- wind. Many instances of structural damage caused by high winds are documented in the records of town councils, churches and so on. One such from the Chronicles of Perth tells us that in 1608 The great wind blew down the stanes of the mantil wall of the kirk. In literature, there are many figurative references to wind, including This wikkit wind of adulatioun in Robert Henryson’s Fables (1500).
An ill [evil] wind is frequently attributed to witchcraft. In 1650, Brechin Presbytery brought Presumptiones of witchcraft against Catharin Lyall . . . [she] straik [struck] the horse on the hinder fillets with a weight . . . ther cam by a stranger woman and said the horse has gotten a blast of ill wind, and when his skin shall be taken off it would have a black spott quher [where] he had gotten the stroke. Sometimes the spell was misdirected, according to Perth Kirk Sessions (1623). A complainer reports that Hir sister wes seik by the dint of ane ill wynd, quhilk wes prepairit nocht for hir bot for hir maister.
The intervention of witches could be of benefit. Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall, in his Historical Observes of Memorable Occurrents in Church and State (1685) reports that The wind Argile got from Holland . . . was so favorable that it brought him in a very few dayes to Orknay . . . which made some think his witches had sold him a wind but he hes got no good wind to carry him away.
The duty of a landlord to keep a building wind and watertight is still often written into leases in Scotland, although it is no longer common in England. This phrase has a long history: The said tour fortalice [tower fortress] was than windticht and waterticht sufficiently sklaittit and ruiffit [slated and roofed] with timber and sklait (The Book of the Thanes of Cawdor 1635).