Buchanites

As with many controversial sects in various times and places, they were rumoured by a disapproving society to have practised behaviour that contravened social norms – "a community of wives" or "orgies in the woods"; but there is no conclusive proof that they did either.

Innes, who lived in the (still existing) Buchanite last abode, "Newhouse", Crocketford, had expected a "resurrection" of the mummified body of Mother Buchan on 29 March 1841 - the 50th anniversary of her death.

The Buchanites are remembered in Scottish literature in the works of John Galt, who was a four-year-old child in Irvine when the sect was expelled.

They are also mentioned - quite negatively - in a letter by Robert Burns: "[A]bout two years ago, a Mrs Buchan from Glasgow came among them, & began to spread some fanatical notions of religion among them, [...] till in spring last the Populace rose & mobbed the old leader Buchan & put her out of the town; on which all her followers voluntarily quit the place likewise, & with such precipitation, that many of them never shut their doors behind them [...] Their tenets are a strange jumble of enthusiastic jargon; among others, she pretends to give them the Holy Ghost by breathing on them, which she does with postures & practices that are scandalously indecent.

[...] This My Dear Sir, is one of the many instances of the folly in leaving the guidance of sound reason, & common sense in matters of Religion.