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