by Eliza Lynn Linton (uncredited).
Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.16 #383 (25 Jul 1857).
THE first notable trial for witchcraft in Scotland was that of Bessie Dunlop; which was held on the eighth of November, fifteen hundred and seventy-six. We exclude the execution of the unfortunate Lady Glammis, in fifteen hundred and thirty-seven; for though it has been the fashion to class her among the earliest and the noblest victims of the witch delusion, she was, on the contrary, burnt for high treason; and her death was a political, not a superstitious murder. We also pass by the trial and execution for witchcraft of Janet Bowman, in fifteen hundred and seventy-two—the Record presenting no point of special interest—and give, as the first of any historical value, the tragic history of poor Bessie Dunlop, "spous to Andro Jak in Lyne."
Bessie deposed, after torture (it is very important to observe those two words) that one day as she was going between her own house and Monkcastle yard, driving her cows, and making "hevye sair dule with hirselff," weeping bitterly for her cow that was dead, and her husband and child who were lying sick "in the land-ill"—she herself still weak after "gissane," or child-birth—she met "ane honest, wele, elderlie man, gray bairdit; and had ane gray coitt with Lumbart slevis of the auld fassioun; ane pair of grey brekis and quhyte shankis gartenit abone the kne; ane blak bonet on his heed, cloise behind and plane befoir, with silkin laissis drawin throw the lippis thairof, and ane whyte wand in his hand." This was Thom Reid, who had been killed at the battle of Pinkye (fifteen hundred and forty-seven), but was now a dweller in Elfame or Fairy-land. Thom stopped her, asking why she was weeping so sorely; poor Bessie told him her troubles. The little old man soothed her by assuring her that, though her cow and child would die, yet her husband would recover; and Bessie, after being "sumthing fleit" at seeing him pass through too narrow a hole in the dyke for an honest, earthly man to pass through, yet returned home comforted at hearing that her goodman would mend. After this, she and Thom forgathered several times. Once he came to her house, and took her away, in the presence of her husband and three tailors—they seeing nothing—to where twelve people were assembled waiting for her. These were eight women and four men, all "verrie semelie lyk to see;" and they were the "gude wichtis that wynnit in the Court of Elfame," who had come to persuade her to go away with them. But Bessie refused. Half demented as she was, she was loyal to her husband and her children, and would have nothing to say to a separation from them; though Thom Reid was angry and told her "it would be worse for her." Once, too, the Queen of the Fairies, a stout, comely woman, came to her, as she was again "lying in gissane," and asked for a drink, which Bessie gave her. She told her that the child would die, but that her husband would recover: for poor Andro Jak seems to have been often in a delicate condition, and to have given Bessie's faithful heart many an anxious hour. Then Thom began to teach her the art of healing. He gave her roots wherewith to make salves for sheep or cows, or children "taken with an evill blast of wind or elf-grippit:" and she cured many people, by following, as she said, the old man's directions. For instance, she healed Lady Johnstone's daughter, married to the young Laird of Stanelie, by giving her a drink made of strong ale, boiled with cloves, ginger, aniseed, liquorice, and white sugar: which Thom said was good for her complaint—"a cold blood that went about her heart, and caused her to pine and fall away." But she could not mend old Lady Kilbowye's leg. It had been crooked all her life, and now, he said, the marrow was consumed and the blood benumbed. It was hopeless; and it would be worse for her if she asked for fairy help again. Bessie also found stolen goods, under Thom's directing; and those which she could not find, she could at least tell of. Thus, Hugh Scott's cloak could not be returned, because it had been made into a kirtle: and James Baird and Henry Jamesoun could not recover their plough irons, because James Douglas, the sheriff's officer, had accepted a bribe of three pounds not to find them. Lady Blair, too, after having "dang and wrackit" her servants on account of certain linen of which she had been robbed, learned by the mouth of Bessie, prompted by Thom, that Margaret Symple, her own friend and relation, had stolen it. With divers other like revelations. Bessie also received from the hands of her ghostly friend a green silk lace, which, if tacked to the "wylie coat," and wound about the left arm of any woman about to be a mother, would facilitate recovery marvellously. She lost the lace; insinuating that Thom took it away again; but kept her fatal character for more medical skilfulness than belonged to an ordinary or canny old wife. She said that she often saw Thom Reid going about like other people. He would be in the streets of Edinburgh, handling goods like any living man; but she never spoke to him, unless he spoke to her first: he had forbidden her to do so. The last time she met him before her arrest, he told her of the evil that was to come: but he buoyed her up with false hopes, assuring her that she would be well treated and eventually stand clear. Poor Bessie Dunlop!—After being cruelly tortured, and her not very strong brain utterly disorganised, she was "convict and burnt" on the Castle Hill, of Edinburgh. A mournful commentary on her elfin friend's brave words and promises.
On the twenty-eighth of May, fifteen hundred and eighty-eight, Alesoun Peirsoun was haled before a just judge and sapient jury, on the same accusation of witchcraft, and consorting with the fairy folk. This Alesoun, or Alison Pearson, had a certain cousin, one William Simpson, who, according to her account, had been carried to Egypt by a man of Egypt (gipsy) when he was a mere lad, and had there been educated in the medical profession, in which he seems to have been more than ordinarily skilful. Simpson's father had been smith to gracious majesty; but, during his son's absence in Egypt, he had died, for "opening a priest's book, and looking upon it,"—a fact as veracious as all the rest of this crazed narrative. Well. Mr. William once cured his cousin of some curious disorder, thereby gaining great influence over her; which he abused by taking her with him to fairy land, and introducing her to the good neighbours, whose company he himself had affected for many years. They treated poor Alison very harshly. They used to beat and knock her about till she was terrified out of the small wits she ever possessed; and frequently she was left by them covered with bad bruises, and perfectly powerless. She was never free from her questionable associates. They used to come upon her at all times, and initiate her into their secrets, whether she liked it or no. They used to show her how they gathered their herbs before sunrise, and she would watch them with their pans and fires making the "saws," or salves, that could kill or cure all who used them, according to the witch's will. What with fairy teaching, and Mr. William's clinical lectures, half-crazed Alison soon got a reputation for healing powers; so great, that the Bishop of St. Andrews—a poor, shaken hypochondriac, with as many diseases on him as would fill the ward of a hospital—applied to her for some of her charms and remedies, which she had the sense to make palatable enough; namely, spiced claret—a quart to be drunk at two draughts—and a boiled capon. It scarcely needed witchcraft to have prescribed that for a luxurious prelate, who had brought himself into a state of chronic dyspepsia by laziness and good living. Mr. William was very careful of Alison. He used to go before the fairy folk, when they set out in the whirlwinds to plague her, and tell her of their coming; and he was very urgent that she should not go away with them altogether, since a tythe of them was yearly taken down to hell. But, neither Mr. William's thought nor fairy power could save poor Alice. She was "convicted and burnt," never more to be troubled by epilepsy, or the feverish dreams of madness.
Nobler names come next upon the records. Katherine Lady Fowlis, and Hector Munro, her step-son, were tried on the twenty-second of July, fifteen hundred and ninety, for "witchcraft, incantation, sorcery, and poisoning." Two people were in the Lady's way,—Margery Campbell, the young lady of Balnagowan, wife to George Ross of Balnagowan, Lady Katherine's brother; and Robert Munro, her step-son, present Baron of Fowlis, and brother to the Hector Munro mentioned above. If these two persons were dead, then George Ross could marry the young Lady Fowlis, to the pecuniary advantage of himself and his family. Hector's quarrel was with his half-brother, George Munro of Obisdale, Lady Katherine's own son. The charges against the Lady Katherine were—the unlawful making of two pictures representing the young Lady Balnagowan and Robert Munro, which pictures two notorious witches, Cristiane Ross and Marjory M'Allester, alias Loskie Loncart, shot at with "elf-arrow-heads." But the pictures—literally images of wax or clay—were broken by the arrow-heads, and the spell was destroyed. After this, the Lady made a stoup or pailful of poison, to be sent to Robert Munro. The pail leaked, and all the poison ran out, excepting a very small quantity, which an unfortunate page belonging to the Lady tasted, and incontinently died. Again, another pig or jar full of poison was prepared; this time of double strength; the brewer thereof, Loskie Loncart. It was sent to the young laird by the hands of Lady Katherine's foster-mother; but she broke the jar by the way; and, like the page, tasting the contents, paid the penalty of her curiosity with her life. The poison was of such a nature that neither cow nor sheep would touch the grass where it fell; and soon the herbage withered away altogether, in fearful memorial of her guilt. She was more successful in her attempts on the young Lady Balnagowan. Her "dittay" sets forth that the poor girl, tasting of her step-mother's infernal potions, contracted an incurable disease; the pain and anguish she suffered revolting even the wretch who administered the poison. But she did not die. Nothing daunted by her failures, the Lady sent far and wide, and openly too, for various poisons; consulting with "Egyptians" and notorious witches as to what would best "suit the complexions" of her victims; and whether her ratsbane, which she often tried, should be administered in eggs, broth, or cabbage. She paid many sums, too, for more clay images and elf-arrow-heads, which elf-arrow-heads are the ancient arrow-heads frequently found in Scotland; and her wickedness at last grew too patent even for her rank to cover. She was arrested and arraigned; but the jury, composed of the Fowlis dependants, acquitted her, though many of her creatures had previously been "convicted and burnt," on the same charges as those now made against her.
Hector Munro's trial was somewhat of a different stamp. His step-mother does not seem to have had much confidence in mere sorcery. She put her faith in facts rather than in incantations, and preferred drugs to charms. But, Hector was more superstitious and more cowardly. Parings of nails, clippings of hair, water wherein enchanted stones had been laid, were all of as much potency in his mind as the "ratoun poysoun," so dear to the Lady; and the method of his intended murder rested on such means as these. After a small piece of preliminary sorcery, undertaken with his foster-mother, Cristian Neill Dayzell and Marion McIngareach, "one of the most notorious and rank witches of the country," it was pronounced that Hector, who was sick, would not recover his health unless the principal man of his blood should suffer for him. This was found to be none other than George Munro of Obisdale, Lady Fowlis's eldest son. George then must die; not by poison, but by sorcery; and the first step to be taken was to secure his presence by Hector's bed-side. Seven times did the invalid impatiently send for him; and when at last he did come, Hector said never a word to him, after his surly "better now that you have come," in answer to George's "how's a' with you?" but sat for a full hour, with his left hand in his brother's right, working the first spell in silence, according to the directions of his foster-mother and the witch. That night, one hour after midnight, the two women went out to a "piece of ground lying between two manors," and there made a grave, near to the sea flood. A few nights after this—it was January—Hector, wrapped in blankets, was carried out of his sick hod and laid in this grave; he, his foster-mother, and McIngareach all silent as death. The sods were laid over him, and the witch sat down by him. Then Cristian Dayzell, with a young boy in her hand, ran the breadth of nine rigs or furrows, and, coming back to the grave, asked the witch, "who was her choice?" Mclngareach, prompted by the devil, answered, "that Mr. Hector was her choice to live, and his brother George to die for him!" This ceremony was repealed thrice, and then they all returned silently to the house; Hector Munro convinced that everything necessary had now been done, and that his half-brother must perforce be his sacrifice. In his gratitude he made Marion McIngareach keeper of his sheep; and so uplifted her that the country people durst not oppose her for their lives. It was the common talk that he favoured and honoured her, said the dittay, "gif she had been his wife;" and once he kept her out of the way, when she was cited to appear before the court, to answer to the charge of witchcraft. But, Hector got clear, as his step-mother had done half an hour before him ; and we hear no more of the Fowlis crimes or the Fowlis follies.
On the twenty-sixth of May, fifteen hundred and ninety, John Fian, alias Cuningham, Master of the School at Saltpans, Lothian, and contemptuously recorded as "Secretary and Register to the Devil," was arraigned for witchcraft and high-treason. There were twenty counts against him; the least of which was enough to have lighted a witch-fire at that time on the fatal Castle Hill. First, he was accused of entering into a covenant with Satan, who appeared to him all in white, as he lay in bed, thinking how he could be revenged on Thomas Trumbill, for not having whitewashed his room. After promising his Satanic Majesty allegiance and homage, he received his mark; which was found, later, under his tongue, with two pins stuck up to their heads. Dr. Fian had once the misfortune to be unwell, which was translated into a grievous crime by the gracious "assisa" who tried him. He was found guilty,—"fylit," is the legal term,—of "feigning himself to be sick in the said Thomas Trumbill's chamber, where he was stricken in great ecstacies and trances, lying by the space of two or three hours dead, his spirit taken, and suffered himself to be carried and transported to many mountains, as he thought, through all the world, according to his depositions;" those depositions made after fearful torture, and recanted the instant his mind recovered its tone. He was also found guilty of suffering himself to be carried to North Berwick church, where, together with many others, he did homage to Satan, as he stood in the pulpit "making doubtful speeches," and bidding them "not to fear, though he was grim." But the pith of the indictment was, that he, Fian, and sundry others to be spoken of hereafter, entered into a league with Satan to wreck the King (James the Sixth) on his Denmark voyage, when, in a fit of clumsy gallantry, he went to visit his future queen. While sailing to Denmark, Fian and a whole crew of witches and wizards met Satan at sea, and the master, giving an enchanted cat into Robert Grierson's hand, bade him "cast the same into the sea, holà!" Which was done, and a strong gale was the consequence. Then, when the King was returning from Denmark, the Devil promised to raise a mist, which should wreck him on English ground. To perform which feat he took something like a football, appearing like a wisp to Dr. Fian, which, when he cast it into the sea, caused the great mist to rise that nearly drove the cumbrous pedant on to the English shore.
Then he was convicted of again consorting with Satan and his crew, still in North Berwick church; where they paced round the church "withershins," that is, contrary to the way of the sun. Fian blew into the lock to open the door—a favourite trick of his—and blew in the lights which burned blue and seemed black; and where Satan, as a "mickle blak man," preached again to them, and made them very angry by calling Robert Grierson by his name. He ought to have been called "Ro' the Comptroller, or Rob the Rowar." This slip of Satan's displeasing them, they ran "hirdie girdie" in great excitement. At this séance, Fian and others rifled the graves of the dead, and dismembered their bodies for charms. Once at the house of David Seaton's mother, he breathed into a woman's hand, sitting by the fire, and opened a lock at the other end of the kitchen. Once he raised up four candles on his horse's two ears, and a fifth on the staff which a man, riding with him, carried in his hand. These magic candles gave as much light as the sun at noonday, and the man was so terrified that he fell dead on his own threshold. Then he was seen to chase a cat; and to be carried in the chace over a hedge so high that he could not touch the cat's head. When asked why he hunted her, he said that Satan wanted all the cats he could lay his hands on, to cast into the sea for the purpose of raising storms for shipwreck. Which, with divers smaller and somewhat monotonous charges, formed the sum of the indictment against him. He was put to the torture. First, his head was "thrawed with a rope," for about an hour. But, he would confess nothing. Then they tried fair means and coaxed him, with no better success; and then they "put him to the most severe and cruell paine in the worlde," namely the Boots. After the third stroke he became speechless; and they, supposing it to be the devil's mark which kept him silent, searched for that mark, that by its discovery the spell might be broken. So they found it, as was said before, under his tongue, with two charmed pins stuck up to their heads therein. And when they were withdrawn, that is, after some further torture, he confessed anything his tormentors pleased. The next day he recanted his confession. He was then somewhat restored to himself, and had mastered the weakness of his agony. Of course it was declared that the devil had visited him during the night, and had marked him afresh. They searched, but found nothing; so, in revenge, they put him to the torture again. But, he remained constant to the last; bearing his grievous tortures with most heroic patience and fortitude; and dying as a brave man knows always how to die. Finding that nothing more could be made of him, he was strangled and burnt "in the Castle Hill of Edinbrough, on a Saturdaie, in the ende of Januarie last past, 1591."
Fian was the first victim of the grand battue opened to the royal witch-hunter. Others were to follow, the manner of whose finding was singular enough. Baillie David Seaton had a half-crazed servant-girl, one Geillis Duncan, whose conduct had excited the righteous suspicion of her master. To make sure he tortured her: first by the "pilliewinks" or thumbscrews, then by wrenching, binding, or thrawing her head with a rope. But, not confessing under all this agony, she was searched, and the mark was found on her throat. Whereon she immediately confessed, accusing amongst others, the defunct John Fian or Cuningham, Agnes Sampson, "the eldest witch of them all" at Haddington, Agnes Tompson of Edinburgh, and Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftounhall, one of the Senators of the College of Justice. Agnes Sampson's trial came first. She was a grave matron-like educated woman, commonly called the "grace wyff," or "wise wife of Keith;" and, to her was assigned the doubtful honour of being carried to Holyrood, there to be examined before the king himself. At first she quietly and firmly denied all that she was charged with. But—after having been fastened to the witches' bridle, kept without sleep, her head shaved and thrawn with a rope, searched and pricked—she too confessed whatever blasphemous nonsense her accusers chose to charge her with, to the wondrous edification of the kingly witch-finder. She said that she and two hundred more witches went to sea on All Halloween in riddles or sieves, making merry and drinking by the way; that they landed at North Berwick church, where, taking hands they danced a round, saying:
"Commer goe ye before! commer goe ye,
Gif ye will not goe before; commer let me."
She said also that Geillis Duncan, the informer, went before them, playing on the Jew's harp; which so delighted Gracious Majesty to hear that he sent on the instant for Geillis Duncan to play the same tune before him; which she did: to his "great pleasure and amazement." Furthermore, Agnes Simpson confessed, that, on asking Satan why he hated King James, and wished so greatly to destroy him, the foul fiend answered because he is the greatest enemy I have," adding though, that he was "un homme de Dieu," and that he, Satan, was powerless against him. A pretty piece of flattery! but, it availed the poor wise wife, little. Her indictment was very heavy: fifty-three counts in all; for the most part curing disease by incantations and charms, and foretelling events, especially disease or death. As she went on, weakened in body and fevered in mind by torture, she owned to more monstrous things. Item, to having a familiar, the devil in shape of a dog by name Elva, whom she called to her by saying, "Holà, master!" and conjured away by "the Law be lived on." This dog she caused to appear to the Lady of Edmistoun's daughters, when she called him out of the well, where he lay growling, to tell them if the old lady would live or die. Then she said she caused a ship, "The Grace of God," to perish. For helping her in this nefarious deed she gave twenty shillings to Grey Meill, "ane auld sely pure plowman," who usually kept the door at the witches' conventions, and who had attended on her in this shipwreck adventure. Then she was one of the foremost and most active in the celebrated storm-raising for the destruction, or at least the damage of the king on his return from Denmark; giving some curious particulars in addition to what we have already read in Fian's indictment: as, that she and her sister witches baptised the cat which raised the storm, by putting it with various ceremonies, thrice through the "chimney crook," and fastening four bones of dead men to its four feet. Which processes it made infallible as a storm-raiser, and ship-wrecker general. She was also at all the famous North Berwick meetings; where Dr. Fian was secretary and lock-opener; where they were baptised of the fiend and received formally into his congregation; where he preached to them as a great black man; and where they rifled graves and meted out the dead among them. For all which crimes Agnes Sampson, the grave matron-like, well-educated grace-wife of Keith, was tied to a stake on Castle Hill, and burnt.
Euphemia Macalzean was even higher game. She was the daughter of Lord Ciiftonhall, and wife of Patrick Moscrop, a man of wealth and standing. She was a firm, heroic, passionate woman, whom no tortures could weaken into confession, no threats terrify into submission. She fought her way inch by inch, using every legal power open to her, but she was "convict" at last, and condemned to be burnt alive; the severest sentence ever pronounced against a witch. There is good reason to believe that her witchcraft was made merely the pretence, while her political predilections, the friendship for the Earl of Bothwell, and her Catholic religion, were the real grounds of the king's enmity to her, and the real causes of the severity with which she was treated. Her indictment contains the ordinary list of crimes, diversified with the addition of bewitching a certain Joseph Douglas, whose love she craved, and found beyond her power to retain. The young wife whom Douglas married and the two children she bore him also came in for part of the alleged maleficent enchantments. She did the "bairns to death," and struck the wife with sickness. She was also accused of the heinous crime of casting her childbirth pains, once on a dog, and once on a cat; both of which beasts ran distractedly out of the house—as well the might—and were never seen again. And once, too, she tried to cast them on her husband: without effect as it would seem. She was also accused of endeavouring to poison her husband, and it was manifest that their union was not a happy one—he being for the most part away from her: and it was proved that Agnes Sampson, the wise wife, had made a clay picture of John Moscrop, her father-in-law, who should by these enchantments have dwindled and died. But failed to do as he was witch-bidden. So that these crimes, with others like to them, such as sending visions, and devils, and sickness, and death to every one who stood in her way, or had ever offended her, were quite sufficient legal causes of death. And James could gratify both his superstitious fears and his political animosity at the same time, while Euphemia Macalzean, the fine, brave, handsome, passionate Euphemia, writhed in agony at the stake, where she was bound "to be consumed quick."
In sixteen hundred and eighteen, Margaret Barclay, a young, high-spirited, and beautiful woman, was accused, together with Isobel Insh, by a wandering juggler called John Stewart, of having applied to him to be taught magic arts; and also of having, by sorcery, shipwrecked the vessel and drowned the crew of John Dein, her husband's brother, with whom and with his wife she had had a quarrel a short time ago, ending in her bringing against them a legal action for slander. Margaret denied the charge: poor Isobel, for her part, declared she had never seen Stewart in her life before; though he asserted he had found her modelling clay figures and clay ships, in company with Margaret, for the destruction of the men and vessel aforesaid. A black dog, with fiery eyes, and breathing fire from his nostrils, formed part of the conclave: and one of the principal witnesses, Isobel's own child of eight years of age, added a black man as well. Isobel, after denying all and sundry of the counts against her, under torture admitted their truth. In the night time she found means to escape from her prison, which was the belfry; in clambering over the roof of the church she fell down, and died five days afterwards. Margaret was then tortured: the juggler had strangled himself: and she was the last remaining of this "coven." The torture they used, said the noble Lord Commissioners, "was safe and gentle." They put her two bare legs in a pair of stocks, and laid on them iron bars one by one; augmenting the weight by degrees, till Margaret cried to be released, promising to confess the truth as they wished to hear it. But when released she only denied the charges afresh; so they had recourse to the iron bars again. When, after a time, she shrieked aloud, saying: "Tak off! tak off! and befoir God I will show ye the whole form! " She then confessed; and in her confession included Isobel Crawford; who, when arrested—as she was, on the instant—made no defence, but stupefied and paralysed, admitted all they chose. Margaret's trial proceeded; sullen and despairing, she assented to all that she was charged with; when Alexander Dein, her husband, entered the court, accompanied by a lawyer. And then the despair which had crept over the young wife passed away, and she demanded to be defended. "All that I have confessed," she said, "was in an agony of torture; and, before God, all I have spoken is false and untrue! But," she added, pathetically, turning to her husband, "ye have been ower lang in coming!" In spite of her legal defence, however, she was condemned; and of death. And James could gratify both his at the stake entreated that no harm should befall Isobel Crawford, who was utterly and entirely innocent. The young creature was strangled and burnt: bearing herself bravely to the last. Isobel was now tried: "after the assistant minister of Irvine, Mr. David Dickson, had made earnest prayers to God for opening her obdurate and closed heart; she was subjected to the torture of iron bars laid upon her bare shins, her feet being in the stocks, as in the case of Margaret Barclay." She endured this torture "admirably," without any kind of din or exclamation, suffering above thirty stone of iron to be laid on her legs, never shrinking thereat, in any sort, but remaining, as it were, steady. But in shifting the situation of the iron bars, and removing them to another part of her shins, her constancy gave way, as Margaret's had done; and she, too, broke out into horrible cries of "Tak off! tak off!" She then confessed, and was sentenced; but on her execution she denied all that she had admitted, interrupted the minister in his prayer, and refused to pardon the executioner. They had made her mad.
We must pass over the scores of witches who were yearly strangled and burnt on such charges as, "casting sickness on such an one by means of ane blak clout," &c.; raising the devil; curing diseases by incantations; foretelling events; charming to death, or to love, as the case might be; sending visions to frighten silly men and half-crazed women; cursing land with a paddock, or toad-drawn plough, &c., &c. Curious as the various trials are, we cannot give even the names of the sufferers; witch-finding increased so rapidly in Scotland. In sixteen hundred and sixty-one, the most fertile and the most fatal year of all, no fewer than fourteen special commissions were granted for the purpose of trying witches for the sederunt of November the seventh; how many unfortunates were murdered on this charge Heaven only knows. We have the records of but one—the Justiciary Court; and they were tried by all sorts of courts, ordinary and extra-ordinary. It was the popular amusement; and it would have taken a wiser and a braver man than any living at that time to have turned the tide in favour of the poor, persecuted servants of the "deil." Though it was the Catholic Bull of Innocent the Eighth, in fourteen hundred and eighty-four, which first stirred up the persecuting zeal of the godly against witchcraft, yet Calvinistic Scotland soon outstripped the papacy in her zealous hate, and poured out blood that will leave a stain on her history, so long as that history shall endure.
We turn now those crimson pages rapidly, till we come to the witches of Auldearne, and Isobell Gowdie's confessions.
It does not seem that Isobell Gowdie was either pricked by John Kincaid, the "common pricker"—the Scottish Matthew Hopkins—or tortured before she made her confessions. She was probably a wild, excited lunatic, whose ravings ran in the popular groove, rather than on any purely personal matters; and who was not so much deceiving, as self-deceived by insanity. She began by stating how, that one day she met the devil; and, denying her baptism, put one of her hands to the crown of her head, and the other to the sole of her foot, making over to him all that lay between; he, as a
"mickle, black, hairy man," standing in the pulpit of the church at Auldearne, reading out of a black book. Isobell was baptized by him in her own blood, by the name of Janet, and henceforth was one of the most devoted of her coven, or company. For, they were divided into covens, or bands, under proper officers and leaders. John Young was officer to her coven, and the number composing it was thirteen. They went through the ordinary misdeeds of witchcraft. They destroyed corn-fields; spoilt brewings; dug up unchristened children, and cut them into charms; ploughed with toads and frogs, cursing the land as they went, to make it barren; they rode on straws, which they made into horses, by putting them between their feet, saying, "Horse and hattock in the devil's name;" and Isobell went to the land of faërie, where she got meat from the "Queen of Faërie," more than she could eat. The queen was a comely woman, bravely dressed in white linen, and white and brown clothes; and the king was a fine man, well favoured, and broad-faced; but there were elf bulls, "roytting and skoilling up and down there," which frightened poor Isobell sorely. They took away cow's milk, too, in a very odd manner,—by platting a tether the wrong way, and drawing it between the cow's hind and fore feet; then, milking the tether, they drew the cow's milk clean away. To restore it, it was necessary to cut the witch-line, and the milk would flow back. Of course there were clay pictures of any who offended the witches, and therefore were desired to be put out of the way. All the male children of the laird of Parkis were doomed to perish because of a clay picture of a little child, which was every now and then laid by the fire till it shrivelled and withered. As jackdaws, hares, cats, &c., our witches passed from house to house, destroying dyeing vats, and beer-casks, and all sorts of things, which their owners had forgotten to "sanctify;" and which omission gave the witches their power.
In her next confession. Isobell went into further particulars respecting the constitution of her coven. Each of the thirteen witches had a spirit appointed to wait on her. Swein, clothed in grass-green, waited on Margaret Wilson, called Pickle-nearest-the-wind; Rorie, in yellow, waited on Throw-the-corn-yard. The Roaring Lion, in sea-green, waited on Bessie Rule. Mak Hector, in grass-green, (a young devil this!) accompanied the Maiden of the Coven, daughter to Pickle-nearest-the-wind, and called Over-the-dyke-with-it. Robert the Rule, in sad dun, a commander of the spirits, waited on Margaret Bodie. Thief-of-hell-wait-upon-herself waited on Bessie Wilson. Isobell's own spirit was the Red Riever, and he was ever in black. The eighth spirit was Robert-the-jakes, aged, and clothed in dun, "ane glaiked gowked spirit," waiting on Able-and-Stout; the ninth was Laing, serving Bessie Bauld; the tenth was Thomas, a fairy; but there Isobell's questioners stopped her, and no more information was given of the spirits of the coven. She then told them that to raise a wind they took a rag of cloth, and wetted it in the water, then knocked it on a stone with a flat piece of wood, singing a doggerel rhyme. She gave them, too, the rhymes necessary for transformation into a hare, cat, crow, &c., and for turning back into their own shapes again. The rhymes are unique; the only rhymes of the kind to be found in the whole history of witchcraft; but we have not space to transcribe them; for Isobell was a mighty talker, and told much. Once though. she was nearly caught as a hare; she had just time to run behind a chest, the dogs panting after her, and to say:—
"Hair! hair! God send thé cair!
I am in a hearis liknes now,
But I sail be a woman ewin now!
Hair! hair! God send thé cair!"
which restored her to her proper shape again. But they had a hard task-master in Satan. He often beat them; especially for calling him Black Johnnie, which they would do amongst themselves; when he would suddenly appear in the midst of them, saying, "I ken weel enough what ye are saying of me!" and fall to scourging them like a fierce school-master with his scholars. Alexander Elder was very often beaten. He was very "soft," and did nothing but howl and cry, not defending himself in the least. But, Margaret Wilson defended herself with her hands, and Bessie Wilson "would speak crusty with her tongue, and would be belling at him soundly;" so that on the whole the fiend had but a riotous set of servants after all.
Janet Braidhead succeeded Isobell Gowdie in her madness. Her confession, made between Isobel's third and fourth, follows in precisely the same track. She, like her unhappy predecessor, gave the names of numerous respectable people whom she asserted were belonging to the various covens. She even accused her own husband of presenting her for the infernal baptism; and as the confession of one witch was sufficient for the condemnation of all named therein, it is mournful to reflect on the number of innocent people the wild ravings of one or two lunatics could doom to misery and shame, and a felon's cruel death. Anything was enough for a conviction in those days. A muttered curse, an angry threat, a little more knowledge than the rest of the neighbours, a taste for natural history, an evil temper, or a lonely life, anything was sufficient to fasten the reputation of sorcery on man or woman; and that reputation once fastened, then indeed the happiest, as the most fatally certain, thing for the sufferer was death. Life would have been but one long martyrdom of want and shame and insult.
The delusion at last wore itself out. The latest execution in Scotland for witchcraft was that of an old idiot-woman in seventeen hundred and twenty-two; but even before then, in sixteen hundred and seventy-eight, a suspected witch had known how to get legal redress against some who had tormented and pricked her. Sir George Mackenzie, "that noble wit of Scotland," was mainly instrumental in putting down the horrible phantasy which lay like a curse on the laud, and blighted the whole race on which it fell. His eloquent, forcible, and manly reasonings let a little light into the heavy brains of the ignorant and superstitious rulers; for, though even he dared not go so far as to deny the existence of witchcraft altogether like the "Sadducees" of England, yet he condemned "next to the wretches themselves, those cruel and too forward judges who burn persons by thousands as guilty of this crime." He instanced out of his own knowledge, a poor weaver convicted of sorcery, who, on being asked what the devil was like when he appeared to him, answered, "like flies dancing about the candle;" and a poor woman asked him seriously when she was accused, if a person could be a witch and not know it? Another, who had confessed judicially, told him, under secrecy, "that she had not confest because she was guilty; but, being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, she knew she would starve; for no person thereafter would either give her meat or lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her, and that, therefore, she desired to be out of the world; where-upon she wept most bitterly, and upon her knees called God to witness what she said." Another told him that, "she was afraid the devil would challenge a right to her after she was said to be his servant, and would haunt her, as the minister said, when he was desiring her to confess, and therefore she desired to die."
A poor woman in Lauder jail, lying there on charge of witchcraft, sent for the minister of the town to make her true confession: which was of reiterated acts of sorcery. The minister did not believe her, but ascribed this confession to the devil. However, the woman persisted, and was taken out with the rest to be burnt. Just before her execution, she cried out: "Now, all you that see me this day, know that I am now to die a witch by my own confession, and I free all men, especially the ministers and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly on myself. My blood be upon my own head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but being delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch, disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my coming out of prison, or ever coming in credit again, through the temptation of the devil I made up that confession, on purpose to destroy my own life, being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live;" and so died. Even after Sir George Mackenzie's noble book, however, the witch-fires were still kept burning; hundreds of innocent creatures, hundreds of desperate, insane, or ruined wretches were bound to the stake and burnt to ashes, on these foul and ridiculous charges. The young, the old, the beautiful, the noble, the mean and the wealthy, all were fair game alike. For witnesses,—the testimony of a child of eight years of age was taken against the mother; and a girl of fourteen was accused as a professed witch by a child scarce out of the cradle.