You must allow me to see you home at once." imagined they saw down a glade of the moonlit woods the Queen of Fairy holding high revel in some clearing among the bracken. Though more numerous in the Highlands, these descendants of the old deities of Scotland were equally feared and dreaded in the more peaceful and more civilised Lowlands. Even in the Catholic times, religion in Scotland, hard and logical as the people were, always assumed a character more stern and gloomy than that of England. The omnipresence, the almost omnipotence of the Prince of Evil, was a vital and prominent article of the creed of the Scotch preacher, before even Calvinism acquired its full sway over the national heart. Of all the beliefs engendered by semichristianised paganism, that which took the deepest and most fatal hold was the dread of witchcraft. No Scot, wise or simple, but fully believed, as much as he believed the main articles of the Christian faith, that hundreds of cankered old women, soured by poverty and sorrow, sold themselves formally to the devil, who appeared in propriâ personâ to see the bond signed with their blood, a ceremony accompanied by many ludicrous yet ghastly observances. Katherine bent her head with an expression of meek obedience, which was not all assumed. This wild Paul had got a power over her which no one had ever before possessed; a power wielded unconsciously, and which she had never yet fully recognised until now. They went silently together downward through the mazes of the old mansion, he going first, opening doors, and turning to assist her over broken places in the staircase; she following silently and humbly in her pallid beauty, as if terrified and stricken at what had befallen her. She was stunned, having suddenly come face to face with her own defeat. She had thought to be mistress, and found that she was slave. A pain new to her, so sound in body, so unfeeling in spirit, had cloven her heart at sight of Paul's look of hatred. She was confounded with a new and strange knowledge of herself, so that her agony was genuine, even if rage made a part of it. Every time Paul turned to her, of necessity he pitied her, and his heart reproached him a little more, and a little more. By the time they had got out into the open air his voice had got gentle when he addressed her. By-and-blood of men, far-seeing as Bruce and lionbye, she pleaded to be allowed to cling to hearted as Wallace, has often run cold his arm, for the fear that she had of these to hear how once a year, at the witches' unnatural woods. And this being con- annual Sabbath, the hags who served ceded, the two passed on their way, and Satan assembled to hear him preach and were lost in the thickness of the trees. deride the religion of Christ with ribald sermon and demoniacal prayers. Nor did men of later days, and more versatile brains, like Sir David Lindsay or Buchanan, ever question that Galloway witches could mutter words that at once transformed the broomsticks they bestrode on the windy heath to flying horses, that bore them swift away over firth and tarn, mountain-peak and glen, steeples and roofs glittering silver in the moonshine, to the King of France's cellars, where, in a circle round the biggest butt of Burgundy, the haggard "cummers" would clatter and chuckle as they quaffed the stolen wine, till the time came to mount again the bonny steeds that had brought them so deftly over the sea. OLD STORIES RE-TOLD. SUPERSTITION, dark shadow born of ignorance and fear, ruled the Scotland of the Middle Ages with a power which almost rivalled that of religion. The ghosts and spectres of the pagan times, dim reflections cast by the rude deities of the Picts, the Norsemen, and the early Irish invaders, long lingered in lonely glens and rocky valleys, by the sides of desolate lakes, and by the ruins of old fortresses, refusing to be exorcised from their old strongholds by calm saints with bell, book, or candle, wrestling for their new religion which had peacefully superseded the grosser worship. In the course of centuries Scotch Christianity gradually became adulterated by an admixture of the old belief, and the Douglas and his followers, who knelt before the shrine of St. Andrew in the morning, at evening shuddered as they rode along the sands, past the Kelpie's Flow, or The No sudden sickness fell on a Scotchman in the time of Barfour, or of Knox, but he at once turned pale at the sudden and sure conviction that he was elf-shot, that some witch he had chidden for stealing wood, or to whom he had refused a pinch of oatmeal, or a mutchkin of whisky, had cast a spell over him, had repeated the Lord's Prayer backwards outside his door or had melted a little wax effigy of him over some enchanted fire. These fears, and such as these, racked and tormented the minds of many generations of worthy Scotchmen, and led to the cruel persecution and horrible deaths of many thousands of rheumatic, half-crazed, hysterical, harmless old women. A picturesque yet careful summary of a few of these witch-trials will show very perfectly the exact nature of this absurd belief, and the varied character that it assumed as the darkness of superstition lightened or deepened over the bleak northern land where it had taken such firm root. The Scottish witches seem to have began their infernal cantrips as early as the times of St. Patrick, when a gang of them, as that worthy and vermin-hating saint was crossing to Scotland, hurled a rock at him, which rock is now known as that on which Dumbarton Castle securely stands. In 968, King Duff only saved himself from a mortal sickness, by discovering in time, and breaking, a wax image of himself melting away at a witches' fire at Forres, in Murray. For this treasonable act several witches were immolated. After this acute monarch came Thomas the Rhymer, Thomas of Ercildoune, as he was usually called, whom the Queen of the Fairies decoyed from the Tweed-side meadows into Fairyland. Nor must we forget the great wizard of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Michael Scott, who shook France and Spain with his spells, and even split the Eildon hills into three. And later came the wicked enchanter, William Lord Soulis, who, when no sword or spear could pierce him, was dropped into a hot cauldron like a ham, and, under considerable protest on his part, boiled to death. But, leaving the swamp of fiction and coming to the terra firma of fact, let us calmly state that in 1479 no less a person than the Earl of Mar, twelve " mean women," and several wizards, were burnt at Edinburgh for melting a waxen image of the king; and the year after it was currently reported that "the young lady of Mar" had formed a highly improper acquaintance with an Incubus, while in 1537 Lady Glammis, the young and beautiful widow of that pugnacious chieftain, Lord Glammis, or as he was more generally and admiringly called, "Clear the Causeway," and the grand-daughter of that grand old murderer, Archibald Bell - the - Cat, was burnt for witchcraft, on a false charge of poisoning her husband, and attempting to poison the king. The first recorded witch-trial took place in 1576. On the 8th of November, 1576, Bessie Dunlop, the wife of a yeoman, named Andro Jake of Lyne, in Ayrshire, walking to Monkcastle-yard, weeping for a dead cow and also for her husband and children, who were down with a fever, met the ghost of one Thom Reid, who had been killed at the battle of Pinkie, twenty-nine years before, and was at the time she met him lodging in Fairyland. "Sancta Maria," said he, "Bessie, why make you such dool and greeting for any worldly thing?" Thom, we may mention, was a greybearded ghost, wearing a grey coat with old-fashioned Lombard sleeves, grey breeks, and white stockings gartered at the knee. He had a black bonnet with silken lace, and carried a white wand in his hand. Eventually the well-clad ghost, consoling the poor crying woman by telling her that though her child would die her husband would recover, disappeared through an impossibly small hole in the nearest dyke. After this came other interviews with the designing ghost. The third time the cloven foot showed pretty clearly, for he endea voured to persuade her to deny her baptism, but orthodox Bessie declared she would rather be "ridden at horses' tails" than forswear her Christianity. At the fourth meeting Thom came to the woman's own house, carried her audaciously off from a small but select tea-party of her husband and "three creeshie tailors," and took her to a witches' assembly. There were eight women in plaids there and four well-dressed men, who tried to persuade her to go back with them to Fairyland, where she should have plenty of beef and good braw clothes, but frightened Bessie stoutly refused to go, and Thom threatened her for refusing. After this the Queen of the Fairies, "a stout, comely woman,' came to her as she was lying in bed during her confinement, and asked for a drink, which Bessie gave her. The queen told her, as Thom had done, that her child would die, and her husband recover. At a later period, Thom gave Bessie roots to make into powder and salve for human beings, as well as for cattle. Armed with these specifics, Bessie soon became famous as a doctoress. She cured Lady Johnstone's daughter, with spiced ale, of swoons, and her wife's sister's cow, but failed with old Lady Kilbowye's crooked leg, because the marrow of it was gone, and the blood, according to her great medical authority, Thom, was "dosint," or as we should say benumbed. Bessie's fame as a midwife and nurse soon became only equalled by her fame as a spaewife. She told anxious farmers where such a man's coat was, another's plough-irons, and she disclosed the thief who stole Lady Blair's body-linen. Envious midwives, angry bone-setters, and jealous fortune-tellers soon conspired against poor Bessie. Poor, weakly, crafty woman no doubt, to gain a higher reputation among her poor ignorant country patients, she had trumped up all this story about the ghost of old Thom, and had even shown a green silk lace which she wound round the left arms of women at their time of delivery as a talisman brought for her by that very old soldier from the Queen of Fairyland herself. Oh what a tangled web we weave When first we practise to deceive. Too late, with her limbs crushed in the terrible boots, her ribs snapping on the rack, her poor fingers bleeding in the "pilniewinks," Bessie Jake lamented that she had ever boasted of meeting a soldier's ghost, or a fairy queen. In her delirium, her brain gone, she rambled on with fresh lies about having frequently seen Thom handling goods, like any decent living body, at the Edinburgh market. The last time she met him, said the groaning woman, he had told her she would soon be arrested, but assured her that she would be well treated, and eventually cleared. Lies, lies all, even if the biggest ghost ever rapped up had spoken those words. To the fire she was hurried, and the lies were burnt out of her miserable body in the sight of a pitiless multitude that blackened the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. Following down the black rings that mark the burning place of these victims of cruel and stupid superstition, we come, in 1590, to John Fian, alias Cunningham, a poor parish schoolmaster at Saltpans, Lothian, who was discovered to occupy the onerous office of secretary and registrargeneral to the devil. The witnesses, who feared or disliked this unhappy scholar, deposed that Satan had appeared to him all in white one night as he lay in bed, thinking how he could be revenged on Thomas Turnbull, his landlord, for not white-washing his room as per agreement. It was sworn that to obtain this revenge Fian had sworn allegiance to Satan, and received his recruiting mark, to wit, two pins thrust under his tongue up to their heads. heads. After a trance of three hours in Turnbull's chamber, the poor schoolmaster had told the foolish and suspicious country people of how he had been transported to various mountains half round the world. Under torture, following the lead of dangerous and entrapping questions, the schoolmaster confessed that he had done homage to Satan as he stood in the pulpit of North Berwick Church. To his witch congregation, Satan had said, during a short but appropriate sermon: 66 'Many come to the fair, but all sell not wares; fear not, though I am grim, for I have many servants who shall never ail or want so long as their hair is on, and never shall a tear fall from their eyes so long as they serve me. Spare not to do evil, eat, drink, and be blithe, take rest and ease, for I will raise you up on the latter day gloriously." Fian had also entered into a league with Satan and a gang of witches and wizards to wreck King James on his return from Denmark, where he had visited Ann, his future wife. It was also deposed that at the witches' Sabbath in North Berwick Church, Fian and the crew had passed round the church "widdershins," that is, contrary to the sun's course. Fian opened the strong church door by blowing into the lock, and then puffed in the lights, which very properly burned blue, and appeared as big black candles held by old men's hands all round the pulpit. Satan appeared as a huge black man with a black beard like that of a goat, a high ribbed nose like a hawk's beak, and a long tail. He wore a black gown, and an "evil-favoured" black skullcap on his head, and preached with a black book in his hand, telling them if they would be good servants to him, he would be a good master to them, and that they should never want. He made the witches all very angry on one occasion, by forgetting the proprieties so much as to call one Rob by his christian name. The congregation all ran "hirdie-girdie" at this, in surprise and consternation, but, nevertheless, no public apology seems to have been made. Fian had also, as he confessed under torture, dug up dead bodies and dismembered them to make charms. At the house of one David Seaton it was sworn that he had opened a lock by merely breathing into the hand of an old wife sitting by the fire. Another time four lighted candles sprang out of his horse's head, and a fifth arose on the staff These candles which his servant carried. On Doctor Fian's renouncing the devil and all his works (it was about time), the evil spirit, he said, angrily broke the white wand he carried, and disappeared. The next day the poor wretch recanted, and then the monsters invented fresh tortures, but he was resolute now, and would invent no more lies. On a January Saturday, 1591, he escaped from their cruelty in a fire on the Castle Hill. Other members of Fian's gang were also dragged to the stake, after endless examinations, that lasted a whole winter, before that miserable pedant, James the First. Agnes Sympson, generally known as the "wise wife of Keith," after dreadful tortures, confessed that she and two hundred other witches had gone to sea in sieves on All Halloween, laughing and drinking as they sailed. The witnesses against her complained of her using nonsenical rhymes, for the instructing of ignorant people and teaching them to pray; among others, these two prayers, the Black and White Pater Noster, to be used morning and evening: White Pater Noster, God was my foster. Under the Book of palm tree. To read upon yon sweet Book, That hear the White Prayer, Pater Noster. Four newks in this house, for holy angels, God be into this house and all that belangs us. When she sought for an answer from the devil on any occasion, he appeared to her in the shape of a dog; the way of dismissing and conjuring him to go was this, "I charge thee to depart on the law thou lives on,' as she did when she dismissed him after her consulting him about old Lady Edmiston's sickness. But the manner how she raised the devil was with these words, "Eloa, come and speak to me, who came in the likeness of a dog." Her sailing with her cummers and fellowwitches in a boat to a ship was very remarkable: the devil caused her and them to drink good wine and beer without money, she neither seeing the mariners nor the mariners her. And after all the devil raised a wind, whereby the ship perished. She baptised a cat to hinder Queen Ann from coming into Scotland. In her own confession to King James she said that "the devil, in man's likeness, met her going out to the fields from her own house at Keith, betwixt five and six at even, being alone, and commanded her to be at North Berwick Kirk the next night, to which place she came on horseback, conveyed by her good son, called John Couper, and lighted near the kirkyeard about eleven hours at even. They danced along the kirk-yeard, Geilie Duncan playing on a trump, and John Fian, muffled, led the king. The said Agnes and her daughter followed next. Besides, there were Kate Gray, George Moilis, his wife, Robert Grierson, Katherine Duncan, Bessie Wright, Isabel Gilmore, John Graymail, Duncan Buchanan, Thomas Barnhil and his wife, Gilbert Mackgill, John Mackgill, Katherine Mackgill, with the rest of their cummers, above one hundred persons, whereof there were six men, and all the rest women. The women made first their courtesy to their maister, and then the men. The men turned nine times widdershines about, and the women six times. The devil started up himself in the pulpit like a mickle black man, and calling the roll, every one answered, 'Here.' "The first thing Satan demanded was if they kept all promise, and had been good servants, and what they had done since the last time they had conveened. At his command they opened up three graves― two within and one without the kirk, and cutting off from the dead corps the joints of their fingers, toes, and nose, parted them amongst them, and she (Agnes Sympson) got for her part a winding-sheet and two joints. The devil commanded them to keep the joints upon them while they were dry, and then to make a powder of them to do evil withall. Then he bade them to keep his commandments, which were to do all the evil and mischief they could. Before they departed and were dismist they behoved to kiss this diabolical preacher. In the churchyard at North Berwick, Geillis Duncan, a half-crazed servantgirl, had led the dance, playing a tune called Gyllatripes on the jew's harp. The devil had confessed to her (well-devised flattery, but fruitless), that James was a man of God and his greatest enemy. She and some other witches had sunk a vessel on one occasion, and on another baptised a cat. Doctor Fian, she owned, acted as secretary and registrar at their meetings. She, too, went to the ever-ready bonfire. Barbara Napier, wife of an Edinburgh burgess, and sister-in-law to the Laird of Carschoggill, was acquitted, much to the rage and regret of the Scottish Solomon. A lady of good family, Euphemia Maclean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, was burnt about the same time, probably all the sooner for being a Catholic and a friend of the hated Bothwell. The year after, a man named Richard Graham was burnt at the Cross in Edinburgh for boasting of having a familiar spirit at his beck, and also for raising a devil in the court-yard of the house of Sir Lewis Ballantyne, in the Canongate, an apparition which, by-thebye, frightened poor Sir Lewis to death. The foolish book on Demonology, written by King James before he ascended the English throne, gave a great impetus to the persecution of witches. Droves of old women were hurried to the flames. What special opinions the sapient king held, our readers may gather from the following extracts, which are the very gist of the whole farrago of learned nonsense, which at least did this good to the world, that it probably gave some hints to Shakespeare for his wonderful witches in Macbeth. "EPISTEMON. In their actions used towards others, three things ought to be considered; first, the maner of their consulting therefrom; next, their part as instruments; and last, their master's part, who puts the same in execution. As to their consultations therefrom, they use them oftest in the churches, where they convene for adoring, at what time their master inquiring of them what they would be at, every one of them proposes unto him what wicked torture they would have done, either for obtaining of riches, or for revenging them upon any whom they have malice at; who graunting their demaund, as no doubt willingly he will, since it is to doe evill, he teacheth them the meanes whereby they may doe the same; as for little trifling turnes that woman have adoe with, he causeth them to joynt dead corpses, and to make powders thereof, mixing such other things there amongst as he gives unto them. That fourth kinde of spirits, which by the Gentiles was called divine, and her wondering court and amongst was called the Phairie, or our 'good neighbours,' was one of the sorts of illusions that was rifest in the time of Papistrie; for although it was holden odious to prophesie by the divel, yet whom these kind of spirits caried away, and formed, they were thought to be sonsiest, and of best life. To speak of the many vain trottles founded upon that illusion-how there was King and Queen of Phairie of such a jolly court and traine as they had, how they rode and went, eat, and drink, and did all other actions like naturall men and women, I think it were liker Virgil's Campi Elysii, nor anything that ought to be beleeved by Christians, except in generall, that as I spake sundrie times before, the divell illuded the senses of sundrie simple creatures, in making them beleeve that they saw and heard such things as were nothing so indeed. "PHILOMATHES. But how can it be then that sundrie witches have gone to death with that confession, that they have been transported with the Phairie to such a hill, which opening, they went in and saw a faire queen, who being now lighter, gave them a stone that had sundrie virtues, which at sundrie times hath been produced in judgement? "EPI. I say that even as I said before of that imaginar ravishing of the spirit foorth of the bodie; for may not the divel object to their fantasie, their senses being dulled, and as it were asleepe, such hilles and houses within them, such glistering courtes and traines, and whatsoever such-like wherewith he pleaseth to delude them, and in the mean time their bodies being senselesse, to convey in their hande any stone or such like thing, which he makes them to imagine to have received in such a place." |