Jekyll and Hyde and Rankin

Here’s a story I have never heard before, and which is brought to us by Mike Stotter’s Shotsmag Confidential in the run-up to a TV broadcast this coming Saturday on Britain’s BBC Four TV:

A notorious Edinburgh warlock, who led a double life as a pillar of the community, was a prototype Jekyll and Hyde, according to a new documentary, Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from BBC Scotland. The documentary, presented by Ian Rankin, reveals the author Robert Louis Stevenson was horrified as a child by tales of Scotland’s most notorious wizard Major Thomas Weir.

Seemingly an upstanding preacher and Captain of the Town Guard, Major Weir shocked his flock when at the age of 70 he revealed he had for decades practised incest, bestiality and sorcery. Together with his sister Jean, he was sentenced to be strangled and burned at the stake in a trial that shocked the Edinburgh of 1670.

According to local lore, his walking stick had a life of its own and when thrown onto the funeral pyre, burned only with great difficulty. Local legend also has it that his ghost haunts the West Bow area of Edinburgh, where he lived. Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde reveals Robert Louis Stevenson had nightmares in the wake of tales about the Major told by his nanny, who he called Cummy.

Rankin says: “Stevenson had always suffered from nightmares--they began as a child growing up in Heriot Row, Edinburgh. What made Cummy’s bedtime stories
for young Louis so terrifying was that they really happened--just outside his bedroom window on the haunted streets of Edinburgh. One of Cummy’s favourite bedtime stories was about Edinburgh’s most famous witch Thomas Weir. As covenantors, Thomas and his sister Jean made a great show of piety and godliness and excelled at prayer. In time, they even became the unofficial leaders of one group who called themselves ‘The Saints’. But Thomas and Jean had a secret. When both Thomas and his sister Jean confessed to a string of sexual offences, the outraged congregation reported the pair to the authorities.”

You can read all of Stotter’s post here. Ian Rankin Investigates: Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will be shown on BBC Four this coming Saturday at 9:55 p.m., following the first installment of a six-part new drama series, Jekyll, on BBC One, which begins at 9 p.m. Sadly, no American broadcast of this Rankin special is scheduled.

READ MORE: “Shedding Light on Capital’s Dark Influence,” by Joanna Vallely (The Scotsman); “Sympathy for the Devil,” by Louise Welsh (The Guardian); “Dr. Jekyll and Miss Thang,” by Jerome Weeks (Book/Daddy).