Why did I write the story of John Fian, and why did I write it wrong? Well, it’s quite simple, really. The story is too funny to not write. When I was writing As Far As Souls Go I needed a throw-away character, and because I love Scotland, I went about looking for a Scottish character that had connections to the Devil. Didn’t take long for me to find John Fian, but I didn’t put a lot of follow up research in. So when I started on this story, I had to work with the John Fian I had created. To be honest, it didn’t matter that much, considering the historical version wasn’t exactly reliable either. Let me just give you the cliff notes version right now and we’ll go from there.
John Fian was a schoolmaster in Prestonpans. Or Tranent. Allegedly, he was also the leader of a coven of witches, because even in wild accusations it’s apparently unthinkable a bunch of women can do anything without a man telling them what to do. At some point, John is said to be in love with the sister of one of his students. Let’s not ponder the girl’s age. Now, because he’s a sorcerer and knows all kinds of awesome spells, he blackmails his student into getting a few of the girl’s pubic hairs. Amazingly, the lad agrees, but he gets caught by the girl’s mother, who is also a witch. You couldn’t throw a haggis without hitting a witch in the face back then. Instead of beating the stuffing out of the kid, the mother decides to fuck up the spell for John by getting some hairs from a cow’s udder.
Imagine John’s face when he finds out that instead of a pretty young girl being madly in love with him, there is now a big ol’ cow in love with him, and following him around everywhere.
Now, this kind of nonsense may seem quite droll to you, but the reason it’s absolutely hilarious is that I made up absolutely nothing about that. I’m not saying it actually happened, because if I believed pubic hair could make women fall in love with me I wouldn’t be writing this right now.
No, this story was originally printed in a pamphlet called The Damnable Life And Death Of Doctor Fian: A Notable Sorcerer Who Was Burned In Edinburgh January Last (1591). And it wasn’t just some schmo like me writing it either. No, no! This one came straight from the hands of King James I of England, and VI of Scotland. Apparently he used all his imagination on his little story, because I would have just gone with King James VII of Everything, Motherfuckers.
He definitely didn’t use any imagination on the title, that’s for sure. That thing should at least come with a spoiler warning. But we can’t really blame him. When you read the original pamphlet—or at least a modernized version of it, because the original looks like it’s been written by a toddler who’s learning English—you’ll find that every ounce of imagination went into it. And people just gobbled it up. Those who could read looked at the words written by a king and went, “Aye. This is definitely what happened.”
Makes you wonder how we got this far. Imagine some dude with a crown today, going, “There’s this feller with a cow who is a notable sorcerer! For realsies, you guys!”
All you’d say is, “Oh? When’s his show in Vegas?”
Man, if Penn & Teller were alive in the 16th century, they’d be dead meat. I mean, obviously. That’s five hundred years ago, but you get the jist.
Anyway, the point is that King James wrote a serious pamphlet to inform the people about a guy with a cow, and nobody stopped to wonder if James maybe needed to take a couple of days off.
So, that’s why I didn’t think it would be a big problem if I took some liberties with the liberties that have already been taken. Granted, I took a few big liberties to make everything fit with the Dr. Fian I ended up with, but because I’m not King James I’ll spend a few posts laying out exactly where I lied, provided a version of truth is available.