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