Dance Madge Wildfire's Reel 20571

The most colourful character in Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian is the mad woman, Madge Wildfire.

I glance like the wildfire through country and town;
I’m seen on the causeway – I’m seen on the down;
The lightning that flashes so bright and so free,
Is scarcely so blithe or so bonny as me.

Madge, born Murdockson, was described by Scott as “a tall, strapping wench of eighteen or twenty, dressed fantastically, in a sort of blue riding-jacket, with tarnished lace, her hair clubbed like that of a man, a Highland bonnet, and a bunch of broken feathers, a riding-skirt (or petticoat) of scarlet camlet, embroidered with tarnished flowers.” This young woman had been seduced, as had Effie Deans, by George Staunton, alias Geordie Robertson, the minister’s son turned smuggler and highwayman, and had, as had Effie, borne him a child. Odl Meg Murdockson, known as Mother Blood, had arranged a marriage for her daughter with an elderly, but rich, gentleman and since the discovery of the child might prevent the match, Mother Blood killed the child. As a result, Madge lost both her suitor and her sanity.

It was Mother Blood and Madge who held Jeanie Deans prisoner at Newark on her way to London to petition the Duke of Argyll for Effie’s life and freedom. On her return journey Jeanie is witness to the hanging of Mother Blood for witchcraft and to the attack on Madge Wildfire by an angry mob. Jeanie was with Madge when she died at the hospital in Carlisle, the mad woman still singing her snatches of songs in her dying moments.

Scott based the character of Madge Wildfire on Feckless Fanny, a demented woman who wandered with her flock of sheep over the Borders between 1767 and 1775 and who was stoned to death by a mob of youths in Glasgow.