Part 12

The year after Sir George Maxwell's affair there was another case at Haddington which gave full employment to the authorities. Margaret Kirkwood, a woman of some means, hanged herself one Sunday morning during church time. Her servant, Lizzie Mudie, who was at kirk like a good Christian, suddenly called out, to the great disturbance of the congregation. She began repeating all the numbers--one, two, three, four, &c.--till she came to fifty-nine; then she stopped and cried, "The turn is done!" When it was afterwards found that Margaret Kirkwood had hung herself just about that moment, and that her age was fifty-nine, Lizzie Mudie was taken up and searched. She was found a witch by her marks, and soon after confessed, delating five women and one man as her accomplices. But the five women and the one man were obstinate, and would not say that they were guilty, though they were pricked and searched and marks found on them. Lord Fountainhall was present at the searching of the man, and he gives an account of it: "I did see the man's body searched and pricked in two sundry places, one at the ribs and the other at his shoulder. He seemed to find no pain, but no blood followed. The marks were blewish, very small, and had no protuberancy above the skin. The pricker said there were three sorts of witches' marks: the horn mark, it was very hard; the breiff mark, it was very little; and the feeling mark, in which they had sense and pain." "I remained very dissatisfied with this way of trial," says my Lord farther on, "as most fallacious; and the fellow could give me no account of the principles of his art, but seemed to be a drunken, foolish rogue." One of Lizzie Mudie's five victims was an old woman of eighty, named Marion Phinn, who had always borne a good character, "never being stained with the least ignominy, far less with the abominable crime of witchcraft." But though she petitioned the council to free her on her own caution, she was kept hand-fast and foot-bound in gaol, being far too dangerous in the helplessness and feebleness of her eighty years to be let out with the chance of bewitching mankind to death. This she could do, and work all other miracles; but she could not help herself to sunlight and liberty.

BRAVE OLD KATHERINE LIDDELL.[60]

In 1678 two old women of Prestonpans were burnt. They made a voluntary confession, and accused a few more of their craft. These in their turn accusing others, in a very short time seventeen unhappy creatures were collected together, all charged with the sin of witchcraft, intercommuning with the devil, voluntary transformation into ravens, cats, crows, &c., with all the other stock pieces of the hallucination. The judges seemed inclined to favour them, and Sir John Clerk of Pennycuik, when desired to sit on the commission appointed to try the seven given up by the parish of Loanhead, declined, "alleging drily that he did not feel himself warlock (that is, conjuror) enough to be judge upon such an inquisition." These poor creatures had deep sleeps, during which no pinching would awake them; but though the judges saw them when in these sleeps, and heard their confessions as to where they had been and what they had been doing during the time, they were regarded as diabolical trances, and dealt with accordingly. Nine of the East Lothian women were burnt, and the "seven of Loanhead were reserved for future procedure." Among the accused was one Katherine Liddell, a strong-minded, stout-hearted, old widow, who feared no man, spoke her mind freely, and had a body with nerves like cart ropes and muscles of iron. The bailie of Prestonpans, John Rutherford, had caused her to be seized in the late panic, and, though there was nothing against her, he had her pricked in various parts of her body "to the great effusion of her blood, and whereby her skin is raised and her body highly swelled, and she is in danger of life." A drummer, two salt-makers, and others, assisted him in this torture; for John Kincaid had found zealous followers: and any man with a peculiar temperament, and a heart hardened by superstition against suffering, might take on himself the office of pricker to his own soul's satisfaction, and the torture and murder of his fellow-creatures. Katherine Liddell, besides being actively tortured, was kept without sleep for six days and nights, but the stout old woman would confess nothing. On the contrary, she presented a petition to the Council, charging John Rutherford and the rest with "defamation, false imprisonment, and open and manifest oppression," and demanded vengeance and restitution in loud and vigorous terms. The Council, unaccustomed to this sort of thing, and used only to victims as tame as they were considered powerful, soon released her, dropping her like hot iron, and condemning Rutherford and his associates as too hasty and ill-advised: then, somewhat further redeemed themselves by an unusual act of justice and common sense, in sentencing David Cowan, "pricker"--the one who had been the most active of her tormentors--to be confined during pleasure in the Tolbooth.

Katherine Liddell did not do much good to her afflicted sisterhood, though she had helped herself: for that same year, in August,[61] "the devil had a great meeting of witches in Loudian, where, among others, was a warlock who formerly had been admitted to the ministrie in the Presbyterian tymes, and when the bishops came in conformed with them." This warlock minister was Mr. Gideon Penman, minister of Crighton, and a man of notoriously loose life; but whether he carried his defiance of good so far as to dance with the hags at the Sabbath, and "beat up those that were slow," and preach damnable doctrines and blasphemous travesties of the Christian faith in the devil's services, or whether he was only an immoral man--better out of the ministry than in it--remains for each reader's private judgment to determine. Ten of the accused stoutly affirmed that Mr. Gideon Penman was their devil's parson; but as he as stoutly denied it, he was liberated on his own security, while nine out of the ten were condemned to be strangled and burnt, which was done accordingly. They gave some curious details, as, that, when they renounced their baptism and gave themselves over to Satan by laying one hand on their head and the other on their feet he kissed them, and that he was cold to the touch, and his breath like a damp air; that he scourged them oft, and was a most "wicked and barbarous master;" and that when he administered the sacrament to them the bread was like wafers, and the drink like blood or black moss-water: that he transformed them to the likeness of bees, and crows, and ravens, when they flew about from place to place as he ordered.

THE DEVIL IN HIS CUPS.[62]

On December 19, 1679, the parish of Borrowstonness was again in an uproar concerning the evil doings of witches and wizards, the chief of whom was Annaple Thomson, once a widow, but now a wife. She was charged with having one day met the devil on her way between Linlithgow and Borrowstonness, when he "in the lyknes of ane black man told yow that yow wis ane poore puddled bodie, and had ane evill lyiff, and difficultie to win throw the warld; and promised that iff ye wald followe him, and go alongst with him, yow should never want, but have ane better lyiff; and abowt fyve wekes therafter, the Devill appeired to yow, when yow wis goeing to the coal-hill, about sevin o'clock in the morning. Having renewed his former tentatiowne yow did condescend thereto, and declared yowrselff content to follow him, and becwm his servant;"--which was bad of Annaple Thomson, and sure to bring her to ineffectual grief. Then some others, men and women both, were further informed of their misdeeds. They were told that "ye, and each person of yow, wis at several mettings with the Devill in the linkes of Borrowstownes, and in the howse of yow, Bessie Vickar, and ye did eatt and drinke with the Devill, and with on another, and with witches in hir howss in the nycht tyme; and the Devill and the said William Craw browght the ale which ye drank, extending to about sevin gallons, from the howss of Elisabeth Hamilton." So did the rest. Margaret Pringle, whose right wrist the devil had grievously pained, "but having it twitched of new againe, it immediatelie becam haill;" Margaret Hamilton, with whom the devil had at sundry times "drank several choppens of ale with yow," when they met at the town-well at Borrowstonness and talked together like two old gossips; also, another Margaret Hamilton, relict of James Pullwart, with whom the devil conversed in the likeness of a black man, but afterwards removed from her as a dog--they all committed abominable sins with the devil, and entertained him familiarly like any other cummer. And were they not all at the meeting with the "Devill and other witches at the croce of Murestaine," above Kinneil, upon "the threttin of October last, where yow all danced, and the Devill acted the pyiper, and where yow endevored to have destroyed Andrew Mitchell, sone to John Mitchell, elder in Dean of Kinneil?" The case was considered clear enough for all rational men in Borrowstonness; so Annabel Thomson, Margaret Pringle, the two Margaret Hamiltons, William Craw, and Bessie Vickar, were "found guiltie be ane assyse of the abominable cryme of Witchcraft," and were ordered to be taken to the west end of Borrowstonness, "the ordinar place of execution," betwixt two and four in the afternoon, and "there be wirried at a steack till they be dead, and thereafter to have their bodies burnt to ashes."

THE GHOST OF THE BLACK-BROWED MAID.[63]

If bodies were safe after death, characters were not. Isabel Heriot was maid of all work to the minister at Preston. "She was of a low Stature, small and slender of Body, of a Black Complexion. Her Head stood somewhat awry upon her Neck. She was of a droll and jeering Humour, and would have spoken to Persons of Honour with great Confidence." After some short time of service, her master the minister began to dislike her, because she was not eager in her religious duties; so he discharged her: and in 1680 she died--and "about the time of her death her face became extreamly black." Two or three nights after her burial, one Isabel Murray saw her, in her white grave-clothes, walk from the chapel to the minister's louping-on stone (horse-block). Here she halted, leaning her elbow on the stone, then went in at the back gate, and so towards the stable. A few nights after this stones were flung at the minister's house, over the roof, and in at the doors and windows; but they fell softly for the most part, and did no especial damage. Yet one night, just as the minister was coming in at the hall door, a great stone was flung after him, which hit the door very smartly and marked it. Isabel Murray was also hit with stones, and the serving-man who looked to the horses was gripped at the heel by something which made him cry out lustily. So it went on. Stones and clods, and lighted coals, and even an old horse-comb long since lost, were perpetually flying about, and only by severe prayer was the minister able to lay the devil who molested them.

Soon Isabel Murray reappeared with a fresh set of circumstances concerning the ghost of her namesake Isabel Heriot, the maid of all work. She said that as she was coming from church between sermons, to visit her house and kailyard for fear some vagrant cows might have got over the dyke--which were very likely of the true Maclarty type--on going down her own yard, which was next to the minister's, she saw again the apparition of Isabel Heriot, as she was when laid in her coffin. "Never was an egg liker to another than this Apparition was like to her, as to her Face, her Stature, her Motion, her Tongue, and Behaviour; her face was black like the mouten soot, the very colour which her face had when she died." The ghost was walking under the fruit-trees, and over the beds where the seeds had been sown, bending her body downwards, as if she had been seeking somewhat off the ground, and saying, "A stane! a stane!" Her lap was full of stones; as some people supposed the stones she cast in the night-time; and these stones she threw down, as if to harbour them, at a bush-root in the garden. Isobel Murray, nothing daunted, goes up to her.

"Wow!" says she, "what's thou doing here, Isabel Heriot? I charge thee by the law thou lives on to tell me."

Says the ghost, "I am come again because I wronged my master when I was his servant. For it was I that stealed his Shekel (this was a Jewish shekel of gold which, with some other things, had been stolen from him several years before), which I hid under the Hearthstone in the Kitching, and then when I flited took it into the Cannongate, and did offer to sell it to a French Woman who lodged where I served, who askt where I got it. I told her I found it between Leith and Edinburgh." Then she went on to make further confession. Having fyled herself for a thief she went on to show how she had been also a witch. "One night," says the ghost, "I was riding home late from the Town, and near the Head of Fanside Brae, the Horse stumbled, and I said, The Devil raise thee; whereupon the Foul Thief appeared presently to me, and threatened me, if I would not grant to destroy my Master the Minister, he would throw me into a deep hole (which I suppose is yet remaining); or if I could not get power over my master, I should strive to destroy the Shoolmaster."

"It was very remarkable," says George Sinclair, as a kind of commentary, "that one of the minister's servant-women had given to the schoolmaster's servant-woman some Linnings to make clean, among which there was a Cross cloth of strong Linning, which could never be found, though diligent search was made for it, till one morning the Master awakening found it bound round about his Night Cap, which bred admiration both to himself and his Wife. No more skaith was the Devil or the Witches able to do him. What way this was done, or for what end it cannot be well known: but it is somewhat probable that they designed to strangle and destroy him in the night time, which is their usual time in working and doing of mischief. This happened about the time (I suppose) that the Devil had charged Isabel Heriot to destroy this honest man. Yet within two days a young child of his, of a year old, fell sick, which was quickly pulled away by death, none knowing the cause or nature of the disease."

Isabel Murray went on to say, that furthermore the ghost confessed to her, that she, Isabel Heriot, when in life, had met the devil a second time at Elfiston Mill, near to Ormiston: and she told what foulness the devil did to her. Also, one night as she was coming home from Haddington Market with some horse-corn, she met the devil at Knock-hills, and he bade her destroy Thomas Anderson, who was riding with her. When she refused he threw all the horse-corn off the horse. "This Thomas Anderson was a Christian man," and when Murray told her tale "well remembered that Isabel had got up the next morning timeously," and brought home her oats which had lain in the road all the night. She said too that she had cheated her master whenever she went to the market to buy oats, charging him more than they cost--not an unusual practice with servants at market anywhere; and she told Isabel Murray that the stone cast at her was not for herself but for her goodman, who had once flung her, the ghost, into the jawhole, and abused her. At this point Murray said she began to be frightened, and ran home in all haste. So Isabel Heriot's character was settled for ever, and her neighbours only thought the judgment came too late.

THE SUCCUBUS.[64]

William Barton, a loose-lived man of notoriously strong passions, was apprehended for witchcraft. His confession included the not very frequent Scottish element of a Succubus--a demon under the form of a beautiful woman who beguiled him, and to whom he made himself over for love and gold. She baptized him under the name of John Baptist, gave him her mark, and fifteen pounds Scots in good gold as Tocher-money; and then they parted. When he had gone but a little way she called him back and gave him a mark to spend at the Ferry, desiring him to keep the fifteen pounds safe and unbroken. At this point in his confession the poor wretch was weary, and asked leave to go to sleep; which, for a wonderful stretch of humanity, the judges granted. Suddenly he awakened with a loud laugh. The magistrates asked why he laughed?--and he said that during his sleep the devil had come to him, very angry at his confession, and bidding him deny all when he awoke, "for he should be his Warrand." After this he became "obdured," and would never confess anything again; the devil persuading him that no man should take his life. And even when they told him that the stake was set up and the fire built round, he only answered, "he cared not for all that, for," said he, "I shal not die this day." How should he if no man was to kill him? Upon this the executioner came into the prison, but fell stone dead as he crossed the threshold. Hastily the magistrates offered a reward to the executioner's wife if she would undertake her husband's office, and strangle the poor mad fellow before he was burnt; which she agreed to do, for all that she was in great pain and grief, clapping her hands and crying, "Dool for this parting my dear burd Andrew Martin!" When the warlock heard that a woman was to put him to death, he fell into a passion of crying, saying that the devil had deceived him, and "let no man ever trust his promises again!"

Barton's wife was imprisoned with him. On her side she declared that she had never known her husband to be a warlock; he on his that he had never known her to be a witch: but presently the mask fell off, and she confessed. She said that malice against one of her neighbours had driven her to give herself over to the devil, that he had baptized her by the name of Margaratus, and taken her to be very near to him; a great deal too near for even a virtuous woman's thoughts. When asked if she had found pleasure in his society, she answered, "Never much." But one night, going to a witches' dance upon Pentland Hills, he went before them all in the likeness of a rough tanny dog, playing on a pair of pipes. The spring he played, said she, was "The silly bit chicken, gar cast it a pickle, and it will grow mickle;" and coming down the hill they had the best sport of all: the devil carried the candle and his tail went, "ey wig wag, wig wag!" Margaratus was burnt with her husband.

THE ISLAND WITCHES.

The Orkney and Shetland islanders were rich in witchcraft superstitions. They had all the Norwegian beliefs in fullest, ripest quality, and held to everything that had been handed down to them from Harald Harfagre and his followers. Kelpies and trows, and brownies and trolls, which somehow or other went out with taxation and agriculture, peopled every stream and every meadow, and witches were as many as there were men who loved nature, or women who had a faculty for healing and the instinct of making pets. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenth century a woman was adjudged a witch because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple of familiars in the form of black crows or corbies, which hopped on each side of her, all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the imp took the form of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being; as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while her husband was engaged at the Haaf. According to the same authority too,[65] not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy, a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity against a boat's crew that had set off from the Haaf. The day was cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a _cap_, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verse or two she sent her little child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was _whummilled_ (turned upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder; and presently sent the child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang more loud and fierce; and again she sent. The child came back saying the waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried out, "The turn is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned. The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.