ELSPETH

BUCHAN (1738–1791)  , founder of a Scottish religious sect known as the Buchanites, was the daughter of . John Simpson, proprietor of an inn near Banff . Having quarrelled with her husband, Robert Buchan, a potter of Greenock, she settled with her children in Glasgow, where she was deeply impressed by a sermon preached by Hugh White, minister of the Relief church at Irvine . She persuaded White and others that she was a saint with a special mission, that in fact she was the woman, and White the man-child, described in Revelation xii . White was condemned by the presbytery, and the sect, which ultimately numbered forty-six adherents, was expelled by the magistrates in 1784 and settled in a farm, consisting of one room and a loft, known as New Cample in Dumfriesshire . Mrs Buchan claimed prophetic inspiration and pretended to confer the Holy Ghost upon her followers by breathing upon them; they believed that the millennium was near, and that they would not die, but be translated . It appears that they had community of wives and lived on funds provided by the richer members . Robert Burns, the poet, in a letter dated August 1784, describes the sect as idle and immoral .