Witch Stories. E. Lynn Linton
and threw into the fire, where it burned blue. He healed one woman by “fyring”—putting a hot iron, which was supposed to burn the obsessing witch—into some magic water brought from Holywell, Hill-side, and making her drink it; and he cured another woman by burning a poor hen alive, first making her carry it, when half roasted, under her arm; and he took in hand to heal Elspeth, sister of John Thomson, of Corachie—passing with her two brothers in the night season from Corachie towards Burley, enjoining them not to speak a word all the way, and whatever they heard or saw, not to be anywise “effrayed,” saying “it micht be that thai would heir grit rumbling and sie vncouth feirfull apparitiones, but nothing suld annoy thame.” Arrived at the ford at the east of Birley he washed her sark; and during the time of this washing there was a great noise made by fowls in the hill, beasts that arose and fluttered in the water—“beistes that arrais and flichtered” in the water; and when he put her sark upon her again, Elspeth mended and was healed. And of another patient he propounded this wise opinion, come to by the examination of his sark: “Allace, the withcraft appointit for ane vther hes lichtit vpoune him,” but it had not yet reached his heart. And further than all this, which was bad enough, he made signs and crosses, and muttered uncouth words, and believed in himself and the devil: so he was strangled and burnt, and an end come to of him: for which the neighbours all were glad, even those he had benefited, and the ministers were quite satisfied that they had given glory to God in the holiest manner open to them.
KATHERINE GRANT AND HER STOUP.[26]
Katherine Grant, in the November of the year 1623, was dilatit for that she had gone to Henry Janies’ house, with “a stoup in hir hand, with the boddome foremost, and sat down ryght fornent the said Henrie, and gantit thryce on him: and going furth he followit hir; and beiyan the brigstane, scho lukit over her shoulder, and turned up the quhyt of her eye, quhair by her divilrie, their fell ane great weght upoun him that he was forcit to set his bak to the wall, and when he came in, he thoucht the hous ran about with him, and theirefter lay seik ane lang tyme.” Katherine Grant was not likely to overcome the impression of such testimony as this: that she should have gone to any man’s house and yawned thrice, and added to this devilry the further crime of looking over her shoulder, was quite enough evidence of guilt for any sane man or woman in Orkney. Can we wonder, then, that she was not suffered to vex the sunlight longer by carrying pails bottom upwards, or yawning thrice in the faces of decent folk, and that she was taken forth to be strangled, burnt, and her ashes cast to the four winds of the merciful heaven?
THE MISDEEDS OF MARION RICHART.[27]
“Mareoune” Richart, alias Langland, dwelt on one of the wild Orkney islands, not far from where mad Elspeth Sandisome kept the whole country in fear lest she should do something terrible to herself or to others. Marion was invited to go the house, and try her skill at curing her, for she was known to be an awful witch, and able to do whatever she had a mind in the way of healing or killing. So she went, and set herself to her charm. She took some “remedie water”—which she made into “remedy water,” by carrying it in a round bowl to the byre where she cast into it something like “great salt,” taken from her purse, spitting thrice into the bowl, and blowing in her breath—and with this magic “remedie watter forspeking,” she bade Elspeth’s woman-servant wash her feet and hands, and she would be as well as ever she had been before. This was bad enough; but worse than this, she came to Stronsey on a day, asking alms of “Andro Coupar, skipper of ane bark,” to whom said Andrew rudely, “Away witch, carling; devils ane farthing ye will fall!” whereupon went Marion away “verie offendit; and incontinentlie he going to sea, the bark being vnder saill, he ran wode, and wald half luppen ourboord; and his sone seing him gat him in his armes, and held him; quhairvpon the sicknes immediatelie left him, and his sone ran made; and Thomas Paiterson, seeing him tak his madnes, and the father to turn weill, ane dog being in the bark, took the dog and bladdit him vpon the twa schoulderis, and thaireftir flang the said dogg in the sea, quhairby those in the bark were saiffed.” So Marion Richart, alias Langland, learnt the hangman’s way to the grave in the year of grace 1629; and her corpse was burned, when the hangman’s rope had done its work.
LADY LEE’S PENNY AND THE WITCHES OF 1629.[28]
Isobel Young, spous to George Smith, was burnt, in 1629, for curing cattle, as well as for the other crimes belonging to a witch. She had sought to borrow Lady Lee’s Penny—a precious stone or amulet, like to a piece of amber, set in a silver penny, which one of the old Lee family had gotten from a Saracen in the Crusades—and which Lee Penny was to help her in her incantations, for curing “the bestiall of the routting evill,” whatever that might have been. But Lady Lee let her have only a flagon of water in which the amulet had been steeped, which did quite as well, and helped to set the stake as quickly as anything else would have done. Various other mischancy things did Isobel Young. She stopped a certain mill, and made it incapable of grinding for eleven days: she forespoke a certain boat, and though all the rest returned to Dunbar full and richly laden, this came back empty, whereby the owner was ruined: she bewitched milk that it would give no cream, and churns, so that no butter would come: she twice crossed the mill water on a wild and stormy night, when the milne horses could not ride it out, and where there was no bridge of stone or wood; but Isobel the witch crossed and recrossed those raging waters under the stormy sky, and came out at the end as dry as if from a kiln. And was not this as unholy as taking off her “curch” at William Meslet’s barn-door, and running “thrice about the barn widdershins,” whereby the cattle were caused to fall dead in “great suddainty?” Then, as further iniquity, she had dealings with Christian Grinton, another witch, who one night came out of a hole in the roof in the likeness of a cat; and she cast a sickness from off her husband, and laid it on his brother’s son, who, knowing full well that he was bewitched, came to the house, and there saw the “firlott”—a certain measure of wheat—running about, and the stuff poppling on the floor, which was the manner of the charm. Drawing his sword, this husband’s brother’s son ran on the pannel (the accused) to kill her, but was witch-disabled, and only struck the lintel of the door instead; so he went home and died, and Isobel Young was the cause of his death by the cantrip wrought in the locomotive firlott and the poppling grain. Forbye all this, she was seen riding on “ane mare”—at least her apparition was seen so riding—and by her sorcery and devilish handling the mare was made to cast its foal, and since died. So Isobel Young was of no more value to the world or its inheritors, and died by the cord and the faggot, decently, as a convicted witch should. And Margaret Maxwell and her daughter Jane were haled before the Lords of Secret Council for having procured the death of Edward Thomson, Jane’s husband, “by the devilish and detestable practice of witchcraft;” and Janet Boyd was tried for “the foul and detestable crime” of receiving the devil’s mark, besides being otherwise dishonestly intimate with him; but this was in 1628, and we are now in 1629: and then the Lords of the Privy Council published a thundering edict, forbidding all persons to have recourse to holy words, or to make pilgrimages to chapels, and requiring of its Commissioners to make diligent search in all parts for persons guilty of this superstitious practice, and to have up and put in ward all such as were known to be specially devoted thereto. The meaning of the decree was to plague the Catholics, and Hibbert quotes part of this “Commission against Jesuits, Priests, or Communicants and Papists, going in pilgrimage.” But whatever the political significance of the edict, the social effect was to make the search after the White Witches, or Black, hotter and more bitter than ever.
ELSPETH CURSETTER AND HER FRIENDS.[29]
Elspeth Cursetter was tried, May 29 (still in 1629), for all sorts of bad actions. She bade one of her victims “get the bones of ane tequhyt (linnet), and carry thame in your claithes”; and she gave herself out as knowing evil, and able to do it too, when and to whomsoever she would; and she sat down before the house of a man who refused her admittance—for she was an ill-famed old witch, and every one dreaded her—saying, “Ill might they all thrive, and ill may they speed,” whereby in fourteen days’ time the man’s horse fell just where she had sat, and was killed most lamentably. But she cured a neighbour’s cow by drawing a cog of water out of the burn that ran before William Anderson’s door, coming