The year after Sir George Maxwell's affair there was another case at
Haddington which gave full employment to the authorities. Margaret
Kirkwood, a woman of some means, hanged herself one Sunday morning during
church time. Her servant, Lizzie Mudie, who was at kirk like a good
Christian, suddenly called out, to the great disturbance of the
congregation. She began repeating all the numbers--one, two, three, four,
&c.--till she came to fifty-nine; then she stopped and cried, "The turn is
done!" When it was afterwards found that Margaret Kirkwood had hung
herself just about that moment, and that her age was fifty-nine, Lizzie
Mudie was taken up and searched. She was found a witch by her marks, and
soon after confessed, delating five women and one man as her accomplices.
But the five women and the one man were obstinate, and would not say that
they were guilty, though they were pricked and searched and marks found on
them. Lord Fountainhall was present at the searching of the man, and he
gives an account of it: "I did see the man's body searched and pricked in
two sundry places, one at the ribs and the other at his shoulder. He
seemed to find no pain, but no blood followed. The marks were blewish,
very small, and had no protuberancy above the skin. The pricker said there
were three sorts of witches' marks: the horn mark, it was very hard; the
breiff mark, it was very little; and the feeling mark, in which they had
sense and pain." "I remained very dissatisfied with this way of trial,"
says my Lord farther on, "as most fallacious; and the fellow could give me
no account of the principles of his art, but seemed to be a drunken,
foolish rogue." One of Lizzie Mudie's five victims was an old woman of
eighty, named Marion Phinn, who had always borne a good character, "never
being stained with the least ignominy, far less with the abominable crime
of witchcraft." But though she petitioned the council to free her on her
own caution, she was kept hand-fast and foot-bound in gaol, being far too
dangerous in the helplessness and feebleness of her eighty years to be let
out with the chance of bewitching mankind to death. This she could do, and
work all other miracles; but she could not help herself to sunlight and
liberty.