Jean Neilson lived in Torryburn, a village in the west of Fife, and she
and Lillias Adie, a woman of more than equivocal reputation, were not on
the best of terms. Jean Neilson was but a poor sickly body, full of
fancies and uncatalogued ailments; and because she had no scientific name
to give them, she gave Lillias the credit of having created them by her
magic. She swore that she was bewitched, and that old Lillias was the
bewitcher. Upon which the ministers and elders of the kirk in Torryburn
met in solemn conclave on the 29th of July, and called Lillias before them
to give an account of her bad practices. Lillias had no mind that they
should lose their trouble. She confessed herself a witch without further
ado; said how that she had met the devil by the side of a "stook" in the
harvest field, where she had renounced her baptism and accepted him on the
instant as her lord and lover; how he had embraced her, when she found his
skin cold, and saw his feet cloven like a "stirk's." Since then she had
joined in dances with him and others whom she named; for Lillias, like all
the rest, seemed to think there was safety in a multitude, and delated
several of the parish, to bear her company in her uncomfortable position;
and she told how, at the back of Patrick Sands' house in Vellyfield, they
were lighted by a mysterious light, just sufficient to let them see each
other's faces, and to show the devil with a cap covering his ears and
neck. The minister and elders had now rich game in view, and they held
meeting after meeting to examine those whom Lillias accused, and feed
their ears with all the wild and monstrous tales they chose to pour into
them. But what became of them eventually no one now knows: only of a
surety Lillias Adie was burned "within the sea mark," and Jean Neilson
might now bear her uncatalogued ailments in peace. The minister of
Torryburn at that time was one Allen Logan--the Reverend Allen
Logan--notorious for his skill in detecting witches, and his zeal in
hunting them down. When administering the communion he would flash his eye
through the congregation and say harshly, as by knowledge, "You
witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord," casting a ball for the
conscience-stricken to kick at; when, ten to one, some poor old trembling
wretch would totter up, and so go mumbling through the doors, "thus
exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards." He was
always "dinging" against witchcraft; and one day a woman called Helen Kay
took up her stool and went out of the church. She said she thought he was
"daft" "to be always dinging against witches thae' gait;" but the elders
thought differently, and Helen Kay was convicted of profanity, and
ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.