Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/158

 land in 1641, and also for some time as major in the Earl of Lanark's regiment; and on 3 March 1647 presented a petition to the estates for the payment of a sum of 600 merks due to him for these services. In 1649–50 he was promoted to the command of the city guard of Edinburgh. He was one of the promoters of the western remonstrance in 1650, and gradually became noted as one of the most devoted and sanctified of a strict sect of Edinburgh covenanters, at whose meetings he displayed a remarkable gift of extempore prayer. As major of the city guard he had special charge of Montrose before his execution in May 1650, and is stated to have treated him with peculiar harshness.

In his later years, and after he retired from the city guard, Weir gradually became reputed as a wizard. On coming to Edinburgh he lodged for some time in the Cowgate, in the house of a Miss Grissel Whitford, where (d. 1678) [q. v.], the would-be assassinator of Archbishop Sharp, also for some time lodged. Subsequently he resided with his sister Jean in a house in the West Bow. On the stair of this house he is said to have cast a powerful spell by which those who were ascending it felt as if they were going down. His incantations were mainly effected by means of a black staff, which was curiously carved with heads like those of the satyrs, and was supposed to have been presented to him by Satan. This staff could be sent by him on errands, and on dark nights (so it was gravely affirmed) might be seen going before him carrying a lantern. Fraser, minister of Wardle, who saw him in Edinburgh in 1660, thus describes him: ‘His garb was still a cloak, and somewhat dark, and he never went without his staff. He was a tall black man, and ordinarily looked down on the ground: a grim countenance and a big nose’ (manuscript in the Advocates' Library, quoted in Memorials of Edinburgh in the Olden Time, 1872, pp. 335 sqq., where is also an engraving of Weir's house in the West Bow). But whether influenced by remorse or lunacy, or a combination of the two, Weir, though he never professed any penitence, made a voluntary confession to the authorities of incest, sorcery, and other crimes; and, after trial, on 9 April 1670, during which he is said to have been delirious, was burned at the stake on the 12th, at Gallowlie, on the slopes of Greenside, between Edinburgh and Leith. He died impenitent, and renounced all hopes of heaven. His staff, which was also burned with him, ‘gave rare turnings’ in the fire, and, like himself, ‘was long a burning.’ His sister, notwithstanding that she manifested unmistakable symptoms of lunacy, was burned along with him. His story is supposed to have suggested Lord Byron's ‘Manfred.’



WEIR, WILLIAM (1802–1858), journalist, was born in 1802 at Mount Hamilton in Ayrshire. His father, who was Mr. Oswald's ‘factor,’ died in 1804; his mother married again, and Mr. Oswald acted as his guardian, sending him to Ayr academy, which he left in August 1817 with the reputation of being ‘talented, honourable, kind-hearted, somewhat eccentric, and a most rapacious reader.’ His education was completed at the university of Göttingen. He became a member of the Scottish bar on 27 Jan. 1827. He was the first editor of the ‘Glasgow Argus’ (Glasgow Citizen, September 1858), and, removing to London, he contributed to the ‘Spectator.’ Many articles in the ‘Penny Cyclopædia’ and in Knight's ‘London’ were from his pen, and he wrote the chapter on manners during the reign of George III in the ‘Pictorial History of England’ (, Passages of a Working Life, ii. 229, 259, 263).

Weir joined the editorial staff of the ‘Daily News’ when it was founded in 1846, and succeeded [q. v.] in 1854 as editor. After a few days' illness he died on 15 Sept. 1858. Under his editorship the ‘Daily News’ flourished, the ‘Times’ writing after his death that he had conducted it in a way which ‘made it a worthy representative of the English press.’ The ‘Globe’ wrote ‘that he was master of the library of Europe;’ the ‘Athenæum’ that ‘in the ranks of literature there was not a nobler or more unassuming soldier than he;’ and the ‘Spectator’ that ‘his death is a public loss.’ He was credited by the ‘Glasgow Citizen’ with writing good verse as well as prose. The infirmity of deafness prevented him from playing a more conspicuous part in public life.



WEISS, WILLOUGHBY HUNTER (1820–1867), vocalist and composer, the son of Willoughby Gaspard Weiss, professor of the flute and music publisher at Liverpool, was born there on 2 April 1820. He was a pupil of Sir [q. v.] and [q. v.], and made his