← catalogue

Witch Stories

by E. Lynn Linton · English · Gutenberg #32176 · 762,876 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Witch Stories
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Witch Stories

Author: E. Lynn Linton


        
Release date: April 29, 2010 [eBook #32176]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32176

Credits: E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITCH STORIES ***


E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)



Note: Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
      http://www.archive.org/details/witchstories00lintrich





WITCH STORIES

Collected by

E. LYNN LINTON,

Author of "Azeth the Egyptian," "Amymone," Etc.



"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."--EXODUS XXII. 18.







London:
Chapman and Hall, 193 Piccadilly.
1861.

[_The right of Translation reserved._]

London: Printed By W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.




PREFACE.


In offering the following collection of witch stories to the public, I do
not profess to have exhausted the subject, or to have made so complete a
summary as I might have done, had I been admitted into certain private
libraries, which contain, I believe, many concealed riches. But I had no
means of introduction to them, and was obliged to be content with such
authorities as I found in the British Museum, and the other public
libraries to which I had access. I do not think that I have left much
untold; but there must be, scattered about England, old MSS. and unique
copies of records concerning which I can find only meagre allusions, or
the mere names of the victims, without a distinctive fact to mark their
special history. Should this book come to a second edition, any help from
the possessors of these hitherto unpublished documents would be a gain to
the public, and a privilege which I trust may be afforded me.

Neither have I attempted to enter into the philosophy of the subject. It
is far too wide and deep to be discussed in a few hasty words; and to sift
such evidence as is left us--to determine what was fraud, what
self-deception, what actual disease, and what the exaggeration of the
narrator--would have swelled my book into a far more important and bulky
work than I intended or wished. As a general rule, I think we may apply
all the four conditions to every case reported; in what proportion, each
reader must judge for himself. Those who believe in direct and personal
intercourse between the spirit-world and man, will probably accept every
account with the unquestioning belief of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries; those who have faith in the calm and uniform operations of
nature, will hold chiefly to the doctrine of fraud; those who have seen
much of disease and that strange condition called "mesmerism," or
"sensitiveness," will allow the presence of absolute nervous derangement,
mixed up with a vast amount of conscious deception, which the insane
credulity and marvellous ignorance of the time rendered easy to practise;
and those who have been accustomed to sift evidence and examine witnesses,
will be utterly dissatisfied with the loose statements and wild distortion
of every instance on record.

E. LYNN LINTON.

_London_, 1861.




The Witches of Scotland


Scotland was always foremost in superstition. Her wild hills and lonely
fells seemed the fit haunting-places for all mysterious powers; and long
after spirits had fled, and ghosts had been laid in the level plains of
the South, they were to be found lingering about the glens and glades of
Scotland. Very little of graceful fancy lighted up the gloom of those
popular superstitions. Even Elfame, or Faërie, was a place of dread and
anguish, where the devil ruled heavy-handed and Hell claimed its yearly
tithe, rather than the home of fun and beauty and petulant gaiety as with
other nations: and the beautiful White Ladies, like the German Elle-women,
had more of bale than bliss as their portion to scatter among the sons of
men. Spirits like the goblin Gilpin Horner, full of malice and unholy
cunning,--like grewsome brownies, at times unutterably terrific, at times
grotesque and rude, but then more satyr-like than elfish,--like May
Moulachs, lean and hairy-armed, watching over the fortunes of a family,
but prophetic only of woe, not of weal,--like the cruel Kelpie, hiding
behind the river sedges to rush out on unwary passers-by, and strangle
them beneath the waters,--like the unsained laidly Elf, who came tempting
Christian women, to their souls' eternal perdition if they yielded to the
desires of their bodies,--like the fatal Banshie, harbinger of death and
ruin,--were the popular forms of the Scottish spirit-world; and in none of
them do we find either love or gentleness, but only fierceness and crime,
enmity to man and rebellion to God. But saddest and darkest and unholiest
of all was the belief in witchcraft, which infested society for centuries
like a sore eating through to the very heart of humanity, and which was
nowhere more bitter and destructive than among the godly children of our
Northern sister. Strange that the land of the Lord should have been the
favourite camping-ground of Satan, that the hill of Zion should have had
its roots in the depths of Tophet!

The formulas of the faith were as gloomy as the persons. The power of the
evil eye; the faculty of second sight, which always saw the hearse plumes,
and never the bridal roses; the supremacy of the devil in this
God-governed world of ours, and the actual and practical covenant into
which men and women daily entered with him; the unlimited influence of the
curse, and the sin and mischief to be wrought by charm and spell; the
power of casting sickness on whomsoever one would, and the ease with which
a blight could be sent on the corn, and a murrain to the beasts, by those
who had not wherewithal to stay their hunger for a day, these were the
chief signs of that fatal power with which Satan endowed his chosen
ones--those silly, luckless chapmen who bartered away their immortal souls
for no mess of pottage even, and no earthly good to breath or body, but
only that they might harm their neighbours and revenge themselves on those
who crossed them. Sometimes, indeed, they had no need to chaffer with the
devil for such faculties: as in the matter of the evil eye; for Kirk, of
Aberfoyle, tells us that "some are of so venomous a Constitution, by being
radiated in Envy and Malice, that they pierce and kill (like a Cockatrice)
whatever Creature they first set their Eyes on in the Morning: so was it
with Walter Grahame, some Time living in the Parock wherein now I am, who
killed his own Cow after commending its Fatness, and shot a Hair with his
Eyes, having praised its Swiftness (such was the Infection of ane Evill
Eye); albeit this was unusual, yet he saw no Object but what was obvious
to other Men as well as to himselfe." And a certain woman looking over the
door of a byre or cowhouse, where a neighbour sat milking, shot the calf
dead and dried up and sickened the cow, "by the venomous glance of her
evill eye." But perhaps she had got that venom by covenant with the devil;
for this was one of the prescriptive possessions of a witch, and ever the
first dole from the Satanic treasury. When Janet Irving was brought to
trial (1616) for unholy dealings with the foul fiend, it was proved--for
was it not sworn to? and that was quite sufficient legal proof in all
witchcraft cases--that he had told her "yf schoe bure ill-will to onie
bodie, to look on them with opin eyis, and pray evill for thame in his
name, and schoe sould get hir hartis desyre;" and in almost every witch
trial in Scotland the "evil eye" formed part of the counts of indictment
against the accused. The curse was as efficacious. Did a foul-mouthed old
dame give a neighbour a handful of words more forcible than courteous, and
did terror, or revenge, induce, or simulate, a nervous seizure in
consequence, the old dame was at once carried off to the lock-up, and but
few chances of escape lay between her and the stake beyond. To be skilful
in healing, too, was just as dangerous as to be powerful in sickening; and
to the godly and unclean of the period all sorts of devilish cantrips lay
in "south-running waters" and herb drinks, and salves made of simples;
while the use of bored stones, of prayers said thrice or backwards, of
"mwildis" powders, or any other more patent form of witchcraft, though it
might restore the sick to health, yet was fatally sure to land the user
thereof at the foot of the gallows, and the testimony of the healed friend
was the strongest strand in the hangman's cord. This, indeed, was the
saddest feature in the whole matter--the total want of all gratitude,
reliance, trustiness, or affection between a "witch" and her friends. The
dearest intimate she had gave evidence against her frankly, and without a
second thought of the long years of mutual help and kindliness that had
gone before; the neighbour whom she had nursed night and day with all
imaginable tenderness and self-devotion, if he took a craze and dreamed of
witchcraft, came forward to distort and exaggerate every remedy she had
used, and every art she had employed; her very children turned against her
without pity or remorse, and little lips, scarce dry from the milk of her
own breasts, lisped out the glibbest lies of all. Most pitiful, most sad,
was the state of these poor wretches; but instructive to us, as evidencing
the strength of superstition, and the weakness of every human virtue when
brought into contact and collision with it. What other gifts and powers
belonged to the witches will be best gathered from the stories themselves;
for varied as they are, there is a strange thread of likeness running
through them all; specially is there a likeness in all of a time or
district, as might be expected in a matter which belonged so much to mere
imitation.

Scotland played an unenviable part in the great witch panic that swept
like an epidemic over Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It suited with the stern, uncompromising, Puritan temper, to
tear this accursed thing from the heart of the nation, and offer it,
bleeding and palpitating, as a sacrifice to the Lord; and accordingly we
find the witch trials of Scotland conducted with more severity than
elsewhere, and with a more gloomy and savage fanaticism of faith. Those
who dared question the truth of even the most unreliable witnesses and the
most monstrous statements were accused of atheism and infidelity--they
were Sadducees and sinners--men given over to corruption and uncleanness,
with whom no righteous servant could hold any terms. And then the
ministers mingled themselves in the fray; and the Kirk like the Church,
the presbyter like the priest, proved to be on the side of intolerance and
superstition, where, unfortunately, priests of all creeds have ever been.
And when James VI. came with his narrow brain and selfish heart, to
formularize the witch-lie into a distinct canon of arbitrary faith, and
give it increased political significance and social power, the reign of
humanity and common sense was at an end, and the autocracy of cruelty and
superstition began. It is a dreary page in human history; but so long as a
spark of superstition lingers in the world it will have its special and
direct uses.

The first time we hear of Scottish witches was when St. Patrick offended
them and the devil alike by his uncompromising rigour against them: so
they tore off a piece of a rock as he was crossing the sea and hurled it
after him; which rock became the fortress of Dumbarton in the days which
knew not St. Patrick. Then there was the story of King Duff (968), who
pined away in mortal sickness, by reason of the waxen image which had
been made to destroy him; but by the fortunate discovery of a young maiden
who could not bear torture silently, he was enabled to find the
witches--whom he burnt at Forres in Murray, the mother of the poor maiden
who could not bear torture among them: enabled, too, to save himself by
breaking the wasting waxen image roasting at the "soft" fire, when almost
at its last turn. Then we come to Thomas of Ercildoune, whom the Queen of
Faërie loved and kept; and then to Sir Michael Scot of Balweary, that
famous wizard, second to none in power; while a little further removed
from those legendary times we see the dark figure of William Lord Soulis,
who was boiled to death at Nine Stane Brig, in fitting punishment for his
crimes. And then in 1479 twelve mean women and several wizards were burnt
at Edinburgh for roasting the king in wax, and so endangering the life of
the sovereign liege in a manner which no human aid could remedy; and the
Earl of Mar was at their head, and very properly burnt too. And in 1480
Incubi and Succubi held the land between them, and even the young lady of
Mar gave herself up to the embraces of an Incubus--a hideous monster,
utterly loathsome and deadly to behold; and if the young ladies of the
nobility could do such things, what might not be expected from the
commonalty? But now we come out into the light of written history, and the
first corpse lying on the threshold is that of the beautiful Lady Glammis
(1537).


THE STORY OF LADY GLAMMIS[1]

One of the earliest, as she was one of the noblest, victims of this
delusion, politics and jealousy had as much to do with her death as had
superstition. Because she was "one of the Douglases," and not because she
was convicted as a sorceress, did William Lyon find her so easy a victim
to his hate. For it was he--the near relative of her first husband,
"Cleanse the Causey" John Lyon, Lord Glammis,--who ruined her, and brought
her young days to so shameful an end. And had he not cause? Did she not
reject him when left a widow, young and beautiful as but few were to be
found in all the Scottish land? and, rejecting him, did she not favour
Archibald Campbell of Kessneath instead, and make over to him the lands
and the beauties he had coveted for himself, even during the life of that
puling relative of his, "Cleanse the Causey"? Matter enough for revenge in
this, thought William Lyon: and the revenge he took came easy to his hand,
and in fullest measure. For Lady Glammis, daughter of George, Master of
Angus, and grand-daughter of that brave old savage, Archibald
Bell-the-Cat, was in no great favour with a court which had disgraced her
grandfather, and banished her brother; and consequently she found no
protection there from the man who was seeking her ruin. Perhaps, too, she
had mixed herself up with the court feuds and parties then so common, and
thus had given some positive cause of offence to a government which must
crush if it would not be crushed, and extirpate if it would not be
destroyed. Be that as it may, William Lyon soon gathered material for an
accusation, and Lady Glammis found that if she would not have his love he
would have her life. She was accused on various counts; for having
procured the death of her first husband by "intoxication," or unholy
drugging, for a design to poison the king, and for witchcraft generally,
as a matter of daily life and open notoriety; and for these crimes she was
burnt, notwithstanding her beauty and wealth and innocence and
high-hearted bravery, notwithstanding her popularity--for she was beloved
by all who knew her--and the honour of her stainless name. And once more,
as so often, hatred conquered love, and the innocent died that the guilty
might be at rest.

I must omit any lengthened notice of the trial of Janet Bowman in 1572, as
also of that of a notable witch Nicneven, which name, "generally given to
the Queen of the Fairies, was probably bestowed upon her on account of her
crimes, and who, when 'her collore craig with stringis whairon wes mony
knottis' was taken from her, gave way to despair, exclaiming, 'Now I have
no hoip of myself,' saying, too, that 'she cared not whether she went to
heaven or to hell.'" The Record has preserved nothing beyond the mere
fact of the first, while the foregoing extract is all that I can find of
the second; so that I am obliged to pass on to the pitiful tale of--


BESSIE DUNLOP AND THOM REID.[2]

Poor douce honest Bessie Dunlop, spouse to Andro Jak in Lyne, deposed,
after torture, on the 8th day of November, 1576, that one day, as she was
going quietly enough between her own house and Monkcastle yard, "makeand
hevye sair dule with hirself," weeping bitterly for her cow that was
dead, and her husband and child who were lying "sick in the land-ill," she
herself still weak after gissane, or child-birth, she met "ane honest,
wele, elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gray coitt with Lumbart
slevis of the auld fassoun; ane pair of gray brekis and quhyte schankis
gartanit abone the kne; ane blak bonet on his heid, cloise behind and
plane befoir, with silkin laissis drawin throw the lippis thairof; and ane
quhyte wand in his hand." This was Thom Reid, who had been killed at the
battle of Pinkye (1547), but was now a dweller in Elfame, or Fairy Land.
Thom stopped her, saying, "Gude day, Bessie." "God speid yow, gude man,"
says she. "Sancta Marie," says he, "Bessie, quhy makis thow sa grit dule
and sair greting for ony wardlie thing?" Bessie told him her troubles,
poor woman, and the little old gray-bearded man consoled her by assuring
her that though her cow and her child should die, yet her husband would
recover; and Bessie, after being "sumthing fleit" at seeing him pass
through a hole in the dyke too narrow for any honest mortal to pass
through, yet returned home, comforted to think that the gude man would
mend. After this, she and Thom foregathered several times. At the third
interview he wanted her to deny her baptism, but honest Bessie said that
she would rather be "revin at horis taillis" (riven at horses' tails); and
on the fourth he came to her own house, and took her clean away from the
presence of her husband and three tailors--they seeing nothing--to where
an assemblage of eight women and four men were waiting for her. "The men
wer cled in gentilmennes clething, and the wemens had all plaidis round
about them, and wer verrie semelie lyke to se." They were the "gude
wychtis that wynnit (dwelt) in the court of Elfame," and they had come to
persuade her to go back to fairy-land with them, where she should have
meat and clothing, and be richly dowered in all things. But Bessie
refused. Poor crazed Bessie had a loyal heart if but a silly head, and
preferred her husband and children to all the substantial pleasures of
Elfame, though Thom was angry with her for refusing, and told her "it
would be worse for her."

Once, too, the queen of the fairies, a stout, comely woman, came to her,
as she was "lying in gissane," and asked for a drink, which Bessie gave
her. Sitting on her bed, she said that the child would die, but that the
husband would recover; for Andro Jak seems to have been but an ailing
body, often like to find out the Great Mysteries for himself, and Bessie
was never quite easy about him. Then Thom began to teach her the art of
healing. He gave her roots to make into salves and powders for kow or yow
(cow or sheep), or for "ane bairne that was tane away with ane evill blast
of wind or elfgrippit:" and she cured many people by the old man's fairy
teaching. She healed Lady Johnstone's daughter, married to the young Laird
of Stanelie, by giving her a drink brewed under Thom's auspices, namely,
strong ale boiled with cloves, ginger, aniseed, liquorice, and white
sugar, which warmed the "cauld blude that gaed about hir hart, that causit
hir to dwam and vigous away," or, as we would say, to swoon. And she cured
John Jake's bairn, and Wilson's of the town, and her gudeman's sister's
cow; but old Lady Kilbowye's leg was beyond them both. It had been crooked
all her life, and now Thom said it would never mend, because "the march of
the bane was consumit, and the blude dosinit" (the marrow was consumed,
and the blood benumbed). It was hopeless, and it would be worse for her
if she asked for fairy help again. Bessie got fame too as a "monthly" of
Lyne. A green silk lace, received from Thom's own hand, tacked to their
"wylie coitts" and knit about their left arms, helped much in the delivery
of women. She lost the lace, insinuating that Thom took it away again, but
kept her fatal character for more medical skill than belonged to an
ordinary canny old wife. In the recovery of stolen goods, too, she was
effective, and what she could not find she could at least indicate. Thus,
she told the seekers that Hugh Scott's cloak could not be returned,
because it had been made into a kirtle, and that James Baird and Henry
Jameson would not recover their plough irons, because James Douglas, the
sheriff's officer, had accepted a bribe of three pounds not to find them.
Lady Blair having "dang and wrackit" her servants on account of certain
linen which had been stolen from her, learnt from Bessie, prompted by
Thom, that the thief was no other than Margaret Symple, her own friend and
relation, and that she had dang and wrackit innocent persons to no avail.
Bessie never allowed that Thom's intercourse with her was other than
honest and well conducted. Once only he took hold of her apron to drag her
away to Elfame with him; but this was more in the way of persuasion than
love making, and she indignantly denied the home questions put to her by
the judges with but scant delicacy or feeling for an honest woman's shame.
Interrogated, she said that she often saw Thom going about like other men.
He would be in the streets of Edinburgh, on market days and other,
handling goods like any living body, but she never spoke to him unless he
spoke first to her: he had forbidden her to do so. The last time she met
him before her arrest he told her of the evil that was to come, but
buoyed her up with false hopes, assuring her that she would be well
treated, and eventually cleared. Poor Bessie Dunlop! After being cruelly
tortured, her not very strong brain was utterly disorganized, and she
confessed whatever they chose to tax her with, rambling through her wild
dreamy narrative with strange facility of imagination, and with more
coherence and likelihood, than are to be found in those who came after
her. Adjudged as "confessit and fylit," she was "convict and brynt" on the
Castle Hill of Edinburgh--a mournful commentary on her elfin friend's
brave words and promises.


ALISON PEARSON AND THE FAIRY FOLK.[3]

On the 28th of May, 1588, Alesoun Peirsoun, in Byrehill, was haled before
a just judge and sapient jury on the charge of witchcraft, and seven
years' consorting with the fairy folk. This Alesoun Peirsoun, or, as we
should now write it, Alison Pearson, had a certain cousin, one William
Simpson, a clever doctor, who had been educated in Egypt; taken there by a
man of Egypt, "ane gyant," who, it is to be supposed, taught him many of
the secrets of nature then hidden from the vulgar world. During his
absence, his father, who was smith to king's majesty, died for opening of
"ane preist-buik and luking vpoune it:" which showed the tendency of the
family. When Mr. William came back he found Alison afflicted with many
diseases, powerless in hand and foot, and otherwise evilly holden; and he
cured her, being a skilful man and a kindly, and ever after obtained
unlimited influence over the brain and imagination of his crazed cousin.
He abused this influence by taking her with him to fairy land, and
introducing her to the "gude wychtis," whose company he had affected for
many years. In especial was she much linked with the Queen of Elfame, who
might have helped her, had she been so minded. One day being sick in
Grange Muir, she lay down there alone, when a man in green suddenly
appeared to her and said that if she would be faithful he would do her
good. She cried for help, and then charged him in God's name, and by the
law he lived on, that if he came in God's name and for the welfare of her
soul, he would tell her. He passed away on this, and soon after a lusty
man, and many other men and women came to her, and she passed away with
them further than she could tell; but not before she had "sanit," or
blessed herself and prayed. And then she saw piping, and merriness, and
good cheer, and puncheons of wine with "tassis," or cups to them. But the
fairy folk were not kind to Alison. They tormented her sorely, and treated
her with great harshness, knocking her about and beating her so that they
took all the "poustie," or power out of her side with one of their heavy
"straiks," and left her covered with bruises, blue and evil-favoured. She
was never free from her questionable associates, who used to come upon her
at all times and initiate her into their secrets, whether she liked it or
no. They showed her how they gathered their herbs before sunrise, and she
would watch them with their pans and fires making the "saws" or salves
that could kill or cure all who used them, according to the witches' will;
and they used to come and sit by her, and once took all the "poustie" from
her for twenty weeks. Mr. William was then with them. He was a young man,
not six years older than herself, and she would "feir" (be afraid) when
she saw him. What with fairy teaching, and Mr. William's clinical
lectures, half-crazed Alison soon got a reputation for healing powers; so
great, indeed, that the Bishop of St. Andrews, a wretched hypochondriac,
with as many diseases as would fill half the wards of an hospital, applied
to her for some of her charms and remedies, which she had sense enough to
make palateable, and such as should suit episcopal tastes: namely, spiced
claret (a quart to be drunk at two draughts), and boiled capon as the
internal remedies, with some fairy salve for outward application. It
scarcely needed a long apprenticeship in witchcraft to prescribe claret
and capon for a luxurious prelate who had brought himself into a state of
chronic dyspepsia by laziness and high living; yet the jury thought the
recipe of such profound wisdom that Alison got badly off on its account.

Mr. William was very careful of Alison. He used to go before the fairy
folk when they set out on the whirlwinds to plague her--"for they are ever
in the blowing sea-wind," said Allie--and tell her of their coming; and he
was very urgent that she should not go away with them altogether, since a
tithe of them was yearly taken down to hell, and converts had always first
chance. But many people known to her on earth were at Elfame. She said
that she recognized Mr. Secretary Lethington, and the old Knight of
Buccleugh, as of the party; which was equivalent to putting them out of
heaven, and was a grievous libel, as the times went. Neither Mr. William's
care nor fairy power could save poor Alison. After being "wirreit
(strangled) at ane staik," she was "conuicta et combusta," never more to
be troubled by epilepsy or the feverish dreams of madness.


THE CRIMES OF LADY FOWLIS.[4]

Nobler names come next upon the records. Katherine Roiss, Lady Fowlis, and
her stepson, Hector Munro, were tried on the 22nd of June, 1590, for
"witchcraft, incantation, sorcery, and poisoning." Two people were in the
lady's way: Margery Campbell the young lady of Balnagown, wife to George
Roiss or Ross of Balnagown, Lady Katherine's brother; and Robert Munro her
stepson, the present baron of Fowlis, and brother to the Hector Munro
above mentioned. If these two persons were dead, then George Ross could
marry the young Lady Fowlis, to the pecuniary advantage of himself and the
family. Hector's quarrel was on his own account, and was with George Munro
of Obisdale, Lady Katherine's eldest son. The charges against the Lady
Katherine were, the unlawful making of two pictures or images of clay,
representing the young lady of Balnagown and Robert Munro, which pictures
two notorious witches, Christian Ross and Marioune M'Alester, _alias_
Loskie Loncart, set up in a chamber and shot at with elf arrows--ancient
spear or arrow-heads, found in Scotland and Ireland, and of great account
in all matters of witchcraft. But the images of clay were not broken by
the arrow-heads, for all that they shot eight times at them, and twelve
times on a subsequent trial, and thus the spell was destroyed for the
moment; but Loskie Loncart had orders to make more, which she did with a
will. After this the lady and her two confederates brewed a stoup or
pailful of poison in the barn at Drumnyne, which was to be sent to Robert
Munro. The pail leaked and the poison ran out, except a very small
quantity which an unfortunate page belonging to the lady tasted, and "lay
continewallie thaireftir poysonit with the liquour." Again, another "pig"
or jar of poison was prepared; this time of double strength--the brewer
thereof that old sinner, Loskie Loncart, who had a hand in every evil pie
made. This was sent to the young laird by the hands of Lady Katherine's
foster-mother; but she broke the "pig" by the way, and, like the page,
tasting the contents, paid the penalty of her curiosity with her life. The
poison was of such a virulent nature that nor cow nor sheep would touch
the grass whereon it fell; and soon the herbage withered away in fearful
memorial of that deed of guilt. She was more successful in her attempts on
the young Lady Balnagown. Her "dittay" sets forth that the poor girl,
tasting of her sister-in-law's infernal potions, contracted an incurable
disease, the pain and anguish she suffered revolting even the wretch who
administered the poison, Catherine Niven, who "scunnerit (revolted) with
it sae meikle, that she said it was the sairest and maist cruel sight that
ever she saw." But she did not die. Youth and life were strong in her, and
conquered even malice and poison--conquered even the fiendish
determination of the lady, "that she would do, by all kind of means,
wherever it might be had, of God in heaven, or the devil in hell, for the
destruction and down-putting of Marjory Campbell." Nothing daunted, the
lady sent far and wide, and now openly, for various poisons; consulting
with "Egyptians" and notorious witches as to what would best "suit the
complexion" of her victims, and whether the ratsbane, which was a
favourite medicine with her, should be administered in eggs, broth, or
cabbage. She paid many sums, too, for clay images, and elf arrows
wherewith to shoot at them, and her wickedness at last grew too patent for
even her exalted rank to overshadow. She was arrested and arraigned, but
the private prosecutor was Hector Munro, who was soon to change his place
of advocate for that of "pannel;" and the jury was composed of the Fowlis
dependents. So she was acquitted; though many of her creatures had
previously been convicted and burnt on the same charges as those now made
against her; notably Cristiane Roiss, who, confessing to the clay image
and the elf arrows, was quietly burnt for the same.

Hector Munro's trial was of a somewhat different character. His stepmother
does not seem to have had much confidence in mere sorcery: she put her
faith in facts rather than in incantations, and preferred drugs to charms:
but Hector was more superstitious and more cowardly too. In 1588, he had
communed with three notorious witches for the recovery of his elder
brother, Robert; and the witches had "pollit the hair of Robert Munro, and
plet the naillis of his fingeris and taes;" but Robert had died in spite
of these charms, and now Hector was the chief man of his family. Parings
of nails, clippings of hair, water wherein enchanted stones had been laid,
black Pater-Nosters, banned plaids and cloths, were all of as much potency
in his mind as the "ratoun poysoun" so dear to the lady; and the method of
his intended murder rested on such means as these. They made a goodly pair
between them, and embodied a fair proportion of the intelligence and
morality of the time. After a small piece of preliminary sorcery,
undertaken with his foster-mother, Cristiane Neill Dayzell, and Mariaoune
M'Ingareach, "one of the most notorious and rank witches of the country,"
it was pronounced that Hector, who was sick, would not recover, unless
the principal man of his blood should suffer for him. This was found to be
none other than George Munro, of Obisdale, Lady Katherine's eldest son,
whose life must be given that Hector's might be redeemed. George, then,
must die; not by poison but by sorcery; and the first step to be taken was
to secure his presence by Hector's bedside. "Sewin poistes" or messengers
did the invalid impatiently send to him; and when he came at last, Hector
said never a word to him, after his surly "Better now that you have come,"
in answer to his half-brother's unsuspecting "How's a' wi' ye?" but sat
for a full hour with his left hand in George's right, working the first
spell in silence, according to the directions of his foster-mother and the
witch. That night, an hour after midnight, the two women went to a "piece
of ground lying between two manors," and there made a grave of Hector's
length, near to the sea-flood. A few nights after this--and it was
January, too--Hector, wrapped in blankets, was carried out of his sick
bed, and laid in this grave; he, his foster-mother, and M'Ingareach all
silent as death, until Cristiane should have gotten speech with their
master, the devil. The sods were then laid over the laird, and the witch
M'Ingareach sat down by him, while Cristiane Dayzell, with a young boy in
her hand, ran the breadth of nine rigs or furrows, coming back to the
grave, to ask the witch "who was her choice." M'Ingareach, prompted of
course by the devil, answered that "Mr. Hector was her choice to live and
his brother George to die for him." This ceremony was repeated thrice, and
then they all returned silently to the house, Mr. Hector carried in his
blankets as before. The strangest thing of all was that Mr. Hector was not
killed by the ceremony.

Hector Munro was now convinced that everything possible had been done, and
that his half-brother must perforce be his sacrifice. In his gratitude he
made M'Ingareach keeper of his sheep, and so uplifted her that the common
people durst not oppose her for their lives. It was the public talk that
he favoured her "gif she had been his own wife;" and once he kept her out
of the way "at his own charges," when she was cited to appear before the
court to answer to the crime of witchcraft. But in spite of the tremendous
evidence against him, Hector got clear off, as his stepmother had done
before him, and we hear no more of the Fowlis follies and the Fowlis
crimes. Nothing but their rank and the fear of the low people saved them.
Slighter crimes than theirs, and on more slender evidence, had been
sufficient cause for condemnation ere now; and Lady Katherine's
poisonings, and Hector Munro's incantations, would have met with the fate
the one at least deserved, save for the power and aid of clanship.


BESSIE ROY.

The month after this trial, Bessie Roy, nurreych (nurse) to the Leslies of
Balquhain, was "dilatit" for sorcery generally, and specially for being "a
common awa-taker of women's milk." She took away poor Bessie Steel's, when
she came to ask alms, and only restored it again when she was afraid of
getting into trouble for the fault. She was also accused of having, "by
the space of tual yeiris syne or thairby," past to the field with other
women to pluck lint, but instead of following her lawful occupation, she
had made "ane compas (circle) in the eird, and ane hoill in the middis
thairof;" out of which hole came, first, a great worm which crept over
the boundary, then a little worm, which crept over it also, and last of
all another great worm, "quhill could nocht pas owre the compas, nor cum
out of the hoill, but fell doune and deit." Which enchantment or sorcery
being interpreted meant, by the first worm, William King, who should live;
by the second small worm, the unborn babe, of which no one yet knew the
coming life; and by the third large worm the gude wyffe herself, who
should die as soon as she was delivered. Notwithstanding the gravity and
circumstantiality of these charges, Bessie Roy marvellously escaped the
allotted doom, and was pronounced innocent. "Quhairvpoune the said Bessie
askit act and instrument." Two women tried the day before, Jonet Grant and
Jonet Clark, were less fortunate. Charged with laming men and women by
their devilish arts--whereof was no attempt at proof--they were convicted
and burnt; as also was Meg Dow, in April of the same year, for the
"crewell murdreissing of twa young infant bairns," by magic.

And now we come to a very singular group of trials, opened out by that
clumsy, superstitious pedant, whose name stands accursed for vice and
cruel cowardice and the utmost selfishness of fear--James VI. of Scotland.
If anything were wanting to complete one's abhorrence of Carr's patron and
Raleigh's murderer--one's contempt of the upholder of the divine right of
kings in his own self-adoration as God's vicegerent upon earth--it would
be his part in the witch delusion of the sixteenth century. Whatever of
blood-stained folly belonged specially to the Scottish trials of this
time--and hereafter--owed its original impulse to him; and every groan of
the tortured wretches driven to their fearful doom, and every tear of the
survivors left blighted and desolate to drag out their weary days in
mingled grief and terror, lie on his memory with shame and condemnation
ineffaceable for all time.


THE DEVIL'S SECRETARY.[5]

On the 26th of December, 1590, John Fian, _alias_ Cuningham (spelt Johanne
Feane, _alias_ Cwninghame), master of the school at Saltpans, Lothian, and
contemptuously recorded as "Secretar and Register to the Devil," was
arraigned for witchcraft and high treason. There were twenty counts
against him, the least of which would have been enough to have lighted up
a witch-fire on that fatal Castle Hill, for the bravest and best in the
land. First, he was accused of entering into a covenant with Satan, who
appeared to him in white, as he lay in bed, musing and thinking ("mwsand
and pansand," says the dittay in its quaint language) how he should be
revenged on Thomas Trumbill, for not having whitewashed his room,
according to agreement. After promising his Satanic majesty allegiance and
homage, he received his mark, which later was found under his tongue, with
two pins therein thrust up to their heads. Again, he was found
guilty--"fylit" is the old legal term--of "feigning himself to be sick in
the said Thomas Trumbill's chamber, where he was stricken in great
ecstacies and trances, lying by the space of two or three hours dead, his
spirit taken, and suffered himself to be carried and transported to many
mountains, as he thought through all the world, according to his
depositions." Note, that these depositions were made in the midst of
fearful torture, and recanted the instant after. Also, he was found
guilty of suffering himself to be carried to North Berwick church, where,
together with many others, he did homage to Satan, as he stood in the
pulpit, making doubtful speeches, saying, "Many come to the fair, and all
buy not wares;" and desired him "not to fear, though he was grim, for he
had many servants who should never want, or ail nothing, so long as their
hair was on, and should never let one tear fall from their eyes so long as
they served him;" and he gave them lessons, and said, "Spare not to do
evil, and to eat and drink and be blithe, taking rest and ease, for he
should raise them up at the latter day gloriously." But the pith of the
indictment was that he, Fian, and sundry others to be spoken of hereafter,
entered into a league with Satan to wreck the king on his way to Denmark,
whither, in a fit of clumsy gallantry, he had set out to visit his future
queen. While he was sailing to Denmark, Fian and a whole crew of witches
and wizards met Satan at sea, and the master, giving an enchanted cat into
Robert Grierson's hand, bade him "cast the same into the sea, holà," which
was accordingly done; and a pretty capful of wind the consequence. Then,
when the king was returning from Denmark, the devil promised to raise a
mist which should wreck him on English ground. To perform which feat he
took something like a football--it seemed to Dr. Fian like a wisp--and
cast it into the sea, whereupon arose the great mist which nearly drove
the cumbrous old pedant on to English ground, where our strong-fisted
queen would have made him pay for his footing in a manner not quite
congenial to his tastes. But, being a Man of God, none of these charms and
devilries prevailed against him. A further count was, that once again he
consorted with Satan and his crew, still in North Berwick church, where
they paced round the church wider shins (wider scheins?), that is,
contrary to the way of the sun. Fian blew into the lock--a favourite trick
of his--to open the door, and blew in the lights which burned blue, and
were like big black candles held in an old man's hand round about the
pulpit. Here Satan as a "mekill blak man, with ane blak baird stikand out
lyke ane gettis (goat's) baird; and ane hie ribbit neise, falland doun
scharp lyke the beik of ane halk; with ane lang rumpill (tail); cled in
ane blak tatie goune, and ane ewill favorit scull bonnett on his heid;
haifand ane blak buik in his hand," preached to them, commanding them to
be good servants to him, and he would be a good master to them, and never
let them want. But he made them all very angry by calling Robert Grierson
by his Christian name. He ought to have been called "Ro' the Comptroller,
or Rob the Rower." This slip of the master's displeased them sorely, and
they ran "hirdie girdie" in great excitement, for it was against all
etiquette to be named by their earthly names; indeed, they always received
new names when the devil gave them their infernal christening, and they
made themselves over to him and denied their holy baptism. It was at this
meeting that John Fian was specially accused of rifling the graves of the
dead, and dismembering their bodies for charms. And many other things did
this Secretar and Register to the devil. Once, at the house of David
Seaton's mother, he breathed into the hand of a woman sitting by the fire,
and opened a lock at the other end of the kitchen. Once he raised up four
candles on his horse's two ears, and a fifth on the staff which a man
riding with him carried in his hand. These magic candles gave as much
light as the sun at noonday, and the man was so terrified that he fell
dead on his own threshold. He sent an evil spirit, who tormented a man for
twenty weeks; and he was seen to chase a cat, and in the chase to be
carried so high over a hedge that he could not touch her head. The dittay
says he flew through the air--a not infrequent mode of progression with
such people. When asked why he hunted the cat, he said that Satan had need
of her, and that he wanted all the cats he could lay hands on, to cast
into the sea, and cause storms and shipwrecks. He was further accused of
endeavouring to bewitch a young maiden by his devilish cantrips and horrid
charms; but, by a wile of the girl's mother, up to men's arts, he
practised on a heifer's hairs instead of the girl's, and the result was
that a luckless young cow went lowing after him everywhere--even into his
school-room--rubbing herself against him, and exhibiting all the languish
and desire of a love-sick young lady. A curious old plate represents John
Fian and the heifer in grotesque attitudes; the heifer with large,
drooping, amorous eyes, intensely ridiculous--the schoolmaster with his
magic wand drawing circles in the sand. These, with divers smaller
charges, such as casting horoscopes, and wearing modewart's (mole's) feet
upon him, amounting in all to twenty counts, formed the sum of the
indictment against him. He was put to the torture. First, his head was
"thrawed with a rope" for about an hour, but still he would not confess;
then they tried fair words and coaxed him, but with no better success; and
then they put him to the "most severe and cruell pains in the worlde,"
namely, the boots, till his legs were completely crushed, and the blood
and marrow spouted out. After the third stroke he became speechless; and
they, supposing it to be the devil's mark which kept him silent, searched
for that mark, that by its discovery the spell might be broken. So they
found it, as stated before, under his tongue, with two charmed pins stuck
up to their heads therein. When they were drawn out--that is, after some
further torture--he confessed anything which it pleased his tormentors to
demand of him, saying how, just now, the devil had been to him all in
black, but with a white wand in his hand; and how, on his, Fian's,
renouncing him, he had brake his wand, and disappeared. The next day he
recanted this confession. He was then somewhat restored to himself, and
had mastered the weakness of his agony. Whereupon it was assumed that the
devil had visited him through the night, and had marked him afresh. They
searched him--pulling off every nail with a turkas, or smith's pincers,
and then thrusting in needles up to their heads; but finding nothing more
satanic than blood and nerves, they put him to worse tortures, as a
revenge. He made no other relapse, but remained constant now to the end;
bearing his grievous pains with patience and fortitude, and dying as a
brave man always knows how to die, whatever the occasion. Finding that
nothing more could be made of him, they mercifully came to an end. He was
strangled and burnt "in the Castle Hill of Edinbrough, on a Saterdaie, in
the ende of Januarie last past 1591;" ending a may be loose and not
over-heroic life in a manner worthy of the most glorious martyr of
history. John Fian, schoolmaster of Saltpans, with no great idea to
support him, and no admiring friends to cheer him on, bore himself as
nobly as any hero of them all, and vindicated the honour of manhood and
natural strength in a way that exalts our common human nature into
something godlike and divine.


THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH AND HER CUMMERS.[6]

Fian was the first victim in the grand battue offered now to the royal
witchfinder; others were to follow, the manner of whose discovery was
singular enough. Deputy Bailie David Seaton of Tranent, had a half-crazed
servant-girl, one Geillis Duncan, whose conduct in suddenly taking "in
hand to helpe all such as were troubled or grieved with anie kinde of
sicknes or infirmitie," excited the righteous suspicions of her master. To
make sure he tortured her, without trial, judge, or jury; first, by the
"pillie-winks" or thumbscrews, and then by "thrawing,"--wrenching, or
binding her head with a rope--an intensely agonizing process, and one that
generally comes in as part of the service of justice done to witch and
wizard. Not confessing, even under these persuasions, she was "searched,"
and the mark was found on her throat: whereupon she at once confessed;
accusing, among others, the defunct John Fian, or Cuningham, Agnes Sampson
at Haddington, "the eldest witch of them all," Agnes Tompson of Edinburgh,
and Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators
of the College of Justice. Agnes Sampson's trial came first. She was a
grave, matronlike, well-educated woman, "of a rank and comprehension above
the vulgar, grave and settled in her answers, which were to some purpose,"
and altogether a woman of mark and character. She was commonly called the
"grace wyff" or "wise wyff" of Keith; and, doubtless, her superior
reputation brought on her the fateful notice of the half-crazed girl; also
it procured her the doubtful honour of being carried to Holyrood, there to
be examined by the king himself. At first she quietly and firmly denied
all that she was charged with, but after having been fastened to the
witches' bridle,[7] kept without sleep, her head shaved and thrawn with a
rope, searched, and pricked, she, too, confessed whatever blasphemous
nonsense her accusers chose to charge her with, to the wondrous
edification of her kingly inquisitor. She said that she and two hundred
other witches went to sea on All-Halloween, in riddles or sieves, making
merry and drinking by the way: that they landed at North Berwick church,
where, taking hands, they danced around, saying--

  "Commer goe ye before! commer goe ye!
  Gif ye will not goe before, commer let me!"


Here they met the devil, like a mickle black man, as John Fian had said,
and he marked her on the right knee; and this was the time when he made
them all so angry by calling Robert Grierson by his right name, instead of
Rob the Rower, or Ro' the Comptroller. When they rifled the graves, as
Fian had said, she got two joints, a winding-sheet, and an enchanted ring
for love-charms. She also said that Geillis Duncan, the informer, went
before them, playing on the Jew's harp, and the dance she played was
Gyllatripes; which so delighted gracious Majesty, greedy of infernal news,
that he sent on the instant to Geillis, to play the same tune before him;
which she did "to his great pleasure and amazement." Furthermore, Agnes
Sampson confessed that, on asking Satan why he hated King James, and so
greatly wished to destroy him, the foul fiend answered: "Because he is the
greatest enemy I have;" adding, that he was "un homme de Dieu," and that
Satan had no power against him. A pretty piece of flattery, but availing
the poor wise wife nothing as time went on. Her indictment was very heavy;
fifty-three counts in all; for the most part relating to the curing of
disease by charm and incantation, and to foreknowledge of sickness or
death. Thus, she took on herself the sickness of Robert Kerse in Dalkeith,
then cast it back, by mistake, on Alexander Douglas, intending it for a
cat or a dog: and she put a powder containing dead men's bones under the
pillow of Euphemia Macalzean, when in the pains of childbirth, and so got
her safely through. As she went on, and grew more thoroughly weakened in
mind and body, she owned to still more monstrous things. Item, to having a
familiar, in shape of a dog by name Elva, whom she called to her by "Holà!
master!" and conjured away "by the law he lived on." This dog or devil
once came so near to her that she was "fleyt," but she charged him by the
law he lived on to come no nearer to her, but to answer her
honestly--"Should old Lady Edmistoune live?" "Her days were gane," said
Elva; "and where were the daughters?" "They said they would be there,"
said Agnes. He answered, one of them should be in peril, and that he
should have one of them. "It sould nocht be sa," cried the wise wife; so
he growled and went back into the well. Another time she brought him forth
out of the well to show to Lady Edmistoune's daughters, and he frightened
them half to death, and would have devoured one of them had not Agnes and
the rest gotten a grip of her and drawn her back. She sent a letter to
Marian Leuchope, to raise a wind that should prevent the queen from
coming; and she caused a ship, 'The Grace of God,' to perish--the devil
going before, while she and the rest sailed over in a flat boat, entered
unseen, ate of the best, and swamped the vessel afterwards. For helping
her in this nefarious deed, she gave twenty shillings to Grey Meill, "ane
auld, sely, pure plowman," who usually kept the door at the witches'
conventions, and who had attended her in this shipwreck adventure. Then,
she was one of the foremost and most active in the celebrated
storm-raising for the destruction, or at least the damage of the king on
his return from Denmark; giving some curious particulars in addition to
what we have already had in Fian's indictment; as, that she and her sister
witches baptized the cat by which they raised the storm, by putting it,
with various ceremonies, thrice through the chimney crook. "Fyrst twa of
thame held ane fingar, in the ane syd of the chimnay cruik, and ane vther
held ane vther fingar in the vther syd, the twa nebbis of the fingaris
meting togidder; than they patt the catt thryis throw the linkis of the
cruik, and passit it thryis vnder the chimnay;" afterwards they knit four
dead men's joints to the four feet of the cat, and cast it into the sea,
ready now to work any amount of mischief that Satan might command. Then
she made a "picture," or clay image, of Mr. John Moscrop, father-in-law to
Euphemia Macalzean, to destroy him, at the said Euphemia's desire. She was
also at all the famous North Berwick meetings, where Dr. Fian was
secretary, registrar, and lock-opener; where they were baptized of the
fiend, and received formally into his congregation; where he preached to
them as a great black man; and where they rifled graves and meted out the
dead among them. She also confessed to taking a black toad, and hanging
him up by his heels, collecting all his venom in an oyster shell for three
days, and she told the king that it was then she wanted his fouled linen,
when she would have enchanted him to death--but she never got it. She had
two Pater Nosters, the white and the black. The white ran thus:--

  "White Pater Noster,
  God was my Foster,
  He fostered me,
  Under the Book of Palm Tree.
  Saint Michael was my Dame,
  He was born at Bethlehem,
  He was made of flesh and blood,
  God send me my right food:
  My right food and dyne two
  That I may to yon kirk go,
  To read upon yon sweet book,
  Which the mighty God of Heaven shoop.
  Open, open, Heaven's yaits,
  Stick, stick, Hell's yaits.
  All Saints be the better,
  That hear the white prayer Pater Noster."


There was no harm in this doggerel, nor yet much good; little of blessing,
if less of banning; nor was the Black more definite. It was shorter, which
ought to have ranked as a merit:--

         Black Pater Noster.
  "Four newks in this house, for holy angels,
  A post in the midst, that's Christ Jesus,
  Lucas, Marcus, Matthew, Joannes,
  God be into this house and all that belongs us."


To "sain" or charm her bed she used to say,--

  "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
  The bed be blest that I ly on."

And when the butter was slow in coming, it was enough if she chanted
slowly--

  "Come, butter, come!
  Come, butter, come!
  Peter stands at the gate.
  Waiting for a buttered cake,
  Come, butter, come,"

said with faith and unction, she was sure to have at once a lucky
churn-full.

These queer bits of half-papistical, half-nonsensical doggerel were
considered tremendous sins in those days, and the use of them was quite
sufficient to bring any one to the scaffold; as their application would,
for a certainty, destroy health, and gear, and life, if it were so willed.
And for all these crimes--storm-raising, cat-baptizing, and the
rest--Agnes Sampson, the grave, matronlike, well-educated grace wife of
Keith, was bound to a stake, strangled, and burnt on the Castle Hill, with
no one to seek to save her, and no one to bid her weary soul God-speed!

Barbara Napier, wife to a burgess of Edinburgh, and sister-in-law to the
Laird of Carschoggill, was then seized--accused of consorting with Agnes
Simpson, and consulting with Richard Grahame, a notorious necromancer, to
whom she gave "3 ells of bombezie for his paynes," all that she might gain
the love and gifts of Dame Jeane Lyon, Lady Angus; also of having procured
the witch's help to keep the said Dame Jeane "fra wometing quhen she was
in bredin of barne." She was accused of other and more malicious things;
but acquitted of these: indeed the "assisa" which tried her was
contumacious and humane, and pronounced no doom; whereon King James wrote
a letter demanding that she be strangled, then burnt at the stake, and all
her goods escheated to himself. But Barbara pleaded that she was with
child; so her execution was delayed until she was delivered, when "nobody
insisting in the persute of her, she was set at libertie." The
contumacious majority was tried for "wilful error on assize--acquitting a
witch," but got off with more luck than usual.[8]

Euphemia Macalzean,[9] or as we should say, Maclean, was even higher game.
She was the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, and wife of Patrick Moscrop, a
man of wealth and standing; a firm, passionate, heroic woman, whom no
tortures could weaken into confession, no threats terrify into submission.
She fought her way, inch by inch, but she was "convict" at last, and
condemned to be burnt alive: the severest sentence ever pronounced against
a witch. In general they were "wirreit" or strangled before being burnt.
There is good reason to believe that her witchcraft was made merely the
pretence, while her political predilections, her friendship for the Earl
of Bothwell, and her Catholic religion, were the real grounds of the
king's enmity to her, and the causes of the severity with which she was
treated. Her indictment contains the ordinary list of witch-crimes,
diversified with the additional charge of bewitching a certain young
Joseph Douglas, whose love she craved and found impossible to obtain, or
rather, to retain. She was accused of giving him, for unlawful purposes,
"ane craig cheinzie (neck chain), twa belt cheinzies, ane ring, ane
emiraut," and other jewels; trying also to prevent his marriage with Marie
Sandilands, and making Agnes Simpson get back the jewels, when her spells
had failed. The young wife whom Douglas married, and the two children she
bore him, also came in for part of her alleged maleficent enchantments.
She "did the barnes to death," and struck the wife with deadly sickness.
She was also accused of casting her own childbirth pains, once on a dog,
and once on the "wantoune cat;" whereupon the poor beasts ran distractedly
out of the house, as well they might, and were never seen again. She
managed this marvellous piece of sleight-of-hand by getting a bored stone
from Agnes Sampson, and rolling "enchanted mwildis"--earth from dead men's
graves--in her hair. Another time she got her husband's shirt, and caused
it to be "woumplit" (folded up) and put under her bolster, whereby she
sought to throw her labour pains upon him, but without effect; as is not
to be wondered at. She bewitched John M'Gillie's wife by sending her the
vision of a naked man, with only a white sheet about him; and Jonett
Aitcheson saw him with the sleeves of his shirt "vpoune leggis, and taile
about his heid." She was also accused of endeavouring to poison her
husband; and it was manifest that their union was not happy--he being for
the most part away from home, and she perhaps thinking of the other
husband promised her, Archibald Ruthven; which promise, broken and set
aside, had made such a slander and scandal of her marriage with Patrick
Moscrop. And it was proved--or what went for proof in those days--that
Agnes Sampson, the wise wife, had made a clay image of John Moscrop, the
father-in-law, who should thereupon have pined away and died, according to
the law of these enchantments, but, failing in this obedience, lived
instead, to the grief and confusion of his daughter-in-law. All these
crimes, and others like unto them, were quite sufficient legal causes of
death; and James could gratify his superstitious fears and political
animosity at the same time, while Euphemia Maclean--the fine, brave,
handsome Euphemia--writhed in agony at the stake to which she was bound
when burned alive in the flames: "brunt in assis quick to the deid," says
the Record--the severest sentence ever passed on a witch. This murder was
done on the 25th July, 1591.

"The last of Februarie, 1592, Richard Grahame wes brant at y{e} Cross of
Edinburghe for vitchcrafte and sorcery," says succinctly Robert Birrel,
"burges of Edinburghe," in his "Diarey containing divers Passages of
Staite and uthers memorable Accidents, from y{e} 1532 zeir of our
Redemption, till y{e} beginning of the zeir 1605." "And in 1593, Katherine
Muirhead was brunt for vitchcrafte, quha confest sundrie poynts yrof."
Richard Graham was the "Rychie Graham, ane necromancer," consulted by
Barbara Napier; the same who gave the Earl of Bothwell some drug to make
the king's majesty "lyke weill of him," if he could but touch king's
majesty on the face therewith; it was he also who raised the devil for Sir
Lewis Ballantyne, in his own yard in the Canongate, whereby Sir Lewis was
so terrified that he took sickness and died. Even in the presence of the
king himself, Rychie boasted that "he had a familiar spirit which showed
him many things;" but which somehow forgot to show him the stake and the
rope and the faggot, which yet were the bold necromancer's end, little as
the poor cozening wretch merited such an awful doom.


THE TWO ALISONS.

June, 1596, had nearly seen a nobler victim than those usually accorded.
John Stuart, Master of Orkney, and brother of the Earl, "was dilatit of
consulting with umquhile Margaret Balfour, ane wich, for the
destructionne of Patrik Erll of Orkney, be poysoning." In the dittay she
is called "Alysoun Balfour, ane knawin notorious wich." Alisoun, after
being kept forty-eight hours in the "caschiclawis"[10]--her husband, an
old man of eighty-one, her son, and her young daughter, all being in ward
beside her, and tortured--was induced to confess. She could not see the
old man with the Lang Irons of fifty stone weight laid upon him; her son
in the boots, with fifty-seven strokes; and her little daughter, aged
seven, with the thumbscrews upon her tender hands, and not seek to gain
their remission by any confession that could be made. But when the torture
was removed from them and her, she recanted in one of the most moving and
pathetic speeches on record--availing her little then, poor soul! for she
was burnt on the Castle Hill, December 16th, 1594, and her confession
treasured up to be used as future evidence against John Stuart. Thomas
Palpla, a servant, was also implicated; but as he had been kept eleven
days and nights in the caschiclaws (or caspie-claws); twice in the day for
fourteen hours "callit in the buitis;" stripped naked and scourged with
"ropes in sic soirt that they left nather flesch nor hyde vpoun him;" and,
as he recanted so soon as the torture was removed, his confession went for
but little. So John, Master of Orkney, was let off, when perhaps he had
been the only guilty one of the three.

In October[11] of the same year (1596), Alesoun Jollie, spous to Robert
Rae, in Fala, was "dilatit of airt and pairt" in the death of Isobell
Hepburn, of Fala: and the next month, November, Christian Stewart, in
Nokwalter, was strangled and burnt for the slaughter of umquhile Patrick
Ruthven, by taking ane black clout from Isobell Stewart, wherewith to work
her fatal charm. It does not appear that she did anything more heinous
than borrow a black cloth from Isobell, which might or might not have been
left in Ruthven's house; but suspicion was as good as evidence in those
days, and black clouts were dangerous things to deal with when women had
the reputation of witches. So poor Christian Stewart was strangled and
burnt, and her soul released from its troubles by a rougher road, and a
shorter, than what Nature would have taken if left to herself. "Strange
that while all these dismal affairs were going on at Edinburgh, Shakspeare
was beginning to write his plays, and Bacon to prepare his essays. Ramus
had by this time shaken the Aristotelian philosophy, and Luther had broken
the papal tyranny."[12] Truly humanity walks by slow marches, and by
painful stumbling through thorny places!


THE TROUBLES OF ABERDEEN.[13]

Aberdeen was not behind her elder sister. One man and twenty-three women
were burned in one year alone for the crime of witchcraft and magic; and
the Records of the Dean of Guild faithfully detail the expenses which the
town was put to in the process. On the 23rd of February, 1597, Thomas
Leyis cost them two pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence, for "peattis,
tar barrelis, fir, and coallis, to burn the said Thomas, and to Jon
Justice for his fie in executing him;" but Jonet Wischart (his mother),
and Isobel Cocker, cost eleven pounds ten shillings for their joint
cremation; with ten shillings added to the account for "trailling of
Monteithe (another witch of the same gang) through the streits of the town
in ane cart, quha hangit herself in prison, and eirding (burying) her."
The dittay against these several persons set forth various crimes. Janet
Wischart, who was an old woman notorious for her evil eye, was convicted,
amongst other things, of having "in the moneth of Aprile or thairby, in
anno nyntie ane yeiris, being the first moneth in the raith (the first
quarter) at the greiking" (breaking) of the day, cast her cantrips in
Alexander Thomson's way, so that one half of the day his body was "rossin"
(burned or roasted) as if in an oven, with an extreme burning drought, and
the other half melting away with a cold sweat. Upon Andrew Wobster--who
had put a linen towel round her throat, half choking her, and to whom she
said angrily, "Quhat wirreys thow me? thow salt lie: I sall give breid to
my bairnis this towmound, and thou sall nocht byd ane moneth with thin, to
gif tham breid"--she had laid such sore cantrips, that he died as she
predicted: which was a cruel and foul murder in the eyes of the law,
forbye the sin of witchcraft. But she had other victims as well. James
Low, a stabler, refused to lend her his kiln and barn, so he took a
"dwining" illness in consequence, "melting away like ane burning candle
till he died." His wife and only son died too, and his "haill geir,
surmounting three thousand pounds, are altogether wrackit and away."
Beside this evidence there was his own testimony availing; for he had
often said on his death-bed, that if he had lent Jonet what she had
demanded, he would never have suffered loss. She had also once brought
down a dozen fowls off a roost, dead at her feet; and had ruined a woman
and her husband, by bidding them take nine grains or ears of wheat, and a
bit of rowan tree, and put them in the four corners of the house--for all
the mischance that followed after was due to this unholy charm; and once
she raised a serviceable wind in a dead calm, by putting a piece of live
coal at two doors, whereby she was enabled to winnow some wheat for
herself, when all the neighbours were standing idle for want of wind; and
she bewitched cows, so that they gave poison instead of milk; and oxen, so
that they became furious under the touch of any one but herself; and she
sent cats to sit on honest folks' breasts, and give them evil dreams and
the horrors; and furthermore, she was said to have gone to the gallows in
the Links, and to have dismembered the dead body hanging there, for
charms; and twenty-two years ago she was proved to have been found sitting
in a field of corn before sunrising, peeling blades, and finding that it
would be "ane dear year," for the blade grew widershins, and it was only
when it grew sungates (from east to west) that it would be a full harvest
and cheap bread for the poor; and once her daughter-in-law had found her,
and another hag, sitting stark by her fireside, the one mounted on the
shoulders of the other, working charms for her health and well-being. So
she cost the town of Aberdeen the half of eleven pounds odd shillings, for
the most effectual manner of carrying out her sentence, which was, that
she "be brint to the deid."

Her son Thomas Leyis was not so fortunate as her husband and daughters:
"qwik gangand devills" were these; for they escaped the flames this time,
and were banished instead. But Thomas was less lucky. He was dilatit of
being a common witch and sorcerer, and the partner of all his mother's
evil deeds. One of his worst crimes was having danced round the
market-cross of Aberdeen, he and a number of witches and sorcerers--the
devil leading; "in the quhilk dans, thow, Thomas, was foremost, and led
the ring, and dang the said Katherine Mitchell (another of the accused)
because scho spillit your dans, and ran nocht so fast about as the rest."
Thomas had a lover too, faithless Elspet Reid, and she, turning against
him, as has been the manner of lovers through all time, gave tremendous
evidence in his disfavour. She said that he had once offered to take her
to Murrayland, and there marry her; a man at the foot of a certain
mountain being sure to rise at his bidding, and supply them with all they
wanted; and when he was confined in the church-house, she came and
whispered to him through the window, and the man in charge of Thomas swore
that she said she had been meeting with the devil according to his orders,
and that when she sained herself he had "vaniest away with ane rwmleng
(rumbling)." In the morning, too, before the old mother's conviction, "ane
ewill spreit in lyiknes of ane pyit (magpie)," went and struck the
youngest sister in her face, and would have picked out her eyes, but that
the neighbours to the fore dang the foul thief out of the room; and again,
on the day after conviction, and before execution, the devil came again as
ane kae (crow), and would have destroyed the youngest sister entirely had
he not been prevented: which two visitations were somehow hinged on to
Thomas, and included in the list of crimes for which he was adjudged
worthy of death.

Helen Fraser, of the same "coven," was a most dangerous witch. She had the
power to make men transfer their affections, no matter how good and
wholesome the wife deserted:--and she never spared her power. By her
charms she caused Andrew Tullideff to leave off loving his lawful wife and
take to Margaret Neilson instead: so that "he could never be reconceillit
with his wife, or remove his affection frae the said harlot;" and she made
Robert Merchant fall away from the duty owing to his wife, Christian
White, and transfer himself and his love to a certain widow, Isobel Bruce,
for whom he once went to sow corn, and fell so madly in love that he could
never quit the house or the widow's side again; "whilk thing the country
supposed to be brought about by the unlawful travelling of the said Helen;
"and was further _testified by Robert himself_," says Chambers
significantly. Helen Fraser was therefore burnt; and it is to be hoped
that the men returned to their lawful mates.

Isobel Cockie, who was burnt in company with Thomas Lee's mother, old
Jonet, meddled chiefly with cows and butter. She could forespeak them so
that they should give poison instead of milk, and the cream she had once
overlooked was never fit for the "yirning." Her landlord once offended her
by mending the roof of her house while she was from home, and Isobel, who
did not choose that her things should be pulled about in her absence, and
perhaps some of her cantrips discovered, "glowrit up at him, and said, 'I
sall gar thee forthink it that thow hast tirrit my hows, I being frae
hame.'" Whereupon Alexander Anderson went home sick and speechless, and
gat no relief until Isobel gave him "droggis," when his speech and health
returned as of old. Isobel had been the dancer immediately after Thomas
Lees at the Fish Cross, "and because the dewill playit not so melodiously
and well as thow cravit, thow took his instrument out of his mouth, then
tuik him on the chafts (chops) therewith, and playit thyself theiron to
the haill company." What further evidence could possibly be required to
prove that Isobel Cockie was a witch, and one that "might not be suffered
to live"?

Other trials did Aberdeen entertain that year on this same wise and
Christian count. There was that of Andrew Man, a poor old fellow specially
patronized by the Queen of Fairy who sixty years ago had come to his
mother's house, where she was delivered of a bairn just like an ordinary
woman, and no devil or Queen of Elfin at all. Andrew was then but a boy,
but he remembered it all well, and how he carried water for her, and was
promised by her that he should know all things, and should be able to cure
all sorts of sickness except the "stand deid;" and that he should be "well
entertainit," but should seek his meat ere he died, as Thomas Rhymer had
done in years long past. Twenty-eight years after this the queen came
again, and caused one of his cattle to die on a hillock called the
Elf-hillock, but promised to do him good afterwards; and it was then that
their guilty albeit poetic and loving intercourse began. Andrew was told
in his dittay that he could cure "the falling sickness, the bairn-bed, and
all other sorts of sickness that ever fell to man or beast, except the
_stand-deid_, by baptizing them, reabling them in the auld
corunschbald,[14] and striking of the gudis on the face, with ane foot in
thy hand, and by saying their words, 'Gif thou wilt live, live; and gif
thow wilt die, die,' with sundry other orisons, sic as Sanct John and the
three silly brethren, whilk thow canst say when thow please, and by
giving of black wool and salt as a remeid for all diseases, and for
causing a man prosper, so that his blude should never be drawn." Once,
Andrew Man, by putting a patient nine times through a hasp of unwatered
yarn, and a cat as many times backwards through the same hasp, cured the
patient by killing the cat. This was logical, and quite easy to be
understood. Andrew's devil whom he affirmed to be an angel, and whose name
was Christsonday, was raised by saying Benedicite, and laid again by
putting a dog under his arm, then casting it into the devil's mouth with
the awful word "Maikpeblis!" "The Queen of Elphen has a grip of all the
craft," says the dittay, "but Christsonday is the gudeman, and has all
power under God; and thow kens sundry deid men in their company, and the
king that died at Flodden, and Thomas Rhymer is there." And as the queen
had been seen in Andrew's company in a rather beautiful and poetic manner,
the whole affair was settled, and no man's mind was left in doubt of the
old creature's guilt. For, Andrew was told, "Upon Rood-day in harvest, in
this present year, whilk fell on a Wednesday, thow saw Christsonday come
out of the snaw in the likeness of a staig (young male horse), and the
Queen of Elphen was there, and others with her, riding upon white
hackneys." "The elves have shapes and claithes like men, and will have
fair covered tables, and they are but shadows, but are starker (stronger)
nor men, and they have playing and dancing when they please; the queen is
very pleasant, and will be auld and young when she pleases; she makes any
king whom she pleases.... The elves will make thee appear to be in a fair
chalmer, and yet thow wilt find thyself in a moss on the moor. They will
appear to have candles, and licht, and swords, whilk will be nothing else
but dead grass and straes." So Andrew's doom was sealed, for all that he
denied his guilt, and he was convicted and burnt like the rest.

Marjory Mutch came to her end because, having a deadly hatred against
William Smith, she bewitched his oxen, as they were ploughing, so that
they all ran "wood" or mad that instant, broke the plough, and two of them
plunged up over the hills to Deer, and two ran up Ithan side, and could
never be taken or apprehended again. She was notorious for bewitching
cattle; and that she was a witch, and good for nothing but burning, a
gentleman proved to the satisfaction of all present, for he found a soft
spot on her which he pricked without causing any pain; a test that ought
to have been eminently satisfactory and conclusive--but was not; for she
was "clenged"--cleansed, or acquitted.

Ellen Gray, convicted of many of the ordinary crimes of witchcraft, did
away with all chance of mercy for herself when, on being taken, she looked
over her shoulder, saying, "Is there no mon following me?" and Agnes
Wobster was a witch because in a great snow she took fire out of a "cauld
frosty dyke," and carried the same to her house. They were both burnt, as
they merited. Jonet Leisk cast sickness and disease on all she knew, and
made whole flocks run "wode" and furious; geese too; but she was
"clenged," or cleared; so was Gilbert Fidlar; but Isobell Richie, Margaret
Og, Helen Rogie, and others, were burnt, for the satisfaction of offended
justice.

Margaret Clark, too, came to no good end, because being sent for by the
wife of Nicol Ross, when in child-bed, she gave her ease by casting her
pains upon Andrew Harper, who fell into such a fury and madness during
her time of travail, that he could not be holden, and only recovered when
the gentlewoman was delivered. And what did Violet Leys do, but bewitch
William Finlay's ship so that she never made one good voyage again, all
because her husband had been discharged therefrom, and Violet the witch
was most mightily angered? And Isobell Straquhan, too, had she not powers
banned even in the blessing? She went one day to "Elspet Murray in
Woodheid, she being a widow, and asked of her if she had a penny to lend
her, and the said Elspet gave her the penny; and the said Isobell took the
penny and bowit (bent) it, and took a clout and a piece of red wax, and
sewed the clout with a thread, the wax and the penny being within the
clout, and gave it to the said Elspet Murray, commanding her to use the
said clout to hang about her craig (neck), and when she saw the man she
loved best, take the clout, with the penny and wax, and stroke her face
with it, and she so doing, would attain into the marriage of that man whom
she loved." She also made Walter Ronaldson leave off beating his wife, by
sewing certain pieces of paper thick with threads of divers colours, and
putting them in the barn among the corn, since which time Walter left off
dinging his poor spouse, and was "subdued entirely to her love." So
Isobell Straquhan made one of the tale of twenty-two unfortunate wretches
who were executed in Aberdeen that year, for the various crimes of
witchcraft and sorcery.

No evidence was too meagre for the witch-hunters; no accusation too
absurd; no subterfuge or enormity sufficiently transparent to show the
truth behind. When Margaret Aiken, "the great witch of Balwery,"[15] went
about the country dilating honest women for witches, "by the mark between
their eyes," it was evident to all but the heated and credulous, such as
John Cowper, the minister of Glasgow, and others, that she used this as a
mere means to save time, she herself having been tortured into confession,
and now seeing no way of safety but by complicity and witch-finding. She
told of one convention held on a hill in Atholl, where there were
twenty-three hundred witches, and the devil among them. "She said she knew
them all well enough, and what mark the devil had given severally to every
one of them. There was many of them tried by swimming in the water, by
binding of their two thumbs and their great toes together, for being thus
casten in the water, they floated ay aboon." It was not only the
malevolent witch that suffered in this wild raid made against reason and
humanity. The doom dealt out to the witch who slew was equally allotted to
the witch who saved. Yet the witchologists made a difference between the
two.

"Of witches there be two sorts," says Thomas Pickering, in his 'Discovrse
of the damned Art of Witchcraft,' printed 1610, "_the bad witch_ and _the
good witch_; for so they are commonly called. The _bad witch_ is he or she
that hath consulted in league with the Deuill; to vse his helpe for the
doing of hurte onely, so as to strike and annoy the bodies of men, women,
children, and cattell, with diseases and with death itselfe; so likewise
to raise tempests by sea and by land, &c. This is commonly called _the
binding_ witch.

"The _good witch_ is he or she that by consent in a league with the Deuill
doth vse his helpe for the doing of good onely. This cannot hurt, torment,
curse, or kill, but onely heale and cure the hurt inflicted vpone men or
cattell by badde witches. For as they can doe no good but onely hurt; so
this can doe no hurt but good onely. And this is that order which the
Deuill hath set in his kingdome, appointing to severall persons their
severall offices and charges. And the Good Witch is commonly called the
Vnbinding Witch."

But the good witch, as Pickering calls her, was no better off than the
bad. Indeed she was held in even greater dread, for the black witch hurt
only the body and estate, while the white witch hurt the soul when she
healed the body; the healed part never being able to say "God healed me."
Wherefore it was severed from the salvation of the rest, and the wholeness
of the redemption destroyed. In consequence of this belief we find as
severe punishments accorded to the blessing as to the banning witches; and
no movement of gratitude was dreamt of towards those who had healed the
most oppressive diseases, or shown the most humane feeling and kindness,
if there was a suspicion that the power had been got uncannily, or that
the drugs had more virtue than common.


WHITE WITCHES.[16]

Thus on November the 12th, 1597, Janet Stewart in the Canongate, Christian
Levingstone in Leith, Bessie Aiken, also of Leith, and Christian Sadler of
Blackhouse, were brought to trial for no worse crimes than healing and
helping sundry of their neighbours. Christian Levingstone was "fylit and
convict" for abusing (deceiving) Thomas Gothray, who went to her
complaining that his gear went from him, and that he was bewitched; which
she said was true; promising to help him, and "let him see where the
witchcraft was laid." So she took him down his own stair, and dug a hole
with her knife, and took out a little bag of black plaid, wherein were
some grains of wheat, worsted threads of many colours, some hair, and
nails of men's fingers, affirming that he was bewitched by these means,
and bidding his wife catch them in her apron. If this bag had not been
found, said Christian, he would have been wrackit both in mind and body;
which was a clear case of "abusing," if you will. This "scho deponit in
presens of my Lord Justice vpoun the tent day of Julij last past to be of
veritie." She also said that her daughter had been taken away by fairy
folk, and that she had learnt all her wise-wife knowledge from her, and as
a proof of this knowledge, she prophesied that Gothray's wife, then "being
with barne," should bear a man child; which proved to be true, to the sad
strengthening of the accusations against her. Another time she and
Christian Sadler were prayed by Robert Bailie, mason in Haddington, to go
and cure his wife. Christian Sadler recommended her to take three pints of
sweet wort, and boil it with a quantity of fresh butter; which she did,
and drank it too, but with no good effects of healing, as we may suppose.
Again, shortly before her accusation, she was sent for by Christian
Sadler, on some other devil's deed; and together they made Andrew
Pennycuik a cake baked with the blood of a red cock; but he could not eat
it. Then they took his shirt and dipped it in the well at the back of his
house, and brought it to him and put it on him, dripping as it was,
"quhairthrow he maist haif sownit amang their hands," giving him to
understand that now he would be mended, "albeit that it was onlie plane
abusione, as the event declarit." Not finding the cake of red cock's
blood or the dripping shirt of great efficacy, Andrew went then to Janet
Stewart, craving his health at her hands "for God's sake;" but we are not
told the result.

Janet Stewart was fylit for going to Bessie Inglis in the Kowgate, Bessie
being deidlie sick; when Janet took off her "mutche and sark" (cap and
shift), washed them in south-running water, and put them on her again at
midnight, wet as they were, saying three times, "In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." She also "fyrit," or put a hot iron
into water, and burnt straw at the four corners of the bed, as Michael
Clarke, smith, had learnt her; and she healed women of the mysterious
child-bed disorder called wedonymph, by taking a garland of woodbine and
putting them through it, afterwards cutting it into nine pieces, which she
threw into the fire. This charm she said she had learnt from Mr. John
Damiet, an Italian, and a notorious enchanter. And she cured sundry
persons of the falling-evil by hanging a stone about their necks for five
nights, which stone she said she got from Lady Crawford.

Christian Sadler was "fylit and convict" for taking in hand to heal the
young Laird of Bargany, with a salve made of quicksilver, which she rubbed
into the patient, alleging that she learnt it of her father; but she did
the same by "unlessum" (unwholesome) means, said the dittay, she having no
such knowledge as would enable her to cure leprosy, which the most expert
men in medicine are not able to do. Robert Hunter, too, since deceased,
having a flaw in his face, she undertook to cure with a mixture of
quicksilver in a drink. She said the flaw was leprosy, but it was nothing
of the kind; and "God knows how the drink was composed," but the
gentleman died twelve hours after, "as was notourlie confessit of hirself,
and can nocht be denyit, quhairby scho was giltie of his death be hir
craft; ministering to him vnlessum things, quhairof he deit suddenlie." So
the four women were convicted and condemned, sentenced to be strangled at
a stake, then burnt, and all their goods forfeit to the crown. Only Bessie
Aiken got off by reason of her pregnancy; and after having suffered "lang
puneischment be famine and imprisonment," was finally banished the kingdom
for life.

In July, 1602, James Reid suffered for the same kind of offences--taking
three pennies and a piece of "creisch" (grease) from the bag of his master
the devill, whom he met on Bynnie-crags, and learning from him the art of
healing by means of silk laces, south-running waters, charms,
incantations, and other "unlessum" means. He cured Sarah Borthwick by his
sorcery and devilry, bringing her south-running water from the
"Schriff-breyis-well," and casting a certain quantity of salt and wheat
about her bed: and he consulted with certain for the destruction of David
Libbertoune, baxter and burges of Edinburgh, his spouse, their corn, and
goods, by taking a piece of raw flesh, and making nine nicks in it, then
putting part under the mill door and part under the stable door; while, to
ruin the land, he enchanted stones and cast them on the fields. He cured
John Crystie of a swelling, by putting three silk laces round his leg for
ten weeks; and his deeds becoming notorious and his character lost, he was
adjudged worthy of death, and judicially murdered accordingly.

Who was safe, if a half-fed scrofulous woman had fancies and the megrims?
The first person on whom her wild imagination chose to cast the grim
shadow of witchcraft was surely doomed, however slight the evidence, or
whatever the manifest quality of the disease. There was poor Patrick
Lowrie, fylit July 23, 1605--what had he done? Why, he and Jonet Hunter,
"ane notorious wich," bewitched Bessie Saweris' (Sawyer's) her corn, and
took all her fisnowne (fushion, foison, pith, strength, flavour) from her;
and then he fell foul of certain "ky," so that they gave no milk; and he
had cured the horse of Margaret Guffok, the witch of Barnewell, twenty
years ago; and struck Janet Lowrie blind; and, as a climax, uncannily
helped Elizabeth Crawford's bairn in Glasgow, which had been strangely
sick for the last eight or nine years. And the way in which he helped her
was thus. He took a cloth off the said bairn's face, "saining" it, and
crossing the face with his hand; he kept the cloth for eight days, then
came back and covered her face again with it; whereupon the child slept
without moving for two days, and at the end of that time Patrick Lowrie
wakened her, and her eye, which "had been tynt throw disease, was restored
to her, and in five days she was cured and mended." He was also fylit of
having met the devil on the common waste at Sandhills, in Kyle, when a
number of men and women were there; and for having entertained him under
the form of a woman, one Helen M'Brune (this was a succubus); also of
having received from him a hair belt, at one end of which was the
similitude of "four fingeris and ane thumbe, nocht far different from the
clawis of the devill;" which belt Jonet Hunter had, and it was burnt at
her trial; also of having dug up dead bodies, to dismember them for his
deadly charms; and also for being "ane cowmone and notorious sorcerer,
warlok, and abuser of the peopill, be all vnlawfull charms and devillische
incantationes, vset be him this xxiiij yeir begane." To which terrific
array was added the testimony of Mr. David Mill, who said how, in his own
place, he was "brutit and commonlie called Pait ye Witch, and that he gat
his father's malison," and had been spoken of as sure to make an ill end.
So he did, poor fellow; for the Lord Advocate threatened to prosecute the
assize if they acquitted him, which insured his effectual condemnation,
and Pate the Witch was burnt with his fellows.


THE MISDEEDS OF ISOBEL GRIERSON.[17]

Two years afterwards, on March the 10th, 1607, Isobel Grierson, "spous to
John Bull," came into court with anything but clean hands. She was accused
of having visited Adam Clarke and his wife--they lying decently in bed,
their servant being in the other bed beside them--not as an honest woman,
but in the form of a cat, being accompanied by other cats which made a
great and fearful noise. Whereat Adam Clarke, his wife, and servant were
so affrighted they were almost mad. At the same time arrived the devil in
the shape of a black man, and came to the servant girl then standing on
the floor, and drew her up and down the house in a fearful manner, first
taking the curtche (cap) off her head and casting it into the fire,
whereby the poor woman had a sickness which lasted six weeks. Isobel
killed William Burnet by casting a cutting of plaid in at his door, after
which the devil, for the space of half a year, perpetually appeared to
him as a naked child, holding an enchanted picture in his hand, and
standing before the fire; but sometimes he appeared as Isobel herself,
who, when William Burnet called to her by name, would vanish away. So she
haunted and harried him till he pined away and died. She bewitched Mr.
Brown, of Prestonpans, by throwing an enchanted "tailzie" (cut or piece)
of beef at his door, sending the devil to distress him for half a year,
appearing to him herself in the form of an infant bairn, and so hardly
treating him, that Brown died as Burnet had done. Then she bewitched
Robert Peddan, who got no good from any remedy, and knew not what ailed
him, until he suddenly remembered that he and Isobel had had a quarrel
about nine shillings which he owed her and would not pay; so he went to
her and paid her, asking humbly for his health again; which came. Robert
Peddan deposed, too, that, being once at his house, she wanted her cat,
whereupon she opened his window, put out her hand, and drew the cat in: at
which time was working a brewing of good sound ale, which all turned to
"gutter dirt." Another time she or her spirit went at night to his house
and drew Margaret Donaldson, his wife, out of her bed, and flung her
violently against the floor; whereat the wife was very ill and sore
troubled, and cried out on her. Isobel, hearing of this, went to the
neighbours, and said they were to bring her and Margaret together again;
which they did; and Margaret had her health for nine or ten days. But Meg,
not leaving off calling out against her, Isobel went to her, "and spak to
hir mony devillisch and horribill words," saying, "The faggot of hell
lycht on thé, and hell's cauldron may thow seith in!" So Meg was sick
again after this; and as a poor beggarwoman coming to the door to ask
meat told her she was bewitched, for that she had the right stamp of it,
the case grew serious, and Margaret cried out more loudly than before.
Then Isobel went again to her house with a creil on her back, and said
passionately, "Away, theiff! I sall haif thy hairt for bruitting of me sae
falslie;" which so frightened Meg that she took to her bed, and Isobel was
arrested, tried, convicted, and burnt.


BARTIE PATERSON'S CHARM.[18]

That same year James Brown was ill. Bartie Paterson went to him, and gave
him drinks and salves made of green herbs, and bade him "sitt doun on his
kneis thre seuerall nychtis, and everie nycht, thryse nyne tymes, ask his
helth at all living wichtis, aboue and vnder the earth in the name of
Jesus." He gave Alexander Clarke a drink of Dow-Loch water--poor Alexander
Clarke was fond of consulting witches--causing him each time he lifted the
mug to say, "I lift this watter in the name of the Father, Sone, and Holy
Ghaist, to do guid for their helth for quhom it is liftit." And he was
able to cast a spell over cattle by saying--

  "I charme thé for arrow-schot,
  For dor-schot, for wondo-schot,
  For ey-schot, for tung-schot,
  For lever-schot, for lung-schot,
  For hert-schot, all the maist,
  In the name of the Father, the Sone, and Haly Ghaist.
  To wend out of fleisch and bane,
  Into stek and stane,
  In the name of the Father, the Sone, and Haly Ghaist. Amen."

So the law put a stop to his incantations, and he was strangled and
burnt, and all his goods escheit to the crown. But the crown did not get a
very full haul, for poor Bartie was scarce removed from beggary.


BEIGIS TOD AND HER COMPEERS.[19]

In 1608, on May the 27th, Beigis Tod in Lang Nydrie came to her fate. She
had long been a frequenter of Sabbaths, and once was reproved by the devil
for being late, when she answered respectfully, "Sir, I could wyn na
soner!" Immediately thereafter she passed to her own house, took a cat,
and put it nine times through the chimney work, and then sped to Seaton
Thorne "be north the yet," where the devil called Cristiane Tod, her
younger sister, and brought her out. But Cristiane took a great fright and
said, "Lord, what wilt thou do with me?" to whom he answered, "Tak na
feir, for ye sall gang to your sister Beigis, to ye rest of hir cumpanie
quha are stayand vpoun your cuming at the Thorne." Cristiane Tod, John
Graymeill, Ersche (Irish), Marion, and Margaret Dwn, who were of that
company that night, had all been burnt, so now Beigis had her turn. She
fell out with Alexander Fairlie, and made his son vanish away by continual
sweating and burning at his heart, during which time Beigis appeared to
him nightly in her own person, but during the day in the similitude of a
dog, and put him almost out of his wits. Alexander went to her to be
reconciled, and asked her to take the sickness off his son, which at first
she refused, but afterwards consenting, she went and healed the youth, a
short time before she was arrested--to be burnt. Two years after this
Grissel Gairdner was burnt for casting sickness upon people; and in 1613
Robert Erskine and his three sisters were executed--he was beheaded--for
poisoning and treasonable murder against his two nephews. But before this,
in 1608, the Earl of Mar brought word to the Privy Council that some women
taken at Broughton or Breichin, accused of witchcraft, and being put to
"ane assize and convict albeit they persevered constant in their deniall
to the end, yet they wes burnet _quick_ after sic ane crewell maner that
sum of thame deit in dispair, renunceand and blasphemand, and vtheris,
half brunt, brak out of the fyre and wes cassin _quick_ into it againe,
quhill they war brunt to the deid." Even this horrible scene does not seem
to have had any effect in humanizing men's hearts, or opening their eyes
to the infamy into which their superstition dragged them; for still the
witch trials went on, and the young and the old, and the beautiful and the
unlovely, and the loved and the loveless, were equally victims, cast
without pity or remorse to their frightful doom.

Sixteen hundred and sixteen was a fruitful year for the witch-finders.
There was Jonka Dyneis of Shetland,[20] who, offended with one Olave, fell
out in most vile cursings and blasphemous exclamations, saying that within
a few days his bones should be "raiking" about the banks: and as she
predicted so did it turn out--Olave perishing by her sorcery and
enchantments. And not content with this, she cursed the other son of the
poor widowed mother, and in fourteen days he also died, to Jonka's own
undoing when the Shetlanders would bear her iniquities no longer. And
there was Katherine Jonesdochter, also of Shetland, who cruelly
transferred her husband's natural infirmities to a stranger: and Elspeth
Reoch of Orkney, who pulled the herb called melefowr (millfoil?) betwixt
her finger and thumb, saying, "In Nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritûs
Sancti," thus curing men's distempers in a devilish and unwholesome
manner: and Agnes Scottie, who refused to speak word to living man before
passing "the boundis of hir ground, and their sat down, plaiting her feit
betwixt the merchis," that a certain woman might have a good childbirth;
who was also convicted "of washing the inner nuke of her plaid and
aprone," for some wicked and sinister purpose; for what sane Scottish
woman would wash her clothes more than was absolutely necessary? and who
could curse as well as cure, and transfer as well as give the sickness she
could heal: and Marable Couper who threw a "wall piet" at a man who spoke
ill of her, and made his face bleed, so that he went mad, and could only
be recovered by her laying her hands on him, whereby he received his
senses and his health again: and Agnes Yullock, who went to the guid wyfe
of Langskaill, and by touching her gave her back her health: and William
Gude, who had power over all inanimate things, and by his touch could give
them back the virtue they had lost. These are only a few, very few, of the
cases to be found in the various judiciary records of the year 1616--a
year no worse than others, and no better, where all were bad and
blood-stained alike.

In 1618 one of the saddest stories of all was to be read in the tears of a
few sorrowful relatives, and in the exultation of those fanatics who
rejoiced when the accursed thing plucked out from them was of more goodly
savour and of a fairer form than usual, and thus was a meeter sacrifice
for the Lord. Of all the heartrending histories to be found in the records
of witchcraft, the history of Margaret Barclay and her "accomplices" is
saddest, most sorrowful, most heartrending.


THE PITIFUL FATE OF MARGARET BARCLAY.[21]

Margaret was a young, beautiful, high-spirited woman, wife of Archibald
Dein, burgess of Irvine, and not on the best of terms with John Dein, her
husband's brother. Indeed, she had had him and his wife before the Kirk
session for slander, and things had not gone quite smoothly with them ever
since. When, therefore, the ship, The Grace of God, in which John Dein was
sailing, sank in sight of land, drowning him and all his men, the old
quarrel was remembered, and Margaret, together with Isobel Insh and John
Stewart, a wandering "spaeman," was accused of having sunk the vessel by
charms and enchantments. Margaret disdainfully denied the charge from
beginning to end: Isobel said she had never seen the spaeman in her life
before; but Stewart "clearly and pounktallie confessit" all the charges
brought against him, and also said that the women had applied to him to be
taught his magic arts, and that once he had found them both modelling
ships and figures in clay for the destruction of the men and vessel
aforesaid. And as it was proved that Stewart had spoken of the wreck
before he could have known it by ordinary means, suspicion of sorcery fell
upon him, and he was taken: and made his confession. He said that he had
visited Margaret to help her to her will, when a black dog, breathing fire
from his nostrils, had formed part of the conclave; and Isobel's own
child, a little girl of eight, added to this, a black man as well.
Isobel, after denying all and sundry of the charges brought against her,
under torture admitted their truth. In the night time she found means to
escape from her prison, bruised and maimed with the torture as she was;
but in scrambling over the roof she fell to the ground, and was so much
injured that she died five days afterwards. Margaret was then tortured:
the spaeman had strangled himself, which was the best thing he could do,
only it was a pity he did not do it before; and poor Margaret was the last
of the trio. The torture they used, said the Lords Commissioners, was
"safe and gentle." They put her bare legs into a pair of stocks, and laid
on them iron bars, augmenting their weight one by one, till Margaret,
unable to bear the pain, cried out to be released, promising to confess
the truth as they wished to have it. But when released she only denied the
charges with fresh passion; so they had recourse to the iron bars again.
After a time, pain and weakness overcame her again, and she shrieked
aloud, "Tak off! tak off! and befoir God I will show ye the whole form!"
She then confessed--whatever they chose to ask her; but unfortunately, in
her ravings, included one Isobel Crawford, who when arrested--as she was
on the instant--attempted no defence, but, paralyzed and stupefied,
admitted everything with which she was charged. Margaret's trial
proceeded: sullen and despairing, she assented to the most monstrous
counts: she knew there was no hope, and she seemed to take a bitter pride
in suffering her tormentors to befool themselves to the utmost. In the
midst of her anguish her husband, Alexander Dein, entered the court,
accompanied by a lawyer. And then her despair passed, and she thought she
saw a glimmer of life and salvation. She asked to be defended. "All that
I have confessed," she said, "was in an agony of torture; and before God
all that I have spoken is false and untrue. But," she added pathetically,
turning to her husband, "ye have been owre lang in coming!" Her defence
did her no good; she was condemned, and at the stake entreated that no
harm might befall Isobel Crawford, who was utterly and entirely innocent.
To whom did she make this prayer? to hearts turned wild and wolfish by
superstition; to hearts made fiendish by fear; to men with nothing of
humanity save its form--with nothing of religion save its terrors. She
might as well have prayed to the fierce winds blowing round the
court-house, or the rough waves lashing the barren shore! She was taken to
the stake, there strangled and burnt: bearing herself bravely to the last.
Poor, brave, beautiful, young Margaret! we, at this long lapse of time,
cannot even read of her fate without tears; it needed all the savageness
of superstition to harden the hearts of the living against the actual
presence of her beauty, her courage, and her despair!

Isobel Crawford was now tried; "after the assistant minister, Mr. David
Dickson, had made earnest prayer to God for opening her obdurate and
closed heart, she was subjected to the torture of the iron bars laid upon
her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks, as in the case of Margaret
Barclay." She endured this torture "admirably," without any kind of din or
exclamation, suffering above thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs,
never shrinking thereat in any sort, but remaining steady and constant.
But when they shifted the iron bars, and removed them to another part of
her legs, her constancy gave way, as Margaret's had done, and she too
broke out into horrible cries of "Tak off! tak off!" She then
confessed--anything--everything--and was sentenced: but on the way to her
execution she denied all that she had admitted, interrupted the minister
in his prayer, and refused to pardon the executioner, according to form.
Her brain had given way, and they fastened to the stake a bewildered,
raving maniac. God rest their weary souls!


MARGARET WALLACE AND HER DEAR BURD.[22]

Margaret Wallace (1622), spous to John Dynning, merchant and citizen of
Glasgow, hated Cuthbert Greg. She had sent Cristiane Grahame to him,
wanting his dog; but he would not give it, saying, "I rather ye and my
hussie (cummer, gossip) baith was brunt or ye get my dog." Margaret,
coming to the knowledge of this speech, went to him angrily, and said,
"Ffals land-loupper loun that thow art, sayis thow that Cristiane Grahame
and I sall be brunt for witches? I vow to God I sall doe ye ane evill
turne." So she did, by means of a cake of bread, casting on him the most
strange, unnatural, and unknown disease, such as none could mend or
understand. Suspecting that he was bewitched, his friends got her to come
and undo the mischief she had done: so she went into the house, took him
by the "schaikill bane" (shoulder-blade) with one hand, and laid the other
on his breast, but spoke no word, only moved her lips; then passed from
him on the instant. The next day she went again to his house, and took him
up out of bed, leading him to the kitchen and three or four times across
the floor, though he had been bedridden for fifteen days, unable to put
his foot to the ground. And if all that was not done by devilish art and
craft, how was it done? asked the judges and the jury. Another time she
went to the house of one Alexander Vallange, where she was taken with a
sudden "brasch" of sickness, and was so hardly holden that they thought
she would have "ryved" herself to fits. She cried out piteously for her
"dear burd," and the bystanders thought she meant her husband: but it
turned out to be the witch Cristiane Grahame that she wanted--whom they
immediately sent for. Cristiane came at once, and took Margaret tenderly
in her arms, saying "no one should hurt her dear burd, no one;" then
carried her down stairs into the kitchen, and so home to her own house.
The little daughter of the house ran after them; on the threshold, she was
seized with a sudden pain, and falling down cried and screamed most
sorely. Her mother went to lift her up crossly, but she called out,
"Mother, mother, ding me nocht, for there is ane preyne (pin) raschet
throw my fute." She "grat" all the night, and was very ill; her parents
watching by her through the long hours: but when Margaret wanted the
mother to let her be cured by Cristiane's aid, she said sternly, no, "scho
wad commit her bairne to God, and nocht mell with the devill or ony of his
instrumentis." However, Margaret Wallace healed the little one unbidden;
by leaping over some bits of green cloth scattered in the midst of the
floor, and then taking her out of bed and laying her in Cristiane
Grahame's lap--which double sorcery cured her instantly. Cristiane Grahame
had been burnt for a witch some time before this trial; and now Margaret
Wallace, in this year of our Lord 1622, was doomed to the same fate: bound
to a stake, strangled, burnt, her ashes cast to the wind, and all her
worldly gear forfeit to king's majesty, because she was a tender-hearted,
loving woman, with a strong will and large mesmeric power, and did her
best for the sick folk about her.


THOM REID AGAIN.[23]

Isobell Haldane confessed before the Session of Perth, May 15, 1623, that
she had cured Andro Duncan's bairn by washing it and its sark in water
brought from the Turret Port, then casting the water into a burn; but in
the going "scho skaillit (spilt) swm quhilk scho rewis ane evill rew,
becaus that if onye had gone ower it they had gottyn the ill." She
confessed, too, that about ten years since, she, lying in her bed, was
taken forth, whether by God or the devil she knows not, and carried to a
hill: the hill-side opened, and she went in and stayed there from Thursday
to Sunday at eleven o'clock, when an old man with a gray beard brought her
forth. The old man with the gray beard, who seems to have been poor Bessie
Dunlop's old acquaintance, told her many things after this visit. He told
her that John Roch, who came to the wright's shop for a cradle, need not
be so hasty, for his wife would not be lighter for five weeks, and then
the bairn should never lie in the cradle, but would die when baptized: as
it proved, and as John Roch deposed on her trial. Also, he told her that
Margaret Buchanan, then in good health, should prepare herself for death
before Fastings Even, which was a few days hence; and Margaret died as she
predicted. And Patrick Ruthven deposed that he, being sick--bewitched by
one Margaret Hornscleugh--Isobell came to see him, and stretched herself
upon him, her head to his head, her hands on his, and so forth, mumbling
some words, he knew not what. And Stephen Ray deposed that three years
since he had detected Isobell in a theft, whereon she clapped him on the
back, and said, "Go thy way; thow sall nocht win thyself ane bannok of
breid for yeir and ane day;" and so it proved. He pined away, heavily
diseased, and did not do a stroke of work for just three hundred and
sixty-six days, of the full four-and-twenty hours' count. But Isobell said
that her sole words were, "He that delyueret me frome the ffairy ffolk
sall tak amends on thé:" and that she had never meaned to harm him, nor
even to answer him ungently. But she confessed to various charms; such as
a cake made of small handsful of meal, gotten from nine several women who
had been married, virgins--through a hole in which sick children were to
be passed, to their decided cure; and she confessed to getting water,
silently going, and silently returning, from the well of Ruthven, in which
to bathe John Gow's child; and to having made a drink of focksterrie[24]
leaves for Dan Morris's child, who "wes ane scharge" (changeling or fairy
child), which focksterrie drink she made it swallow; when it died soon
after. So Isobell Haldane shook hands with life, and went back to Thom
Reid and the fairy folk on the hill, helped thither by the hangman.


BESSIE SMITH.

In the July of this same year Bessie Smith of Lesmahago also confessed to
sundry unlawful doings. When people who were ill of the heart fevers went
to her for advice, instead of employing honest drugs such as every
Christian understood and nauseated, she bade them kneel and ask their
health "for God's sake, for Sanct Spirit, for Sanct Aikit, for the nine
maidens that died in the boor-tree in the Ladywell Bank. This charm to be
buik and beil to me, God grant that sae be." This charm, with the
"wayburn" leaf to be eaten for nine mornings, was sufficient to prove
Bessie Smith of Lesmahago a necromancer; and the presbytery of Lanark did
quite righteously, according to its lights, when they made her come before
them and confess her crimes, humbly. Fortunately, they did not burn her.


THOMAS GRIEVE'S ENCHANTMENTS (1623).[25]

Thomas Grieve was a notorious enchanter, according to the Session, which
prided itself on being "ripely advised." He put a woman's sickness on a
cow, which ran mad, and died in consequence; and he cured William Kirk's
bairn by stroking its hair back from its face and wrapping it in an
enchanted cloth, whereby it slept, and woke healed. He cured cattle of
"the heastie," or any other bovine disease untranslateable, by sprinkling
the byre with enchanted water; and he cured sick people by putting them
through a hank of yarn, which then he cut up and threw into the fire,
where it burned blue. He healed one woman by "fyring"--putting a hot iron,
which was supposed to burn the obsessing witch--into some magic water
brought from Holywell, Hill-side, and making her drink it; and he cured
another woman by burning a poor hen alive, first making her carry it,
when half roasted, under her arm; and he took in hand to heal Elspeth,
sister of John Thomson, of Corachie--passing with her two brothers in the
night season from Corachie towards Burley, enjoining them not to speak a
word all the way, and whatever they heard or saw, not to be anywise
"effrayed," saying "it micht be that thai would heir grit rumbling and sie
vncouth feirfull apparitiones, but nothing suld annoy thame." Arrived at
the ford at the east of Birley he washed her sark; and during the time of
this washing there was a great noise made by fowls in the hill, beasts
that arose and fluttered in the water--"beistes that arrais and
flichtered" in the water; and when he put her sark upon her again, Elspeth
mended and was healed. And of another patient he propounded this wise
opinion, come to by the examination of his sark: "Allace, the withcraft
appointit for ane vther hes lichtit vpoune him," but it had not yet
reached his heart. And further than all this, which was bad enough, he
made signs and crosses, and muttered uncouth words, and believed in
himself and the devil: so he was strangled and burnt, and an end come to
of him: for which the neighbours all were glad, even those he had
benefited, and the ministers were quite satisfied that they had given
glory to God in the holiest manner open to them.


KATHERINE GRANT AND HER STOUP.[26]

Katherine Grant, in the November of the year 1623, was dilatit for that
she had gone to Henry Janies' house, with "a stoup in hir hand, with the
boddome foremost, and sat down ryght fornent the said Henrie, and gantit
thryce on him: and going furth he followit hir; and beiyan the brigstane,
scho lukit over her shoulder, and turned up the quhyt of her eye, quhair
by her divilrie, their fell ane great weght upoun him that he was forcit
to set his bak to the wall, and when he came in, he thoucht the hous ran
about with him, and theirefter lay seik ane lang tyme." Katherine Grant
was not likely to overcome the impression of such testimony as this: that
she should have gone to any man's house and yawned thrice, and added to
this devilry the further crime of looking over her shoulder, was quite
enough evidence of guilt for any sane man or woman in Orkney. Can we
wonder, then, that she was not suffered to vex the sunlight longer by
carrying pails bottom upwards, or yawning thrice in the faces of decent
folk, and that she was taken forth to be strangled, burnt, and her ashes
cast to the four winds of the merciful heaven?


THE MISDEEDS OF MARION RICHART.[27]

"Mareoune" Richart, _alias_ Langland, dwelt on one of the wild Orkney
islands, not far from where mad Elspeth Sandisome kept the whole country
in fear lest she should do something terrible to herself or to others.
Marion was invited to go the house, and try her skill at curing her, for
she was known to be an awful witch, and able to do whatever she had a mind
in the way of healing or killing. So she went, and set herself to her
charm. She took some "remedie water"--which she made into "remedy water,"
by carrying it in a round bowl to the byre where she cast into it
something like "great salt," taken from her purse, spitting thrice into
the bowl, and blowing in her breath--and with this magic "remedie watter
forspeking," she bade Elspeth's woman-servant wash her feet and hands, and
she would be as well as ever she had been before. This was bad enough; but
worse than this, she came to Stronsey on a day, asking alms of "Andro
Coupar, skipper of ane bark," to whom said Andrew rudely, "Away witch,
carling; devils ane farthing ye will fall!" whereupon went Marion away
"verie offendit; and incontinentlie he going to sea, the bark being vnder
saill, he ran wode, and wald half luppen ourboord; and his sone seing him
gat him in his armes, and held him; quhairvpon the sicknes immediatelie
left him, and his sone ran made; and Thomas Paiterson, seeing him tak his
madnes, and the father to turn weill, ane dog being in the bark, took the
dog and bladdit him vpon the twa schoulderis, and thaireftir flang the
said dogg in the sea, quhairby those in the bark were saiffed." So Marion
Richart, _alias_ Langland, learnt the hangman's way to the grave in the
year of grace 1629; and her corpse was burned, when the hangman's rope had
done its work.


LADY LEE'S PENNY AND THE WITCHES OF 1629.[28]

Isobel Young, spous to George Smith, was burnt, in 1629, for curing
cattle, as well as for the other crimes belonging to a witch. She had
sought to borrow Lady Lee's Penny--a precious stone or amulet, like to a
piece of amber, set in a silver penny, which one of the old Lee family had
gotten from a Saracen in the Crusades--and which Lee Penny was to help
her in her incantations, for curing "the bestiall of the routting evill,"
whatever that might have been. But Lady Lee let her have only a flagon of
water in which the amulet had been steeped, which did quite as well, and
helped to set the stake as quickly as anything else would have done.
Various other mischancy things did Isobel Young. She stopped a certain
mill, and made it incapable of grinding for eleven days: she forespoke a
certain boat, and though all the rest returned to Dunbar full and richly
laden, this came back empty, whereby the owner was ruined: she bewitched
milk that it would give no cream, and churns, so that no butter would
come: she twice crossed the mill water on a wild and stormy night, when
the milne horses could not ride it out, and where there was no bridge of
stone or wood; but Isobel the witch crossed and recrossed those raging
waters under the stormy sky, and came out at the end as dry as if from a
kiln. And was not this as unholy as taking off her "curch" at William
Meslet's barn-door, and running "thrice about the barn widdershins,"
whereby the cattle were caused to fall dead in "great suddainty?" Then, as
further iniquity, she had dealings with Christian Grinton, another witch,
who one night came out of a hole in the roof in the likeness of a cat; and
she cast a sickness from off her husband, and laid it on his brother's
son, who, knowing full well that he was bewitched, came to the house, and
there saw the "firlott"--a certain measure of wheat--running about, and
the stuff poppling on the floor, which was the manner of the charm.
Drawing his sword, this husband's brother's son ran on the pannel (the
accused) to kill her, but was witch-disabled, and only struck the lintel
of the door instead; so he went home and died, and Isobel Young was the
cause of his death by the cantrip wrought in the locomotive firlott and
the poppling grain. Forbye all this, she was seen riding on "ane mare"--at
least her apparition was seen so riding--and by her sorcery and devilish
handling the mare was made to cast its foal, and since died. So Isobel
Young was of no more value to the world or its inheritors, and died by the
cord and the faggot, decently, as a convicted witch should. And Margaret
Maxwell and her daughter Jane were haled before the Lords of Secret
Council for having procured the death of Edward Thomson, Jane's husband,
"by the devilish and detestable practice of witchcraft;" and Janet Boyd
was tried for "the foul and detestable crime" of receiving the devil's
mark, besides being otherwise dishonestly intimate with him; but this was
in 1628, and we are now in 1629: and then the Lords of the Privy Council
published a thundering edict, forbidding all persons to have recourse to
holy words, or to make pilgrimages to chapels, and requiring of its
Commissioners to make diligent search in all parts for persons guilty of
this superstitious practice, and to have up and put in ward all such as
were known to be specially devoted thereto. The meaning of the decree was
to plague the Catholics, and Hibbert quotes part of this "Commission
against Jesuits, Priests, or Communicants and Papists, going in
pilgrimage." But whatever the political significance of the edict, the
social effect was to make the search after the White Witches, or Black,
hotter and more bitter than ever.


ELSPETH CURSETTER AND HER FRIENDS.[29]

Elspeth Cursetter was tried, May 29 (still in 1629), for all sorts of bad
actions. She bade one of her victims "get the bones of ane tequhyt
(linnet), and carry thame in your claithes"; and she gave herself out as
knowing evil, and able to do it too, when and to whomsoever she would; and
she sat down before the house of a man who refused her admittance--for she
was an ill-famed old witch, and every one dreaded her--saying, "Ill might
they all thrive, and ill may they speed," whereby in fourteen days' time
the man's horse fell just where she had sat, and was killed most
lamentably. But she cured a neighbour's cow by drawing a cog of water out
of the burn that ran before William Anderson's door, coming back and
taking three straws--one for William Anderson's wife, and one for William
Coitts' wife, and one for William Bichen's wife--which she threw into the
pail with the water, then put the same on the cow's back; by which charm
the three straws danced in the water, and the water bubbled as if it had
been boiling. Then Elspeth took a little quantity of this charmed water,
and thrust her arm up to the elbow into the cow's throat, and on the
instant the cow rose up as well as she had ever been; but William
Anderson's ox, which was on the hill, dropped down dead. Likewise she
worked unholy cantrips for a sick friend with a paddock (toad), in the
mouth of a pail of water, which toad was too large to get down the mouth,
and when it was cast forth another man sickened and died immediately: and
she spake dangerous words to a child, saying, "Wally fall that quhyt head
of thine, but the pox will tak the away frae thy mother." As it proved,
for the little white head was laid low a short time after, when the
small-pox raged through the land. "Thow can tell eneugh yf thow lyke,"
said the mother to her afterwards, "that could tell that my bairne wold
die so long befoir the tyme." "I can tell eneugh if I durst," replied
Elspeth, over proud for her safety. But in spite of all this testimony,
Elspeth got off with "arbitrary punishment," which did not include burning
or strangling, so was luckier than her neighbours. Luckier than poor Jonet
Rendall was, who, on the 11th of November (1629), was proved a witch by
the bleeding of the corpse of the poor wretch whom she had "enchanted" to
his death. For "as soon as she came in the corpse having lain a good
space, and not having bled any, immediately bled much blood, as a sure
token that she was the author of his death." And had she not said, too,
when a certain man refused her a Christmas lodging, "that it wald be weill
if the gude man of that hous sould make ane other yule banket" (Christmas
banquet); by which curse had he not died in fifteen days after? Wherefore
was she a proved murderess as well as witch, and received the doom
appointed to both alike. Alexander Drummond was a warlock who cured all
kinds of horrid diseases, the very names of which are enough to make one
ill; and he had a familiar, which had attended him for "neir this fifty
yeiris:" so he was convicted and burnt.

Then came Jonet Forsyth, great in her art. She could cast sickness on any
one at sea, and cure him again by a salt-water bath; she could transfer
any disease from man to beast, so that when the beast died and was opened,
nothing could be found where its heart should have been but "a blob of
water;" she knew how to charm and sain all kinds of cattle by taking
three drops of a beastie's blood on All Hallow E'en, and sprinkling the
same in the fire within the innermost chamber; she went at seed time and
bewitched a stack of barley belonging to Michael Reid, so that for many
years he could never make it into wholesome malt; and this she did for the
gain of Robert Reid, changing the "profit" of the grain backwards and
forwards between the two, according as they challenged or displeased her.
All this did Jonet Forsyth of Birsay, to the terror of her neighbours and
the ultimate ruin of herself, both in soul and body. Then came Catherine
Oswald,[30] spouse to Robert Aitcheson, in Niddrie, who was brought to
trial for being "habite and repute" a witch--defamed by Elizabeth Toppock
herself a witch and, as is so often the case, a dear friend of Katie's.
Elizabeth need not have been so eager to get rid of her dear friend and
gossip, for she was burnt afterwards for the same crimes as those for
which poor Catherine suffered the halter and the stake. It seems that
Katie was bad for her enemies. She was offended at Adam Fairbairn and his
wife, so she made their "twa kye run mad and rammish to died," and also
made a gentleman's bairn that they had a-fostering run wood (mad) and die.
And she fired William Heriot's kiln, full of grain; and burnt all his
goods before his eyes; and made his wife, in a "frantick humour," drown
herself; and she cursed John Clark's ground, so that for four years after
"by hir sorceries, naether kaill, lint, hempe, nor any other graine" would
grow thereon, though doubly "laboured and sowen." She bewitched Thomas
Scott by telling him that he looked as well as when Bessie Dobie was
living, whereby he immediately fell so deadly sick that he could not
proceed further, but was carried on a horse to Newbiggin, where he lay
until the morrow, when "a wife" came in and told him he was forespoken.
And other things as mischievous--and as true--did Catherine Oswald, as the
Record testifies. She was well defended, and might have got off, but that
a witness deposed to having seen Mr. John Aird the minister, and a most
zealous witch-finder, prick her in the shoulder with a prin, and that no
blood followed thereafter, nor did she shrink as with pain or feeling. And
as there was no gainsaying the evidence of the witch-mark, Satan and Mr.
John Aird claimed their own. Was Catherine's brand like a "blew spot, or a
little tate, or reid spots, like flea-biting?" or with "the flesh sunk in
and hallow?" according to the description of such places, published by Mr.
John Bell, minister of the gospel in Gladsmuir. We are seldom told of what
precise character the marks were, only that they were found, pricked, and
tested, and the witch hung or burnt on their testimony.


SANDIE AND THE DEVIL.[31]

Soon after Catherine Oswald's execution, one of her crew or covin, who had
been with her on the great storm in "the borrowing days (in anno 1625), on
the Brae of the Saltpans," a noted warlock, by name Alexander Hunter, or
Hamilton, _alias_ Hatteraick, which last name he had gotten from the
devil, was brought to execution on the Castle Hill. It was in 1629 that he
was taken. It was proved that on Kingston hills he had met with the devil
as a black man, or, as Sinclair says, as a mediciner; and often
afterwards he would meet him riding on a black horse, or he would appear
as a corbie, cat, or dog. When Alexander wanted him he would beat the
ground with a fir stick lustily, crying, "Rise up, foul thief!" for the
master got but hard names at times from his servants. This fir stick, and
four shillings sterling, the devil gave to him when the compact was first
made between them; and he confessed, moreover, that when raised in this
manner he could only be got rid of by sacrificing to him a cat or dog, or
such like, "quick." Also he set on fire Provost Cockburn's mill of corn,
by taking three stalks from his stacks, and burning them on Garleton
Hills; and he owned to a deadly hatred against Lady Ormiston, because she
once refused him "ane almous," and called him "ane custroune carle." So,
to punish her, he and some witches raised the devil in Salton Wood, where
he appeared like a man in gray clothes, and gave him the bottom of a blue
clew, telling him to lay it at the lady's door: "which he and the women
having done, 'the lady and her daughter were soon thereafter bereft of
their naturall lyfe.'" But Sinclair's account is the most graphic. I will
give it in his own words:--

"Anent Hattaraick, an old Warlock.

"This man's name was Sandie Hunter, who called himself Sandie Hamilton,
and it seems so called Hattaraik by the devil, and so by others as a
Nickname. He was first a Neatherd in East Lothian, to a gentleman there.
He was much given to charming and cureing of men and Beasts, by words and
spels. His charms sometimes succeeded and sometimes not. On a day, herding
his kine upon a Hill side in the summer time, the Devil came to him in
form of a Mediciner, and said, 'Sandie, you have too long followed my
trade, and never acknowledged me for your master. You must now take on
with me, and I will make you more perfect in your calling.' Whereupon the
man gave up himself to the devil, and received his Mark with this new
name. After this he grew very famous throw the countrey for his charming
and cureing of diseases in men and beasts, and turned a vagrant fellow
like a Jockie, gaining Meat, Flesh, and Money by his Charms, such was the
ignorance of many at that time.

"Whatever House he came to, none durst refuse Hattaraik an alms, rather
for his ill than his good. One day he came to the yait of Samuelstown,
when some Friends after dinner were going to Horse. A young Gentleman,
Brother to the Lady, seeing him, switcht him about the ears, saying, 'You
Warlok Cairle, what have you to do here?' whereupon the Fellow goes away
grumbling, and was overheard to say, 'You shall dear buy this, ere it be
long.' This was _Damnum Minatum_. The young Gentleman conveyed his Friends
a far way off, and came home that way again, where he slept. After supper,
taking his horse and crossing Tine-water to go home, he rides throw a
shadowy piece of a Haugh, commonly called the Allers, and the evening
being somewhat dark he met with some Persons there that begat a dreadful
consternation in him, which for the most part he would never reveal. This
was _malum secutum_. When he came home, the Servants observed terror and
fear in his countenance. The next day he became distracted, and was bound
for several days. His sister, the Lady Samuelstoun, hearing of it, was
heard to say, 'Surely that knave Hattaraik is the cause of his Trouble.
Call for him in all haste.' When he had come to her, 'Sandie,' says she,
'what is this you have done to my brother William?' 'I told him,' says
he, 'I should make him repent his striking of me at the Yait lately.' She
gave the Rogue fair words, and promising him his Pock full of Meal with
Beef and Cheese, persuaded the Fellow to cure him again. He undertook the
business; 'but I must first,' says he, 'have one of his Sarks,' which was
soon gotten. What pranks he plaid with it cannot be known. But within a
short while the gentleman recovered his health. When Hatteraik came to
receive his wadges, he told the Lady, 'Your Brother William shal quickly
goe off the Countrey but shall never return.' She, knowing the Fellow's
prophecies to hold true, caused her Brother to make a Disposition to her
of all his patrimony, to the defrauding of his younger brother George.
After that this Warlock had abused the Countrey for a long time, he was at
last apprehended at Dunbar, and brought into Edinburgh, and burnt upon the
Castle Hill." But not until he had delated several others of hitherto good
repute, so that for the next few months the witch-finder's hands were
full.


THE MIDWIFE'S DOUBLE SIN.

Notably was arrested about this time, Alie Nisbet, midwife; and three
others. Alie was accused of witchcraft; and of a softer, but as heinous a
crime as witchcraft. This she confessed to; but the breaking of the
seventh commandment in Christian Scotland, in the year 1632, was a far
more dangerous thing than we can imagine possible in our laxer day; and
Alie was on the horns of a dilemma, either of which could land her in
ruin, death, and perdition. She was accused, among other things, of
having taken her labour pains from off a certain woman, using "charmes and
horrible words, amongs which thir ware some, _the bones to the fire and
the soull to the devill_;" but this Alie denied, strenuously, though she
admitted that she might have bathed the woman's legs in warm water, which
she had bewitched for good, by putting her fingers into it and running
thrice round the bed, widershins; but the spoken charm as given she would
have none of. The labour pains, however, left the woman, and were foully
and unnaturally cast upon another who had no concern therewith, so that
she died in four-and-twenty hours from that time, and Alie was the
murderess by all the laws of sorcery. She was accused, also, of having
poured some enchanted water on a threshold over which a servant girl,
against whom she had a spite, must pass, and the servant girl died
therefrom. Alie was wirriet and burnt and troubled the world no more.


KATHERINE GRIEVE AND JOHN SINCLAIR.[32]

Katherine Grieve, too (1633), was brought to judgment and sentenced to be
"taken to the mercat crose and brunt in the cheick, in example of others,"
with the future prospect, that if she haunted suspected places, or used
charms "scho sould be brunt in asches to the dead without dome or law, and
that willinglie, of hir owne consent." For Katherine's curses had wronged
both man and beast, which evil thing she had brought to pass by the power
of the devil her master. However, she was forced to undo her evil, and by
laying on of hands cure the sore she had made: so she got off with this
smaller punishment of branding, and a rebuke. And there was John Sinclair
tried that same year; a cruel villain to others, if loving to his own. For
under silence and cloud of night he took his distempered sister, sitting
backward on the horse, and carried her from where she lay to the Kirk of
Hoy. Then a voice came to him, saying "Seven is too many, but four might
do;" and in the morning a boat with five men in it struck on the rocks,
and four perished, but one was saved; by which fiendish and unholy
sacrifice John Sinclair's sister was cured. He was proved to be their
murderer, for when the dead men were found, and he was "forcit to lay his
handis vpoun thame, they guishit out with bluid and watter at the mouth
and noise." John Sinclair's thread of life needed no more waxing to make
it run smoothly and easily. The hangman knew where the knot lay; and cut
it to the perfect satisfaction of all the country.


BESSIE BATHGATE'S NIPS.[33]

A year after this Bessie Bathgate, spouse to Alexander Rae, fell into
trouble and the hands of the police. George Sprot, wobster, had some cloth
of Bessie's, which he kept too long for her thinking. She went and took it
violently away, and nipped his child in the thigh till it skirled, "and of
which nip it never convalesced, but dwamed thereof and died by hir
sorcerie." Also, said Sprot's wife, giving her child an egg that came out
of Bessie's house there struck out a lump as big as a goose egg upon the
child, which continued on her till her death, which was occasioned by
nothing else than this "enchanted egg." Furthermore she threatened Sprot
that "he should never get his Sunday's meat to the fore by his work;" and
he forthwith fell into extreme poverty, by which her words came true. To
William Donaldson she said--he outrunning her as she chased him to beat
him for calling her a witch--"Weill, sir, the devill be in your feit," and
he fell lame and impotent straightways, and so continued ever since. Other
things of the same kind did she, bewitching Margaret Horne's cow that it
died, "and that night it died there was women seen dancing on the rigging
of the byre;" also she was seen by "two young men at 12 howers at even
(when all persons are in their beds) standing barelegged and in hir sark
valicot, at the back of hir yard, conferring with the devill, who was in
gray cloaths;" which, with other offences of the same nature, were, we
should have thought, heavy enough to have lost a world. But Elizabeth
Bathgate, spouse to Alexander Rae, was acquitted; though how the verdict
came about no one can possibly understand.

It was not that any fit of mercy or humanity had come over the people.
More than twenty poor wretches suffered about this time, Sir George Home
of Manderston, being one of the chief of the prosecutors: for Sir George
and his wife did not live very lovingly together, and she was given to
witches and warlocks--or they said she was--to see if she could not get
rid of him by enchantments and sorceries: so Sir George had a pleasant
mixture of spite and self-defence in his onslaught, and the whole
country-side was in a stir. About this time too, John Balfour, of
Corhouse, took on himself the office of witch-finder and pricker by
thrusting "preens" into the marks; but he was not accepted quite blindly,
and measures were taken for examining his pretensions to this special
branch of knowledge. In general the pricker was the master of the
situation, and brought all the rest to his feet.


BESSIE SKEBISTER.[34]

All the honest men of the isle knew Bessie Skebister. She was the
shrewdest witch in the whole country, and it was a usual thing with them
when they thought their boats in danger to send to her to know the truth;
and, "Giff Bessie say it is weill, it is weill" was a common proverb in
the Orkney Islands. She did other things besides foreknowing the fall of
storms, for she took James Sandieson when in a strange distemper and
tormented him greatly. "In his sleip, and oftymes waking," says the
dittay, "he was tormented with yow, Bessie, and vther two with yow, quhom
he knew not, cairying him to the sea, and to the fyre, to Norroway,
Yetland, and to the south--that ye had ridden all this wayes, with ane
brydle in his mouth." Moreover, Bessie was a "dreamer of dreams," as well
as a rider of sick men's souls; so she was strangled and burnt.


THE TRIAL OF SPIRITS.[35]

The trial of Katherine Craigie (1640), had a certain dash of poetry and
romance in it, not often found in these woeful stories. Friend Robbie--now
friend, now foe--lay a-dying, and Katherine must needs go see him with
the rest. The wild waves were beating round that rugged Orkney Isle, when
Katherine went over the heather to Robbie's house. "What now, Robbie! ye
are going to die!" she said. "I grant that I prayed ill for yow, and now I
see that prayer hath taken effect. Jonet," quoth she, turning to the wife,
"if I durst trust in yow, I sould knaw quhat lyeth on your guidman and
holdis him downe. I sould tell whether it was ane hill spirit, ane kirk
spirit, or ane water spirit that so troubles him." Jonet was too anxious
not to promise secrecy or help, or anything else that Katherine wished; so
the next morning, before daylight, Katherine brought three stones to
Robbie's house, and put them into the fire, where they remained until
after sunset. While the night was passing, they were taken from the fire,
and put under the threshold of the door, then, in the early morning,
thrown, one after the other, into a pail of water, where Jonet heard one
of them "chirle and chirme." Upon which Katherine said that it was a kirk
spirit that troubled the guidman Robbie, and he must be washed with the
water in which the stones had "chirled and chirmed." This ceremony was
repeated thrice, and at the third time Katherine herself washed Robbie, on
whom this unusual cleansing had most powerful and beneficial effects. When
one thinks of the normal state of filth in which these honest people
lived, it is not surprising if any form of ablution proved of a most
supernatural benefit. But Katherine Craigie got into the trouble from
which there was no escape; and friend Robbie went back to his dirt,
persuaded of the Satanic agency of a bath.

Quite as full of poetic feeling was James Knarstoun's manner of charming
with stones, when he took one stone for the ebb, another for the hill, and
the third for the kirkyard, listening carefully as to what stone should
make the "bullering" noise that would betray the tormenting spirit, and
enable the magician to send him home again: a process through which
Katherine Carey went (1617) when she found that her patient was troubled
with the spirit of the sea, which would not let him bide in peace and
quiet. Such touches as these redeem the subject from the sad monotony of
sorrow and death which else pervades it from end to end, and lift it from
the domain of the devil into the brighter and lovelier world of the
Spirits of Nature.


SIXTEEN HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE.

In 1643 there was a fierce onslaught against the poor persecuted servants
of the devil. Thirty women suffered at once in Fife alone; and the more
zealous of the ministers hounded on the people to terrible cruelties.
There was one John Brugh,[36] "a notorious warlock in the parachin of
Fossoquhy, by the space of 36 yearis," who was wirreit at a stake and
burnt; and Janet Barker and Margaret Lauder, "indwellers and servands in
Edinburgh," who came to confession boldly, and showed that they had read
the story of Europa to some purpose, though to a great deal of confusion.
They accused Janet Cranstoun of seducing them, by promising them that if
they gave themselves over to her and the devil, they should be "as trimlie
clad as the best servands in Edinburgh." Coupled with the fact that they
had witch-marks, their confession was accepted as undeniable, and their
fate inevitably sealed.

And there was Marion Cumlaquoy,[37] in Birsay, who bewitched David
Cumlaquoy's corn seed, and made it run out too soon. She had been very
anxious to know when David would sow, and when she was told, she went and
stood "just to his face" all the time he was casting, and that year his
seed failed him, so that he could only sow a third of his land; though he
had as much grain as heretofore, and it had never run out too soon all the
years he had farmed that land. And she went to Robert Carstairs' house by
sunrise one day, bringing milk to his good mother, though not used to show
such attention; and as she left she turned herself three several times
"withershins" about the fire, and that year Robert Carstairs' "bear
(barley) was blew and rottin," and his oats gave no proper meal, but made
all who ate thereof heart-sick, albeit both bear and oats were good and
fresh when he put them in the yard. And if all this was not proof against
Marion Cumlaquoy, what would the Orkney courts hold as proof? As the past,
so the present; and Marion Cumlaquoy must learn in prison and at the stake
the evils that honest folk found in her power of "enchanting" corn and
crops. There were many others in this same year, to catalogue whom would
become at least wearisome and monotonous: they must be passed by
unmentioned, and left to the silence and oblivion which is the privilege
of the unfortunate dead.

But among the victims was one Agnes Finnie,[38] a bitter-tongued,
evil-tempered old hag, who had a curse and a threat for every one who
offended her; who killed young Fairlie with a terrible disorder, because
he called her "Winnie Annie;" and laid so frightful a disease on Beatrix
Nisbet, for some other trifling offence, that she lost the use of her
tongue; who made a "grit jist" (great joist) fall down on the leg of
Euphame Kincaid's daughter, because Euphame called her a witch on being
called by her a drunkard; and appeared to John Cockburn in the night--the
doors and windows being fast closed--terrifying him by her hideous old
apparition in his sleep, because he had disagreed with her daughter; and
who did all other wicked and uncanny things, like a raving, unprincipled,
old hag as she was. She even forespoke Alexander Johnstone's bairne, so
that it was eleven years old before it could walk, and all because she was
not made godmother, or "had not gotten its name;" and she made Margaret
Williamson sick and blind, by saying most outrageously, "The devill blaw
thé blinde!" And she was a bad mother and evil exemplar to her daughter,
bringing her up to be as vile as herself, at least in the way of
quarrelling and fighting with her neighbours, and then backing her with an
unfair amount of her own supernatural powers. Thus, one day, Margaret
Robinson, the daughter in question, was using high words with Mawse
Gourlay, spouse of Andrew Wilson, and Mawse, in a rage, called her "ane
witche's get," which was about the worst thing that could be said in those
days between a couple of scolds. "Gif I be ane witche's get," cried
Margaret, in extremest fury, "the devill ryve the saull out of ye befoir I
come again!" After which cruel and devilish imprecation, helped on by
Winnie Annie's horrible art used at Margaret's instigation, Andrew Wilson
became "frenatik" and stark mad: his eyes starting out of his head in the
most terrible and frightful manner as he went about, ever pronouncing
these words as his ordinary and continual speech--the perpetual raving of
his madness--"The devill ryve the saull out o' me!" For all which
crimes--though she was ably defended--though, when her house was searched,
"there was neither picture, toad, nor any such thing found therein, which
ever any witch in the world was used to practize,"--yet the evidence was
held to be too strong, and Winnie Annie Finnie was ordained to be "brunt
to the deid," and her ashes cast out to the winds of heaven.

Janet Brown[39] was another of those who got into hot quarters. She
confessed that she had charmed James Hutton and Janet Scott with these
words:--

  "Our Lord forth did raide,
  His foal's foot slade;
  Our Lord down lighted,
  His foal's foot righted;
  Saying flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and stane to stane,
  In our Lord his name."


She said this was a charm that had been learnt her by a nameless man from
Strathmiglo; but Margaret Fisher,[40] in Weardie, spoke it somewhat
differently. She had for her spell:--

  "Our Lord to hunting red,
  His sool-soot sled,
  Down he lighted,
  His sool-soot righted;
  Blod to blod,
  Shinew to shinew,
  To the other sent in God's name,
  In the name of the Father, Sone, and Holy Ghost."

Either version was equally efficacious as a cure to the sick and a curse
to the whole; and equally deadly as a crime in those who used it. And
there was Margaret Young, "ane honest young woman of good reputation,
without any scandal or blot," who lay miserably in prison for ten weeks,
without trial or release; but she got off at last on her husband's
becoming her surety. And Jonet Thomeson, who bewitched Andrew Burwick's
corn, so that when carried to the mill it leapt up into his wife's face
like mites, and as it were "nipped" her face until it swelled; and when it
was made into "meat," neither he nor his wife could abide the smell of it;
and when they did manage to eat it, it tasted like pins ("went owre lyke
prinsis"), and could not be quenched for thirst: and the dogs would not
eat of it, and the neighbours would not buy it; so poor Andrew Burwick's
gear was destroyed, and his means most sorely diminished. For all which
deadly sorcery and malice Jonet Thomeson, _alias_ Greibok, was made to
smart severely.

Marion Peebles[41] came to an untimely end, not unreasonably, according to
the witch-haters. She was "a wicked, devilish, fearful, and abominable
curser," and the world could not be too soon rid of her; for had she not
changed herself into the likeness of an unchristian beast, a mere
shapeless monster, a huge and ugly "pellack-quhaill" (porpoise), and in
this form wrecked the boat of Edward Halcro, to whom she and her husband
had "ane deadlie and veneficial malice?" Halcro and four other men were in
the boat, and public suspicion pointed at once to Marion, and affirmed
this wreck to be caused by her wicked deed. So when two of the dead bodies
were brought to land, she and her husband had to undergo the
_bahr-recht_--the ordeal by touch of the dead--to prove themselves
innocent or guilty. When they came where they lay the "said umquhile
Edward bled at the collar-bane or craig-bane;" the other in the hand and
fingers, "gushing out bluid thairat, to the great admiration of the
beholders, and judgment of the Almytie." Many and heavy were Marion's
misdeeds. She cursed Janet Robinson, and "accordingly showers of pains and
fits fell upon the victim." She looked upon a cow, and it "crappit
togidder till no lyfe was leukit for her." She took away the profit of
Edward Halcro's brewing, and destroyed the milk of Andrew Erasmusson's kye
for thirteen days. Indeed, her character was so well known that when
Swene, her husband, was working in a peat moss where a sickly fellow was
one of the gang, his fellows would ask him seriously "if he could not make
his wife go to her pobe (foster-father) the devil, and bid him loose a
knot, so that the man might get back his health?" Once she cast a sickness
on a woman, then took it from her and flung it on a calf, which went mad
and died; and she crippled a man, then cured him under compulsion, by
putting her fingers first to his leg and then to the ground, which she did
twice, muttering to herself; but the report of this getting about, she was
angry and banned the man once more, yet once more was forced to cure
him;--this time by means of a bannock prepared with her own hands, whereby
she cast his malady on a cow. Poor cowey died of her strange sickness, and
poor Marion died of a worse disease--the rope and the faggot: and then the
neighbourhood slept in peace.


SINCLAIR'S STORIES.[42]

On a certain day in a certain month, A.D. 1644, a woman went to the house
of another woman in Borrowstonness. She went early, and instantly fell to
mauling and pulling her, crying, "Thou traitour thief, thou thought to
destroy my son this morning, but it was not in thy power!" And then she
pulled her mutch from off her head, and mauled and maltreated her anew.
Now the meaning of the row was, that this woman had a son out at sea, whom
she, so cruelly assaulted, had sought to destroy by means of a sudden
storm raised by magic means this very day. The storm was actually raised,
and many of the crew suffered; but the son of the woman at Borrowstonness
was washed overboard by one wave, and washed on board again by another
wave, which so filled all the mariners with amaze that they came ashore.
The dispute between the two women becoming noised abroad, and the thing
being as the one had said, it was found that they were both in equal
fault--that the one had done, and the other known, too much; wherefore
they were burnt as witches, and the world had the satisfaction of hearing
them confess before they died.

Another woman, "about thirty and two, or three and thirty years of age, a
most beautiful and comely person as was in the country about," wife to one
Goodaile, a cooper, in Carrin, was fyled for a witch and put in prison.
She was the devil's favourite and dear delight; and at their meetings she
was the person whom "he did most court and embrace, calling her constantly
my dear mistress, setting her always at his right hand, to the great
discontent of his old haggs, whom, as they now conceived, he slighted;"
but her time came at last, and the law caught hold of her in place of the
devil, and gave her a yet more stringent embrace. James Fleming, a
sea-captain, and a man of great personal courage and physical strength,
was set to watch her, for the magistrates feared lest the devil should
attempt her rescue, since he loved her so well; and to him she said, that
if she got no deliverance by one o'clock in the morning, she would lay her
breast open to him and confess freely. James Fleming, a little alarmed at
this, and not liking to encounter the devil single-handed, took down
fourteen of his ship's company with him, "not forgetting the reading of
Scripture and earnest prayer to God." Sure enough the foul fiend came: for
on a sudden at midnight a tremendous hurricane arose, which unroofed the
house where they all were, and threatened to bring the whole place about
their ears, and a voice was heard calling to her by a strange name to come
away: "at which time she made three several loups upward, increasing
gradually till her feet were as high as his breast." But though James
Fleming's hair was standing widershins on his head, and though his heart
failed him for dread and fear, and he "beteached" himself to God "with
great amazement," yet his muscles continued as serviceable as ever, and at
last got the better even of the Prince of Darkness. He held this beautiful
and comely person in his powerful arms, and kept her there, through all
her struggles to get free; and at last succeeded in throwing her down upon
the ground, where for some time she grovelled and foamed like one in the
falling sickness, and then sank into a deep sleep. When she awaked she
complained bitterly of the devil, saying how that he had promised to
release her and carry her over to Ireland, touching at Paisley by the way,
where she had a sister living; but now she saw through all his treachery
and perfidiousness, and understood how she had been made his dupe. She was
burnt in all penitence and good conduct, as was also another woman about
the same time, who, putting up her arm to swear that she was not a witch,
had it suddenly withered and stiffened so that she could not bring it back
again; nor was she able to do so, until a minister who was there, had
intreated God in her behalf; for the ministers were always men of mighty
power on such occasions, and either made or marred at their pleasure. If
they chose to accept a case as possession, they prayed and exorcised; but
if it seemed good to them to call it witchcraft, then the poor wretch's
life was doomed, and no man might hope to save. It was very seldom they
cared so much for humanity as to choose the more merciful of the two
absurdities. Sometimes, though, the devil was as good as his word, and
made at least an attempt, if a clumsy one, to release his servants: as
when he took Helen Eliot from the steeple of Culross where she was
confined, and carried her in his arms through the air. He might have
landed her in safety somewhere--who knows?--had she not cried out, "O God!
whither are you taking me?" At which words he let her fall "at the
distance from the steeple of about the breadth of the street of Edinburgh,
whereby she broke her legs and otherwise seriously injured herself." Many
thousand people flocked to see the dimple which her heels had made, and
over which no grass would grow again. So at last they built a stone dyke
round it, and kept the impression safe.

In 1649 Lady Pittathrow was delated of witchcraft. She was put in prison
waiting for her trial; but one morning she was found dead, having
strangled herself, or been strangled by the devil--the world might
determine which according to its pleasure. Shortly after, Bessie Grahame
was apprehended for a few drunken words said against John Rankin's wife,
who had since died. During a confinement of thirteen weeks she was
visited by the minister, who found her obdurate in confession, and was
much inclined to find her innocent of crime. But Alexander Bogue, a
pricker, came to examine her, and discovered the mark, into which he
thrust a pin, which neither pained nor drew blood. Still she was held to
be innocent, until one day Mr. James Fergusson, the minister, heard her
talking to the devil as soon as she was alone. He knew it was the devil,
for his voice was hollow and ghoustie, and the servant, Alexander Sympson,
was like to have fallen back for fear. Still Bessie would never confess
anything beyond general unworthiness and the usual tale of vague misdeeds,
owning, indeed, to a special horror of him, the minister, and how she was
not "let to love him," as indeed was no special miracle; and then she fell
to railing at him bitterly, which was less a miracle than all else. So she
was burnt, dying obdurate and unconfessed; and thus another murder reeked
up to heaven, crying aloud for vengeance, because John Rankin's wife died
suddenly, and an intemperate old woman swore in her cups and had a habit
of speaking to herself.

Agnes Gourlay was accused of charming milk. She told Anna Simpson to throw
a small quantity of the milk into the "grupe" or sewer of the byre,
saying, "God betak us to! May be they are under the earth that have as
much need of it as they that are above the earth!" After which bread and
salt were to be put into the cows' ears, and milk would come. Agnes got
off by penance and confession: which was more than Janet Couts did, or
Archibald Watt, _alias_ "Sole the Paitlet;" though eleven other poor
creatures delated escaped their doom, partly because the burgh of Lanark
disliked having so many mouths to feed in prison pending their trial.

At Lauder, in 1649, Hob Grieve was accused of witchcraft. Twenty years
agone his wife, who had been burnt for a witch, told Hob that he might get
rich if he would follow her counsel and go along with her. So he went with
her to a haugh on Gallow-water, to meet, as she said, a gentleman there;
but he saw only a large mastiff dog, "which amazed him." At last came the
devil as a black man, telling him that if he would take suit and service
with him he should be made rich. He was to be officer at the meetings, and
hold the door at the sabbaths. Hob consented, and for eighteen years held
that office; but it does not seem that the foul fiend kept his part of the
condition, for Hob had enough to do to find salt for his porridge. He was
always poor, and remained poor to the end, with all the kicks and none of
the halfpence; and for his eighteen years of servitude got only suspicion
and ill-will, without fat or fry to comfort him. When taken, he "delated"
many, who, for the most part, confessed. After he had filled the prison,
so that it could hold no more, he accused another still, a woman of
Lauder. The magistrate kept the secret, wishing to wait until some of the
accused were "emptied out," having nowhere to put her; but the devil,
always at mischief, went to her in the night time, and told her what Hob
Grieve had said. Next day she arose and came to the prison, railing at
Hob, calling him warlock and slave to the devil, and what not. She was
told to go home, but she sat down on the Tolbooth stairs, and said she
would never stir until she and that slave of Satan had been confronted.
The bailie himself came to her, and told her to go home; but that was too
mild a proceeding. "No," she cried, "I must be set face to face with that
rascal who has delated me, an honest woman, for a witch." She was set face
to face with him, and she fell down on her bare knees, and cursed him.
Says she, "Thou common thief, how dare thou for thy soul say that ever
before this time thou saw me or I saw thee, or ever was in thy company,
either alone or with others?" Hob listened to her railings patiently, till
commanded by the bailie to speak, when says he, "How came she then to know
that I had called her a witch? Surely none but the devil, thy old master
and mine, has told thee so much." "The devil and thou perish together, for
he is not my master though he be thine. I defy the devil and all his
works!" said the woman. Then Hob reminded her of the many times and places
where they had met while in the same service; whereat she cried, "Now I
perceive that the devil is a lyar and a murderer from the beginning, for
this night he came to me, and told me to come and abuse thee; and never
come away till I was confronted with thee, and he assured me that thou
would deny all and say, thou false tongue, thou lyest!" She then confessed
all with which she was charged, and was executed. Hob was a very penitent
sinner: being now a mere lunatic, he was easy to manage, and exceeding
confidential in his confessions. He said that once in Musselburgh water
the devil had tried to drown him when he had a heavy creil on his back;
and even since he had been in prison he had come to cast him into the
fire. But though there was a very crowd "fylit" by this poor maniac, he
was innocent of the death of a certain woman who was hanged a short time
after. The magistrates, glutted to satiety with victims, wanted to save
her; but she would accept no chance offered to her. She had been fyled as
a witch, she said, and as a witch she would die. And had not the devil
once, when she was a young lassie, kissed her, and given her a new name?
Reason enough why she should die, if even nothing worse lay behind. At
last the day of her execution came, and she was taken out to be burnt with
the rest. On her way to the scaffold she made this lamentable
speech:--"Now all you that see me this day, know that I am now to die a
witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers
and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly on myself. My
blood be upon my own head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven
presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but being
delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch,
disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my
coming out of prison or ever coming in credit again, through a temptation
of the devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life,
being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live." How many poor
wretches had been like this unhappy creature--disowned by husband and
friends, seeing no ground of hope of ever coming in credit again, and
therefore in despair choosing rather to die than to live! In this special
case even the magistrates, usually so passionately determined that all the
accused should be found guilty and suffer death, even they seem to have
sought her release, and to have refused the evidence of her confession as
long as they could; but the times were not sufficiently enlightened for
them to refuse it altogether; and so she gained the fiery goal whither her
anguish and despair impelled her.


MANIE HALIBURTON.[43]

In 1649, John Kinnaird, the witch-finder, made deposition that he had
"pricked" Patrik Watson, of West Fenton, and Manie Haliburton, his spouse,
and that he had found the devil's mark on Patrik's back a little under the
point of his left shoulder, and on Manie's neck a little above her left
shoulder; of which marks they were not sensible (had no feeling in them),
neither came there any blood when pricked. So Manie, seeing that the scent
was hot and the game up, made confession, and saved further trouble. She
said that eighteen years ago, the devil had come to her in likeness of a
man, calling himself a physician, saying that he had good salves, and
specially oylispek (oil of spike or spikenard), wherewith he would cure
her daughter, then sick. So she bought some of his salves, and gave him
two English shillings for her bargain, forbye bread and milk and a pint of
ale. In eight days' time he came again, and stayed all night; and the next
morning, Patrik being "forth" and Manie yet in bed, she became more
intimately acquainted with the devil than an honest woman should. We do
not read that Manie was tortured, and, considering that it was not an
unusual thing to keep suspected witches twenty-eight days and nights on
bread and water, they being stripped stark naked, with only a haircloth
over them, and laid on a cold stone, or to put them into hair-shirts
steeped in vinegar, so that the skin might be pulled from off them, we
feel that poor Manie got off pretty well with only cremation as the result
of her mad confessions.

But one of the most extraordinary things of all was that wonderful bit of
knavery and credulity called


THE DEVIL OF GLENLUCE,[44]

when Master Tom Campbell set the whole country in a flame, and brought no
end of notice and sympathy upon his house and family. In 1654 one Gilbert
Campbell was a weaver in Glenluce, a small village not far from Newton
Stewart. Tom, his eldest son, and the most important personage in the
drama, was a student at Glasgow College; and there was a certain old
blaspheming beggar, called Andrew Agnew--afterwards hanged at Dumfries for
his atheism, having said, in the hearing of credible witnesses, that
"there was no God but salt, meal, and water"--who every now and then came
to Glenluce to ask alms. One day old Andrew visited the Campbells as
usual, but got nothing; at which he cursed and swore roundly, and
forthwith sent a devil to haunt the house, for it was soon after this
refusal that the stirs began, and the connection was too apparent to be
denied. For what could they be but the malice of the devil sent by old
Andrew in revenge? Young Tom Campbell was the worst beset of all, the
demon perpetually whistling and rioting about him, and playing him all
sorts of diabolical and malevolent tricks. Once, too, Jennet, the young
daughter, going to the well, heard a whistling behind her like that
produced by "the small slender glass whistles of children," and a voice
like the damsel's, saying, "I'll cast thee, Jennet, into the well! I'll
cast thee, Jennet, into the well!" About the middle of November, when the
days were dark and the nights long, things got very bad. The foul fiend
threw stones in at the doors and windows, and down the chimney head; cut
the warp and threads of Campbell's loom; slit the family coats and bonnets
and hose and shoon into ribbons; pulled off the bed-clothes from the
sleeping children, and left them cold and naked, besides administering
sounding slaps on those parts of their little round rosy persons usually
held sacred to the sacrifices of the rod; opened chests and trunks, and
strewed the contents over the floor; knocked everything about, and
ill-treated bairn and brother; and, in fact, persecuted the whole family
in the most merciless manner. The weaver sent his children away, thinking
their lives but barely safe, and _in their absence there were no assaults
whatever_--a thing to be specially noted. But on the minister's
representing to him that he had done a grievous sin in thus withdrawing
them from God's punishments, they were brought back again in contrition.
Only Tom was left behind, and nothing ensued until Tom appeared; but
unlucky Tom brought back the devil with him, and then there was no more
peace to be had.

On the Sunday following Master Tom's return, the house was set on
fire--the devil's doing: but the neighbours put the flames out again
before much damage had ensued. Monday was spent in prayer; but on Tuesday
the place was again set on fire, to be again saved by the neighbours'
help. The weaver, in much trouble, went to the minister, and besought him
to take back that unlucky Tom, whom the devil so cruelly followed and
molested; which request he, after a time, "condescended to," though
assuring the weaver that he would find himself deceived if he thought
that the devil would quit with the boy. And so it proved; for Tom, having
now indoctrinated some of his juniors with the same amount of mechanics
and legerdemain as he himself possessed, managed that they should be still
sore troubled--the demon cutting their clothes, throwing peats down the
chimney, pulling off turf and "feal" from the roof and walls, stealing
their coats, pricking their poor bodies with pins, and raising such a
clamour that there was no peace or rest to be had.

The case was becoming serious. Glenluce objected to be made the
head-quarters of the devil; and the ministers convened a solemn meeting
for fast and humiliation; the upshot of which was that weaver Campbell was
led to take back his unlucky Tom, with the devil or without him. For this
was the point at issue in the beginning; the motive of which is not hard
to be discovered. Whereupon Tom returned; but as he crossed the threshold
he heard a voice "forbidding him to enter that house, or any other place
where his father's calling was exercised." Was Tom, the Glasgow student,
afraid of being made a weaver, consent or none demanded? In spite of the
warning voice he valiantly entered, and his persecutions began at once. Of
course they did. They were tremendous, unheard of, barbarous; in fact, so
bad that he was forced to return once more for a time to the minister's
house; but his imitator or disciple left behind carried on business in his
absence. On Monday, the 12th day of February, the demon began to speak to
the family, who, nothing afraid, answered quite cheerily: so they and the
devil had long confidential chats together, to the great improvement of
mind and morals. The ministers, hearing of this, convened again, and met
at weaver Campbell's, to see what they could do. As soon as they entered,
Satan began: "Quum literatum is good Latin," quoth he. These were the
first words of the Latin rudiments, as taught in the grammar-school. Tom's
classical knowledge was coming into play.

After a while he cried out, "A dog! a dog!" The minister, thinking he was
alluded to, answered, "He thought it no evil to be reviled of him;" to
which Satan replied civilly, "It was not you, sir, I spoke to: I meant the
dog there;" for there was a dog standing behind backs. They then went to
prayer, during which time Tom--or the devil--remained reverently silent;
his education being not yet carried out to the point of scoffing.
Immediately after prayer was ended, a counterfeit voice cried out, "Would
you know the witches of Glenluce? I will tell of them," naming four or
five persons of indifferent repute, but one of whom was dead. The weaver
told the devil this, thinking to have caught him tripping; but the foul
fiend answered promptly, "It is true she is dead long ago, but her spirit
is living with us in the world."

The minister replied, saying, "Though it was not convenient to speak to
such an excommunicated and intercommuned person, 'the Lord rebuke thee,
Satan, and put thee to silence. We are not to receive information from
thee, whatsoever fame any person goes under. Thou art seeking but to
seduce this family, for Satan's kingdom is not divided against itself.'"
After which little sparring there was prayer again; so Tom did not take
much by this move.

All the while the young Glasgow student was very hardly holden, so that
there was more prayer on his special behalf. The devil then said, on their
rising, "Give me a spade and a shovel, and depart from the house for
seven days, and I will make a grave and lie down in it, and shall trouble
you no more."

The good man Campbell answered, "Not so much as a straw shall be given
thee, through God's assistance, even though that would do it. God shall
remove thee in due time." Satan cried out, impudently, "I shall not remove
for you. I have my commission from Christ to tarry and vex this family."
Says the minister, coming to the weaver's assistance, "A permission thou
hast, indeed; but God will stop it in due time." Says the demon,
respectfully, "I have, sir, a commission which perhaps will last longer
than yours." And the minister died in the December of that year, says
Sinclair. Furthermore, the demon said he had given Tom his commission to
keep. Interrogated, that young gentleman replied in an off-hand way, that
"he had had something put into his pocket, but it did not tarry." They
then began to search about for the foul fiend, and one gentleman said, "We
think this voice speaks out of the children." The foul fiend, very angry
at this--or Master Tom frightened--cries out, "You lie! God shall judge
you for your lying; and I and my father will come and fetch you to hell
with warlock thieves." So the devil discharged (forbade) the gentleman to
speak anything, saying, "Let him that hath a commission speak (meaning the
minister), for he is the servant of God." The minister then had a little
religious controversy with the devil, who answered at last, simply, "I
knew not these scriptures till my father taught me them." Nothing of all
this disturbing the easy faith of the audience, they, through the
minister, whom alone he would obey, conjured him to tell them who he was;
whereupon he said that he was an evil spirit come from the bottomless pit
of hell, to vex this house, and that Satan was his father. And then there
appeared a naked hand, and an arm from the elbow downward, beating on the
floor till the house did shake again, and a loud and fearful crying, "Come
up, father! come up, father! I will send my father among ye! See! there he
is behind your backs!"

Says the minister, "I saw, indeed, a hand and an arm, when the stroke was
given and heard."

Says the devil, "Saw ye that? It was not my hand, it was my father's; my
hand is more black in the loof."

"Oh!" said Gilbert Campbell, in an ecstacy, "that I might see thee as well
as I hear thee!"

"Would ye see me?" says the foul thief. "Put out the candle, and I shall
come but[45] the house among you like fire-balls; I shall let ye see me
indeed."

Alexander Bailie of Dunraget said to the minister, "Let us go ben,[46] and
see if there is any hand to be seen." But the demon exclaimed, "No! let
him (the minister) come ben alone: he is a good honest man: his single
word may be believed." He then abused Mr. Robert Hay, a very honest
gentleman, very ill with his tongue, calling him witch and warlock: and a
little while after, cried out, "A witch! a witch! there's a witch sitting
upon the ruist! take her away." He meant that there was a hen sitting on
one of the rafters. They then went to prayer again, and, when ended, the
devil cried out, "If the good man's son's prayers at the College of
Glasgow did not prevail with God, my father and I had wrought a mischief
here ere now." Ah, Master Tom, did you then know so much of prayer and the
inclining of the counsels of God?

Alexander Bailie said, "Well, I see you acknowledge a God, and that
prayer prevails with him, and therefore we must pray to God, and commit
the event to him." To whom the devil replied, having an evident spite
against Alexander Bailie, "Yea, sir, you speak of prayer, with your
broad-lipped hat" (for the gentleman had lately gotten a hat in the
fashion with broad lips); "I'll bring a pair of shears from my father's
which shall clip the lips of it a little." And Alexander Bailie presently
heard a pair of shears go clipping round his hat, "which he lifted, to see
if the foul thief had meddled with it."

Then the fiend fell to prophesying. "Tom was to be a merchant, Bob a
smith, John a minister, and Hugh a lawyer," all of which came to pass.
Turning to Jennet, the good man's daughter, he cried, "Jennet Campbell,
Jennet Campbell, wilt thou cast me thy belt?"

Quoth she, "What a widdy would thou do with my belt?"

"I would fain," says he, "fasten my loose bones together."

A younger daughter was sitting "busking her puppies" (dressing her
puppets, dolls), as young girls are used to do. He threatens to "ding out
her harns," that is, to brain her; but says she quietly, "No, if God be to
the fore," and so falls to her work again. The good wife having brought
out some bread, was breaking it, so that every one of the company should
have a piece. Cries he, "Grissel Wyllie! Grissel Wyllie! give me a piece
of that haver bread. I have gotten nothing this day but a bit from
Marritt," that is, as they speak in the country, Margaret. The minister
said to them all, "Beware of that! for it is sacrificing to the devil!"
Marritt was then called, and inquired if she had given the foul fiend any
of her haver bread. "No," says she; "but when I was eating my due piece
this morning, something came and clicked it out of my hands."

The evening had now come, and the company prepared to depart; the
minister, and the minister's wife, Alexander Bailie of Dunraget, with his
broad-lipped hat, and the rest. But the devil cried out in a kind of
agony--

"Let not the minister go! I shall burn the house if he goes." Weaver
Campbell, desperately frightened, besought the minister to stay; and he,
not willing to see them come to mischief, at last consented. As he turned
back into the house, the devil gave a great gaff of laughing, saying,
"Now, sir! you have done my bidding!" which was unhandsome of Tom--very.

"Not thine, but in obedience to God, have I returned to bear this man
company whom thou dost afflict," says the minister, nowise discomposed,
and not disdaining to argue matters clearly with the devil.

Then the minister "discharged" all from speaking to the demon, saying,
"that when it spoke to them they must only kneel and pray to God." This
did not suit the demon at all. He roared mightily, and cried, "What! will
ye not speak to me? I shall strike the bairns, and do all manner of
mischief!" No answer was returned; and again the children were slapped and
beaten on their rosy parts--where children are accustomed to be whipped.
After a while this ended too, and then the fiend called out to the
good-wife, "Grissel, put out the candle!"

"Shall I do it?" says she to the minister's wife.

"No," says that discreet person, "for then you shall obey the devil."

Upon which the devil shouted, with a louder voice, "Put out the candle!"
No one obeyed, and the candle continued burning. "Put out the candle, I
say!" cries he, more terribly than before. Grissel, not caring to continue
the uproar, put it out. "And now," says he, "I will trouble you no more
this night." For by this time I should suppose that Master Tom was sleepy,
and tired, and hoarse.

Once again the ministers and gentlemen met for prayer and exorcism; when
it is to be presumed that Tom was not with them, for everything was quiet;
but soon after the stirs began again, and Tom and the rest were sore
molested. Gilbert Campbell made an appeal to the Synod of Presbyters, a
committee of whom appointed a special day of humiliation in February,
1656, for the freeing of the weaver's house from this affliction. In
consequence whereof, from April to August, the devil was perfectly quiet,
and the family lived together in peace. But after this the mischief broke
out again afresh. Perhaps Tom had come home from college, or his father
had renewed his talk of settling him firmly to his own trade: whatever the
cause, the effect was certain, the devil had come back to Glenluce.

One day, as the good-wife was standing by the fire, making the porridge
for the children, the demon came and snatched the "tree-plate," on which
was the oatmeal, out of her hand, and spilt all the meal. "Let me have the
tree-plate again," says Grissel Wyllie, very humbly; and it came flying
back to her. "It is like if she had sought the meal too she might have got
it, such is his civility when he is intreated," says Sinclair. But this
would have been rather beyond even Master Tom's power of legerdemain.
Things after this went very ill. The children were daily thrashed with
heavy staves, and every one in the family underwent much personal damage;
until, as a climax, on the eighteenth of September, the demon said he
would burn the house down, and did, in fact, set it on fire. But it was
put out again, before much damage was done.

After a time--probably by Tom's going away, or becoming afraid of being
found out--the devil was quieted and laid for ever; and Master Tom
employed his intellect and energies in other ways than terrifying his
father's family to death, and making stirs which went by the name of
demoniac.

This account is taken almost verbatim from an article of mine in "All the
Year Round;" and if a larger space has been given to this than to many
other stories, it is because there was more colouring, and more
distinctness in the drawing, than in anything else that I have read.
Though scarcely belonging to a book on witches, there is yet a hook and
eye, if a very slender one, in the fact that the old beggar, Andrew Agnew,
was hanged; and we may be sure that it was not only his atheism, but also
his naughty tricks with Satan, and his connection with the devil of
Glenluce, that helped to fit the hangman's rope round his neck. There are
many other stories of haunted houses, notably, Mr. Monpesson's at Tedworth
caused by the Demon Drummer, and the Woodstock Devil who harried the
Parliamentary Commissioners to within an inch of their lives, and others
to the full as interesting; but there is no hook and eye with
them--nothing by which they can be hung on to the sad string of witches,
or witchcraft murders. Baxter has two or three such stories; and the
curious in such matters will find a large amount of interesting matter in
the various works referred to at the foot of the pages; matter which could
not be introduced here, because of its not belonging strictly to the
subject in hand. I do not think that any candid or unprejudiced person
will fail in seeing the dark shadow of fraud and deceit flung over every
such account remaining. The importance of which, to me, is the evident and
distinct likeness between these stories and the marvels going on now in
modern society.


JONET WATSON AND THE DEVIL IN GREEN.

Steadily went on these appalling judicial crimes. In February, 1658, two
women and a man were in the Tolbooth at Edinburgh, imprisoned on the
charge of witchcraft. One of the women died in prison, the other, Jonet
Anderson,[47] confessed that before her marriage, which had been only
three months ago, she had given herself up body and soul to the devil, and
that when she was married she had seen him standing by the pulpit. She was
kept only so long as was necessary to prove her not pregnant, and then was
executed, fully repentant. In August four women, "ane of them a maiden,"
were burnt on the Castle Hill in ghastly company; and soon after five more
from Dunbar; and then again nine from Tranent, all confessing. These
seemed to have stayed the appetite of the magistrates for a time, as we
come across no more until 1661, when a painful collection of lies,
slanders, and confessions again harrow up every feeling, and outrage every
reasoning faculty.

Jonet Watson was one of the first to make her confession. She said that in
April last, bypast or thereby, she being at the burial of Lady Dalhousie,
a rix dollar was given to Jean Bughane, to be divided among a certain
number of poor folk, whereof she was one. But Jean ran away with the
money, so poor Jonet got none of it: whereat being very grieved and angry,
when she came to her own house she wished to be revenged on Jean, and at
the wish appeared the devil in the likeness of a pretty boy in green
clothes, and asked: "what ailed her, and what revenge would she have?" He
then gave her his mark and left her under the form of a black dog, and for
three days after she had a gnat constantly with her, and one morning when
she was changing her linen it sat down upon her shoulder, where she had
one of her marks. Also about the time of last Baal-fyre night (the
beginning of May) she was at a meeting in Newton-dein, where was the devil
dressed in green clothes, with a black hat on his head. And here she
denied Christ, and took upon herself to be his servant, he laying his hand
on her head, and receiving from her "all that was under his hand," when he
gave her the name of "weill-dancing Jonet," and she and a few more danced
like Tam o' Shanter's hags, and probably tired the devil out.

Beatrice Leslie[48] was a witch too, and Agnes, wife of William Young,
gave her some wholesome advice and honest reproof on the matter, whereby
Beatrice was offended, and gave her a terrible look; and that very night
William Young awakened out of his sleep all in terror and dismay, crying
out that Beatrice, with a number of cats, was devouring him. Beatrice had
a cat which two coal-heaving damsels killed by letting some coals fall on
it, afterwards adding to their offence by throwing away her coal-basket.
So Beatrice cursed them, and told them "they should see an ill sight
before eight days were past:" as it fell out, for according to her
threatening they were both killed in the coal-pit, though no one else was
hurt; and when she was brought to see and touch the corpses, the one bled
at the nose and the other at the ear, thus proving her guilt beyond the
possibility of denial. Also she helped Alexander Wilson's wife in
child-bed, by cantrips and unholy sleights; sticking a bare knife betwixt
the bed and the straw, sprinkling salt about the bed, and saying, "Lord,
let never ane worse wight waken thee, nor hes laid thee downe," with other
villanies, unwholesome to honest folk; so Beatrice Leslie saw the sun for
the last time between the cord and the flames.


THE LANTHORNE AND THE BAHR-RECHT.[49]

Christian Wilson, _alias_ the Lanthorne, which name she had gotten from
the devil at the time of her baptism, was too famous in her generation.
She lived near her brother Alexander, and there was notorious ill blood
between them, perhaps because of her notorious evil proceedings. One
evening Alexander was found dead in his own house, naked, with his face
torn and cut, but without a spot of blood anywhere. Yet a "greate lumpe of
fleisch" had been cut out of his cheek more cleanly than any ordinary
razor could have cut either flesh or cheese. Christian bore herself
strangely. She expressed no sorrow, perhaps because she felt none, and
absolutely refused to see or touch the corpse according to the fashion of
the honest and the orthodox of the time. This refusal did her much harm in
men's minds, for was it not very evident that she was afraid of the
bier-law, or bahr-recht, which, in 1661, when all this took place, was
such a useful agent of the police, and helped so powerfully to the
discovery of murder? The bailies and ministers heard the rumours affecting
her, and commanded her to be brought into the house to touch the corpse,
as the rest had done. "She came trembling all the way to the house, but
she refused to come nigh the corpse, or to touch it, saying that 'she
never touched a dead corpse in her life.'" The neighbours did not allow of
her plea, and dragged her to the murdered man, that she might touch it
softly. She went forward to do so. "But before shoe did it, the Sone being
shyning in at the howse, shoe exprest herselfe thus, humbly desyring that,
'as the Lord made the Sone to shine and give light into that howse, that
also he would give light to discovering of that murder!' And with these
words shoe tuitching the wound of the dead man verie softlie, it being
whyte and cleane, without any spot of blood or the lyke, yet immediately,
while her fingers was upon it, the blood rushed owt of it, to the greate
admiratioune of all the behoulders, who tooke it for discoverie of the
murder according to her own prayers." Another charge, no less grave than
that of murder, was, that William Richardson, having felled one of her
hens with a stone, she frowned on him threateningly, and said he should
never throw another stone. And he never did; for immediately he fell into
ane "franicie" and madness, took to his bed, and died in a few days, all
the time of his sickness crying out against Cristiane Wilson, who, he
said, was tormenting him in the likeness of a grey cat. After his death
his nephew teased the witch by calling her "The Lanthorne," which every
one knew to be her devil-name; but Cristiane threatened him, and said that
"if he did not hold his peace she would make him die by the same death as
his uncle," which was proof sufficient of the truth of the grey cat and
her guilty sorcery. This was the same Cristiane Wilson who, when she was
being carried off to Nidrie, there to be confronted with another witch,
was suddenly lifted off the pillion by a furious blast of wind, which she
got the devil to raise in the hope of her rescue. But though she was blown
into the stream, she swam lightly as a witch should and as only a witch
could, and her jailers fished her out again, to secure her better for the
future. As the sky was cloudless when the blast arose, and as no storm
followed after, there was no possibility of doubting the Satanic origin of
that mighty puff of wind. Besides, did not Jennot Cock, another confessing
witch, say to John Stevin, when he told her that Cristiane was to be
carried to Nidrie to-morrow, "Will not yow think it a sport, if the
deivill raise a whirrell of wind, and tak her away from among yow by the
gette (way) to-morrow?" This and that together made the thing certain; and
the fall of the poor wretch was included in the dittay as one of the
counts against her, proving her witchcraft.

Witch-finding now increased rapidly in Scotland. No fewer than fourteen
special commissions were issued for the sole purpose of trying witches for
the sederunt of November the 7th, 1661; and on the 23rd of January, 1662,
fourteen more were made out. It was the popular amusement of the day, and
no one or two men then living could have turned the tide in favour of
these poor persecuted creatures. Even Sir George Mackenzie, that "noble
wit of Scotland," failed to make any reasonable impression on the besotted
public, though his pleadings and writings got him into immense disfavour
with the religious part of the community, and caused him to be ranked as
an atheist and Sadducee, and classed with the Pilates and Judases of
history. Though it had been the Bull of Pope Innocent VIII. in 1484,
which had first stirred up the zeal of the godly against witchcraft, and
written that terrible text, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," in
still more terrible characters of blood and suffering, yet Calvinistic
Scotland soon outstripped even the superstitious Papacy in her frantic
piety, and poured out a sea of innocent blood which will stain her pages
with an ineffaceable stain, for ever and for ever. Yet she was nearly a
hundred years behind Rome in her zeal, for it was not till June, 1563,
that she made the subject matter for legislation at all, and then the
Estates[50] enacted "that 'nae person take upon hand to use any manner of
witchcrafts, sorcery, or necromancy, nor give themselves furth to have ony
sic craft or knowledge thereof therethrough abusing the people;' also,
that 'nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation, at ony sic
users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under pain of death.' This is the
statute under which all the subsequent witch trials took place." But bad
as it was under the Presbyterians and the Elders, it is true that under
the Restoration the witch persecutions in Scotland were even more
excessive than during the reign of the Covenanters, and that the return of
Charles II. brought satisfaction and pleasure to the younger women only of
his dominions, but nothing save torture to the old, the poor, and the
despised. Ray says that about a hundred and twenty witches suffered in the
year 1661, the year after the Restoration had brought joy and gladness to
all loyal hearts; so that it mattered little whether Puritan or Cavalier,
Presbyterian or Episcopalian, had the upper hand. Superstition was the
greatest lord of all, and a slavish adherence to a few words fettered men
down hopelessly to ignorance and wickedness.

At this time (1661) John Kincaid and John Dick were the most notorious
prickers; and they let no one escape whom they had the chance of hurting.
One John Hay, an old man of sixty, and of untarnished reputation, fell
into Dick's hands, accused of sorcery by "a distracted woman," whose words
were not worth the wind that wafted them. But Dick shaved him, and pricked
him, and tortured him in all allowable ways, then sent him off to
Edinburgh, two hundred miles away, to be locked up in the Tolbooth,
pending further proceedings. The case against him was too slight for even
those times to entertain, and he was liberated on his own petition, and a
few testimonials: but John Dick was not reproved, nor was his zeal thought
extreme or passionate.


MISCELLANEOUS.

Margaret Bryson[51] quarrelled with her husband about the selling of a
cow; she went to the house-door, "and there did imprecate that God or the
devil might take her from her husband;" which naturally ended in the
devil's appearing and forcing her into the covenant with him that had its
final expression at the stake.

Margaret Hutchison was a witch, too. She laid on Henry Balfour the pains
of a child-bed woman, and caused such a universal swelling of his body
that he died thereof; and she threatened John Boost for calling her a
witch, and threw a piece of raw flesh against his house, which the very
dogs and cats would not eat; and she sent a plague of cats to John Bell's
house, and tormented him and his wife by appearing at their hearth-side at
night, combing her hair: so Margaret Hutchison was no better than she
should be, and the world was well rid of her.

Isabel Ramsey for her part was convicted of taking sixpence from the
devil, and entering into a long chat with him upon sundry local matters;
and, indeed, she herself confessed that he gave her a dollar, which turned
into a sklaitt stane: for nothing that the devil did for these witches
ever turned to good, so that one is more surprised at their stupidity than
offended by their guilt.

Jennet Cock[52] had an ill name, past all forbearance or overlooking. She
was never easy unless she was after some evil, and the world must
positively be quit of her. She bewitched William Scott's bonny bay horse,
worth pounds and pounds of money, and made him mad; and she told a brute
who beat her that he should live to be hanged, which not very unlikely
prediction was fulfilled; and she kept company with the devil on terms
that no honest woman should endure; and she and Jean Dickson, another
witch, cured a neighbour's child by cutting off a dog's head, with which
they played some devilish cantrip that healed the bairn; and she it was
who made that speech concerning Christiane Wilson and the gaff of wind; so
Jennet Cock was adjudged dangerous to be at large, and was put into
prison, there to await her trial. And she was tried, but, strange to say,
acquitted of the charges brought against her; she was not let loose
though, but kept still in durance till a fresh case could be completed
against her. Jennet Cock was rather notorious for her evil eye and power
of overlooking, and in her dittay is thus charged:--"There being an
outcast betwixt yow and Jeane Forrest, because schoe had called yow a
witch, yow came to the said Jeane, her landlord's house, where she was
with some nyghboures, desyreing to make aggriement betwixt yow. Ye
malitiouslie and bitterlie girneing and gnashing your teeth, and beating
your hands upon your knies, said, 'O them that called me a witch! O them
that called me a witch!' And at that tyme, the said Jeane Forrest, her
chylde being in good health, on the morne the chylde, by your sorceries
and witchcraft dyed; and the mother, at the chylde's departour, called out
with a loud voyce upone her nighbours, saying, 'Alace! that ever I had
adoe with that witch Janet Cock, for shoe has been at my bed syd all this
night standing, and I could not get red of her: and behold the fruit of
it--my chylde is dead!'" This deposition was made September 10, 1661, and
surely Jennet Cock never escaped the consequences of such a cantrip as
this!

Marion Grinlaw[53] and Jean Howison, "the survivors of ten women and a man
who had been imprisoned at Musselburgh," petitioned the Council for their
release. "Some of the rest died of cold and hunger. They themselves had
lain in durance _forty weeks_, and were now in a state of extreme misery,
_although nothing could be brought against them_. Margaret Carvie and
Barbara Horniman, of Falkland, had in like manner been imprisoned at the
instance of the magistrates and parish minister, had lain six weeks in
jail, subjected to a great deal of torture by one who takes upon him the
trial of witches by pricking; and so great was their sufferings that life
was become a burden to them, notwithstanding that they declared their
innocence, and nothing to the contrary had been shown. The Council ordered
all these women to be liberated:" which was a marvellous outstep of
humanity, and one for which its previous acts could hardly have prepared
us. The next year it seems to have had a small side-blow of rationality.
It had become sensible of the vile inhumanity of John Kincaid, and threw
the wretch into prison, then issued a proclamation repudiating the seizure
of suspected persons, which had been made illegally, unauthorizedly, and
out of only envy and covetousness. Nevertheless, it took care to issue
twelve fresh commissions for trying witches, immediately after; being
chiefly anxious to keep all the business in its own hands, and shut the
door against any outside free lances. John Kincaid lay for nine weeks in
jail, then was liberated only on condition that he would prick no more
without warrant. He sent up a whining petition, setting forth that he was
an old man, and if confined longer might be brought to mortal sickness; so
to avert this terrible catastrophe, the old sinner had his liberty given
to him again: he ought to have had instead the doom of the murderer for
blood-money!


CLOWTS AND THE SERPENT.[54]

In the parish of Innerkip, on March 4, 1662, Marie Lamont, a "young Woman
of the adge of Eighteen Yeares," offered herself for voluntary confession.
She said that five years ago Kattrein Scot taught her to take kyes' milk.
She told her to go out in misty mornings with a hair rope (harrie
tedder), which she was to draw over the mouth of a mug, saying, "In God's
name, God send us milk, God sent it, and mickle of it." By which means she
and Kattrein got much of their neighbours' milk which they made into
butter and cheese. Also she said, that two years and a half since, the
devil came to them at Kattrein Scot's house, where many of them were
present, and gave them all wine to drink and wheat bread to eat, and they
danced and were very merry, the devil shaking hands with them, and she
delivering herself over to him in baptism. And at her baptism she was
given the name of "Clowts," and bid to call the devil "Serpent." Further,
"Shee confessed that at that sam tym the devil nipit her upon the right
syd, qlk was very painful for a tym, but yairefter he straikit it with his
hand, and healed it; this she confesses to be his mark." At a certain
meeting which she spoke of, when she and the rest went to raise storms to
hinder the Killing fishery, the devil came to them in the likeness of a
brown dog, but she and Kattrein were as cats, and in this form they ran
into Allan Orr's house and took a bite of a herring lying in a barrel.
They then put it back again, and Allan Orr's wife, afterwards finishing
the herring, took heavy disease, and died. The reason of this malicious
act was, that Allan Orr had put Margaret Holm (one of the cats) out of her
house, and this was the manner in which she chose to be
revenged--"threitening in wrath, that he and his wife sould not be long
together." Many other things did she confess: one of which was how the
devil once "convoyed her home in the dawing; and when shee was com near
the house wherein she was a servant, her master saw a waff of him as he
went away from her." Another time she and some other witches met at the
back gate of Ardgowand, where his Cloutieship appeared in the likeness of
a black man with cloven feet, directing them to take white sand and cast
it about the gates of Ardgowand, and about the minister's house; and while
they were about the business he turned them into the likeness of cats, by
shaking his hands above them. And at another time they went to cast the
longston into the sea, to cause storms and shipwrecks, and the devil
kissed them as they went away, apparently better pleased than ordinarily
with his Clowts and Kats. All these things did poor Marie Lamont, aged
eighteen, confess to the minister and Laird of Innerkip; and they, not
knowing the virtue of purgatives and port wine, nor understanding the
value of rest and silence, took the poor young soul at her word, and found
her guilty of all the crimes and follies with which a diseased body, and a
mind overset and charg

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/32176