The trial of Katherine Craigie (1640), had a certain dash of poetry and
romance in it, not often found in these woeful stories. Friend Robbie--now
friend, now foe--lay a-dying, and Katherine must needs go see him with
the rest. The wild waves were beating round that rugged Orkney Isle, when
Katherine went over the heather to Robbie's house. "What now, Robbie! ye
are going to die!" she said. "I grant that I prayed ill for yow, and now I
see that prayer hath taken effect. Jonet," quoth she, turning to the wife,
"if I durst trust in yow, I sould knaw quhat lyeth on your guidman and
holdis him downe. I sould tell whether it was ane hill spirit, ane kirk
spirit, or ane water spirit that so troubles him." Jonet was too anxious
not to promise secrecy or help, or anything else that Katherine wished; so
the next morning, before daylight, Katherine brought three stones to
Robbie's house, and put them into the fire, where they remained until
after sunset. While the night was passing, they were taken from the fire,
and put under the threshold of the door, then, in the early morning,
thrown, one after the other, into a pail of water, where Jonet heard one
of them "chirle and chirme." Upon which Katherine said that it was a kirk
spirit that troubled the guidman Robbie, and he must be washed with the
water in which the stones had "chirled and chirmed." This ceremony was
repeated thrice, and at the third time Katherine herself washed Robbie, on
whom this unusual cleansing had most powerful and beneficial effects. When
one thinks of the normal state of filth in which these honest people
lived, it is not surprising if any form of ablution proved of a most
supernatural benefit. But Katherine Craigie got into the trouble from
which there was no escape; and friend Robbie went back to his dirt,
persuaded of the Satanic agency of a bath.
Quite as full of poetic feeling was James Knarstoun's manner of charming
with stones, when he took one stone for the ebb, another for the hill, and
the third for the kirkyard, listening carefully as to what stone should
make the "bullering" noise that would betray the tormenting spirit, and
enable the magician to send him home again: a process through which
Katherine Carey went (1617) when she found that her patient was troubled
with the spirit of the sea, which would not let him bide in peace and
quiet. Such touches as these redeem the subject from the sad monotony of
sorrow and death which else pervades it from end to end, and lift it from
the domain of the devil into the brighter and lovelier world of the
Spirits of Nature.