Chapter VI: Part 6

Isabel Murray went on to say, that furthermore the ghost confessed to her, that she, Isabel Heriot, when in life, had met the devil a second time at Elfiston Mill, near to Ormiston: and she told what foulness the devil did to her. Also, one night as she was coming home from Haddington Market with some horse-corn, she met the devil at Knock-hills, and he bade her destroy Thomas Anderson, who was riding with her. When she refused he threw all the horse-corn off the horse. "This Thomas Anderson was a Christian man," and when Murray told her tale "well remembered that Isabel had got up the next morning timeously," and brought home her oats which had lain in the road all the night. She said too that she had cheated her master whenever she went to the market to buy oats, charging him more than they cost--not an unusual practice with servants at market anywhere; and she told Isabel Murray that the stone cast at her was not for herself but for her goodman, who had once flung her, the ghost, into the jawhole, and abused her. At this point Murray said she began to be frightened, and ran home in all haste. So Isabel Heriot's character was settled for ever, and her neighbours only thought the judgment came too late.

THE SUCCUBUS.[64]

William Barton, a loose-lived man of notoriously strong passions, was apprehended for witchcraft. His confession included the not very frequent Scottish element of a Succubus--a demon under the form of a beautiful woman who beguiled him, and to whom he made himself over for love and gold. She baptized him under the name of John Baptist, gave him her mark, and fifteen pounds Scots in good gold as Tocher-money; and then they parted. When he had gone but a little way she called him back and gave him a mark to spend at the Ferry, desiring him to keep the fifteen pounds safe and unbroken. At this point in his confession the poor wretch was weary, and asked leave to go to sleep; which, for a wonderful stretch of humanity, the judges granted. Suddenly he awakened with a loud laugh. The magistrates asked why he laughed?--and he said that during his sleep the devil had come to him, very angry at his confession, and bidding him deny all when he awoke, "for he should be his Warrand." After this he became "obdured," and would never confess anything again; the devil persuading him that no man should take his life. And even when they told him that the stake was set up and the fire built round, he only answered, "he cared not for all that, for," said he, "I shal not die this day." How should he if no man was to kill him? Upon this the executioner came into the prison, but fell stone dead as he crossed the threshold. Hastily the magistrates offered a reward to the executioner's wife if she would undertake her husband's office, and strangle the poor mad fellow before he was burnt; which she agreed to do, for all that she was in great pain and grief, clapping her hands and crying, "Dool for this parting my dear burd Andrew Martin!" When the warlock heard that a woman was to put him to death, he fell into a passion of crying, saying that the devil had deceived him, and "let no man ever trust his promises again!"

Barton's wife was imprisoned with him. On her side she declared that she had never known her husband to be a warlock; he on his that he had never known her to be a witch: but presently the mask fell off, and she confessed. She said that malice against one of her neighbours had driven her to give herself over to the devil, that he had baptized her by the name of Margaratus, and taken her to be very near to him; a great deal too near for even a virtuous woman's thoughts. When asked if she had found pleasure in his society, she answered, "Never much." But one night, going to a witches' dance upon Pentland Hills, he went before them all in the likeness of a rough tanny dog, playing on a pair of pipes. The spring he played, said she, was "The silly bit chicken, gar cast it a pickle, and it will grow mickle;" and coming down the hill they had the best sport of all: the devil carried the candle and his tail went, "ey wig wag, wig wag!" Margaratus was burnt with her husband.

THE ISLAND WITCHES.

The Orkney and Shetland islanders were rich in witchcraft superstitions. They had all the Norwegian beliefs in fullest, ripest quality, and held to everything that had been handed down to them from Harald Harfagre and his followers. Kelpies and trows, and brownies and trolls, which somehow or other went out with taxation and agriculture, peopled every stream and every meadow, and witches were as many as there were men who loved nature, or women who had a faculty for healing and the instinct of making pets. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century a woman was adjudged a witch because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple of familiars in the form of black crows or corbies, which hopped on each side of her, all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the imp took the form of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being; as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while her husband was engaged at the Haaf. According to the same authority too,[65] not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy, a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity against a boat's crew that had set off from the Haaf. The day was cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a _cap_, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verse or two she sent her little child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was _whummilled_ (turned upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder; and presently sent the child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang more loud and fierce; and again she sent. The child came back saying the waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried out, "The turn is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned. The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.

It was no unusual thing for men and women of otherwise peaceable and cleanly life to tamper with the elements in those dim and distant days. Even seventy years ago a man named John Sutherland of Papa Stour was in the habit of getting a fair wind for weather-bound vessels: and the Knoll of Kibister, in the island of Bressay, now called Luggie's Knowe,[66] testifies by its name to the skill and sorrowful fate of a well-known wizard of the seventeenth century. There on that steep hill used Luggie to live, and in the stormiest weather managed somehow always to have his bit of fresh fish: angling with the most perfect success, even when the boats could not come into the bay. When out at sea Luggie had nothing to do but cast out his lines to have as plentiful a dinner as he could desire. "He would out of Neptune's lowest kitchen, bring cleverly up fish well-boiled and roasted;" but strange and mischancy as the art was, his companions got accustomed to it, "and would by a natural courage make a merry meal thereof, not doubting who was cook." But Luggie's cleverness proved fatal to him. Men were not even adept fishers in those days without danger, and jealousy and fear helped to swell the reputation of his natural skill into supernatural power: so he was tried for a sorcerer, and burnt at a stake at Scalloway. We need hardly wonder at the fate of poor Luggie, considering the times. If it were possible to hang two women on the 26th of January, 1681--actually to hang them in the sight of God and this loving pitiful human world, "for calling kings and bishops perjured bloody men,"[67] we need not wonder to what lengths superstition in any of its other forms was carried. We have made a stride since then, with seven-leagued boots winged at the heels.

A family of bright young sons[68] lived on one of the Shetland islands. A certain Norwegian lady had reason to think herself slighted by one of them, and she swore she would have her revenge. The sons were about to cross a voe or ferry; but one was to take his shelty, while the rest were to go by the boat. Mysteriously the shelty was found to have been loosed from its tether, and was gone; so all the heirs male of the race were under the necessity of going by the boat across the voe. It was the close of day---a mild windless evening: not a ripple was on the water, not a cloud in the sky; and no one on either bank heard a cry or saw the waters stir. But the youths never returned home. When they were searched for the next day they could nowhere be found: only the boat drifting to the shore, unharmed and unsteered. When the deed was done the shelty was brought back to its tether as mysteriously as it had been taken away.

Trials and executions still went on; some at Dumfries, and some at Coldingham[69] where Margaret Polwart was publicly rebuked for using charms and incantations to recover her sick child whom "that thief Christian Happer had wronged." But as a neighbour told her very wisely, "They that chant cannot charm, or they that lay on cannot take off the disease, or they that do wrong to any one, cannot recover them," so what was the good of all her notorious cantrips with Jean Hart and Alison Nisbet--the last of such evil fame that she had lately been scratched for a witch--that is, had blood drawn above her breath? Margaret Polwart might be thankful that she got off with only a rebuke for using charms in place of drugs, and consorting with witches to undo witches' work. In 1696, Janet Widdrow and Isobel Cochrane were brought to trial, but not burnt for the present; but two poor creatures, M'Rorie and M'Quicken, did not escape: nor some others, of no special dramatic interest.

And now we come to that marvellous piece of disease and imposture combined, the notorious case of "Bargarran's Daughter."

THE RENFREWSHIRE WITCHES.[70]

Christian Shaw, Bargarran's daughter, was a little girl of about eleven years of age, "of a lively character and well inclined." On the 17th of August, 1696, she saw the woman servant, Katherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk from the can, whereupon she threatened to tell her mother; but Campbell, "being a young woman of a proud and revengeful temper, and much addicted to cursing and swearing upon any light occasion," turned against her vehemently, wishing "that the Devil might harle her soul through hell," and cursing her with violent imprecations. Five days after this, Agnes Naismith, an old woman of bad fame, came into the courtyard, and asked Christian how old she was, and how she did, inquiring also after the health of other members of the family. Christian gave her a pert answer, and there the matter ended; but the next night the young girl was taken with fits, and the first act of the long and mournful tragedy began. In her fits she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, saying they were cutting her side and otherwise tormenting her; then she struggled as with an unseen enemy, and her body was, now bowed stiff and rigid, resting in an arch on her head and her heels alone, and now shaken with such a strange motion of rising and falling, as it had been a pair of bellows; her tongue was drawn into her throat, and even the great Dr. Brisbane of Glasgow himself was puzzled by what name to call her passion, for she began to vomit strange things, which she said the witches, her tormentors, forced upon her--such as crooked pins, small fowl bones, sticks of candle fir, filthy hay, gravel stones, lumps of candle-grease, and egg-shells. And still she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith; holding long conversations with the former, whom she affirmed to be sitting close by when she was perhaps many miles away, and arguing with her out of the Bible: exhorting her to repent of her sins with more unction than logical clearness of reasoning. Agnes Naismith she took somewhat into favour again; for the poor old woman, having been brought by the parents into the chamber where she lay, and having prayed for her a little simple prayer very heartily, the afflicted damsel condescended to exempt her from further persecution for the moment, saying that she was now her defender and did protect her from the fury of the rest. For the crafty child had seen too well how her first venture had sped not to venture on a broader cast. One day being in her fits she made a grip with her hands as if to catch something, then exclaimed that J. P. was then tormenting her, and that she had got a grip of his jerkin which was "duddie" (tattered) at the elbows; and immediately her mother and aunt heard the tearing of cloth, and the girl showed them in her hands two pieces of red cloth newly torn, where never a bit of red cloth had been before. Then she went off into a swoon or "swerf," and lay as if dead a considerable time. These fits continued with more or less severity far into the winter of the next year, and with ever new victims claimed by her as her tormentors. Now it was Elizabeth Anderson; now James and Thomas Lindsay--the latter a young lad of eleven, "the gley'd or squint-eyed elf," as she called him; now "the scabbed-faced lass," who came to the door to ask alms; and now the weary old Highland body, begging for a night's lodging; then Alexander Anderson, father of Elizabeth; and Jean Fulton, the grandmother; and then Margaret Lang--Pincht Margaret as she was called--"a Name given her by the Devil, from a Pincht Cross cloath, ordinarily worn on her Brow;" and her daughter, Martha Semple. Of the twenty-one people accused by this wicked girl, Margaret Lang and her daughter were the most remarkable--the one for her courage, her fine character and powerful mind, the other for her youth, her beauty, and child-like innocence of nature. When she heard that she was accused, Margaret--who had been advised to get out of the way for a time, but who had answered disdainfully, "Let them quake that dread and fear that need, but I will not gang"--went up straight to Bargarran house, and passing into the chamber where Christian lay, put her arms round her and spoke to her soothingly, saying, "The Lord bless thee and ding the devil frae thee!" She then asked her pointedly if she had ever seen her among her tormentors?--to which the girl said. "No, but she had seen her daughter Martha." Afterwards she retracted this admission and said that Margaret had really afflicted her, but that she was under a spell when asked and could not confess. Martha could not take things so gently. "She was as well-Favoured and Gentill a Lass as you'l look on, and about 17 or 18 years of Age," says an old authority in an anonymous letter written to a couple of initials. Poor Martha! her youth and beauty and passionate distress moved even the bigoted wretches who condemned her; but their compassion led to nothing pitiful or merciful, and the poor, bright, beautiful girl passed into the awful doom of the rest. Then the authorities "questioned" the witches; they were pricked, according to custom and the national law; and "There was not any of them, save Margaret Fulton, but marks were found on them, which were altogether insensible. That a Needle of 3 Inches length was frequently put in without their knowledge, nor would any Blood come from these places." Elizabeth Anderson, a girl of seventeen, a beggar, James Lindsay, of fourteen, and gley'd Thomas, his brother, not yet twelve--who for a halfpenny would turn himself widershins and stop a plough at a word--were found willing and able to confess. Elizabeth Anderson was especially determined that things should not be lost for the want of finding. She said that about twenty days ago her father had told her to go with him to Bargarran's yard, somewhere about noon, where they met a black man with a bonnet on his head, and a band round his neck, whom her father and Agnes Naismith, then present, told her was the devil: that certain people, named, were also in their company; that their discourse was all of Christian Shaw, then lying sick, "whose Life they all promis'd to take away by the stopping of her Breath;" that they all danced in the yard; that her father "Discharged her to tell anything she saw, or she would be Torn in Pieces: and that she was more Affraied of the forsaid persons than she was of the Devil." This confession was made on the 5th of February, 1697. A few days later her imagination was more lively. About seven years ago, she said, as she was playing round the door of her grandmother, Jean Fulton's, house, she saw "ane black grim man" go into the house to her grandmother, where he abode for a while talking. Jean bade her take the gentleman by the hand, and he would give her "ane Bony Black, new Coat; which accordingly she did." But his hand was cold and she was afeard: and then he vanished away. The same thing happened once again, when the black gentleman and her grandmother fell a-talking together by "rounding in other's ears," but the girl understood not what they said. This time she would not touch his hand for all his promises of bran new clothes; so "the gentleman went away in a flight," and she saw him no more for long after. The next time was when her father "desired her to go with him through the Country and seek their Meat; to which she replyed she need not seek her Meat, seeing she might have Work:" but her father prevailed, and took her to a moor where above twenty people were assembled; whose names she gives in a formidable muster. Now the devil tempted her anew with meat and clothes, but she would not consent; so he and her father stepped aside and conferred together. Their meeting this day was for the destruction of a certain minister's child, which they were to effect by means of a wax picture and pins. Another time it was for the destruction of another minister's child by the same means, and she heard Margaret Rodger say, "Stay a little, till I stop ane Pin in the Heart of it:" which accordingly she did. This time her father took her on his back over the water to Kilpatrick in a Flight, saying Mount and Fly. She was with the witch crew when they drowned Brighouse by upsetting his boat, and when they strangled a child with a sea napkin: after which they all danced with the devil "in ane black Coat, ane Blew Bonnet, ane Blew Band," who played the pipes for them, and gave them each a piece of an unchristened bairn's liver to eat, so that they should never confess if apprehended. With other abominations too foul to be repeated.

The same day, February 18th, James Lindsay, the elder of the two brothers, confessed. Jean Fulton was his grandmother too, and he said that one day, when she met him, she took his little round hat and plack from him. Being loath to part with the same, he ran after her crying for them: which she refusing, he called her an old witch, and ran away. Whereupon she threatened him. Eight days after this, as he was begging through the country near Inchannan where she lived, he met her again; and this time she had with her "ane black grim man with black cloaths, ane black Hat and blew Band," who offered his hand, which James took and which he found cold as it gript him straitly. The gentleman asked if he would serve him for a Bonny black coat and a black hat, and several other things, to which he replied "Yes, I'll do't." He then went to all the meetings, and saw all the people and did all the things that Elizabeth had spoken of; even to strangling Montgomerie's bairn with a sea napkin at twelve o'clock at night, while the servant girl was watching by the cradle. Young Thomas the gley'd followed next, confessing to just the same things, even to the liver of the "uncrissened bairn," which all eat save Elizabeth and their two selves: a slip-by that accounted for their confessions. And now justice had a good handful to begin with, so the work of accusation went briskly forward. Bargarran's daughter still continued bringing out crooked pins and stones and all sorts of unmentionable filth from her mouth, and still went on quarrelling with the devil whom she called an old sow, and holding conversations with the apparitions of her tormentors, still mixed up fraud with epilepsy, and lies and craft and wicked guile with hysteria, till the witch-fires were fairly lighted, and seven of the poor wretches "done to death." Among whom brave Margaret and her beautiful child held the most prominent place. Never for a moment did Margaret Lang lose her courage or self-possession. Seeing a farmer whom she knew, among the crowd assembled round the gallows, she called out to him bitterly, "that he would now thrive like a green bay-tree, for there would be no innocent blood shed that day;" but what she meant for irony the people took for confession. When she was burned, the answer of a spectator to one who asked if the execution was over, showed what feeling they had about her: "There's ane o' the witches in hell, an' the rest 'ill shune follow!" said he contentedly. Another man, whose stick was taken to push back the legs of the poor wretches as they were thrust out of the flames, when it was returned to him, flung it into the flames, saying, "I'll tak nae stick hame wi' me to nay hous that has touched a witch." When all was over and the sacrifice was complete, Bargarran's daughter declared herself satisfied and cured; no more "bumbees" came to pinch her--no more charms of balls of hair or waxen eggs were laid beneath her bed--no more apparitions thronged to vex her, nor had she fits or tossings, foamings or strange swellings as of old; the devil left off tempting her with promises of a fine gentleman for a husband; the witches no longer allured her by phantom aprons filled with phantom almonds; the Lord "helped the poor daft child," as Mrs. M. had prayed, though she was scarce worth the helping, and the world was oppressed with her lies no more. But the blood of the murdered innocent lay red on the ground, and cried aloud to heaven for vengeance against the murderers. The case of Bargarran's daughter has been always accepted as one of the most puzzling on record; but when may not mankind be puzzled if they have but sufficient credulity? Subtract from this account the possible and the certain--the possible frauds and the certain lies--and what is left? A diseased girl, hysterical and epileptic, full of hallucinations and pretended fancies, with a certain quickness of hand which the tremendous gullibility of her auditory rendered yet more facile--unscrupulous, mendacious; the only thing surprising in the whole matter was that there was not one man of sufficient coolness of judgment, or quickness of perception, to see through the imposture and set his grip on it ere it passed. Dickie and Mitchell, who a few years back visited the house where all this took place, found a slit or hole in the wooden partition between her bedroom and the room next it; a slit, evidently made purposely, and not a natural defect in the wood, and so placed that when the bed was made up (the bed of richly-carved oak yet stands or stood there) it could not be seen by any one in the room. This little fact seems to speak volumes, and to help materially towards establishing the questions of fraud and connivance. The remote sequel is the only consoling feature in the case. From being the most notorious impostor and the most cruel, false, and deadly persecutor of her time, Bargarran's daughter, as Mrs. Miller, became one of the best and most famous spinners of fine and delicate thread. She caused certain machinery to be brought from Holland, and wrought at her spinning wheel with all the intelligence and zeal that, earlier, had been so miserably employed to the ruin and destruction of her fellow-creatures. It is to be hoped that the coolness and reflection of maturity gave her grace to repent of the sins of her girlhood, and that after-penitence wiped out the terrible stains of youthful lying and murder.

MISCELLANEOUS.

That same year also Sir John Maxwell, of Pollok, and some other gentlemen, were commissioned to try two poor women, Mary Millar and Elspeth M'Ewen, and if guilty adjudge them to death; which they were found to be, and adjudged accordingly; and a few months after, Margaret Laird--still in Renfrewshire--was reputed to have been "under ane extraordinary and most lamentable trouble, falling into strange and horrible fits, judged by all who have seen her to be preternatural, arising from the devil and his instruments." The suspected witches who were accused of troubling her, were seized and put upon their trial. So was Mary Morrison, spouse of Francis Duncan; but her husband petitioned so earnestly for her release for sake of her "numerous poor family" starving in neglect at home, and there being no kind of proof against her, she was at length released and set at liberty. "The Lord-Advocate soon after reported to the Privy Council a letter he had received from the Sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating that 'the persons imprisoned in that county as witches are in a starving condition, and that those who informed against them are passing from them, and the sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth, unless they be quickly tried.' His lordship was recommended to ask the sheriff to support the prisoners till November next, when they would probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. A distinct allowance of a groat a day was ordered on the 12th of January, 1699, for each of the Renfrewshire witches."[71]

In July of the same year, Ross-shire contributed a famous quota. Twelve luckless creatures were reported at once as being guilty of the "diabolical crimes and charms of witchcraft," and by the 2nd of January, 1700, two of them had confessed, and were sentenced to such arbitrary punishment as the committee might think proper. "This is the first appearance of an inclination in the central authorities to take mild views of witchcraft," says Chambers; but we have not seen the last of capital punishments, for on the 20th of November, 1702, Margaret Myles was hanged at Edinburgh. That she was a witch was proved not only by her own confession, but by her inability to say the Lord's Prayer, even when the minister, Mr. George Andrews, tried to teach her. When he desired her to pray "her heart was so obdured that she answered she could not; for, as she confessed, she was in covenant with the devil, who had made her renounce her baptism." He then wished her to say the Lord's Prayer after him, and she began, but she would say nothing but "Our Father which wart in heaven," and could not by any means be got to say the right word. He then reproached her, saying, "How could she bid him pray for her, since she could not pray for herself?" and, singing two verses of the 51st Psalm, he made her show a little penitence. Then he essayed her again, trying to make her repeat after him, "I renounce the devil," but she would only say, "I unce the devil;" "for by no means would she say distinctly that she renounced the devil, and adhered unto her baptism, but that she unced the devil, and hered unto her baptism. The only sign of repentance she gave was after the napkin had covered her face, for then she said, 'Lord, take me out of the devil's hands, and put me in God's.'"

The next year, "The Rigwoodie Witch," lean Marion Lillie of Spott, was had before the Kirk Session to account for her dealings in the village. She was a passionate-tongued old dame, who had handled roughly one of her neighbours while in the condition that looked forward to Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup; so roughly, indeed, that Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup were forestalled, and the poor woman was brought to an unpleasant pass; so the Rigwoodie witch got something not so pleasant as a month's nursing, and was put out of the way of handling pregnant women roughly for the future.

THE STIRK'S FOOT.[72]

Jean Neilson lived in Torryburn, a village in the west of Fife, and she and Lillias Adie, a woman of more than equivocal reputation, were not on the best of terms. Jean Neilson was but a poor sickly body, full of fancies and uncatalogued ailments; and because she had no scientific name to give them, she gave Lillias the credit of having created them by her magic. She swore that she was bewitched, and that old Lillias was the bewitcher. Upon which the ministers and elders of the kirk in Torryburn met in solemn conclave on the 29th of July, and called Lillias before them to give an account of her bad practices. Lillias had no mind that they should lose their trouble. She confessed herself a witch without further ado; said how that she had met the devil by the side of a "stook" in the harvest field, where she had renounced her baptism and accepted him on the instant as her lord and lover; how he had embraced her, when she found his skin cold, and saw his feet cloven like a "stirk's." Since then she had joined in dances with him and others whom she named; for Lillias, like all the rest, seemed to think there was safety in a multitude, and delated several of the parish, to bear her company in her uncomfortable position; and she told how, at the back of Patrick Sands' house in Vellyfield, they were lighted by a mysterious light, just sufficient to let them see each other's faces, and to show the devil with a cap covering his ears and neck. The minister and elders had now rich game in view, and they held meeting after meeting to examine those whom Lillias accused, and feed their ears with all the wild and monstrous tales they chose to pour into them. But what became of them eventually no one now knows: only of a surety Lillias Adie was burned "within the sea mark," and Jean Neilson might now bear her uncatalogued ailments in peace. The minister of Torryburn at that time was one Allen Logan--the Reverend Allen Logan--notorious for his skill in detecting witches, and his zeal in hunting them down. When administering the communion he would flash his eye through the congregation and say harshly, as by knowledge, "You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord," casting a ball for the conscience-stricken to kick at; when, ten to one, some poor old trembling wretch would totter up, and so go mumbling through the doors, "thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards." He was always "dinging" against witchcraft; and one day a woman called Helen Kay took up her stool and went out of the church. She said she thought he was "daft" "to be always dinging against witches thae' gait;" but the elders thought differently, and Helen Kay was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.

THE HORRIBLE MURDER OF JANET CORNFOOT.[73]

While Lillias Adie was being burned in the west of Fife, Beatrix Laing, at Pittenweem in the east, was put to sore trouble. Patrick Morton, a youth of sixteen "free from any known vice," sent up a petition to the Privy Council (June 13, 1704), stating, that being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship lying off Pittenweem, Beatrix Laing, spouse to William Brown, tailor, and late treasurer of the burgh, came and demanded some nails. He "modestly" refused her, saying that he was engaged in another job, and could not therefore work for her; whereupon she went away, "threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch." The next day, on passing Beatrix's door, "he observed a timber vessel with some water and fire coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effect of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs that he could hardly stand or walk." For many weeks this strange kind of lingering disease and discomfort went on, he "still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated," all because of Beatrix having "slockened" fire coals in a vessel as a malevolent charm for him; till about May the disease ripened, and the symptoms of hysteria and epilepsy presented themselves. He swelled prodigiously; his breathing was like the blowing of a pair of bellows; his body was rigid and inflexible; his tongue was drawn into his mouth; and he cried out vehemently against Beatrix Laing and others--for these accusations never came alone; professing to know his tormentors by their touch if brought to him, although his eyes were blinded, and the bystanders held their peace. In short, he played the same antics here in the east as Bargarran's daughter had played in the west. Beatrix and the rest were flung into prison, and every effort was made to induce them to confess. Beatrix was pricked, and kept without sleep for five days and nights; but she held out manfully. She would not consent to accept the modest youth's interpretation of his illness, and denied strongly all hand in it, and all trafficking with witch charms or unholy arts. At last she was conquered. Sleeplessness and torture did their appointed work, and she made a rambling statement of baptismal renunciation, and the like, delating Janet Cornfort and others, which confession she recanted as soon as she had got a little strength; and specially that part where she had spoken of her fine packs of wool which she had sold so well at the market, coming home afterwards on a big black horse, which she gave into her husband's hands. Her husband, she had said, was embarrassed with this big black horse, and asked what he should do with it? to which she had answered, "Cast his bridle on his neck and you will be quit of him." So the horse flew off overhead with a great noise, and Beatrix Laing's startled husband for the first time understood its real character.

In revenge at her obduracy the magistrates "put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves' Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse; and in this condition she lay for five months." All this while the magistrates of the burgh were pressing on the Privy Council the absolute need of trying her; but the Earl of Balcarres and Lord Anstruther, two members of the council connected with the district, interposed their influence, and got the poor creature set at liberty;--"brought her off as a dreamer," says the anonymous pamphlet angrily. But she was forced to turn her face from Pittenweem, and "wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house," for fear of the fury and rage of the people: dying at last "undesired" in her bed at St. Andrews.

Beatrix was wandering about in strange places, safe if sorrowful, but Alexander Macgregor clinched her muttered charge against Janet Cornfoot by accusing her of perpetually haunting him--she and two other witches, and his Cloutieship along with them. They tormented him chiefly in the night time, while he was sleeping in his bed. Janet, under torture confessed; but retracted immediately after, saying that the minister himself had beaten her with his staff to make her speak out: and there being considerable doubt of her guilt in the minds of the gentry of the district, even of the chastising minister himself, she was allowed to escape, by connivance. But another minister of the neighbourhood, with more zeal than humanity and more grace than knowledge, stopped her in her flight, and sent her back to Pittenweem. There the mob got hold of her. They had been fearfully excited by Beatrix Laing's acquittal and Janet's escape, and they were not disposed to let this unexpected glut to their vengeance go. They seized poor Janet Cornfoot, tied her up hard in a rope, beat her unmercifully, then dragged her by the heels through the streets and along the shore. "The appearance of a bailie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to show how easily the authorities might have protected their victim if they had chosen." Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and finally covering her with a door, pressed her to death (Jan. 30, 1705). Janet's daughter was in the town, and knew what was taking place down by that blood-stained shore, but she dared not interfere; and during all the time this hideous murder was going on--lasting for nearly three hours--neither magistrate nor minister came forward to protect or interpose. Are verily and in truth "the powers that be ordained of God," or has not the devil sometimes something to do with the laying on of hands?--so much of the devil, at least, as is represented by ignorance, inhumanity, superstition, and cowardice, always conspicuous qualities of the more zealous of every denomination.

About this time,[74] Thomas Brown, another of the accused, died of "hunger and hardship" in prison; and at the close of the year, two Inverness men, George and Lachlan Rattray, were executed, being found "guilty of the horrid crimes of mischievous charms, by witchcraft and malefice, sorcery or necromancy." And many witches were also burnt on the top of Spott Loan.

THE SPELL OF THE SLAP.[75]

In 1708, William Stensgar, of Southside, in Orkney, had rheumatism. He sent to an old beggar-woman, called Catherine Taylor--a cripple herself, but none the less qualified to heal others by her magic arts. She came to him about an hour before sunrise and took the case in hand, bidding him follow her till they came to a certain kind of gate or stile, called a slap or grind; William's wife accompanying them with a stoup of water. At this slap Catherine touched his knee, saying, "As I was going by the way I met the Lord Jesus Christ in the likeness of another man; he asked me what tidings I had to tell? I said I had no tidings to tell, but I am full of pain, and can neither gang nor stand. Thou shalt go to the holy kirk, and thou shalt gang round about, and then sit down upon thy knees, and say thy prayers to the Lord, and then thou shalt be as heal as the hour when Christ was born." After this precious charm, which the old cripple said had been taught her when a child, she repeated the 23rd Psalm; and then the evil spirit which had caused the rheumatism was assumed to be "telled out" into the stoup of water; at all events William Stensgar would have no more of it. Then the water was emptied out over the slap or gate so that the next person passing by the stile might get it instead of William. One man who had watched this devilry from the beginning, evaded the foul fiend by pushing his way through the hedge higher up; but another unfortunate wretch, not so lucky or not so early a riser, coming blundering over the stile as usual, got laid hold of by the fiend which William Stensgar had shaken off, and was holden by it hardly.

THE PLAGUE OF CATS.[76]

Year by year witches became scarcer, none of any special note presenting themselves till we come to the case of Margaret Nin-Gilbert, of Caithness, which happened in the year 1718; the same year as that in which the minister of Redcastle lost his life by witchcraft, and Mr. M'Gill's house at Kinross (he was minister there) was so egregiously troubled by a spirit which nipped the sheets and stuck pins into eggs and meat, and clipt away the laps of a gentlewoman's hood and a servant maid's gown tail, and flung stones down the chimney, which "wambled a space" on the floor, and then took a flight out of the window, and threw the minister's bible into the fire, and spoilt the baking, and played all sorts of mad pranks to disquiet the family and defy God. If such things as these could be done in the light of the sun, why, should not Margaret Nin-Gilbert have supernatural power? Nin-Gilbert had a friend, one Margaret Olson, a woman of it is said wicked behaviour, whom Mr. Frazer put out of her house, taking as his tenant instead one William Montgomerie. Upon this Margaret Olson went to her friend Nin-Gilbert, the notorious witch, and besought her to harm Mr. Frazer; but Mr. Frazer being a gentleman of rank and fortune was defended from the witches, and Nin-Gilbert confessed she had no power or inclination to hurt him. However, one night as he was crossing a bridge, they attempted him, but succeeded not; and he, on being questioned, said he perfectly remembered "his horse making a great adoe at that place, but that by the Lord's goodness he escaped." Also he had a great sickness at the time these women were taken, but he had common sense enough to refuse to ascribe it to them. Finding that they could not prevail against Mr. Frazer, they turned their attention to Montgomerie, "mason, in Burnside of Scrabster," who was also under the ban for having accepted the tenancy of which Margaret Olson had been dispossessed. Suddenly his house became so infested with cats that it was no longer safe for his family to remain there. He himself was away, but his wife sent to him five times, threatening that if he did not return home to protect them, she would flit to Thurso; and his servant left them suddenly, and in mid term, because five of these cats came one night to the fireside where she was alone, and began speaking among themselves with human and intelligible voices. So William Montgomerie, mason at Scrabster, returned home to do battle with the enemy. The cats came in their old way and in their old numbers; and William prepared his best. On Friday night, the 28th of November, one of the cats got into a chest with a hole in it, and when she put her head out of the hole, William made a lunge at her with his sword, which "cutt hir," but for all that he could not hold her. He then opened the chest, and his servant, William Geddes, stuck his dirk into her hind quarters and pinned her to the chest. After which, Montgomerie beat her with his sword and cast her out for dead; but the next morning she was gone; so there was no doubt as to her true character. Four or five nights after this, his servant, being in bed, "cryed out that Some of these catts had come in on him." Montgomerie ran to his aid, wrapt his plaid about the cat and thrust his dirk through her body, then smashed her head with the back of an axe, and cast her out like the first. The next morning she too was gone, and there was proof positive for another case. So as none of these cats belonged to the neighbourhood, and there were eight of them assembled together in one night, "this looking like witchcraft, it being threatened that none should thrive in my said house," William Montgomerie made petition to the Sherrif-Deput of Caithness, to visit "some person of bad fame," who was reported to have fallen sick immediately on this encounter, and search out if she had any wounds on her body or not. "This representation seeming all the time to be very incredulous and fabulous, the sheriff had no manner of regard yrto." But when, on the 12th of February, Margaret Nin-Gilbert was seen by one of her neighbours "to drop at her own door one of her leggs from the midle, and she, being under bad fame for witchcraft, the legg, black and putrified, was brought before the Sheriff-depute" (not the sheriff himself, the Earl of Caithness, who might have had a little more common sense)--then the said Sheriff-depute ordered Nin-Gilbert to be seized and examined. Margaret made short work of it. Being interrogated the 8th of February, 1719, she confessed that she was under compact with the devil, whom she had met in the likeness of a black man as she was travelling some long time byegone in ane evening; confessed also that he sometimes appeared to her as a great black horse, and other times as if riding on a black horse, and sometimes as a black cloud, and sometimes as a black hen. Confessed also that she was at William Montgomerie's house that evening, when he attacked her as a cat, and that he broke her leg with the dirk or axe, which since had fallen off from the rest of her body: also, that Margaret Olson was there with her, who, being stronger than she did cast her on the dirk when her leg was broken. She then delated four other women, one of whom, Helen Andrew, had been so crushed and maimed by Montgomerie, "that she dyed that same night of her wounds or few days yrafter:" and another, M'Huistan, "cast herself a few days afterwards from the rocks of Borrowstoun into the sea, since which time she was never seen; while a third, Jannet Pyper, she identified as having a red petticoat on her. Asked how they managed not to be discovered said, the devil raised a fog or mist to conceal them." When her confession was ended, her accomplices were apprehended; but she herself died in prison in a fortnight's time. Margaret Olson was then examined. She was "tryed in the shoulders" (for witches' marks), "where there were several small spots, some read, some blewish; after a needle was driven in with great force almost to the eye she felt it not. Mr. Innes, Mr. Oswald, minister, and several honest women, and Bailzie Forbes, were witnesses to this. And further, that while the needle was in her shoulder, as aforesaid, she said, 'Am not I ane honest woman now?'" So this instance of human wickedness and folly ended by the usual method of the cord and the stake.

THE YOUNG HONOURABLE'S DECEITS.

January, 1720, saw distress and confusion at Calder in Mid Lothian. Lord Torphichen's third son, the Honourable Patrick Sandilands, was bewitched, and the whole country was in excitement. If the devil could touch a Lord's son, who was safe? There was no doubt of the fact, let who would deny it. Lord Torphichen's son though he was, the Honourable Patrick Sandilands was worse holden than the meanest hind on the estate. He was buffeted about the room; flung down in trances, from which no horsewhippings--and it is to be hoped he had plenty of them, and well laid on--could revive him; he pronounced prophecies; was lifted up in the air; taken off long journeys between the space of two flashes of light; had the gift of clairvoyance; and put out all the candles by his very presence--his powers depending, as such powers generally do, on darkness and confusion for their perfect development. Lord Torphichen soon left off the use of the horsewhip, and he and all the family came to the conclusion that the Honourable Patrick was bewitched. So they got hold of the witch, a brutish, ignorant, half-witted woman living in the village of Calder, and put her in prison, waiting her confession. As for that, it was not difficult to get at. Yes, she was a witch; had been a witch for many years; had once given the devil her own dead child to make a roast of; had made an image of the young laird; and had three associates, two women and a man. Mad William Mitchell, the Tinklarian Doctor,[77] as he was called, went on foot in ill weather without food from the West Bow to Lord Torphichen's house at Calder, to see what he could do towards discovering the devil in the witches. This was on the 14th of January--the day of the solemn fast, which was all the help that the awakening reason of the times would allow the Honourable Patrick Sandilands. True, the witch and her confederates were in prison, but there was no gallows planted, and no fire set: only the ministers, and elders, and saints, and people, convened in solemn and sacred prayer, to beseech God to drive out the devil from a lying, mischievous, hysterical lad. But crazy William Mitchell took very little by this move, Lord Torphichen not favouring his pretensions to special and private illumination. The sermon was preached in the Calder Kirk by the Rev. Mr. John Wilkie, minister of Uphall, the sorcerers being present, and was found so powerful that the devil was fairly exorcised, and the boy soon after wholly recovered. In time he went to sea, rose to the command of an East Indiaman, but perished in a storm, leaving a meritorious name singularly stained with boyish sins. "It brings us strangely near to this wild-looking affair," says Chambers, "that the present Lord Torphichen (1860) is only _nephew_ to the witch-boy of Calder."

THE LAST OF THE WITCHES.