BUCH'ANITES, an extraordinary sect of fanatics, which sprang up in the w. of Scot land in 1783, but has now become extinct. The founder of the sect was Mrs. or Lucky Buchan, b. in Banffshire in 1738, of humble parentage. Her maiden name was Elspeth Simpson. She early fell into habits of vice, but with her licentiousness were combined a sort of religious fervor and extreme antinomian opinions. In 1782, being resident in Glasgow with her husband, a potter, who ultimately divorced her, she became acquainted with the Rev. Hugh White, minister of the Relief congregation in Irvine, a weak vain man and coarse declamatory preacher, who adopted her opinions, for which lie was deposed by his presbytery, and began along with her to found a new sect in Irvine. Popular tumults arose, which led to her expulsion from the town in May, 1784. Mr. White and his wife, with other devoted adherents, male and female, accom panied her, regarding her as a divinely commissioned person, and expecting her to lead them to the place where Christ was speedily to appear again on earth. She was addressed as "friend mother in the Lord," and among other more blasphemous preten sions, gave herself out to be the woman mentioned in Rev. xii., White being repre sented as the "man-child" whom she had brought forth. She and her followers traveled towards Nithsdale, and found a resting-place in a barn at New Cample, near Thornhill, where they afterwards built for themselves a house of one apartment with a loft, in which they all dwelt, supported chiefly by the money of the more wealthy of their number. A few additional persons joined them. They lived in expectation of
being translated to heaven without death; and on one occasion, after a fast of extraor dinary duration, by which many of them were reduced to a very spectral condition, were led out by their prophetess to a hill-top to be immediately taken up, but returned disappointed. After this, dissensions began to arise among them; and some, recovering from their infatuation, left the society. Their expected heaven was one of mere sensual delights; and it is now sufficiently ascertained that they lived in unrestrained sexual intercourse—for they condemned marriage as unworthy of Christians—and that they systematically practiced infanticide. Yet they were protected from the outbreakings of popular indignation, and no investigation was made by the authorities. On the failure of their means of subsistence, they took a farm in a moorish part of the stewartry of Kirkcudbright; and those who remained of them accumulated by their industry the means of purchasing a small property, on which was built the first house of the village of Crocketford, where they finally became extinct, the last of them surviving till 1846, full even in his old age of the strange delusions of his youth, and preserving in his house the bones of Lucky Buchan, which were buried with him in his grave.—See The Bach anites front First to Last, by Joseph Train. (Edin. 1846.)