval Scotland and unlike ghosts they did not merely pass through walls and give you a bit of a fright but would actually rip you to shreds if you got in their way.

“These are chunky corpses that lumber around with bits falling off them and tear people to pieces – they’re absolutely terrifying,” explained Dr Louise Yeoman who will be shedding light on the phenomenon at Scotland’s History Festival this week. “People really believed that corpses could come out of graves and that if you were bad in life you would be bad in death as well.”

Medieval historians referred to these zombies as revenants from the Latin word reveniens, meaning “returning”, and the related French verb revenir, meaning “to come back”.

They are typically wrongdoers in their lifetime, described as wicked, vain, or unbelievers. The recommended solution was exhumation, followed by some form of decapitation, and burning or removal of the heart.

WHY THE UNDEAD?

PREVIOUSLY co-director of the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, Dr Yeoman became fascinated by tales of witches who came back from the grave and so she began to investigate Scotland’s walking dead.

She found sources in all sorts of places from the Norse sagas to the later Scots ballads.

“There is an amazing tale from Melrose Abbey about the Hundeprest or Dog Priest,” said Dr Yeoman. “This was a priest who had gone to the dogs — literally as he was out with his dogs all the time instead of being a dutiful priest. William of Newburgh in the 12th century told how, after he had been buried, he rose from a grave in the Abbey graveyard and tried to get into a lady’s chamber.”

The lady, a major donor to the Abbey, called in the living monks for help and they agreed to post a graveyard watch.

However, as nothing seemed to be happening, some of them went off for a break at midnight leaving only one monk to keep guard and that is when the Hundeprest chose to rise from the grave. The grave seemed to open automatically — it is like something out of the Hammer House of Horror — but the lone monk successfully fought him off by giving him a huge blow from his axe.”

WHAT HAPPENED THEN?

THE account says the monster groaned and fled.

“The monk chased him and compelled him to seek his own tomb again which opened of its own accord and then appeared to close again,” said Dr Yeoman.

The following morning the monks dug up the corpse which they discovered now had a huge wound out of which a great quantity of gore had flooded. Taking no chances of him coming back, they burned the body.

Another account of a revenant is in the Scots ballads. Here there is a tale of a young man called Willie who forgets to say his prayers. His previous girlfriend is dead and he is courting another but his furious former love comes back from the grave and tears him to shreds.

“She hangs bits of him over every seat in the Kirk, making sure to hang his head over the seat of the new girlfriend,” said Dr Yeoman.

AND THE WITCHES?

STORIES of revenants also come up in the witch trial accounts where they were used to explain how the Devil, who was believed to be a spirit, could take corporeal form.

“Demonologists came to the conclusion he was going into the graveyard and inhabiting a corpse which, as a master of illusion, he could turn into something presentable,” said Dr Yeoman.

He was unable to mask the smell of the dead, however, and this was how some of the witch hunters claimed they could identify witches.

“There’s an amazing document about John Kincaid from Tranent who gets into trouble during the great Scottish witch-hunt of 1662,” said Dr Yeoman. “The Privy Council start to think something is being made up as too many people are being accused so Kincaid is hauled in and examined.

“The idea of the witch is that they make a pact with the devil, renounce their baptism and have sex with him in order to obtain magical powers.

“Kincaid said he knew they were witches because of the unpleasant smell they had after the devil left them.”

HOW ABOUT RLS?

A REVENANT also crops in Stevenson’s short story, Thrawn Janet, which takes its inspiration from a collection of tales of the supernatural by George Sinclair written in the 17th century.

“Sinclair wrote the book with the idea of stopping 17th century people becoming atheists,” Yeoman explained. “He recounted all these testimonies of the devil and ghosts so that people would believe that if they were bad and didn’t believe in God they would go to hell.

“Stevenson’s story is written in beautiful Scots and is an amazing tale about a minister who comes to a parish and manages to acquire a revenant for his servant. The climax of story is terrifying and is based on Sinclair’s account of a servant called Isobel Heriot who comes back from the grave.”

WHAT ABOUT THE FIFE ‘WITCH’?

DR Yeoman was recently in the news after the face of a Scottish woman, persecuted as a witch more than 300 years ago, was reconstructed.

Lilias Adie died in prison in 1704 before she could be burned at the stake for her “confessed” sin of being a witch and having sex with the devil.

She was buried under a large stone on the Fife coast, probably to stop her rising from the grave to terrify the living.

Exhumed in the 19th century by antiquarians, her skull ended up in the St Andrews University Museum and was photographed before it went missing last century.

Her face was reconstructed for a BBC Radio Scotland Time Travels programme which Dr Yeoman researched. Forensic artist Dr Christopher Rynn from Dundee University’s Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification carried out the work using the picture of the skull.

“It’s sad to think her neighbours expected some terrifying monster when she was actually an innocent person who’d suffered terribly,” said Dr Yeoman. “The only thing that’s monstrous here is the miscarriage of justice.”

Revenants and Robert Louis Stevenson — The Scottish Undead in literature and history will take place on November 23 in the City of Edinburgh Methodist Church at 6.30pm.

For more information on this and other events in Previously…Scotland’s History Festival go to http://www.historyfest.co.uk