That same year also Sir John Maxwell, of Pollok, and some other gentlemen,
were commissioned to try two poor women, Mary Millar and Elspeth M'Ewen,
and if guilty adjudge them to death; which they were found to be, and
adjudged accordingly; and a few months after, Margaret Laird--still in
Renfrewshire--was reputed to have been "under ane extraordinary and most
lamentable trouble, falling into strange and horrible fits, judged by all
who have seen her to be preternatural, arising from the devil and his
instruments." The suspected witches who were accused of troubling her,
were seized and put upon their trial. So was Mary Morrison, spouse of
Francis Duncan; but her husband petitioned so earnestly for her release
for sake of her "numerous poor family" starving in neglect at home, and
there being no kind of proof against her, she was at length released and
set at liberty. "The Lord-Advocate soon after reported to the Privy
Council a letter he had received from the Sheriff of Renfrewshire, stating
that 'the persons imprisoned in that county as witches are in a starving
condition, and that those who informed against them are passing from them,
and the sheriff says he will send them in prisoners to Edinburgh Tolbooth,
unless they be quickly tried.' His lordship was recommended to ask the
sheriff to support the prisoners till November next, when they would
probably be tried, and the charges would be disbursed by the treasury. A
distinct allowance of a groat a day was ordered on the 12th of January,
1699, for each of the Renfrewshire witches."[71]
In July of the same year, Ross-shire contributed a famous quota. Twelve
luckless creatures were reported at once as being guilty of the
"diabolical crimes and charms of witchcraft," and by the 2nd of January,
1700, two of them had confessed, and were sentenced to such arbitrary
punishment as the committee might think proper. "This is the first
appearance of an inclination in the central authorities to take mild views
of witchcraft," says Chambers; but we have not seen the last of capital
punishments, for on the 20th of November, 1702, Margaret Myles was hanged
at Edinburgh. That she was a witch was proved not only by her own
confession, but by her inability to say the Lord's Prayer, even when the
minister, Mr. George Andrews, tried to teach her. When he desired her to
pray "her heart was so obdured that she answered she could not; for, as
she confessed, she was in covenant with the devil, who had made her
renounce her baptism." He then wished her to say the Lord's Prayer after
him, and she began, but she would say nothing but "Our Father which wart
in heaven," and could not by any means be got to say the right word. He
then reproached her, saying, "How could she bid him pray for her, since
she could not pray for herself?" and, singing two verses of the 51st
Psalm, he made her show a little penitence. Then he essayed her again,
trying to make her repeat after him, "I renounce the devil," but she would
only say, "I unce the devil;" "for by no means would she say distinctly
that she renounced the devil, and adhered unto her baptism, but that she
unced the devil, and hered unto her baptism. The only sign of repentance
she gave was after the napkin had covered her face, for then she said,
'Lord, take me out of the devil's hands, and put me in God's.'"
The next year, "The Rigwoodie Witch," lean Marion Lillie of Spott, was had
before the Kirk Session to account for her dealings in the village. She
was a passionate-tongued old dame, who had handled roughly one of her
neighbours while in the condition that looked forward to Mrs. Gamp and the
caudle-cup; so roughly, indeed, that Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup were
forestalled, and the poor woman was brought to an unpleasant pass; so the
Rigwoodie witch got something not so pleasant as a month's nursing, and
was put out of the way of handling pregnant women roughly for the future.