[484] Durham, after mentioning 'old abbacies or monasteries, or castles
when walls stand and none dwelleth in them,' adds, 'If it be
asked, If there be such a thing, as the haunting of evill spirits
in these desolate places? We answer 1. That there are evill
spirits rangeing up and down through the earth is certain, even
though hell be their prison properly, yet have they a sort of
dominion and abode both in the earth and air; partly, as a piece
of their curse, this is laid on them to wander; partly as their
exercise to tempt men, or bring spirituall or temporall hurt to
them,' &c. _Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation_,
p. 582. So, too, Hutcheson (_Exposition of the Book of Job_, p.
9): 'We should remember that we sojourn in a world where Devils
are, and do haunt among us;' and Fleming (_Fulfilling of the
Scripture_, p. 217): 'But the truth itself is sure, that such a
party is at this day, encompassing the earth, and trafficking up
and down there, to prove which by arguments were to light a candle
to let men see that it is day, while it is known what _ordinary
familiar converse many have therewith_.' One of their favourite
abodes was the Shetland Islands, where, in the middle of the
seventeenth century, 'almost every family had a Brouny or evil
spirit so called.' See the account given by the Rev. John Brand,
in his work entitled _A Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland,
Pightland-Firth, and Caithness_, pp. 111, 112, Edinburgh, 1701.