THE WITCHES OF SCOTLAND.
Among the people of Scotland, a more serious-minded and imaginative
race than the English, the superstition of witchcraft was deeply
rooted at an early period. Its development was encouraged not only by
the idiosyncrasies of the national character, but also by the nature
of the country and the climate in which they lived. The lofty
mountains, with their misty summits and shadowy ravines--their deep
obscure glens--were the fitting homes of the wildest fancies, the
eëriest legends; and the storm crashing through the forests, and the
surf beating on the rocky shore, suggested to the ear of the peasant
or the fisherman the voices of unseen creatures--of the dread spirits
of the waters and the air. To men who believed in kelpie and wraith
and the second sight, a belief in witch and warlock was easy enough.
And it was not until the Calvinist reformers imported into Scotland
their austere and rigid creed, with its literal interpretation of
Biblical imagery, that witchcraft came to be regarded as a crime. It
was not until 1563 that the Parliament of Scotland passed a statute
constituting 'witchcraft and dealing with witches' a capital offence.
It is true that persons accused of witchcraft had already suffered
death--as the Earl of Mar, brother of James III., who was suspected of
intriguing with witches and sorcerers in order to compass his
brother's death, and Lady Glamis, in 1532, charged with a similar plot
against James V.--but in both these cases it was the _treason_ which
was punished rather than the _sorcery_.
In the Scottish criminal records the first person who suffered death
for the practice of witchcraft was a Janet Bowman, in 1572. No
particulars of her offence are given; and against her name are written
only the significant words, 'convict and byrnt.'
A remarkable case, that of Bessie Dunlop, belongs to 1576.[44] She was
the wife of an Ayrshire peasant, Andrew Jack. According to her own
statement, she was going one day from her house to the yard of
Monkcastle, driving her cows to the pasture, and greeting over her
troubles--for she had a milch-cow nigh sick to death, and her husband
and child were lying ill, and she herself had but recently risen from
childbed--when a strange man met her, and saluted her with the words,
'Gude day, Bessie!' She answered civilly, and, in reply to his
questions, acquainted him with her anxieties; whereupon he informed
her that her cow, her two sheep, and her child would die, but that her
gude man would recover. She described this stranger in graphic
language as 'an honest, wele-elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane
gray coat with Lumbart slevis of the auld fassoun; ane pair of gray
brekis and quhyte schankis, gartaurt above the knee; ane black bonnet
on his heid, cloise behind and plane before, with silkin laissis
drawin throw the lippis thairof; and ane quhyte wand in his hand.' He
told Bessie that his name was _Thomas Reid_, and that he had been
killed at the Battle of Pinkie. Extraordinary as was this information,
it did not seem improbable to her when she noted the manner of his
disappearance through the yard of Monkcastle: 'I thocht he gait in at
ane narroware hoill of the dyke [wall], nor ony erdlie man culd haif
gaun throw; and swa I was sumthing fleit [terrified].'
Thomas Reid's sinister predictions were duly fulfilled. Soon
afterwards, he again met Bessie, and boldly invited her to deny her
religion, and the faith in which she was christened, in return for
certain worldly advantages. But Bessie steadfastly refused.
This visitor of hers was under no fear of the ordinance which is
supposed to limit the mundane excursions of 'spiritual creatures' to
the hours between sunset and cockcrow; for he generally made his
appearance at mid-day. It is not less singular that he made no
objection to the presence of humanity. On one occasion he called at
her house, where she sat conversing with her husband _and three
tailors_, and, invisible to them, plucked her by the apron, and led
her to the door, and thence up the hill-end, where he bade her stand,
and be silent, whatever she might hear or see. And suddenly she beheld
twelve persons, eight women and four men; the men clad in gentlemen's
clothing, and the women with plaids round about them, very seemly to
look at. Thomas was among them. They bade her sit down, and said:
'Welcome, Bessie; wilt thou go with us?' But she made no answer, and
after some conversation among themselves, they disappeared in a
hideous whirlwind.
When Thomas returned, he informed her that the persons she had seen
were the 'good wights,' who dwell in the Court of Faëry, and he
brought her an invitation to accompany them thither--an invitation
which he repeated with much earnestness. She answered, with true
Scotch caution: 'She saw no profit to gang that kind of gates, unless
she knew wherefore.'
'Seest thou not me,' he rejoined, 'worth meat and worth clothes, and
good enough like in person?'
The prospect, however, could not beguile her; and she continued firm
in her simple resolve to dwell with her husband and bairns, whom she
had no wish to abandon. Off went Thomas in a storm of anger; but
before long he recovered his temper, and resumed his visits, showing
himself willing to 'fetch and carry' at her request, and always
treating her with the deference due to a wife and mother. The only
benefit she derived from this friendship was, she said, the means of
curing diseases and recovering stolen property, so that her witchcraft
was of the simplest, innocentest kind. There was no compact with the
devil, and it injured nobody--except doctors and thieves. Yet for
yielding to this hallucination--the product of a vivid imagination,
stimulated, we suspect, by much solitary reverie--Bessie Dunlop was
'convyct and byrnt.' Mayhap, as she was led to the death-fire, she may
have dreamed that she had done better to have gone with Thomas Reid to
the Court of Faëry!
* * * * *
The combination of the fairy folklore with the gloomier inventions of
witchcraft occurs again in the case of Alison Pierson (1588). There
was a certain William Simpson, a great scholar and physician, and a
native of Stirling. While but a child, he was taken away from his
parents 'by a man of Egypt, a giant,' who led him away to Egypt with
him, 'where he remained by the space of twelve years before he came
home again.' On his return, he made the acquaintance of Alison, who
was a near relative, and cured her of certain ailments; but soon
afterwards, less fortunate in treating himself, he died. Some months
had passed when, one day as Alison was lying on her bed, sick and
alone, she was suddenly addressed by a man in green clothes, who told
her that, if she would be faithful, he would do her good. In her first
alarm, she cried for help, but no one hearing, she called upon the
Divine Name, when her visitor immediately disappeared. Before long, he
came to her again, attended by many men and women; and compelling her
to accompany them, they set off in a gay procession to Lothian, where
they found puncheons of wine, with drinking-cups, and enjoyed
themselves right heartily. Thenceforward she was on the friendliest
terms with the 'good neighbours,' even visiting the Fairy Queen at her
court, where, according to her own account, she was made much of, was
treated, indeed, as 'one of themselves,' and allowed to see them
compounding wonderful healing-salves in miniature pans over tiny
fires.
It would seem that this woman had acquired a considerable knowledge of
'herbs and simples,' and that the medicines she made up effected
remarkable cures. No doubt it was for the purpose of enhancing the
value of her concoctions that she professed to have obtained the
secret of them from the fairies. So great was her repute for medicinal
skill, that the Archbishop of St. Andrews sought her advice in a
dangerous illness, and, by her directions, ate 'a sodden food,' and at
two draughts absorbed a quart of good claret wine, which she had
previously medicated, greatly benefiting thereby.
Alison had a fertile fancy and a fluent tongue, and told stories of
the fairies and their doings which did credit to her invention. It
does not appear that she injured anybody, except, perhaps, by her
drugs, but, then, even the faculty sometimes do _that_! But, like
Bessie Dunlop, she was convicted of witchcraft, and burned. The
surprising thing about this and similar cases is, that the poor woman
should have assisted in her own condemnation by devising such
extraordinary fictions. What was the use of them? A prisoner on a
charge which, if proved against her, meant a terrible death, what
object did she expect to gain? Was it all done for the sake of the
temporary surprise and astonishment her tale created? that she might
be the heroine of an hour?--Men have, we know, their strange
ambitions, but if this were Alison Pierson's, it was one of the very
strangest.
* * * * *
In the next case I shall bring forward, that of Dame Fowlis, we come
upon the trail of actual crime. Dame Fowlis, second wife of the chief
of the clan Munro, was by birth a Roise or Ross, of Balnagown. To
effect the aggrandisement of her own family, she plotted the death of
Robert, her husband's eldest son, in order to marry his wealthy widow
to her brother, George Roise or Ross, laird of Balnagown; but as he,
too, was married, it was necessary to get rid of _his_ wife also. For
this 'double event,' she employed, with little attempt at concealment,
three 'notorious witches'--Agnes Roy, Christian Roy, and Marjory Nayre
MacAllister, alias Loskie Loncart--besides one William MacGillivordam,
and several other persons of dubious reputation. About Midsummer,
1576, Agnes Roy was despatched to bring Loskie Loncart into Dame
Fowlis' presence. The result of this interview was soon apparent. Clay
images of the two doomed individuals were made, and exposed to the
usual sorceries; while MacGillivordam obtained a supply of poison from
Aberdeen, which the cook was bribed to put into a dish intended for
the lady of Balnagown's table. It did not prove mortal, as
anticipated, but afflicted the unfortunate lady with a long and severe
illness. Dame Fowlis, however, felt no remorse, but continued her
plots, gradually widening their scope until she resolved to kill all
her husband's children by his first wife, in order to secure the
inheritance for her own. In May, 1577, she instructed MacGillivordam
to procure a large quantity of poison. He refused, unless his brother
was made privy to the transaction. I suppose this was done, as the
poison was obtained, and proved to be so deadly in its nature that two
persons--a woman and a boy--were killed by accidentally tasting of it.
Foiled in her scheme, Dame Fowlis resorted to the practices of
witchcraft, and bought, in June, for five shillings, 'an elf
arrow-head'--that is, a rude flint implement--belonging to the
neolithic age. On July 2, she and her accomplices met together in
secret conclave; and having made an image of butter to resemble Robert
Munro, they placed it against the wall; and then, with the elf
arrow-head, Loskie Loncart shot at it for eight times, but each time
without success, a proof that the familiars of the devil, like their
master, could not always hit the mark. Meeting a second time for the
same purpose, they made an image of clay, at which Loskie shot twelve
times in succession, invariably missing, to the great disappointment
of all concerned. The failure was ascribed to the elf arrow-head, and
in August another was procured; two figures of clay were also made,
for Robert Munro and for Lady Balnagown, respectively; at the latter
Dame Fowlis shot twice, and at the former Loskie Loncart shot thrice;
but the shooting was no better than before, and the two images being
accidentally broken, the charm was destroyed. It was proposed to try
poison again, but by this time the authorities had gained information
of what was going on, and towards the end of November, Christian Roy,
who had been present at the third meeting, was arrested. Being put to
the torture, she confessed everything, and, together with some of her
confederates, was convicted of witchcraft and burnt. Dame Fowlis, who
assuredly was not the least guilty person, escaped to Caithness, but,
after remaining in concealment for nine months, was allowed to return
to her home. In 1588, her husband died, and was succeeded in his
estates by Robert Munro, who revived the charge of witchcraft against
his step-mother, and obtained a commission for her examination and
that of her surviving accomplices. Dame Fowlis was put on her trial on
July 22, 1590; but she had money and friends, and contrived to obtain
a verdict of acquittal.
It is one of the most remarkable features of this remarkable case
that, as soon as her acquittal was pronounced, a new trial was opened,
in which the defendant was her other stepson, Hector Munro,[45] who
had been, only an hour before, the principal witness against her. The
allegations against him were: first, that, during the sore sickness of
his brother, in the summer of 1588, he had consulted with 'three
notorious and common witches' respecting the best means of curing him,
and had sheltered them for several days, until compelled by his father
to send them about their business; and, second, that falling ill
himself, in January, 1559, he had caused a certain Marion MacIngaruch,
'one of the most notorious and rank witches in the whole realm,' to be
brought to him, and who, after administering three draughts of water
out of three stones which she carried with her, declared that his sole
chance of recovery lay in the sacrifice of 'the principal man of his
blood.' After due consultation, they decided that this vicarious
sufferer must be George Munro, his step-brother, the eldest son of
Dame Fowlis. Messengers were accordingly sent in search of him.
Apprehending no evil, he obeyed the call, and five days afterwards
arrived at the house of Hector Munro. Following the directions of the
witch, Hector received his brother in silence, giving him his left
hand, and taking him by the right hand, and uttering no word of
greeting until he had spoken. George, astounded by the chillness of
his reception, which he could not but contrast with the warmth of the
invitations, remained in his brother's sick-room an hour without
speaking. At last he asked Hector how he felt. 'The better that you
have come to visit me,' replied Hector, and then was again silent, for
so the witch had ordained. An hour after midnight appeared Marion
MacIngaruch, with several assistants; and, arming themselves with
spades, they repaired to a nook of ground at the sea-side, situated
between the boundaries of the estates of the two lairds, and there,
removing the turf, they dug a grave of the size of the invalid.
Marion returned to the house, and gave directions to her confederates
as to the parts they were to play in the startling scene which was yet
to be enacted. It was represented to her that if George died suddenly
suspicions would be aroused, with a result dangerous to all concerned;
and she thereupon undertook that he should be spared until April 17
next thereafter. Hector was then wrapped up in a couple of blankets,
and carried to the grave in silence. In silence he was deposited in
it, and the turf lightly laid upon him, while Marion stationed herself
by his side. His foster-mother, one Christiana Neill Dayzell, then
took a young lad by the hand, and ran the breadth of nine ridges,
afterwards inquiring of the witch 'who might be her choice,' and
receiving for answer, 'That Hector was her choice to live, and his
brother George to die for him.' This ceremony was thrice repeated, and
the sick man was then taken from the grave, and carried home, the most
absolute silence still being maintained.
Such an experience on a bitter January night might well have proved
fatal to the subject of it; but, strange to say, Hector Munro
recovered--probably from the effect on his imagination of rites so
peculiar and impressive; whereas, in the month of April, George Munro
was seized with a grievous illness, of which, in the following June,
he died. Grateful for the cure she had effected, Hector received the
witch Marion into high favour, installing her at his uncle's house of
Kildrummadyis, entertaining her 'as if she had been his spouse, and
giving her such pre-eminence in the county that none durst offend
her.' But it is the nature of such unhallowed confederacies to
surrender, sooner or later, their dark, dread secrets. Whispers spread
abroad, gradually shaping themselves into a connected story which
invited judicial investigation. A warrant was issued for the arrest of
Marion MacIngaruch; but for some time Hector Munro contrived to
conceal her, until Dame Fowlis discovered and made known that she was
lying in the house at Fowlis. She was arrested; and, making a full
confession of her actions, was sentenced to death, and burnt. Hector
Munro, however, was more fortunate, and obtained his acquittal.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] Pitcairn, 'Criminal Trials,' i. 49-58. This chapter is mainly
founded on the reports in Pitcairn.
[45] Pitcairn, _ut ante_, i. 192, 202, 285.
JAMES I. AND THE WITCHES.
These, and other cases of witchcraft which, as the mania extended,
occurred in various parts of the country, attracted the attention of
King James, and made a profound impression upon him. Taking up the
study of the subject with enthusiasm, he inquired into the demonology
of France and Germany, where it had been matured into a science; and
this so thoroughly that he became, as already stated, an expert, and
was really entitled to pronounce authoritative decisions. His example,
however, had a disastrous effect, confirming and deepening the popular
credulity to such an extent that the common people, for a time, might
have been divided into two great classes--witches and witch-finders.
That in such circumstances many acts of cruelty should be perpetrated
was inevitable. So complete was the demoralization, that the most
trivial physical or mental peculiarity was held to be an indubitable
witch-mark, and young and old were hurried to the stake like sheep to
the slaughter.
In August, 1589, King James was married, by proxy, to Princess Anne of
Denmark; and the impatient monarch was eagerly awaiting the arrival of
his bride from Copenhagen, when the unwelcome intelligence reached him
that the vessels conveying her and her suite had been overtaken by a
storm, and, after a narrow escape from destruction, had put into the
port of Upsal, in Norway, with the intention of remaining there until
the following spring. The eager bridegroom, summoning up all his
courage--he had no love for the sea--resolved to go in search of his
queen, and, having found her, to conduct her to her new home. At Upsal
the marriage was duly solemnized; and husband and wife then voyaged to
Copenhagen, where they spent the winter. The homeward voyage was not
undertaken until the following spring; and it was on May Day, 1590,
that James and his Queen landed at Leith, after an experience of the
sea which confirmed James's distaste for it.
The political disorder of the country, and the hold which the new
superstition had obtained upon the minds of the people, encouraged the
circulation of dark mysterious rumours in connection with the King's
unfavourable passage; and a general belief soon came to be established
that the tempestuous weather which had so seriously affected it was
due to the intervention of supernatural powers, at the instigation of
human treachery. Suspicion fixed at length upon the Earl of Bothwell,
who was arrested and committed to prison; but in June, 1591, contrived
to make his escape, and conceal himself in the remote recesses of the
Highlands. Not long afterwards, some curious circumstances attending
certain cures which a servant girl--Geillis, or Gillies, Duncan--had
performed, led to her being suspected of witchcraft; and this
suspicion opened up a series of investigations, which revealed the
existence of an extraordinary conspiracy against the King's life.
Geillis Duncan was in the employment of David Seton, deputy-bailiff of
the small town of Tranent, in Haddingtonshire. Unlike the witch of
English rural life, she was young, comely, and fair-complexioned; and
the only ground on which the idea of witchcraft was associated with
her was the wonderful quickness with which she had cured some sick and
diseased persons, the fact being that she was well acquainted with the
healing properties of herbs. When her master severely interrogated
her, she at once denied all knowledge of the mysteries of the black
art. He then, without leave or license, put her to the torture; she
still continued to protest her innocence. It was a popular conviction
that no witch would confess so long as the devil-mark on her body
remained undiscovered. She was subjected to an indecent
examination--the stigma was found (said the examiners) on her throat;
she was again subjected to the torture. The outraged girl's fortitude
then gave way; she acknowledged whatever her persecutors wished to
learn. Yes, she _was_ a _witch_! She had made a compact with the
devil; all her cures had been effected by his assistance--quite a new
feature in the character of Satan, who has not generally been
suspected of any compassionate feeling towards suffering humanity.
That she had done good instead of harm availed the unfortunate Geillis
nothing. She was committed to prison; and the torture being a third
time applied, made a fuller confession, in which she named her
accomplices or confederates, some forty in number, residing in
different parts of Lothian. Their arrest and examination disclosed the
particulars of one of the strangest intrigues ever concocted.
The principal parties in it were Dr. Fian, or Frain, a reputed wizard,
also known as John Cunningham; a grave matron, named Agnes Sampson;
Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall; and Barbara Napier.
Fian, or Cunningham, was a schoolmaster of Tranent, and a man of
ability and education; but his life had been evil--he was a vendor of
poisons--and, though innocent of the preposterous crimes alleged
against him, had dabbled in the practices of the so-called sorcery.
When a twisted cord was bound round his bursting temples, he would
confess nothing; and, exasperated by his fortitude, the authorities
subjected him to the terrible torture of 'the boots.' Even this he
endured in silence, until exhausted nature came to his relief with an
interval of unconsciousness. He was then released; restoratives were
applied; and, while he hovered on the border of sensibility, he was
induced to sign 'a full confession.' Being remanded to his prison, he
contrived, two days afterwards, to escape; but was recaptured, and
brought before the High Court of Justiciary, King James himself being
present. Fian strenuously repudiated the so-called confession which
had been foisted upon him in his swoon, declaring that his signature
had been obtained by a fraud. Whereupon King James, enraged at what he
conceived to be the man's stubborn wilfulness, ordered him again to
the torture. His fingernails were torn out with pincers, and long
needles thrust into the quick; but the courageous man made no sign. He
was then subjected once more to the barbarous 'boots,' in which he
continued so long, and endured so many blows, that 'his legs were
crushed and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and
flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great
abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever.'
As ultimately extorted from the unfortunate Fian, his confession shows
a remarkable mixture of imposture and self-deception--a patchwork of
the falsehoods he believed and those he invented. Singularly grotesque
is his account of his introduction to the devil: He was lodging at
Tranent, in the house of one Thomas Trumbill, who had offended him by
neglecting to 'sparge' or whitewash his chamber, as he had promised;
and, while lying in his bed, meditating how he might be revenged of
the said Thomas, the devil, _clothed in white raiment_, suddenly
appeared, and said: 'Will ye be my servant, and adore me and all my
servants, and ye shall never want?' Never want! The bribe to a poor
Scotch dominie was immense; Fian could not withstand it, and at once
enlisted among 'the Devil's Own.' As his first act of service, he had
the pleasure of burning down Master Trumbill's house. The next night
Beelzebub paid him another visit, and put his mark upon him with a
rod. Thereafter he was found lying in his chamber in a trance, during
which, he said, he was carried in the spirit over many mountains, and
accomplished an aërial circumnavigation of the globe. In the future he
attended all the nightly conferences of witches and fiends held
throughout Lothian, displaying so much energy and capacity that the
devil appointed him to be his 'registrar and secretary.'
The first convention at which he was present assembled in the parish
church of North Berwick, a breezy, picturesque seaport at the mouth of
the Forth, about sixteen miles from Preston Pans. Satan occupied the
pulpit, and delivered 'a sermon of doubtful speeches,' designed for
their encouragement. His servants, he said, should never want, and
should ail nothing, so long as their hairs were on, and they let no
tears fall from their eyes. He bade them spare not to do evil, and
advised them to eat, drink, and be merry: after which edifying
discourse they did homage to him in the usual indecent manner. Fian,
as I have said, was an evil-living man, and needed no exhortation from
the devil to do wicked things. In the course of his testimony he
invented, as was so frequently the strange practice of persons accused
of witchcraft, the most extravagant fictions--as, for instance: One
night he supped at the miller's, a few miles from Tranent; and as it
was late when the revel ended, one of the miller's men carried him
home on horseback. To light them on their way through the dark of
night, Fian raised up four candles on the horse's ears, and one on the
staff which his guide carried; their great brightness made the
midnight appear as noonday; but the miller's man was so terrified by
the phenomenon that, on his return home, he fell dead.
Let us next turn to the confession of Agnes Sampson, 'the wise wife of
Keith,' as she was popularly called. She was charged with having done
grave injury to persons who had incurred her displeasure; but she
seems, when all fictitious details are thrust aside, to have been
simply a shrewd and sagacious old Scotchwoman, with much force of
character, who made a decent living as a herb-doctor. Archbishop
Spottiswoode describes her as matronly in appearance, and grave of
demeanour, and adds that she was composed in her answers. Yet were
those answers the wildest and most extraordinary utterances
imaginable, and, if they be truly recorded, they convict her of
unscrupulous audacity and unfailing ingenuity.
She affirmed that her service to the devil began after her husband's
death, when he appeared to her in mortal likeness, and commanded her
to renounce Christ, and obey him as her master. For the sake of the
riches he promised to herself and her children, she consented; and
thereafter he came in the guise of a dog, of which she asked
questions, always receiving appropriate replies. On one occasion,
having been summoned by the Lady Edmaston, who was lying sick, she
went out into the garden at night, and called the devil by his
terrestrial or mundane _alias_ of Elva. He bounded over the stone wall
in the likeness of a dog, and approached her so close that she was
frightened, and charged him by 'the law he believed in' to keep his
distance. She then asked him if the lady would recover; he replied in
the negative. In his turn he inquired where the gentlewomen, her
daughters, were; and being informed that they were to meet her in the
garden, said that one of them should be his leman. 'Not so,' exclaimed
the wise wife undauntedly; and the devil then went away howling, like
a whipped schoolboy, and _hid himself in the well_ until after supper.
The young gentlewomen coming into the bloom and perfumes of the
garden, he suddenly emerged, seized the Lady Torsenye, and attempted
to drag her into the well; but Agnes gripped him firmly, and by her
superior strength delivered her from his clutches. Then, with a
terrible yell, he disappeared.
Yet another story: Agnes, with Geillis Duncan and other witches,
desiring to be revenged on the deputy bailiff, met on the bridge at
Fowlistruther, and dropped a cord into the river, Agnes Sampson
crying, 'Hail! Holloa!' Immediately they felt the end of the cord
dragged down by a great weight; and on drawing it up, up came the
devil along with it! He inquired if they had all been good servants,
and gave them a charm to blight Seton and his property; but _it was
accidentally diverted in its operation, and fell upon another
person_--a touch of realism worthy of Defoe!
Euphemia Macalzean, a lady of high social position, daughter and
heiress of Lord Cliftonhall (who was eminent as lawyer, statesman, and
scholar), seems to have been involved in this welter of intrigue,
conspiracy, and deception, through her adherence to Bothwell's
faction, and her devotion to the Roman communion. Her confession was
as grotesque and unveracious as that of any of her associates. She was
made a witch (she said) through the agency of an Irishwoman 'with a
fallen nose,' and, to perfect herself in the craft, had paid another
witch, who resided in St. Ninian's Row, Edinburgh, for 'inaugurating'
her with 'the girth of ane gret bikar,' revolving it 'oft round her
head and neck, and ofttimes round her head.' She was accused of having
administered poison to her husband, her father-in-law, and some other
persons; and whatever may be thought of the allegations of sorcery and
witchcraft, this heavier charge seems to have been well-founded.
Euphemia said that her acquaintance with Agnes Sampson began with her
first accouchement, when she applied to her to mitigate her pains, and
she did so by transferring them to a dog. At her second accouchement,
Agnes transferred them to a cat.
As a determined enemy of the Protestant religion, Satan was inimical
to King James's marriage with a Protestant princess, and to break up
an alliance which would greatly limit his power for evil, he
determined to sink the ship that carried the newly-married couple on
their homeward voyage. His first device was to hang over the sea a
very dense mist, in the hope that the royal ship would miss her
course, and strike on some dangerous rock. When this device failed,
Dr. Fian was ordered to summon all the witches to meet their master at
the haunted kirk of North Berwick. Accordingly, on All-Hallow-mass
Eve, they assembled there to the number of two hundred; and each one
embarking in 'a riddle,' or sieve,[46] they sailed over the ocean
'very substantially,' carrying with them flagons of wine, and making
merry, and drinking 'by the way.' After sailing about for some time,
they met with their master, bearing in his claws a cat, which had
previously been drawn nine times through the fire. Handing it to one
of the warlocks, he bade him cast it into the sea, and shout 'Hola!'
whereupon the ocean became convulsed, and the waters seethed, and the
billows rose like heaving mountains. On through the storm sailed this
eerie company until they reached the Scottish coast, where they
landed, and, joining hands, danced in procession to the kirk of North
Berwick, Geillis Duncan going before them, playing a reel upon her
Jew's-harp, or trump--formerly a favourite musical instrument with
the Scotch peasantry--and singing:
'Cummer, go ye before; cummer, go ye;
Gif ye will not go before, cummer, let me!'
Having arrived at their rendezvous, they danced round it
'withershins'--that is, in reverse of the apparent motion of the sun.
Dr. Fian then blew into the keyhole of the door, which opened
immediately, and all the witches and warlocks entered in. It was
pitch-dark; but Fian lighted the tapers by merely blowing on them, and
their sudden blaze revealed the devil in the pulpit, attired in a
black gown and hat. The description given of the fiend reveals the
stern imagination of the North, and is characteristic of the 'weird
sisters' of Scotland, who form, as Dr. Burton remarks, so grand a
contrast to 'the vulgar grovelling parochial witches of England.' His
body was hard as iron; his face terrible, with a nose like an eagle's
beak; his eyes glared like fire; his voice was gruff as the sound of
the east wind; his hands and legs were covered with hair, and his
hands and feet were armed with long claws. On beholding him, witches
and warlocks, with one accord, cried: 'All hail, master!' He then
called over their names, and demanded of them severally whether they
had been good and faithful servants, and what measure of success had
attended their operations against the lives of King James and his
bride--which surely he ought to have known! Gray Malkin, a foolish old
warlock, who officiated as beadle or janitor, heedlessly answered,
That nothing ailed the King yet, God be thanked! At which the devil,
in a fury, leaped from the pulpit, and lustily smote him on the ears.
He then resumed his position, and delivered his sermon, commanding
them to act faithfully in their service, and do all the evil they
could. Euphemia Macalzean and Agnes Sampson summoned up courage enough
to ask him whether he had brought an image or picture of the King,
that, by pricking it with pins, they might inflict upon its living
pattern all kinds of pain and disease. The devil was fain to
acknowledge that he had forgotten it, and was soundly rated by
Euphemia for his carelessness, Agnes Sampson and several other women
seizing the opportunity to load him with reproaches on their
respective accounts.
On another occasion, according to Agnes Sampson, she, Dr. Fian, and a
wizard of some energy, named Robert Grierson, with several others,
left Grierson's house at Preston Pans in a boat, and went out to sea
to 'a tryst.' Embarking on board a ship, they drank copiously of good
wine and ale, after which they sank the ship and her crew, and
returned home. And again, sailing from North Berwick in a boat like a
chimney, they saw the devil--in shape and size resembling a huge
hayrick--rolling over the great waves in front of them. They went on
board a vessel called _The Grace of God_, where they enjoyed, as
before, an abundance of wine and 'other good cheer.' On leaving it,
the devil, who was underneath the ship, raised an evil wind, and it
perished.
Some of these stories proved to be too highly coloured even for the
credulity of King James; and he rightly enough exclaimed that the
witches were, like their master, 'extraordinary liars.' It is said,
however, that he changed his opinion after Agnes Sampson, in a private
conference which he accorded to her, related the details of a
conversation between himself and the Queen that had taken place under
such circumstances as to ensure inviolable secrecy. It is curious that
a very similar story is told of Jeanne Darc--whom our ancestors burned
as a witch--and King Charles VI. of France.
Despite the machinations of the devil and the witches, King James and
Queen Anne, as we know, escaped every peril, and reached Leith in
safety. The devil sourly remarked that James was 'a man of God,' and
was evidently inclined to let him alone severely; but the Preston Pans
conspirators, instigated, perhaps, by some powerful personages who
kept prudently in the background, resolved on another attempt against
their sovereign's life. On Lammas Eve (July 31, 1590), nine of the
ringleaders, including Dr. Fian, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia Macalzean,
and Barbara Napier, with some thirty confederates, assembled at the
New Haven, between Musselburgh and Preston Pans, at a spot called the
Fairy Holes, where they were met by the devil in the shape of a black
man, which was 'thought most meet to do the turn for the which they
were convened.' Agnes Sampson at once proposed that they should make a
final effort for the King's destruction. The devil took an
unfavourable view of the prospects of their schemes; but he promised
them a waxen image, and directed them to hang up and roast a toad, and
to lay its drippings--mixed with strong wash, an adder's skin, and
'the thing on the forehead of a new-foaled foal'--in James's path, or
to suspend it in such a position that it might drip upon his body.
This precious injunction was duly obeyed, and the toad hung up where
the dripping would fall upon the King, 'during his Majesty's being at
the Brig of Dee, the day before the common bell rang, for fear the
Earl Bothwell should have entered Edinburgh.' But the devil's
foreboding was fulfilled, and the conspirators missed their aim, the
King happening to take a different route to that by which he had been
expected.
It is useless to repeat more of these wild and desperate stories, or
to inquire too closely into their origin. Fact and fiction are so
mixed up in them, and the embellishments are so many and so bold, that
it is difficult to get at the nucleus of truth; but, setting aside the
witch or supernatural element, we seem driven to the conclusion that
these persons had combined together for some nefarious purpose.
Whether they intended to compass the King's death by the superstitious
practices which the credulity of the age supposed to be effective, or
whether these practices were intended as a cover for surer means,
cannot now be determined. Nor can we pretend to say whether all who
were implicated in the plot by the confession of Geillis Duncan were
really guilty. Dr. Fian, at all events, protested his innocence to
the last; and with regard to him and others, the evidence adduced was
painfully inadequate. But they were all convicted and sentenced to
death. In the case of Barbara Napier, the majority of the jury at
first acquitted her on the principal charges; but the King was highly
indignant, and threatened them with a trial for 'wilful error upon an
assize.' To avoid the consequences, they threw themselves upon the
King's mercy, and were benevolently 'pardoned.' Poor Barbara Napier
was hanged. So was Dr. Fian, on Castle Hill, Edinburgh (in January,
1592), and burned afterwards. So were Agnes Sampson, Agnes Thomson,
and their real or supposed confederates. The punishment of Euphemia
Macalzean was exceptionally severe. Instead of the ordinary sentence,
directing the criminal to be first strangled and then burnt, it was
ordered that she should be 'bound to a stake, and burned in ashes,
_quick_ to the death.' This fate befell her on June 25, 1591.
It was an unhappy result of this remarkable trial that it confirmed
King James in his belief that he possessed a rare faculty for the
detection of witches and the discovery of witchcraft. Continuing his
investigation of the subject with fanatical zeal, he published in
Edinburgh, in 1597, the outcome of his researches in his
'Dæmonologie'--an elaborate treatise, written in the form of a
dialogue, the spirit of which may be inferred from its author's
prefatory observations: 'The fearful abounding,' he says, 'at this
time and in this country, of these detestable slaves of the devil,
the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch
in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I
protest) to serve for a show of mine own learning and ingene, but only
(moved of conscience) to press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve
the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most
certainly practised, and that the instrument thereof merits most
severely to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two,
principally in our age; whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is
not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such thing as
witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying
of spirits. The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a
public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for them
impunity, he plainly betrays himself to have been one of that
profession.'
Not only is King James fully convinced of the existence of witchcraft,
but he is determined to treat it as a capital crime. 'Witches,' he
affirms, 'ought to be put to death, according to the laws of God, the
civil and imperial law, and the municipal law of all Christian
nations; yea, to spare the life, and not strike whom God bids strike,
and so severely punish so odious a treason against God, is not only
unlawful, but, doubtless, as great a sin in the magistrate as was
Saul's sparing Agag.' Conscious that the evidence brought against the
unfortunate victims was generally of the weakest possible character,
he contends that because the crime is generally abominable, evidence
in proof of it may be accepted which would be refused in other
offences; as, for example, that of young children who are ignorant of
the nature of an oath, and that of persons of notoriously ill-repute.
And the sole chance of escape which he offers to the accused is that
of the ordeal. 'Two good helps,' he says, 'may be used: the one is the
finding of their marks, and the trying the insensibleness thereof; the
other is their floating on the water, for, as in a secret murther, if
the dead carcase be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer,
it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were raging to the Heaven,
for revenge of the murtherer (God having appointed that secret
supernatural sign for trial of that secret unnatural crime), so that
it appears that God hath appointed (for a supernatural sign of the
monstrous impiety of witches), that the water shall refuse to receive
them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of
baptism, and wilfully refused the benefit thereof; no, not so much as
their eyes are able to shed tears at every light occasion when they
will; yea, although it were dissembling like the crocodiles, God not
permitting them to dissemble their obstinacy in so horrible a crime.'
* * * * *
Encouraged by the practice and teaching of their sovereign, the people
of Scotland, whom the anthropomorphism of their religious creed
naturally predisposed to believe in the personal appearances of the
devil, undertook a regular campaign against those ill-fated
individuals whom malice or ignorance, or their own mental or physical
peculiarities, or other causes, branded as his bond-slaves and
accomplices. Religious animosity, moreover, was a powerful factor in
stimulating and sustaining the mania; and the Scotch Calvinist enjoyed
a double gratification when some poor old woman was burned both as a
witch and a Roman Catholic. It has been calculated that, in the period
of thirty-nine years, between the enactment of the Statute of Queen
Mary and the accession of James to the English throne, the average
number of persons executed for witchcraft was 200 annually, making an
aggregate of nearly 8,000. For the first nine years about 30 or 40
suffered yearly; but latterly the annual death-roll mounted up to 400
and 500. James at last grew alarmed at the prevalence of witchcraft in
his kingdom, and seems to have devoted no small portion of his time to
attempts to detect and exterminate it.
In 1591 the Earl of Bothwell was imprisoned for having conspired the
King's death by sorcery, in conjunction with a warlock named Richie
Graham. Graham was burned on March 8, 1592. Bothwell was not brought
to trial until August 10, 1593, when several witches bore testimony
against him, but he obtained an acquittal.
In 1597, on November 12, four women were tried by the High Court of
Justiciary, in Edinburgh, on various charges of witchcraft. Their
names are recorded as Christina Livingstone, Janet Stewart, Bessie
Aikin, and Christina Sadler. Their trials, however, present no special
features of interest.
Passing over half a century, we come to the recrudescence of the
witch-mania, which followed on the restoration of Charles II. Mr. R.
Burns Begg has recently edited for the Society of Antiquaries of
Scotland a report of various witch trials in Forfar and
Kincardineshire, in the opening years of that monarch's reign, which
supplies some further illustrations of the characteristics of Scottish
witchcraft. Here we meet with the strange word 'Covin' or 'Coven'
(apparently connected with 'Covenant' or 'Convention') as applied to
an organization or guild of witches. In 1662 the Judge-General-Depute
for Scotland tried thirteen 'Coviners,' who had been detected by the
efforts of a committee consisting of the ministers and schoolmasters
of the district, together with the 'Laird of Tullibole.' Of these
thirteen unfortunate victims only one was a man. All were found guilty
by the jury, and sentenced to death. Eleven suffered at the stake; one
died before the day of execution, and one was respited on account of
her pregnancy. The evidence was of the usual extraordinary tenor, and
the so-called 'confessions' of the accused were not less puzzling than
in other cases. In Mr. Begg's opinion, which seems to me well founded,
there really _was_ in and around the Crook of Devon a local Covin, or
regularly organized band of so-called witches who acted under the
direction of a person whom they believed to be Satan. He suggests that
at this period there would be many wild and unscrupulous characters,
disbanded soldiers, and others, who found their profit in the
'blinded allegiance' of the witches and warlocks. The difficulty is,
what _was_ this profit? The witches do not seem to have paid anything
in money or in kind. There are allusions which point to acts of
immorality, and in several instances one can understand that personal
enmities were gratified; but on the whole the personators of Satan had
scant reward for all their trouble. And how was it that they were
never denounced by any of their victims? How was it that the vigilance
which detected the witches never tripped up their master? How are we
to explain the diversity of Satan's appearances? At one time he was
'ane bonnie lad;' at another, an 'unco-like man, in black-coloured
clothes and ane blue bonnet;' at another, a 'black iron-hard man;' and
yet again, 'ane little man in rough gray clothes.' Occasionally he
brought with him a piper, and the witches danced together, and the
ground under them was all fireflaughts, and Andrew Watson had his
usual staff in his hand, and although he is a blind man, yet danced he
as nimbly as any of the company, and made also great merriment by
singing his old ballads; and Isabel Shyrrie did sing her song called
'Tinkletum, Tankletum.' Alas, that no obliging pen has transmitted
'Tinkletum, Tankletum' to posterity! One could point to a good many
songs which the world could have better spared. 'Tinkletum,
Tankletum'--there is something amazingly suggestive in the words;
possibilities of humour, perhaps of satire; humour and satire which
might have secured for Isabel Shyrrie a place among Scottish
poetesses, whereas now she comes before us in no more attractive
character than that of a Coviner--a deluded or self-deluding witch.
Let us next betake ourselves to the East Coast, and make the
acquaintance of Isabel Gowdie, whose 'confessions' are among the most
extraordinary documents to be met with even in the records of Scottish
witchcraft. It is impossible, I think, to overrate their psychological
interest. The first is, perhaps, the most curious; and as no summary
or condensation would do justice to its details, I shall place it
before the reader _in extenso_, with no other alteration than that of
Englishing the spelling. It was made at Auldearn on April 13, 1662, in
presence of the parish minister, the sheriff-depute of Nairn, and nine
lairds and farmers of good position:
'As I was going betwixt the towns (_i.e._, farmsteadings) of
Drumdeevin and The Heads, I met with the Devil, and there covenanted
in a manner with him; and I promised to meet him, in the night-time,
in the Kirk of Auldearn,[47] which I did. And the first thing I did
there that night, I denied my baptism, and did put the one of my hands
to the crown of my head, and the other to the sole of my foot, and
then renounced all betwixt my two hands over to the Devil. He was in
the Reader's desk, and a black book in his hand. Margaret Brodie, in
Auldearn, held me up to the Devil to be baptized by him, and he marked
me in the shoulder, and sucked out my blood at that mark, and spouted
it in his hand, and, sprinkling it on my head, said, "I baptize thee,
Janet, in my own name!" And within awhile we all removed. The next
time that I met with him was in the New Wards of Inshoch.... He was a
mickle, black, rough [hirsute] man, very cold; and I found his nature
all cold within me as spring-wall-water.[48] Sometimes he had boots,
and sometimes shoes on his feet; but still his feet are forked and
cloven. He would be sometimes with us like a deer or a roe. John
Taylor and Janet Breadhead, his wife, in Belmakeith, ... Douglas, and
I myself, met in the kirkyard of Nairn, and we raised an unchristened
child out of its grave; and at the end of Bradley's cornfieldland,
just opposite to the Mill of Nairn, we took the said child, with the
nails of our fingers and toes, pickles of all sorts of grain, and
blades of kail [colewort], and hacked them all very small, mixed
together; and did put a part thereof among the muck-heaps, and thereby
took away the fruit of his corns, etc., and we parted it among two of
our Covins. When we take corns at Lammas, we take but about two
sheaves, when the corns are full; or two stalks of kail, or thereby,
and that gives us the fruit of the corn-land or kail-yard, where they
grew. And it may be, we will keep it until Yule or Pasche, and then
divide it amongst us. There are thirteen persons [the usual number] in
my Covin.
'The last time that our Covin met, we, and another Covin, were dancing
at the Hill of Earlseat; and before that, betwixt Moynes and Bowgholl;
and before that we were beyond the Mickle-burn; and the other Covin
being at the Downie-hills, we went from beyond the Mickle-burn, and
went beside them, to the houses at the Wood-End of Inshoch; and within
a while went home to our houses. Before Candlemas we went be-east
Kinloss, and there we yoked a plough of paddocks [frogs]. The Devil
held the plough, and John Young, in Mebestown, our Officer, did drive
the plough. Paddocks did draw the plough as oxen; _quickens wor
sowmes_ [dog-grass served for traces]; a riglon's [ram's] horn was a
coulter, and a piece of a riglon's horn was a sock. We went two
several times about; and all we of the Covin went still up and down
with the plough, praying to the Devil for the fruit of that land, and
that thistles and briars might grow there.
'When we go to any house, we take meat and drink; and we fill up the
barrels with our own ... again; and we put besoms in our beds with our
husbands, till we return again to them. We were in the Earl of Moray's
house in Darnaway, and we got enough there, and did eat and drink of
the best, and brought part with us. We went in at the windows. I had a
little horse, and would say, "Horse and Hattock, in the Devil's name!"
And then we would fly away, where we would, like as straws would fly
upon a highway. We will fly like straws where we please; wild straws
and corn-straws will be horses to us, and we put them betwixt our feet
and say, "Horse and Hattock, in the Devil's name!" And when any see
these straws in a whirlwind, and do not sanctify themselves, we may
shoot them dead at our pleasure. Any that are shot by us, their souls
will go to Heaven, but their bodies remain with us, and will fly as
horses to us, as small as straws.[49]
'I was in the Downie Hills, and got meat there from the Queen of
Fairy, more than I could eat. The Queen of Fairy is heavily clothed in
white linen, and in white and lemon clothes, etc.; and the King of
Fairy is a brave man, well favoured, and broad-faced, etc. There were
elf-bulls, routing and skirling up and down there, and they affrighted
me.
'When we take away any cow's milk, we pull the tail, and twine it and
plait it the wrong way, in the Devil's name; and we draw the tedder
(so made) in betwixt the cow's hinder-feet, and out betwixt the cow's
fore-feet, in the Devil's name, and thereby take with us the cow's
milk. We take sheep's milk even so [in the same manner]. The way to
take or give back the milk again, is to cut that tedder. When we take
away the strength of any person's ale, and give it to another, we
take a little quantity out of each barrel or stand of ale, and put it
in a stoop in the Devil's name, and in his name, with our own hands,
put it amongst another's ale, and give her the strength and substance
and "heall" of her neighbour's ale. And to keep the ale from us, that
we have no power over it, is to sanctify it well. We get all this
power from the Devil; and when we seek it from him, we will him to be
"our Lord."
'John Taylor, and Janet Breadhead, his wife, in Belmakeith, Bessie
Wilson in Aulderne, and Margaret Wilson, spouse to Donald Callam in
Aulderne, and I, made a picture of clay, to destroy the Laird of
Park's male children. John Taylor brought home the clay in his plaid
nook [the corner of his plaid]; his wife broke it very small, like
meal, and sifted it with a sieve, and poured in water among it, in the
Devil's name, and wrought it very sure, like rye-bout [a stir-about
made of rye-flour]; and made of it a picture of the laird's sons. It
had all the parts and marks of a child, such as head, eyes, nose,
hands, feet, mouth, and little lips. It wanted no mark of a child, and
the hands of it folded down by its sides. It was like a pow [lump of
dough], or a flayed _egrya_ [a sucking-pig, which has been scalded and
scraped]. We laid the face of it to the fire, till it strakned
[shrivelled], and a clear fire round about it, till it was red like a
coal. After that, we would roast it now and then; each other day there
would be a piece of it well roasted. The Laird of Park's whole male
children by it are to suffer, if it be not gotten and brokin, as well
as those that are born and dead already. It was still put in and taken
out of the fire in the Devil's name. It was hung up upon a crock. It
is yet in John Taylor's house, and it has a cradle of clay about it.
Only John Taylor and his wife, Janet Breadhead, Bessie and Margaret
Wilson in Aulderne, and Margaret Brodie, these, and I, were only at
the making of it. All the multitude of our number of witches, of all
the Covins, kent [_kenned_, knew] all of it, at our next meeting after
it was made. And the witches yet that are overtaken have their own
powers, and our powers which we had before we were taken, both. But
now I have no power at all.
'Margaret Kyllie, in ... is one of the other Covin; Meslie Hirdall,
spouse to Alexander Ross, in Loanhead, is one of them; her skin is
fiery. Isabel Nicol, in Lochley, is one of my Covin. Alexander Elder,
in Earlseat, and Janet Finlay, his spouse, are of my Covin. Margaret
Haslum, in Moynes, is one; Margaret Brodie, in Aulderne, Bessie and
Margaret Wilson there, and Jane Martin there, and Elspet Nishie,
spouse to John Mathew there, are of my Covin. The said Jane Martin is
the Maiden of our Covin. John Young, in Mebestown, is Officer to our
Covin.
'Elspet Chisholm, and Isabel More, in Aulderne, Maggie Brodie ... and
I, went into Alexander Cumling's litt-house [dye-house], in Aulderne.
I went in, in the likeness of a ken [jackdaw]; the said Elspet
Chisholm was in the shape of a cat. Isabel More was a hare, and Maggie
Brodie a cat, and.... We took a thread of each colour of yarn that
was on the said Alexander Cumling's litt-fatt [dyeing-vat], and did
cast three knots on each thread, in the Devil's name, and did put the
threads in the vat, _withersones_ about in the vat in the Devil's
name, and thereby took the whole strength of the vat away, that it
could litt [dye] nothing but only black, according to the colour of
the Devil, in whose name we took away the strength of the right
colours that were in the vat.'
* * * * *
The second confession, made at Aulderne, on May 3, 1662, is not less
remarkable than the foregoing:
'... After that time there would meet but sometimes a Covin [_i.e._,
thirteen], sometimes more, sometimes less; but a Grand Meeting would
be about the end of each Quarter. There is thirteen persons in each
Covin; and each of us has one Sprite to wait upon us, when we please
to call upon him. I remember not all the Sprites' names, but there is
one called _Swin_, which waits upon the said Margaret Wilson in
Aulderne; he is still [ever] clothed in grass-green; and the said
Margaret Wilson has a nickname, called "Pickle nearest the wind." The
next Sprite is called "Rosie," who waits upon Bessie Wilson, in
Aulderne; he is still clothed in yellow; and her nickname is "Through
the cornyard." ... The third Sprite is called "The Roaring Lion," who
waits upon Isabel Nicol, in Lochlors; and [he is still clothed[50]] in
sea-green; her nickname is "Bessie Rule." The fourth Sprite is called
"Mak Hector," who [waits upon Jane[50]] Martin, daughter to the said
Margaret Wilson; he is a young-like devil, clothed still in
grass-green. [Jane Martin is[50]] Maiden to the Covin that I am of;
and her nickname is "Over the dyke with it," because the Devil [always
takes the[50]] Maiden in his hand nix time we damn "Gillatrypes;" and
when he would leap from ...[50] he and she will say, "Over the dyke
with it!" The name of the fifth Sprite is "Robert the [Rule," and he
is still clothed in[50]] sad-dun, and seems to be a Commander of the
rest of the Sprites; and he waits upon Margaret Brodie, in Aulderne.
[The name of the saxt Sprite] is called "Thief of Hell wait upon
Herself;" and he waits also on the said Bessie Wilson. The name of the
seventh [Sprite is called] "The Read Reiver;" and he is my own Spirit,
that waits on myself, and is still clothed in black. The eighth Spirit
[is called] "Robert the Jackis," still clothed in dun, and seems to be
aged. He is a glaiked, glowked Spirit! The woman's [nickname] that he
waits on is "Able and Stout!" [This was Bessie Hay.] The ninth Spirit
is called "Laing," and the woman's nickname that he waits upon is
"Bessie Bold" [Elspet Nishie]. The tenth Spirit is named "Thomas a
Fiarie," etc. There will be many other Devils, waiting upon [our]
Master Devil; but he is bigger and more awful than the rest of the
Devils, and they all reverence him. I will ken them all, one by one,
from others, when they appear like a man.
'When we raise the wind, we take a rag of cloth, and wet it in water;
and we take a beetle and knock the rag on a stone, and we say thrice
over:
'"I knock this rag upon this stane,
To raise the wind, in the Devil's name;
It shall not lie until I please again!"
When we would lay the wind, we dry the rag, and say (thrice over):
'"We lay the wind in the Devil's name,
[It shall not] rise while we [or I] like to raise it again!"
And if the wind will not lie instantly [after we say this], we call
upon our Spirit, and say to him:
'"Thief! Thief! conjure the wind, and cause it to [lie?...]"
We have no power of rain, but we will raise the wind when we please.
He made us believe [...] that there was no God beside him.
'As for Elf arrow-heads, the Devil shapes them with his own hand [and
afterwards delivers them?] to Elf-boys, who "whyttis and dightis"
[shapes and trims] them with a sharp thing like a packing-needle; but
[when I was in Elf-land?] I saw them whytting and dighting them. When
I was in the Elves' houses, they will have very ... them whytting and
dighting; and the Devil gives them to us, each of us so many, when....
Those that dightis them are little ones, hollow, and boss-backed
[humped-backed]. They speak gowstie [roughly] like. When the Devil
gives them to us, he says:
'"Shoot these in my name,
And they shall not go heall hame!"
And when we shoot these arrows (we say):
'"I shoot you man in the Devil's name,
He shall not win heall hame!
And this shall be always true;
There shall not be one bit of him on lieiw" [on life, alive].
'We have no bow to shoot with, but spang [jerk] them from the nails of
our thumbs. Sometimes we will miss; but if they twitch [touch], be it
beast, or man, or woman, it will kill, tho' they had a jack [a coat of
armour] upon them. When we go in the shape of a hare, we say thrice
over:
'"I shall go into a hare,
With sorrow, and such, and mickle care;
And I shall go in the Devil's name,
Ay, until I come home [again!]."
And instantly we start in a hare. And when we would be out of that
shape, we will say:
'"Hare! hare! God send thee care!
I am in a hare's likeness just now,
But I shall be in a woman's likeness even [now]."
When we would go in the likeness of a cat, we say thrice over:
'"I shall go [intill ane cat],
[With sorrow, and such, and a black] shot!
And I shall go in the Devil's name,
Ay, until I come home again!"
And if we [would go in a crow, then] we say thrice over:
'"I shall go intill a crow,
With sorrow, and such, and a black [thraw!
And I shall go in the Devil's name,]
Ay, until I come home again!"
And when we would be out of these shapes, we say:
'"Cat, cat [or crow, crow], God send thee a black shot [or black
thraw!]
I was a cat [or crow] just now,
But I shall be [in a woman's likeness even now].
Cat, cat" [as _supra_].
If we go in the shape of a cat, a crow, a hare, or any other likeness,
etc., to any of our neighbours' houses, being witches, we will say:
'"[I (or we) conjure] thee go with us [or me]!"
And presently they become as we are, either cats, hares, crows, etc.,
and go [with us whither we would. When] we would ride, we take
windle-straws, or been-stakes [bean-stalks], and put them betwixt our
feet, and say thrice:
'"Horse and Hattock, horse and go,
Horse and pellatris, ho! ho!"
And immediately we fly away wherever we would; and lest our husbands
should miss us out of our beds, we put in a besom, or a three-legged
stool, beside them, and say thrice over:
'"I lay down this besom [or stool] in the Devil's name,
Let it not stir till I come home again!"
And immediately it seems a woman, by the side of our husband.
'We cannot turn in[to] the likeness of [a lamb or a dove?] When my
husband sold beef, I used to put a swallow's feather in the head of
the beast, and [say thrice],
'"[I] put out this beef in the Devil's name,
That mickle silver and good price come hame!"
'I did even so [whenever I put] forth either horse, nolt [cattle],
webs [of cloth], or any other thing to be sold, and still put in this
feather, and said the [same words thrice] over, to cause the
commodities sell well, and ... thrice over--
'"Our Lord to hunting he [is gone]
.......... marble stone,
He sent word to Saint Knitt ..."
'When we would heal any sore or broken limb, we say thrice over....
'"He put the blood to the blood, till all up stood;
The lith to the lith, Till all took nith;
Our Lady charmed her dearly Son, With her tooth and her tongue,
And her ten fingers--
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!"
'And this we say thrice over, stroking the sore, and it becomes whole.
2ndlie. For the Bean-Shaw [bone-shaw, _i.e._, the sciatica], or pain
in the haunch: "We are here three Maidens charming for the bean-shaw;
the man of the Midle-earth, blew beaver, land-fever, maneris of
stooris, the Lord fleigged (terrified) the Fiend with his holy candles
and yard foot-stone! There she sits, and here she is gone! Let her
never come here again!" 3rdli. For the fevers, we say thrice over, "I
forbid the quaking-fevers, the sea-fevers, the land-fevers, and all
the fevers that God ordained, out of the head, out of the heart, out
of the back, out of the sides, out of the knees, out of the thighs,
from the points of the fingers to the nibs of the toes; net fall the
fevers go, [some] to the hill, some to the heep, some to the stone,
some to the stock. In St. Peter's name, St. Paul's name, and all the
Saints of Heaven. In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost!" And when we took the fruit of the fishes from the fishers, we
went to the shore before the boat would come to it; and we would say,
on the shore-side, three several times over:
'"The fishers are gone to the sea,
And they will bring home fish to me;
They will bring them home intill the boat,
But they shall get of them but the smaller sort!"
So we either steal a fish, or buy a fish, or get a fish from them [for
naught], one or more. And with that we have all the fruit of the whole
fishes in the boat, and the fishes that the fishermen themselves will
have will be but froth, etc.
'The first voyage that ever I went with the rest of our Covins was
[to] Ploughlands; and there we shot a man betwixt the plough-stilts,
and he presently fell to the ground, upon his nose and his mouth; and
then the Devil gave me an arrow, and caused me shoot a woman in that
field; which I did, and she fell down dead.[51] In winter of 1660,
when Mr. Harry Forbes, Minister at Aulderne, was sick, we made a bag
of the galls, flesh, and guts of toads, pickles of barley, parings of
the nails of fingers and toes, the liver of a hare, and bits of
clouts. We steeped all this together, all night among water, all
hacked (or minced up) through other. And when we did put it among the
water, Satan was with us, and learned us the words following, to say
thrice over. They are thus:
'1st. "He is lying in his bed; he is lying sick and sore;
Let him lie intill his bed two months and [three] days more!
'2nd. "Let him lie intill his bed; let him lie intill it sick and sore;
Let him lie intill his bed months two and three days more!
'3rd. "He shall lie intill his bed, he shall lie in it sick and sore;
He shall lie intill his bed two months and three days more!"
'When we had learned all these words from the Devil, as said is, we
fell all down upon our knees, with our hair down over our shoulders
and eyes, and our hands lifted up, and our eyes [upon] the Devil, and
said the foresaid words thrice over to the Devil, strictly, against
[the recovery of] Master Harry Forbes [from his sickness]. In the
night time we came in to Mr. Harry Forbes's chamber, where he lay,
with our hands all smeared out of the bag, to swing it upon Mr. Harry,
when he was sick in his bed; and in the daytime [one of our] number,
who was most familiar and intimate with him, to wring or swing the bag
[upon the said Mr. Harry, as we could] not prevail in the night time
against him, which was accordingly done. Any of ... comes in to your
houses, or are set to do you evil, they will look uncouth--like,
thrown ... hurly-like, and their clothes standing out. The Maiden of
our Covin, Jane Martin, was [.... We] do no great matter without our
Maiden.
'And if a child be forespoken [bewitched], we take the cradle ...
through it thrice, and then a dog through it; and then shake the belt
above the fire [... and then cast it] down on the ground, till a dog
or cat go over it, that the sickness may come [... upon the dog or
cat].'
* * * * *
With these extended quotations the reader will probably be satisfied,
and in concluding my account of Isabel Gowdie, I must now adopt a
process of condensation.
Among other freaks and fancies of a disordered imagination, Isabel
declared that she merited to be stretched upon a rack of iron, and
that if torn to pieces by wild horses, the punishment would not exceed
the measure of her iniquities. These iniquities comprehended every act
attributed by the superstition of the time to the servants of the
devil, which had been carefully gathered up by this monomaniac from
contemporary witch-tradition. The cruellest thing was, that she
involved so large a number of innocent persons in the peril into
which she herself had recklessly plunged, naming nearly fifty women,
and I forget how many men, as her associates or accomplices. She
affirmed that they dug up from their graves the bodies of unbaptized
infants, and having dismembered them, made use of the limbs in their
incantations. That when they wished to destroy an enemy's crops, they
yoked toads to his plough; and on the following night the devil, with
this strange team, drove furrows into the land, and blasted it
effectually. The devil, it would seem, was so long and so incessantly
occupied with high affairs in Scotland, that surely the rest of the
world must have escaped meanwhile the evils of his interference!
Witches, added Isabel, were able to assume almost any shape, but their
usual choice was that of a hare, or perhaps a cat. There was some risk
in either assumption. Once it happened that Isabel, in her disguise of
a hare, was hotly pursued by a pack of hounds, and narrowly escaped
with her life. When she reached her cottage-door she could feel the
hot breath of her pursuers on her haunches; but, contriving to slip
behind a chest, she found time to speak the magic words which alone
could restore her to her natural shape, namely:
'Hare! hare! God send thee care!
I am in a hare's likeness now;
But I shall be a woman e'en now.
Hare! hare! God send thee care!'
If witches, while wearing the shape of hare or cat, were bitten by the
dogs, they always retained the marks on their human bodies. When the
devil called a convention of his servants, each proceeded through the
air--like the witches of Lapland and other countries--astride on a
broomstick [or it might be on a corn or bean straw], repeating as they
went the rhyme:
'Horse and paddock, horse and go,
Horse and pellatris, ho! ho!'
They usually left behind them a broom, or three-legged stool, which,
properly charmed and placed in bed, assumed a likeness to themselves
until they returned, and prevented suspicion. This seems to have been
the practice of witches everywhere. Witches specially favoured by
their master were provided with a couple of imps as attendants, who
boasted such very mundane names as 'The Roaring Lion,' 'Thief of
Hell,' 'Ranting Roarer,' and 'Care for Nought'--a great improvement on
the vulgar monosyllables worn by the English imps--and were dressed,
as already described, in distinguishing liveries: sea-green,
pea-green, grass-green, sad-dun, and yellow. The witches were never
allowed--at least, not in the infernal presence--to call themselves,
or one another, by their baptismal names, but were required to use the
appellations bestowed on the devil when he rebaptized them, such as
'Blue Kail,' 'Raise the Wind,' 'Batter-them-down Maggie,' and 'Able
and Stout.' The reader will find in the reports of the trial much more
of this grotesque nonsense--the vapourings of a distempered brain. The
judges, however, took it seriously, and Isabel Gowdie, or Gilbert,
and many of her presumed accomplices, were duly strangled and burned
(in April, 1662).
FOOTNOTES:
[46] So the witch in 'Macbeth' (Act I., sc. 3) says:
'In a sieve I'll thither sail.'
[47] It is a singular circumstance, as Pitcairn remarks, that in
almost all the confessions of witches, or at least of the Scottish
witches, their initiation, and many of their meetings, are said to
have taken place within churches, churchyards, and consecrated ground;
and a certain ritual, in imitation, or mockery, of the forms of the
Church, is uniformly said to have been gone through.
[48] In the Forfarshire reports, alluded to on p. 332, the witches
always speak of the devil's body and kiss as deadly cold.
[49] Pitcairn remarks, with justice, that the above details are,
perhaps, in all respects the most extraordinary in the history of
witchcraft of this or of any other country. Isabel Gowdie must have
been a woman with a powerful and rank imagination, who, had she lived
in the present day, might, perhaps, have produced a work of fiction of
the school of Zola.
[50] There are mutilations in the original manuscript, and the
bracketed words are conjectural.
[51] These, it is needless to say, were pure inventions, and by no
means amusing ones.
CASE OF JANET WISHART.
The case of Janet Wishart, wife of John Leyis, carries us away to the
North of Scotland. It presents some peculiar features, and therefore I
shall put it before the reader, with no more abridgment than is
absolutely needful. It is of much earlier date than the preceding.[52]
'i. In the month of April, or thereabout, in 1591, in the "gricking"
of the day, [that is, in the dawn,] Janet Wishart, on her way back
from the blockhouse and Fattie, where she had been holding conference
with the devil, pursued Alexander Thomson, mariner, coming forth of
Aberdeen to his ship, ran between him and Alexander Fidler, under the
Castle Hill, as swift, it appeared to him, as an arrow could be shot
forth of a bow, going betwixt him and the sun, and cast her "cantrips"
in his way. Whereupon, the said Alexander Thomson took an immediate
"fear and trembling," and was forced to hasten home, take to his bed,
and lie there for the space of a month, so that none believed he would
live;--one half of the day burning in his body, as if he had been
roasting in an oven, with an extreme feverish thirst, "so that he
could never be satisfied of drink," the other half of the day melting
away his body with an extraordinarily cold sweat. And Thomson, knowing
she had cast this kind of witchcraft upon him, sent his wife to
threaten her, that, unless she at once relieved him, he would see that
she was burnt. And she, fearing lest he should accuse her, sent him by
the two women a certain kind of beer and some other drugs to drink,
after which Thomson mended daily, and recovered his former health.'
It is to be noted that Janet flatly denied the coming of Mrs. Thomson
on any such errand.
'ii. Seven years before, on St. Bartholomew's Day, when Andrew Ardes,
webster [weaver], in his play, took a linen towel, and put it about
the said Janet's neck, not fearing any evil from her, or that she
would be offended, Janet, "in a devilish fury and wodnes" [madness],
exclaimed, "Why teasest thou me? Thou shalt die! I shall give bread to
my bairns this towmound [twelvemonth], but thou shalt not bide a month
with thine to give them bread." And immediately after the said
Andrew's departure from her, he took to his bed for the space of eight
days: the one half of the day roasting in his whole body as in a
furnace, and the other half with a vehement sweat melting away; so
that, by her cruel murther and witchcraft, the said Andrew Ardes died
within eight days. And the day after his departure, his widow,
"contracting a high displeasure," took to her bed, and within a month
deceased; so that all their bairns are now begging their meat.'
This was testified to be true by Elspeth Ewin, spouse to James Mar,
mariner, but was denied by the accused.
'iii. Twenty-four years ago, in the month of May, when she dwelt on
the School Hill, next to Adam Mair's, she was descried by Andrew
Brabner the younger, John Leslie, of the Gallowgate, Robert Sanders,
wright, Andrew Simson, tailor, and one Johnson, who were then
schoolboys, stealing forth from the said Adam Mair's yard, at two in
the morning, "greyn growand bear;" and instantly, being pointed out by
the said scholars to the wife of the said Adam, she, in her fury,
burst forth upon the scholars: "Well have ye schemed me, but I shall
gar the best of you repent!" And she added that, ere four in the
afternoon, she would make as many wonder at them as should see them.
Upon the same day, between two and three in the afternoon, the said
scholars passed to the Old Watergang in the Links to wash themselves;
and after they had done so, and dried, the said John Leslie and
Johnson took a race beside the Watergang, and desperately threw
themselves into the midst of the Watergang, and were drowned, through
the witchcraft which Janet had cast upon them. And thus, as she had
promised, she did murder them.'
This was testified by Robert Sanders and Andrew Simson, but was denied
by the accused.
'iv. Sixteen years since, or thereby, she [the accused] and Malcolm
Carr's wife, having fallen at variance and discord, she openly vowed
that the latter should be confined to her bed for a year and a day,
and should not make for herself a single cake: immediately after which
discord, the said Malcolm's wife went to her own house, sought her
bed, and lay half a year bed-stricken by the witchcraft Janet had cast
upon her, according to her promise; one half of the day burning up her
whole body as in a fiery furnace, the other half melting away her body
with an extraordinary sweat, with a _congealed coldness_.'
v. She was also accused of lending to Meryann Nasmith a pair of
head-sheets in childbed, into which she put her witchcraft: which
sheets, as soon as she knew they had taken heat about the woman's
head, immediately she went and took them from her; and before she
[Janet] was well out of the house, Meryann went out of her mind, and
was bound hand and foot for three days.
vi. Three years since, or thereby, James Ailhows, having been a long
time in her service, Janet desired him to continue with her, and on
his refusing, 'Gang where you please,' she said, 'I will see that you
do not earn a single cake of bread for a year and a day.' And as soon
as he quitted her service, he was seized with an extremely heavy
sickness and (wodnes) delirium, with a continual burning heat and cold
sweating, and lay bedfast half a year, according to her promise,
through the devilish witchcraft she had cast upon him. So that he was
compelled to send to Benia for another witch to take the witchcraft
from him: who came to this town and washed him in water _running
south_, and put him through a girth, with some other ceremonies that
she used. And he paid her seventeen marks, and by her help recovered
health again.
vii. For twenty years past she continually and nightly, after eleven
o'clock, when her husband and servants had gone to their beds, put on
a great fire, and kept it up all night, and sat before it using
witchcraft, altogether contrary to the nature of well-living persons.
And on those nights when she did not make up the fire, she went out of
the house, and stayed away all night where she pleased.
viii. She caused ...., then in her service, and lately shepherd to Mr.
Alexander Fraser, to take certain drugs of witchcraft made by her,
such as old shoon, and cast them in the fire of John Club, stabler,
her neighbour; since which time, through her witchcraft, the said John
Club has become completely impoverished.
ix. She and Janet Patton having fallen into variance and discord,
Janet Patton called the witch 'Karling,' to whom she answered that she
would give her to understand if she was a witch, and would try her
skill upon her. And immediately afterwards, Janet Patton [like
everybody else concerned in these mysterious doings] took to her bed,
with a vehement, great, and extraordinary sickness, for one half the
day, from her middle up, burning as in a fiery furnace, with an
insatiable drought, which she could not slake; the other half-day,
melting away with sweat, and from her middle down as cold as ice, so
that through the witchcraft cast upon her she died within a month.
x. The particulars given of the case of James Lowe, stabler, are
almost the same. He refused to lend his kill and barn, and on the same
day he was seized with this remarkable sickness--half a day burning
hot, and half a day ice-cold. On his death-bed he accused Janet
Wishart of being the cause of his misfortune, saying, "That if he had
lent to her his kill and kilbarn, he wald haf bene ane lewand man."
His wife and only son died of the same kind of disease, and his whole
gear, amounting to more than £3,000, was altogether wracked and thrown
away, so that there was left no memory of the said James, succession
of his body, nor of their gear.
xi. John Pyet, stabler, is named as another victim.
xii. There is an air of novelty about the next case, that of John
Allan, cutler, Janet Wishart's son-in-law. Quarrelling with his wife,
he 'dang' her, 'whereupon Mistress Allan complained to her mother, who
immediately betook herself to her son-in-law's house, 'bostit' him,
and promised to gar him repent that ever he saw or kent her. Shortly
afterwards, either she or the devil her master, in the likeness of a
brown tyke, came nightly for five or six weeks to his window, forced
it open, leaped upon the said John, dang and buffeted him, while
always sparing his wife, who lay in bed with him, so that the said
John became half-wod and furious.' And this persecution continued,
until he threatened to inform the ministry and kirk-session.
xiii. The next case must be given verbatim, it is so striking an
example of ignorant prejudice:
'Four years since, or thereby, she came in to Walter Mealing's
dwelling-house, in the Castlegate of Aberdeen, to buy wool, which they
refused to sell. Thereafter, she came to the said Walter's bairn,
sitting on her mother's knee, and the said Walter played with her. And
she said, "This is a comely child, a fine child," without any further
words, and would not say "God save her!" And before she reached the
stair-foot, the bairn, by her witchcraft, in presence of both her
father and mother, "cast her gall," changed her colour like dead, and
became as weak as "ane pair of glwffis," and melted continually away
with an extraordinary sweating and extreme drought, which that same
day eight days, at the same hour, she came in first, and then the
bairn departed. And for no request nor command of the said Walter, nor
others whom he directed, she would not come in again to the house to
"visie" the bairn, although she was oft and divers times sent for,
both by the father and mother of the bairn, and so by her witchcraft
she murdered the bairn.'
xiv. On Yule Eve, in '94, at three in the morning, Janet, remaining in
Gilbert Mackay's stair in the Broadgate, perceived Bessie Schives,
spouse of Robert Blinschell, going forth of her own house to the
dwelling-house of James Davidson, notary, to his wife, who was in
travail. She came down the stair, and cast her cantrips and witchcraft
in her way, and the said Bessie being in perfect health of body, and
as blithe and merry as ever she was in her days, when she went out of
the same James Davidson's house, or ever she could win up her own
stair, took a great fear and trembling that she might scarcely win up
her own stair, and immediately after her up-coming, went to her naked
bed, lay continually for the space of eighteen weeks fast bed-sick,
bewitched by Janet Wishart, the one half-day roasting as in a fiery
furnace, with an extraordinary kind of drought, that she could not be
slaked, and the other half-day in an extraordinary kind of sweating,
melting, and consuming her body, as a white burning candle, which kind
of sickness is a special point of witchcraft; and the said Bessie
Schives saw none other but Janet only, who is holden and reputed a
common witch.
xv. At Midsummer was a year or thereby, Elspeth Reid, her
daughter-in-law, came into her house at three in the morning, and
found her sitting, mother naked as she was born, at the fireside, and
another old wife siclike mother naked, sitting between her
shoulders[!], making their cantrips, whom the said Elspeth seeing,
after she said 'God speed,' immediately went out of the house;
thereafter, on the same day, returned again, and asked of her, what
she was doing with that old wife? To whom she answered, that she was
charming her. And as soon as the said Elspeth went forth again from
Janet Wishart's house, immediately she took an extraordinary kind of
sickness, and became 'like a dead senseless fool,' and so continued
for half a year.
xvi. She [Janet] and her daughter, Violet Leyis, desired ... her woman
to go with her said daughter, at twelve o'clock at night, to the
gallows, and cut down the dead man hanging thereon, and take a part of
all his members from him, and burn the corpse, which her servant
would not do, and, therefore, she was instantly sent away.
xvii. The following deposition is, however, the most singular of all:
Twelve years since, or thereby, Janet came into Katherine Rattray's,
behind the Tolbooth, and while she was drinking in the said
Katherine's cellar, Katherine reproved her for drinking in her house,
because, she said, she was a witch. Whereupon, she took a cup full of
ale, and cast it in her face, and said that if she were indeed a
witch, the said Katherine should have proof of it; and immediately
after she had quitted the cellar, the barm of the said Katherine's ale
all sank to the bottom of the stand, and no had abaid [a bead] thereon
during the space of sixteen weeks. And the said Katherine finding
herself 'skaithit,' complained to her daughter, Katherine Ewin, who
was then in close acquaintance with Janet, that she had bewitched her
mother's ale; and immediately thereafter the said Katherine Ewin
called on Janet, and said, 'Why bewitched you my mother's ale?' and
requested her to help the same again. Which Janet promised, if
Katherine Ewin obeyed her instructions ... to rise early before the
sun, without commending herself to God, or speaking, and neither
suining herself nor her son sucking on her breast; to go, still
without speaking, to the said Katherine Rattray's house, and not to
cross any water, nor wash her hands; and enter into the said Katherine
Rattray's house, where she would find her servant brewing, and say to
her thrice, 'I to God, and thou to the devil!' and to restore the
same barm where it was again; 'and to take up thrie dwattis on the
southt end of the gauttreyis, and thair scho suld find ane peice of
claithe, fowr newikit, with greyn, red, and blew, and thrie corss of
clewir girss, and cast the same in the fyir; quhilk beand cassin in,
her barm suld be restorit to hir againe, lyik as it was restorit in
effect.' And the said Katherine Ewin, when cracking [gossiping] with
her neighbours, said she could learn them a charm she had gotten from
Janet Wishart, which when the latter heard, she promised to do her an
evil turn, and immediately her son, sucking on her breast, died. And
at her first browst, or brewing, thereafter, the whole wort being
played and put in 'lumes,' the doors fast, and the keys at her own
belt, the whole wort was taken away, and the haill lumes fundin dry,
and the floor dry, and she could never get trial where it yird to. And
when the said Katherine complained to the said Janet Wishart, and dang
herself and her good man both, for injuries done to her by taking of
her son's life and her wort [which Katherine seems to have thought of
about equal value], she promised that all should be well, giving her
her draff for payment. And the said Katherine, with her husband
Ambrose Gordon, being in their beds, could not for the space of twenty
days be quit of a cat, lying nightly in their bed, between the two,
and taking a great bite out of Ambrose's arm, as yet the place
testifies, and when they gave up the draff, the cat went away.
Some fourteen more charges were brought against her. She was tried on
February 17, 1596, before the Provost and Baillies of Aberdeen, and
found guilty upon eighteen counts of being a common witch and
sorcerer. Sentence of death by burning was recorded against her, and
she suffered on the same day as another reputed witch, Isabel Cocker.
The expenses of their execution are preserved in the account-books of
the Dean of Guild, 1596-1597, and prove that witch-burning was a
luxury scarcely within the reach of the many.
JANETT WISCHART AND ISSBEL COCKER.
_Item._ For twentie loades of peattes to burne
thame xl_sh._
_Item._ For ane Boile of Coillis xxiiii_sh._
_Item._ For four Tar barrellis xxvi_sh._ viii_d._
_Item._ For fyr and Iron barrellis xvi_sh._ viii_d._
_Item._ For a staik and dressing of it xvi_sh._
_Item._ For four fudoms [fathoms?] of Towis iiii_sh._
_Item._ For careing the peittis, coillis, and
barrellis to the Hill viii_sh._ iiii_d._
_Item._ To on Justice for their execution xiii_sh._ iiii_d._
--------------------
cliv _shillings_.
--------------------
On several occasions commissions were issued by the King, in favour of
the Provost and some of the Baillies of the burgh, and the Sheriff of
the county, for the purpose of 'haulding Justice Courtis on Witches
and Sorceraris.' These commissioners gave warrants in their turn to
the minister and elders of each parish in the shire, to examine
parties suspected of witchcraft, and to frame a 'dittay' or indictment
against such persons. It was an inevitable result that all the
scandalous gossip of the community was assiduously collected; while
any individual who had become, from whatsoever cause, an object of
jealousy or dislike to her neighbours, was overwhelmed by a mass of
hearsay or fictitious evidence, and by the conscious or unconscious
exaggerations of ignorance, credulity, or malice.
As an example of the kind of stuff stirred up by this parochial
inquisition, I shall take the return furnished to the commissioners by
Mr. John Ross, minister of Lumphanan:
'i. _Elspet Strathauchim_, in Wartheil, is indicted to have charmed
Maggie Clarke, spouse to Patrick Bunny, for the fevers, this last
year, with "ane sleipth and ane thrum" [a sleeve and thread]. She is
indicted, this last Hallow e'en, to have brought forth of the house a
burning coal, and buried the same in her own yard. She is indicted to
have bewitched Adam Gordon, in Wark, and to have been the cause of his
death, and that because, she coming out of his service without his
leave, he detained some of her gear, which she promised to do; and
after his death wanted [to have it believed] that she had gotten
"assythment" of him. She is indicted to have said to Marcus Gillam, at
the Burn of Camphil, that none of his bairns should live, because he
would not marry her; which is come to pass, for two of them are dead.
She is indicted continually to have resorted to Margaret Baine her
company.
'ii. _Isabel Forbes._--She is indicted to have bewitched Gilbert
Makim, in Glen Mallock, with a spindle, a "rok," and a "foil;" as
Isabel Ritchie likewise testified.
'iii. _James Og_ is indicted to have passed on Rud-day, five years
since, through Alexander Cobain's corn, and have taken nine stones
from his "avine rig" [corn-rick], and cast on the said Alexander's
"rig," and to have taken nine "lokis" [handfuls] of meal from the said
Alexander's "rig," and cast on his own. He is indicted to have
bewitched a cow belonging to the said Alexander, which he bought from
Kristane Burnet, of Cloak; this cow, though his wife had received milk
from her the first night, and the morning thereafter, gave no milk
from that time forth, but died within half a year. He is indicted to
have passed, five years since, on Lammas-Day, through the said
Alexander's corn, and having "gaine nyne span," to have struck the
corn with nine strokes of a white wand, so that nothing grew that year
but "fichakis." He is indicted that, in the year aforesaid or
thereabouts, having corn to dry, he borrowed fire from his neighbour,
haiffing of his avine them presently; and took a "brine" of the corn
on his back, and cast it three times "woodersonis" [or "withersonis,"
_ut supra_, that is, west to east, in the direction contrary to the
sun's course] above the "kill." He is indicted that, three years
since, Alexander Cobaine being in Leith, with the Laird of Cors, his
"wittual," he came up early one morning, at the back of the said
Alexander's yard, with a dish full of water in his hand, and to have
cast the water in the gate to the said Alexander's door, and then
perceiving that David Duguid, servant to the said Alexander, was
beholding him, to have fled suddenly; which the said David also
testifies.
'iv. _Agnes Frew._--She is indicted to have taken three hairs out of
her own cow's tail, and to have cut the same in small pieces, and to
have put them in her cow's throat, which thereafter gave milk, and the
neighbours' none. Also, she is indicted that [she took] William
Browne's calf in her axter, and charmed the same, as, also, she took
the clins [hoofs] from forefeitt aff it, with a piece of "euerry
bing," and caused the said William's wife to "yeird" the same; which
the said William's wife confessed, albeit not in this manner. Also,
she took up Alexander Tailzier's calf, lately [directly] after it was
calved, and carried it three times about the cow. Also, she was seen
casting a horse's fosser on a cow.
'v. _Isabel Roby._--She is indicted to have bidden her gudeman, when
he went to St. Fergus to buy cattle, that if he bought any before his
home-coming, he should go three times "woodersonis" about them, and
then take three "ruggis" off a dry hillock, and fetch home to her.
Also, that dwelling at Ardmair, there came in a poor man craving alms,
to whom she offered milk, but he refused it, because, as he then
presently said, she had three folks' milk and her own in the pan; and
when Elspet Mackay, then present, wondered at it, he said, "Marvel
not, for she has thy farrow kye's milk also in her pan." Also, she is
commonly seen in the form of a hare, passing through the town, for as
soon as the hare vanishes out of sight, she appears.
'vi. _Margaret Rianch_, in Green Cottis, was seen in the dawn of the
day by James Stevens embracing every nook of John Donaldson's house
three times, who continually thereafter was diseased, and at last
died. She said to John Ritchie, when he took a tack [a piece of
ground] in the Green Cottis, that his gear from that day forth should
continually decay, and so it came to pass. Also, she cast a number of
stones in a tub, amongst water, which thereafter was seen dancing.
When she clips her sheep, she turns the bowl of the shears three times
in their mouth. Also, James Stevens saw her meeting John Donaldson's
"hoggs" [sheep a year old] in the burn of the Green Cottis, and
casting the water out between her feet backward, in the sheep's face,
and so they all died. Also she confessed to Patrick Gordon, of
Kincragie, and James Gordon, of Drumgase, that the devil was in the
bed between her and William Ritchie, her harlot, and he was upon them
both, and that if she happened to die for witchcraft, that he
[Ritchie] should also die, for if she was a devil, he was too.
'There are three of these persons, Elspeet Strathauchim, James Og, and
Agnes Frew, whose accusations the Presbytery of Kincardine, within
whose bounds they dwell, counted insufficient, having duly considered
the whole circumstances, always remitted them to the trial of an
assize, if the judges thought it expedient.
'[Signed] Mr. Jhone Ros,
'Minister at Lumphanan.'
It would not be easy to find a more painful exhibition of clerical
ignorance and incapacity. Probably many of the allegations which Mr.
John Ross records are true, as the practice of charms was common
enough among the peasantry both of Scotland and England, and is even
yet not wholly extinct; but, taken altogether, they did not amount to
witchcraft, the very essence of which was a compact with the devil,
and in no one of the preceding cases is such a compact mentioned. And
one must take the existence of the gross superstition and credulity
which is here disclosed to be irrefutable testimony that, as a pastor
and teacher, Mr. John Ross was a signal failure at Lumphanan.
* * * * *
I have already alluded to those pathetic instances of self-delusion in
which the reputed witch has been her own enemy, and furnished the
evidence needed for her condemnation in her own confession--a
confession of acts which she must have known had never occurred;
building up a strange fabric of fiction, and perishing beneath its
weight. It would seem as if some of these unfortunate women came to
believe in themselves because they found that others believed in them,
and assumed that they really possessed the powers of witchcraft
because their neighbours insisted that it was so. Nor will this be
thought such an improbable explanation when it is remembered that
history affords more than one example of prophets and founders of new
religions whom the enthusiastic devotion of their followers has
persuaded into a belief in the authenticity of the credentials which
they themselves had originally forged, and the truth of the
revelations which they had invented.
From this point of view a profound interest attaches to the official
'dittay' or accusation against one Helen Fraser, who was convicted and
sentenced to death in April, 1597, since it shows that she was
condemned principally upon the evidence which she herself supplied:
'i. John Ramsay, in Newburght, being sick of a consuming disease, sent
to her house, in Aikinshill, to seek relief, and was told by her that
she would do what lay in her power for the recovery of his health; but
bade him keep secret whatever she spake or did, because the world was
evil, and spoke no good of such mediciners. She commanded the said
John to rise early in the morning, to eat "sourrakis" about sunrise,
while the dew was still upon them; also to eat "valcars," and to make
"lavrie" kale and soup. Moreover, to sit down in a door, before the
fowls flew to their roost, and to open his breast, that when the fowls
flew to the roost over him he might receive the wind of their wings
about his breast, for that was very profitable to loose his
heart-pipes, which were closed. But before his departure from her, she
made him sit down, bare-headed, on a stool, and said an orison thrice
upon his head, in which she named the Devil.
'ii. _Item._--The said Helen publicly confessed in Foverne, after her
apprehension, that she was a common abuser of the people; and that,
further, to sustain herself and her bairns, she pretended knowledge
which she had not, and undertook to do things which she could not.
This was her answer, when she was accused by the minister of Foverne,
for that she abused the people, and when he inquired the cause of her
evil report throughout the whole country. This she confessed upon the
green of Foverne, before the laird, the minister, and reader of
Foverne, Patrick Findlay in Newburght, and James Menzies at the New
Mills of Foverne.
'iii. _Item._--Janet Ingram, wife to Adam Finnie, dwelling for the
time at the West burn, in Balhelueis, being sick, and affirming
herself to be bewitched, for she herself was esteemed by all men to be
a witch, she sent for the said Helen Frazer to cure her. The said
Helen came, and tarried with her till her departure and burial, and at
her coming assured the said Janet that within a short time she would
be well enough. But the sickness of the said Janet increased, and was
turned into a horrible fury and madness, in such sort that she always
and incessantly blasphemed, and pressed at all times to climb up the
wall after the "heillis" and scraped the wall with her hands. After
that she had been grievously vexed for the space of two days from the
coming of Helen Frazer, her mediciner, to her, she departed this life.
Being dead, her husband went to charge his neighbours to convey her
burial, but before his returning, or the coming of any neighbour to
the carrying of the corpse, the said Helen Frazer, together with two
or three daughters of the said Janet (whereof one yet living, to wit,
Malye Finnie, in the Blairtoun of Balhelueis, is counted a witch),
had taken up the corpse, and had carried her, they alone, the half of
the distance to the kirk, until they came to the Moor of Cowhill; when
the said Adam and others his neighbours came to them, and at their
coming the said Helen fled away through the moss to Aikinshill, and
went no further towards the kirk.
'iv. _Item._--A horse of Duncan Alexander, in Newburcht, being
bewitched, the said Helen translated the sickness from the horse to a
young cow of the said Duncan; which cow died, and was cast into the
burn of the Newburcht, for no man would eat her.
'v. _Item._--The said Helen made a compact with certain laxis fishers
of the Newburcht, at the kirk of Foverne, in Mallie Skryne's house,
and promised to cause them to fish well, and to that effect received
of them a piece of salmon to handle at her pleasure for accomplishing
the matter. Upon the morrow she came to the Newburcht, to the house of
John Ferguson, a laxis fisher, and delivered unto him in a closet four
cuts of salmon with a penny; after that she called him out of his own
house, from the company that was there drinking with him, and bade him
put the same in the horn of his coble, and he should have a dozen of
fish at the first shot; which came to pass.
'vi. _Item._--The said Helen, by witchcraft, enticed Gilbert Davidson,
son to William Davidson, in Lytoune of Meanye, to love and marry
Margaret Strauthachin (in the Hill of Balgrescho) directly against
the will of his parents, to the utter wreck of the said Gilbert.
'vii. _Item._--At the desire of the said Margaret Strauthachin, by
witchcraft, the said Helen made Catherine Fetchil, wife to William
Davidson, furious, because she was against the marriage, and took the
strength of her left side and arm from her; in the which fury and
feebleness the said Catherine died.
'viii. _Item._--The said Helen, at the desire of the foresaid Margaret
Strauthachin, bewitched William Hill, dwelling for the time at the
Hill of Balgrescho, through which he died in a fury [_i.e._, a fit of
delirium].
'ix. Moreover, at the desire foresaid, the said Helen by witchcraft
slew an ox belonging to the said William; for while Patrick Hill, son
to the said William, and herd to his father, called in the cattle to
the fold, at twelve o'clock, the said Helen was sitting in the yeite,
and immediately after the outcoming of the cattle out of the fold, the
best ox of the whole herd instantly died.
'x. _Item._--The said Helen counselled Christane Henderson, vulgarly
called mickle Christane, to put one hand to the crown of her head, and
the other to the sole of her foot, and so surrender whatever was
between her hands, and she should want nothing that she could wish or
desire.
'xi. _Item._--The said Christane Henderson, being henwife in Foverne,
the young fowls died thick; for remedy whereof, the said Helen bade
the said Christane take all the chickens or young fowls, and draw
them through the link of the crook, and take the hindmost, and slay
with a fiery stick, which thing being practised, none died thereafter
that year.
'xii. _Item._--When the said Helen was dwelling in the Moorhill of
Foverne, there came a hare betimes, and sucked a milch cow pertaining
to William Findlay, at the Mill of the Newburght, whose house was
directly afornent the said Helen's house, on the other side of the
Burn of Foverne, wherethrough the cow pined away, and gave blood
instead of milk. This mischief was by all men attributed to the said
Helen, and she herself cannot deny but she was commonly evil spoken of
for it, and affirmed, after her apprehension at Foverne, that she was
so slandered.
'xiii. _Item._--When Alexander Hardy, in Aikinshill, departed this
life, it grieved and troubled his conscience very mickle, that he had
been a defender of the said Helen, and especially that he, accompanied
with Malcolm Forbes, travailed, against their conscience, with sundry
of the assessors when she suffered an assize, and especially with the
Chancellor of the Assize, in her favour, he knowing evidently her to
be guilty of death.
'xiv. _Item._--The said Helen being a domestic in the said Alexander
Hardy's house, disagreed with one of the said Alexander's servants,
named Andrew Skene, and intending to bewitch the said servant, the
evil fell upon Alexander, and he died thereof.
'xv. _Item._--When Robert Goudyne, now in Balgrescho, was dwelling in
Blairtoun of Balheluies, a discord fell out betwixt Elizabeth
Dempster, nurse to the said Robert for the time, and Christane
Henderson, one of the said Helen's familiars, as her own confession
aforesaid purports, and the country well knows. Upon the which
discord, the said Christane threatened the said Elizabeth with an evil
turn, and to the performing thereof, brought the said Helen Frazer to
the said Robert's house, and caused her to repair oft thereto. After
what time, immediately both the said Elizabeth and the infant to whom
she gave suck, by the devilry of the said Helen, fell into a consuming
sickness, whereof both died. And also Elspet Cheyne, spouse to the
said Robert, fell into the selfsame sickness, and was heavily diseased
thereby for the space of two years before the recovery of his health.
'xvi. _Item._--By witchcraft the said Helen abstracted and withdrew
the love and affection of Andrew Tilliduff of Rainstoune, from his
spouse Isabel Cheyne, to Margaret Neilson, and so mightily bewitched
him, that he could never be reconciled with his wife, or remove his
affection from the said harlot; and when the said Margaret was
begotten with child, the said Helen conveyed her away to Cromar to
obscure the fact.
'xvii. _Item._--Wherever the said Helen is known, or has repaired
there many years bygone, she has been, and is reported by all, of
whatsoever estate or sex, to be a common and abominable witch, and to
have learned the same of the late Maly Skene, spouse to the late
Cowper Watson, with whom, during her lifetime, the said Helen had
continual society. The said Maly was bruited to be a rank witch, and
her said husband suffered death for the same crime.
'xviii. _Item._--When Robert Merchant, in the Newbrucht, had
contracted marriage, and holden house for the space of two years with
the late Christane White, it happened to him to pass to the Moorhill
of Foverne, to sow corn to the late Isabel Bruce, the relict of the
late Alexander Frazer, the said Helen Frazer being familiar and
actually resident in the house of the said Isabel, she was there at
his coming: from the which time forth the said Robert _found his
affection violently and extraordinarily drawn away from the said
Christane to the said Isabel_, a great love being betwixt him and the
said Christane always theretofore, and no break of love, or discord,
falling out or intervening upon either of their parts, which thing the
country supposed and spake to be brought about by the unlawful
travails of the said Helen.
'[Signed] Thomas Tilideff,
'Minister, at Fovern, with my hand.
'_Item._--A common witch by open voice and common fame.'
* * * * *
I have given this 'dittay' in full, from a conviction that no summary
would do justice to its terrible simplicity. Upon the evidence which
it afforded, Helen Frazer was brought before the Court of Justiciary,
in Aberdeen, on April 21, 1597, and found guilty in 'fourteen points
of witchcraft and sorcery.'
The burning of witches went merrily on, so that the authorities of
Aberdeen were compelled to get in an adequate stock of fuel. We note
in the municipal accounts, under the date of March 10, that there was
'bocht be the comptar, and laid in be him in the seller in the
Chappell of the Castel hill, ane chalder of coillis, price thairof,
with the bieing and metting of the same, xvi_lib._ iiii_sh._' As is
usually the case, the frequency of these sad exhibitions whetted at
first the public appetite for them; it grew by what it fed on. One of
the items of expense in the execution of a witch named Margaret Clerk,
is for carrying of 'four sparris, _to withstand the press of the
pepill_, quhairof thair was twa broken, viiis. viiid.'
Among the victims committed to the flames in 1596-97, we read the
names of 'Katherine Fergus and [Sculdr], Issobel Richie, Margaret Og,
Helene Rodger, Elspet Hendersoun, Katherine Gerard, Christin Reid,
Jenet Grant, Helene Frasser, Katherine Ferrers, Helene Gray, Agnes
Vobster, Jonat Douglas, Agnes Smelie, Katherine Alshensur, and ane
other witche, callit ....'--seventeen in all. That during their
imprisonment they were treated with barbarous rigour, may be inferred
from the following entries:
_Item._ To Alexander Reid, smyth, for _twa
pair of scheckellis_ to the Witches in the
Stepill xxxii_sh._
_Item._ To John Justice, for _burning vpon the
cheik_ of four seurerall personis suspect of
witchcraft and baneschit xxvi_sh._ viii_d._
_Item._ Givin to Alexander Home for macking
of _joggis, stapillis, and lockis_ to the
witches, during the haill tyme forsaid xlvi_sh._ viii_d._
Expense on Witches aucht-score, xlii_li._ xvii_sh._ iiii_d._
On September 21, 1597, the Provost, Baillies and Council of Aberdeen
considered the faithfulness shown by William Dun, the Dean of Guild,
in the discharge of his duty, 'and, besides this, _his extraordinarily
taking pains in the burning of the great number of the witches burnt
this year_, and on the four pirates, and bigging of the port on the
Brig of Dee, repairing of the Grey Friars kirk and steeple thereof,
and thereby has been abstracted from his trade of merchandise,
continually since he was elected in the said office. Therefore, in
recompense of his extraordinary pains, and in satisfaction thereof
(not to induce any preparative to Deans of Guild to crave a recompense
hereafter), but to encourage others to travail as diligently in the
discharge of their office, granted and assigned to him the sum of
forty-seven pounds three shillings and fourpence, owing by him of the
rest of his compt of the unlawis [fines] of the persons convict for
slaying of black fish, and discharged him thereof by their presents
for ever.'
At length a wholesome reaction took place; the public grew weary of
the number of executions, and, encouraged by this change of
sentiment, persons accused of witchcraft boldly rebutted the charge,
and laid complaints against their accusers for defamation of
character. In official circles, it is true, a belief in the alleged
crime lingered long. As late as 1669, 'the new and old Councils taking
into their serious consideration that many malefices were committed
and done by several persons in this town, who are _mala fama_, and
suspected guilty of witchcraft upon many of the inhabitants of this
town, several ways, and that it will be necessary for suppressing the
like in time coming, and for punishing the said persons who shall be
found guilty; therefore they do unanimously conclude and ordain that
any such person, who is suspect of the like malefices, may be seized
upon, and put in prisoun, and that a Commission be sent for, for
putting of them to trial, that condign justice may be executed upon
them, as the nature of the offence does merit.' No more victims,
however, were sacrificed; nor does it appear that any accusation of
witchcraft was preferred.
According to Sir Walter Scott, a woman was burnt as a witch in
Scotland as late as 1722, by Captain Ross, sheriff-depute of
Sutherland; but this was, happily, an exceptional barbarity, and for
some years previously the pastime of witch-burning had practically
been extinct. It is a curious fact that educated Scotchmen, as I have
already noted, retained their superstition long after the common
people had abandoned it. In 1730, Professor Forbes, of Glasgow,
published his 'Institutes of the Law of Scotland,' in which he spoke
of witchcraft as 'that black art whereby strange and wonderful things
are wrought by power derived from the devil,' and added: 'Nothing
seems plainer to me than that there may be and have been witches, and
that perhaps such are now actually existing.' Six years later, the
Seceders from the Church of Scotland, who professed to be the true
representatives of its teaching, strongly condemned the repeal of the
laws against witchcraft, as 'contrary,' they said, 'to the express
letter of the law of God.' But they were hopelessly behind the time;
public opinion, as the result of increased intelligence, had numbered
witchcraft among the superstitions of the past, and we may confidently
predict that its revival is impossible.
FOOTNOTE:
[52] From the 'Records of the Burgh of Aberdeen,' printed for the
Spalding Club, 1841.