Witch Stories. E. Lynn Linton
he was able to cast a spell over cattle by saying—
“I charme thé for arrow-schot,
For dor-schot, for wondo-schot,
For ey-schot, for tung-schot,
For lever-schot, for lung-schot,
For hert-schot, all the maist,
In the name of the Father, the Sone, and Haly Ghaist.
To wend out of fleisch and bane,
Into stek and stane,
In the name of the Father, the Sone, and Haly Ghaist. Amen.”
So the law put a stop to his incantations, and he was strangled and burnt, and all his goods escheit to the crown. But the crown did not get a very full haul, for poor Bartie was scarce removed from beggary.
BEIGIS TOD AND HER COMPEERS.[19]
In 1608, on May the 27th, Beigis Tod in Lang Nydrie came to her fate. She had long been a frequenter of Sabbaths, and once was reproved by the devil for being late, when she answered respectfully, “Sir, I could wyn na soner!” Immediately thereafter she passed to her own house, took a cat, and put it nine times through the chimney work, and then sped to Seaton Thorne “be north the yet,” where the devil called Cristiane Tod, her younger sister, and brought her out. But Cristiane took a great fright and said, “Lord, what wilt thou do with me?” to whom he answered, “Tak na feir, for ye sall gang to your sister Beigis, to ye rest of hir cumpanie quha are stayand vpoun your cuming at the Thorne.” Cristiane Tod, John Graymeill, Ersche (Irish), Marion, and Margaret Dwn, who were of that company that night, had all been burnt, so now Beigis had her turn. She fell out with Alexander Fairlie, and made his son vanish away by continual sweating and burning at his heart, during which time Beigis appeared to him nightly in her own person, but during the day in the similitude of a dog, and put him almost out of his wits. Alexander went to her to be reconciled, and asked her to take the sickness off his son, which at first she refused, but afterwards consenting, she went and healed the youth, a short time before she was arrested—to be burnt. Two years after this Grissel Gairdner was burnt for casting sickness upon people; and in 1613 Robert Erskine and his three sisters were executed—he was beheaded—for poisoning and treasonable murder against his two nephews. But before this, in 1608, the Earl of Mar brought word to the Privy Council that some women taken at Broughton or Breichin, accused of witchcraft, and being put to “ane assize and convict albeit they persevered constant in their deniall to the end, yet they wes burnet quick after sic ane crewell maner that sum of thame deit in dispair, renunceand and blasphemand, and vtheris, half brunt, brak out of the fyre and wes cassin quick into it againe, quhill they war brunt to the deid.” Even this horrible scene does not seem to have had any effect in humanizing men’s hearts, or opening their eyes to the infamy into which their superstition dragged them; for still the witch trials went on, and the young and the old, and the beautiful and the unlovely, and the loved and the loveless, were equally victims, cast without pity or remorse to their frightful doom.
Sixteen hundred and sixteen was a fruitful year for the witch-finders. There was Jonka Dyneis of Shetland,[20] who, offended with one Olave, fell out in most vile cursings and blasphemous exclamations, saying that within a few days his bones should be “raiking” about the banks: and as she predicted so did it turn out—Olave perishing by her sorcery and enchantments. And not content with this, she cursed the other son of the poor widowed mother, and in fourteen days he also died, to Jonka’s own undoing when the Shetlanders would bear her iniquities no longer. And there was Katherine Jonesdochter, also of Shetland, who cruelly transferred her husband’s natural infirmities to a stranger: and Elspeth Reoch of Orkney, who pulled the herb called melefowr (millfoil?) betwixt her finger and thumb, saying, “In Nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritûs Sancti,” thus curing men’s distempers in a devilish and unwholesome manner: and Agnes Scottie, who refused to speak word to living man before passing “the boundis of hir ground, and their sat down, plaiting her feit betwixt the merchis,” that a certain woman might have a good childbirth; who was also convicted “of washing the inner nuke of her plaid and aprone,” for some wicked and sinister purpose; for what sane Scottish woman would wash her clothes more than was absolutely necessary? and who could curse as well as cure, and transfer as well as give the sickness she could heal: and Marable Couper who threw a “wall piet” at a man who spoke ill of her, and made his face bleed, so that he went mad, and could only be recovered by her laying her hands on him, whereby he received his senses and his health again: and Agnes Yullock, who went to the guid wyfe of Langskaill, and by touching her gave her back her health: and William Gude, who had power over all inanimate things, and by his touch could give them back the virtue they had lost. These are only a few, very few, of the cases to be found in the various judiciary records of the year 1616—a year no worse than others, and no better, where all were bad and blood-stained alike.
In 1618 one of the saddest stories of all was to be read in the tears of a few sorrowful relatives, and in the exultation of those fanatics who rejoiced when the accursed thing plucked out from them was of more goodly savour and of a fairer form than usual, and thus was a meeter sacrifice for the Lord. Of all the heartrending histories to be found in the records of witchcraft, the history of Margaret Barclay and her “accomplices” is saddest, most sorrowful, most heartrending.
THE PITIFUL FATE OF MARGARET BARCLAY.[21]
Margaret was a young, beautiful, high-spirited woman, wife of Archibald Dein, burgess of Irvine, and not on the best of terms with John Dein, her husband’s brother. Indeed, she had had him and his wife before the Kirk session for slander, and things had not gone quite smoothly with them ever since. When, therefore, the ship, The Grace of God, in which John Dein was sailing, sank in sight of land, drowning him and all his men, the old quarrel was remembered, and Margaret, together with Isobel Insh and John Stewart, a wandering “spaeman,” was accused of having sunk the vessel by charms and enchantments. Margaret disdainfully denied the charge from beginning to end: Isobel said she had never seen the spaeman in her life before; but Stewart “clearly and pounktallie confessit” all the charges brought against him, and also said that the women had applied to him to be taught his magic arts, and that once he had found them both modelling ships and figures in clay for the destruction of the men and vessel aforesaid. And as it was proved that Stewart had spoken of the wreck before he could have known it by ordinary means, suspicion of sorcery fell upon him, and he was taken: and made his confession. He said that he had visited Margaret to help her to her will, when a black dog, breathing fire from his nostrils, had formed part of the conclave; and Isobel’s own child, a little girl of eight, added to this, a black man as well. Isobel, after denying all and sundry of the charges brought against her, under torture admitted their truth. In the night time she found means to escape from her prison, bruised and maimed with the torture as she was; but in scrambling over the roof she fell to the ground, and was so much injured that she died five days afterwards. Margaret was then tortured: the spaeman had strangled himself, which was the best thing he could do, only it was a pity he did not do it before; and poor Margaret was the last of the trio. The torture they used, said the Lords Commissioners, was “safe and gentle.” They put her bare legs into a pair of stocks, and laid on them iron bars, augmenting their weight one by one, till Margaret, unable to bear the pain, cried out to be released, promising to confess the truth as they wished to have it. But when released she only denied the charges with fresh passion; so they had recourse to the iron bars again. After a time, pain and weakness overcame her again, and she shrieked aloud, “Tak off! tak off! and befoir God I will show ye the whole form!” She then confessed—whatever they chose to ask her; but unfortunately, in her ravings, included one Isobel Crawford, who when arrested—as she was on the instant—attempted no defence, but, paralyzed and stupefied, admitted everything with which she was charged. Margaret’s trial proceeded: sullen and despairing, she assented to the most monstrous counts: she knew there was no hope, and she seemed to take a bitter pride in suffering her tormentors to befool themselves to the utmost. In the midst of her anguish her husband, Alexander Dein, entered the court, accompanied by a lawyer. And then her despair passed, and she thought she saw a glimmer of life and salvation. She asked to be defended. “All that I have confessed,” she said, “was in an agony