The Orkney and Shetland islanders were rich in witchcraft superstitions.
They had all the Norwegian beliefs in fullest, ripest quality, and held to
everything that had been handed down to them from Harald Harfagre and his
followers. Kelpies and trows, and brownies and trolls, which somehow or
other went out with taxation and agriculture, peopled every stream and
every meadow, and witches were as many as there were men who loved nature,
or women who had a faculty for healing and the instinct of making pets.
Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century a woman was adjudged
a witch because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple
of familiars in the form of black crows or corbies, which hopped on each
side of her, all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of
these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the
imp took the form of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being;
as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the
devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while
her husband was engaged at the Haaf. According to the same authority
too,[65] not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy,
a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity
against a boat's crew that had set off from the Haaf. The day was
cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to
raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a
_cap_, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm
suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an
old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verse or two she sent her little
child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was _whummilled_ (turned
upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was
afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder; and presently sent the
child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a
strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang
more loud and fierce; and again she sent. The child came back saying the
waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried
out, "The turn is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word
that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned.
The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a
boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a
well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally
agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the
old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.
It was no unusual thing for men and women of otherwise peaceable and
cleanly life to tamper with the elements in those dim and distant days.
Even seventy years ago a man named John Sutherland of Papa Stour was in
the habit of getting a fair wind for weather-bound vessels: and the Knoll
of Kibister, in the island of Bressay, now called Luggie's Knowe,[66]
testifies by its name to the skill and sorrowful fate of a well-known
wizard of the seventeenth century. There on that steep hill used Luggie to
live, and in the stormiest weather managed somehow always to have his bit
of fresh fish: angling with the most perfect success, even when the boats
could not come into the bay. When out at sea Luggie had nothing to do but
cast out his lines to have as plentiful a dinner as he could desire. "He
would out of Neptune's lowest kitchen, bring cleverly up fish well-boiled
and roasted;" but strange and mischancy as the art was, his companions got
accustomed to it, "and would by a natural courage make a merry meal
thereof, not doubting who was cook." But Luggie's cleverness proved fatal
to him. Men were not even adept fishers in those days without danger, and
jealousy and fear helped to swell the reputation of his natural skill into
supernatural power: so he was tried for a sorcerer, and burnt at a stake
at Scalloway. We need hardly wonder at the fate of poor Luggie,
considering the times. If it were possible to hang two women on the 26th
of January, 1681--actually to hang them in the sight of God and this
loving pitiful human world, "for calling kings and bishops perjured bloody
men,"[67] we need not wonder to what lengths superstition in any of its
other forms was carried. We have made a stride since then, with
seven-leagued boots winged at the heels.
A family of bright young sons[68] lived on one of the Shetland islands. A
certain Norwegian lady had reason to think herself slighted by one of
them, and she swore she would have her revenge. The sons were about to
cross a voe or ferry; but one was to take his shelty, while the rest were
to go by the boat. Mysteriously the shelty was found to have been loosed
from its tether, and was gone; so all the heirs male of the race were
under the necessity of going by the boat across the voe. It was the close
of day---a mild windless evening: not a ripple was on the water, not a
cloud in the sky; and no one on either bank heard a cry or saw the waters
stir. But the youths never returned home. When they were searched for the
next day they could nowhere be found: only the boat drifting to the shore,
unharmed and unsteered. When the deed was done the shelty was brought back
to its tether as mysteriously as it had been taken away.
Trials and executions still went on; some at Dumfries, and some at
Coldingham[69] where Margaret Polwart was publicly rebuked for using
charms and incantations to recover her sick child whom "that thief
Christian Happer had wronged." But as a neighbour told her very wisely,
"They that chant cannot charm, or they that lay on cannot take off the
disease, or they that do wrong to any one, cannot recover them," so what
was the good of all her notorious cantrips with Jean Hart and Alison
Nisbet--the last of such evil fame that she had lately been scratched for
a witch--that is, had blood drawn above her breath? Margaret Polwart might
be thankful that she got off with only a rebuke for using charms in place
of drugs, and consorting with witches to undo witches' work. In 1696,
Janet Widdrow and Isobel Cochrane were brought to trial, but not burnt for
the present; but two poor creatures, M'Rorie and M'Quicken, did not
escape: nor some others, of no special dramatic interest.
And now we come to that marvellous piece of disease and imposture
combined, the notorious case of "Bargarran's Daughter."