And now we draw near to the close of this fatal superstition. In 1726,
Woodrow notes "some pretty odd accounts of witches," had from a couple of
Ross-shire men, but fails to give us very accurate details, save only that
one of them at her death "confessed that they had, by sorcery, taken away
the sight of one of the eyes of an Episcopal minister, who lost the sight
of his eye upon a sudden, and could give no reason for it." And early in
the year of 1727[78] the last witch-fire was kindled with which the air of
bonnie Scotland was polluted. Two poor Highland women, a mother and
daughter, were brought before Captain David Ross of Littledean,
deputy-sheriff of Sutherland, charged with witchcraft and consorting with
the devil. The mother was accused of having used her daughter as her
"horse and hattock," causing her to be shod by the devil, so that she was
ever after lame in both hands and feet; and the fact being satisfactorily
proved, and Captain David Ross being well assured of the same, the poor
old woman was put into a tar-barrel and burned at Dornoch in the bright
month of June. "And it is said that after being brought out to execution,
the weather proving very severe, she sat composedly warming herself by the
fire prepared to consume her, while the other instruments of death were
getting ready." The daughter escaped: afterwards she married and had a son
who was as lame as herself; and lame in the same manner too; though it
does not seem that he was ever shod by the devil and witch-ridden. "And
this son," says Sir Walter Scott, in 1830, "was living so lately as to
receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of
Sutherland in her own right."
This, then, is the last execution for witchcraft in Scotland; and in June,
1736, the Acts Anentis Witchcraft were formally repealed. Henceforth, to
the dread of the timid, and the anger of the pious, the English
Parliament distinctly opposed the express letter of the Law of God, "Thou
shalt not suffer a witch to live;" and declared the text upon which so
much critical absurdity had been talked, and in support of which so much
innocent blood had been shed, vain, superstitious, impossible, and
contrary to that human reason which is the highest law of God hitherto
revealed unto men. But if Parliament could stay executions it could not
remove beliefs, nor give rationality in place of folly. Not more than
sixty years ago an old woman named Elizabeth M'Whirter[79] was "scratched"
by one Eaglesham, in the parish of Colmonel, Ayrshire, because his son had
fallen sick, and the neighbours said he was bewitched. Poor old Bessie
M'Whirter was forced over the hills to the young man's house, a distance
of three miles, and there made to kneel by his bedside and repeat the
Lord's Prayer. When she had finished, the youth's father took a rusty nail
and scratched the poor old creature's brow in the form of a cross;
scratched it so effectually that it was many weeks in healing, and the
scar remained to the last day of her life. If Elizabeth M'Whirter had
lived a generation earlier, she might have run a race with death and a tar
barrel, and been defeated at the end, like the poor old wretch at Dornoch.
But still the old faith lingers in those beautiful vales, and hides in the
fastnesses of the mountain glens; still brownies haunt the ruined places,
and witches send forth blight and bale at their will; still the elfin
people ride on the whirlwind and dance in the moonlight; and the hill and
the flood and the brae and the streamlet have their attendant spirits
which vie with the churchyard ghost in impotent malevolence to men. And
the gift of second sight, though dying out because of these degenerate
times of utilitarianism and power-loom weaving, is yet to be found where
the old blood runs thickest, and the old ideas are least disturbed; and
still the whole nation clings with spasmodic force to its gloomy creed of
the Predestined and the Elect, and holds by the early faith from whose
narrow bounds others have emerged into a brighter and a wider path. No
more witch-fires are now lighted on the Castle Hill; no more grave and
reverend divines give themselves up, like Mr. John Aird, to discovering
the devil's mark stamped visibly on human flesh; yet the heart of the
people has not abandoned its ancient God, and though the altars may be
dressed with the flowers of another season, and the name upon the plinth
be carved in other characters, yet is the indwelling idol the same. The
God which Calvinistic Scotland yet worships is the same God as that to
which the witches and wizards of old were sacrificed; he is the God of
Superstition, the God of Condemnation, in whose temple Nature has no
place, and Humanity no rights.
The Witches of England.
"Every old woman with a wrinkled face, a furr'd brow, a hairy lip, a
gobber tooth, a squint eye, a squeaking voice, or a scolding tongue,
having a ragged coate on her back, a skull-cap on her head, a spindle in
her hand, and a Dog or Cat by her side, is not only suspected but
pronounced for a witch," says John Gaule;[80] while Reginald Scot[81] puts
forth as his experience:--"One sort of such as are said to be witches, are
women which be commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, fowle, and full of
wrinckles; poor, sullen, superstitious, and Papists; or such as know no
religion; in whose drousie minds the devill hath gotten a fine seat; so
as, what mischief, mischance, calamity or slaughter is brought to passe,
they are easily perswaded the same is done by themselves; imprinting in
their minds an earnest and constant imagination thereof. They are leane
and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that
see them. They are doting, scolds, mad, devilish; and not much differing
from them that are thought to be possessed with spirits, so firm and
steadfast in their opinions, as whosoever shall only have respect to the
constancy of their words uttered, would easily believe they were true
indeed." Dr. Harsnet, in his "Declaration of Popish Impostures," gives the
subject a masterly touch of common sense and satire:--"These things,"
saith he, "are raked together out of old doating Heathen Histriographers,
Wizzardizing Augurs, Imposturizing Soothsayers, Dreaming Poets, Chimerical
Conceiters, and Coiners of Fables, &c. Out of these is shap'd the true
Idea of a _Witch_, an old weather-beaten Crone, having her Chin and Knees
meeting for Age, walking like a Bow leaning on a Staff, Hollow-Ey'd,
Untooth'd, Furrow'd on her Face, having her Lips trembling with the Palsy,
going mumbling in the Streets: One that hath forgotten her Pater Noster,
and yet hath a shrewd Tongue to call a Drab a Drab. If she hath learn'd of
an old Wife in a Chimney End Pax, Max, Fax, for a Spell; or can say Sir
John Grantham's Curse for the Miller's Eels, All ye that have stolen the
Miller's Eels, laudate Dominum de Coelis: And all they that have
consented thereto, Benedicamus Domino: Why then beware, look about you, my
Neighbours. If any of you have a Sheep sick of the Giddies, or a Stag of
the Mumps, or a Horse of the Staggers, or a Knavish Boy of the School, or
an idle Girl of the Wheel, or a young Drab of the Sullens, and hath not
Fat enough for her Porrage, or Butter enough for her Bread, and she hath a
little Help of the Epilepsy or Cramp, to teach her to roll her Eyes, wry
her Mouth, gnash her Teeth, startle with her Body, hold her Arms and Hands
stiff, &c. And then with an old Mother Nobs hath by Chance call'd her Idle
young Housewife, or bid the Devil scratch her; then no doubt but Mother
Nobs is the Witch, and the young Girl is Owl-blasted, &c." Then he goes on
to say, with more force and right judgment than one could have expected
from one of his generation:--"They that have their Brains baited, and
their Fancies distemper'd with the Imaginations, and Apprehensions of
Witches, Conjurers, and Fairies, and all that Lymphatical Chimaera, I find
to be marshall'd in one of these five Ranks: Children, Fools, Women,
Cowards, sick or black melancholick discompos'd Wits."
These then are the sentiments of three somewhat wise and sane men, who
lived in a time of universal madness, and gave their minds to the task of
stemming the raging torrent. For the whole world was overrun with witches.
From every town came crowds of these lost and damned souls; from every
hovel peered out the cursing witch, or cried aloud for help the stricken
victims. These poor and old and wretched beings, upon whose heads lighted
the wrath of a world, and against whom every idle lad had a curse and a
stone to fling at his will, were held capable of all but omnipotence. They
could destroy the babe in the womb and make the "mother of many children
childless among women;" they could kill with a look and disable with a
curse; bring storms or sunshine as they listed; by their "witch-ropes,"
artfully woven, draw to themselves all the profit of their neighbours'
barns and breweries; yet ever remained poor and miserable, glad to beg a
mouthful of meat, or a can of sour milk from the hands of those whom they
could ruin by half a dozen muttered words; they could take on themselves
what shapes they would, and transport themselves whither they would: no
bolt or bar kept them out, no distance by land or sea was too great for
them to accomplish; a straw--a broomstick--the serviceable imp ever at
hand--was enough for them; and with a pot of magic ointment, and a charm
of spoken gibberish, they might visit the king on his throne, or the lady
in her bower, to do what ill was in their hearts against them, or to
gather to themselves what gain and store they would. Yet with all this
power the superstitious world of the time saw nothing doubtful or
illogical in the fact of their exceeding poverty, and never stayed to
think that if they could transport themselves through the air to any
distance they chose, they would be but slippery holding in prison, and not
very likely to remain there for the pleasure of being tortured and burnt
at the end. But neither reason nor logic had anything to do with the
matter. The whole thing rested on fear, and that practical atheism of
fear, which denies the power of God and the wholesome beauty of Nature, to
exalt in their stead the supremacy of the Devil. This belief in the
Devil's material presence and power over men was the dark chain that bound
them all. Even the boldest opponent of the Witchcraft Delusion dared not
fling it off; not the bravest man or freest thinker could shake his mind
clear of this terrible trammel, this bugbear, this mere phantasm of human
fear and ignorance, this ghastly lie and morbid delusion, or abandon the
slavish worship of Satan for the glad freedom of God and Nature. It was
much when such men as Scot,[82] and Giffard,[83] and Gaule of
Staughton,[84] Sir Robert Filmer,[85] Ady,[86] Wagstaffe,[87] Webster,[88]
Hutchinson,[89] and half a dozen more shining lights could bring
themselves to deny the supernatural power of a few half-crazed old
beggar-women, and plead for humanity and mercy towards them, instead of
cruelty and condemnation; but not one dare take the wider step beyond, and
deny the existence of that phantom fiend, belief in whom wrought all this
misery and despair. Even the very best of the time gave in to this
delusion, and discussed gravely the properties and proportions of what we
know now were mere lies.
"We find the illustrious author of the 'Novum Organum' sacrificing to
courtly suppleness his philosophic truth, and gravely prescribing the
ingredients for a witch's ointment;--Selden maintaining that crimes of the
imagination may be punished with death;--The detector of Vulgar Errors,
and the most humane of physicians giving the casting vote to the
vacillating bigotry of Sir Matthew Hale;--Hobbes, ever sceptical,
penetrating, and sagacious, yet here paralyzed and shrinking from the
subject, as if afraid to touch it;--The adventurous explorer, who sounded
the depths and channels of the 'Intellectual System' along all the
'wide-watered' shores of antiquity, running after witches to hear them
recite the Common Prayer and the Creed, as a rational test of guilt or
innocence;--The gentle spirit of Dr. Henry More, girding on the armour of
persecution, and rousing itself from a Platonic reverie on the Divine Life
to assume the hood and cloak of a familiar of the Inquisition;--and the
patient and inquiring Boyle, putting aside for a while his searches for
the grand Magisterium, and listening, as if spell-bound, with gratified
attention to stories of witches at Oxford and devils at Mascon."[90] In
the Church and amongst the more notoriously "religious" men of the time
it was worse. In Archbishop Cranmer's 'Articles of Visitation' (1549) is
this clause:--"You shall enquire whether you know of any that use Charms,
Sorcery, Enchantments, Soothsaying, or any like Craft invented by the
Devil;" and Bishop Jewel, preaching before Queen Elizabeth (1558),
informed her how that "witches and sorcerers within these last few years
are marvellously increased in your Grace's realm. Your Grace's subjects
pine away even unto their death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rotteth,
their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft; I pray God they never
practise further than upon the subject.... These eyes have seen most
evident and manifest marks of their wickedness." At the next Parliament
the new Bill against the detestable sin of witchcraft was passed, and
Strype says, partly on account of the Lord Bishop's earnest objurgation.
Dalton's[91] 'Country Justice' (1655) shows to what a pass, a century
later, witchcraft had come in credulous England. Truly Scot was right
when he said that his greatest adversaries were "young ignorance and old
customs." They have always been the greatest adversaries of all truth. Of
late, thank God, the march of humanity has been steadily, if slowly,
towards the daylight; but at present you and I, my reader, have to do with
the most debasing superstition that ever afflicted history, in the matter
of those poor wretched servants of the devil--those witches and wizards,
who somehow managed to lose on all sides--to suffer in time and be ruined
for eternity, and to get only ill-will and ill-usage from man and fiend
alike.