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