In the parish of Innerkip, on March 4, 1662, Marie Lamont, a "young Woman
of the adge of Eighteen Yeares," offered herself for voluntary confession.
She said that five years ago Kattrein Scot taught her to take kyes' milk.
She told her to go out in misty mornings with a hair rope (harrie
tedder), which she was to draw over the mouth of a mug, saying, "In God's
name, God send us milk, God sent it, and mickle of it." By which means she
and Kattrein got much of their neighbours' milk which they made into
butter and cheese. Also she said, that two years and a half since, the
devil came to them at Kattrein Scot's house, where many of them were
present, and gave them all wine to drink and wheat bread to eat, and they
danced and were very merry, the devil shaking hands with them, and she
delivering herself over to him in baptism. And at her baptism she was
given the name of "Clowts," and bid to call the devil "Serpent." Further,
"Shee confessed that at that sam tym the devil nipit her upon the right
syd, qlk was very painful for a tym, but yairefter he straikit it with his
hand, and healed it; this she confesses to be his mark." At a certain
meeting which she spoke of, when she and the rest went to raise storms to
hinder the Killing fishery, the devil came to them in the likeness of a
brown dog, but she and Kattrein were as cats, and in this form they ran
into Allan Orr's house and took a bite of a herring lying in a barrel.
They then put it back again, and Allan Orr's wife, afterwards finishing
the herring, took heavy disease, and died. The reason of this malicious
act was, that Allan Orr had put Margaret Holm (one of the cats) out of her
house, and this was the manner in which she chose to be
revenged--"threitening in wrath, that he and his wife sould not be long
together." Many other things did she confess: one of which was how the
devil once "convoyed her home in the dawing; and when shee was com near
the house wherein she was a servant, her master saw a waff of him as he
went away from her." Another time she and some other witches met at the
back gate of Ardgowand, where his Cloutieship appeared in the likeness of
a black man with cloven feet, directing them to take white sand and cast
it about the gates of Ardgowand, and about the minister's house; and while
they were about the business he turned them into the likeness of cats, by
shaking his hands above them. And at another time they went to cast the
longston into the sea, to cause storms and shipwrecks, and the devil
kissed them as they went away, apparently better pleased than ordinarily
with his Clowts and Kats. All these things did poor Marie Lamont, aged
eighteen, confess to the minister and Laird of Innerkip; and they, not
knowing the virtue of purgatives and port wine, nor understanding the
value of rest and silence, took the poor young soul at her word, and found
her guilty of all the crimes and follies with which a diseased body, and a
mind overset and charged, had prompted her to accuse herself.