BESSIE ROY.
The month after this trial, Bessie Roy, nurreych (nurse) to the Leslies of Balquhain, was “dilatit” for sorcery generally, and specially for being “a common awa-taker of women’s milk.” She took away poor Bessie Steel’s, when she came to ask alms, and only restored it again when she was afraid of getting into trouble for the fault. She was also accused of having, “by the space of tual yeiris syne or thairby,” past to the field with other women to pluck lint, but instead of following her lawful occupation, she had made “ane compas (circle) in the eird, and ane hoill in the middis thairof;” out of which hole came, first, a great worm which crept over the boundary, then a little worm, which crept over it also, and last of all another great worm, “quhill could nocht pas owre the compas, nor cum out of the hoill, but fell doune and deit.” Which enchantment or sorcery being interpreted meant, by the first worm, William King, who should live; by the second small worm, the unborn babe, of which no one yet knew the coming life; and by the third large worm the gude wyffe herself, who should die as soon as she was delivered. Notwithstanding the gravity and circumstantiality of these charges, Bessie Roy marvellously escaped the allotted doom, and was pronounced innocent. “Quhairvpoune the said Bessie askit act and instrument.” Two women tried the day before, Jonet Grant and Jonet Clark, were less fortunate. Charged with laming men and women by their devilish arts—whereof was no attempt at proof—they were convicted and burnt; as also was Meg Dow, in April of the same year, for the “crewell murdreissing of twa young infant bairns,” by magic.
And now we come to a very singular group of trials, opened out by that clumsy, superstitious pedant, whose name stands accursed for vice and cruel cowardice and the utmost selfishness of fear—James VI. of Scotland. If anything were wanting to complete one’s abhorrence of Carr’s patron and Raleigh’s murderer—one’s contempt of the upholder of the divine right of kings in his own self-adoration as God’s vicegerent upon earth—it would be his part in the witch delusion of the sixteenth century. Whatever of blood-stained folly belonged specially to the Scottish trials of this time—and hereafter—owed its original impulse to him; and every groan of the tortured wretches driven to their fearful doom, and every tear of the survivors left blighted and desolate to drag out their weary days in mingled grief and terror, lie on his memory with shame and condemnation ineffaceable for all time.
THE DEVIL’S SECRETARY.[5]
On the 26th of December, 1590, John Fian, alias Cuningham (spelt Johanne Feane, alias Cwninghame), master of the school at Saltpans, Lothian, and contemptuously recorded as “Secretar and Register to the Devil,” was arraigned for witchcraft and high treason. There were twenty counts against him, the least of which would have been enough to have lighted up a witch-fire on that fatal Castle Hill, for the bravest and best in the land. First, he was accused of entering into a covenant with Satan, who appeared to him in white, as he lay in bed, musing and thinking (“mwsand and pansand,” says the dittay in its quaint language) how he should be revenged on Thomas Trumbill, for not having whitewashed his room, according to agreement. After promising his Satanic majesty allegiance and homage, he received his mark, which later was found under his tongue, with two pins therein thrust up to their heads. Again, he was found guilty—“fylit” is the old 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.” Note, that these depositions were made in the midst of fearful torture, and recanted the instant after. Also, he was 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, saying, “Many come to the fair, and all buy not wares;” and desired him “not to fear, though he was grim, for he had many servants who should never want, or ail nothing, so long as their hair was on, and should never let one tear fall from their eyes so long as they served him;” and he gave them lessons, and said, “Spare not to do evil, and to eat and drink and be blithe, taking rest and ease, for he should raise them up at the latter day gloriously.” 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 on his way to Denmark, whither, in a fit of clumsy gallantry, he had set out to visit his future queen. While he was 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 accordingly done; and a pretty capful of wind 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—it seemed to Dr. Fian like a wisp—and cast it into the sea, whereupon arose the great mist which nearly drove the cumbrous old pedant on to English ground, where our strong-fisted queen would have made him pay for his footing in a manner not quite congenial to his tastes. But, being a Man of God, none of these charms and devilries prevailed against him. A further count was, that once again he consorted with Satan and his crew, still in North Berwick church, where they paced round the church wider shins (wider scheins?), that is, contrary to the way of the sun. Fian blew into the lock—a favourite trick of his—to open the door, and blew in the lights which burned blue, and were like big black candles held in an old man’s hand round about the pulpit. Here Satan as a “mekill blak man, with ane blak baird stikand out lyke ane gettis (goat’s) baird; and ane hie ribbit neise, falland doun scharp lyke the beik of ane halk; with ane lang rumpill (tail); cled in ane blak tatie goune, and ane ewill favorit scull bonnett on his heid; haifand ane blak buik in his hand,” preached to them, commanding them to be good servants to him, and he would be a good master to them, and never let them want. But he made them all very angry by calling Robert Grierson by his Christian name. He ought to have been called “Ro’ the Comptroller, or Rob the Rower.” This slip of the master’s displeased them sorely, and they ran “hirdie girdie” in great excitement, for it was against all etiquette to be named by their earthly names; indeed, they always received new names when the devil gave them their infernal christening, and they made themselves over to him and denied their holy baptism. It was at this meeting that John Fian was specially accused of rifling the graves of the dead, and dismembering their bodies for charms. And many other things did this Secretar and Register to the devil. Once, at the house of David Seaton’s mother, he breathed into the hand of a woman 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. He sent an evil spirit, who tormented a man for twenty weeks; and he was seen to chase a cat, and in the chase to be carried so high over a hedge that he could not touch her head. The dittay says he flew through the air—a not infrequent mode of progression with such people. When asked why he hunted the cat, he said that Satan had need of her, and that he wanted all the cats he could lay hands on, to cast into the sea, and cause storms and shipwrecks. He was further accused of endeavouring to bewitch a young maiden by his devilish cantrips and horrid charms; but, by a wile of the girl’s mother, up to men’s arts, he practised on a heifer’s hairs instead of the girl’s, and the result was that a luckless young cow went lowing after him everywhere—even into his school-room—rubbing herself against him, and exhibiting all the languish and desire of a love-sick young lady. A curious old plate represents John Fian and the heifer in grotesque attitudes; the heifer with large, drooping, amorous eyes, intensely ridiculous—the schoolmaster with his magic wand drawing circles in the sand. These, with divers smaller charges, such as casting horoscopes, and wearing modewart’s (mole’s) feet upon him, amounting in all to twenty counts, 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 still he would not confess; then they tried fair words and coaxed him, but with no better success; and then they put him to the “most severe and cruell pains in the worlde,” namely, the boots, till his legs were completely crushed, and the blood and marrow spouted out. 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 stated before, under his tongue, with two charmed pins stuck up to their heads therein. When they were drawn out—that is, after some further torture—he confessed anything which it pleased his tormentors to demand of him, saying how, just now, the devil had been to him all in black, but with a white wand in his hand; and how, on his, Fian’s, renouncing him, he had brake his wand, and disappeared. The next day he recanted this confession. He was then somewhat restored to himself, and had mastered the weakness of his agony. Whereupon it was assumed that the devil had visited him through the night, and had marked him afresh. They searched him—pulling off every nail with a turkas, or smith’s pincers, and then thrusting in needles up to their heads; but finding nothing more satanic than blood and nerves, they put him to worse tortures, as a revenge. He made no other relapse, but remained constant now to the end; bearing his grievous pains with patience and fortitude, and dying as a brave man always knows how to die, whatever the occasion. Finding that nothing more could be made of him, they mercifully came to an end. He was strangled and burnt “in the Castle Hill of Edinbrough, on a Saterdaie, in the ende of Januarie last past 1591;” ending a may be loose and not over-heroic life in a manner worthy of the most glorious martyr of history. John Fian, schoolmaster of Saltpans, with no great idea to support him, and no admiring friends to cheer him on, bore himself as nobly as any hero of them all, and vindicated the honour of manhood and natural strength in a way that exalts our common human nature into something godlike and divine.
THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH AND HER CUMMERS.[6]
Fian was the first victim in the grand battue offered now to the royal witchfinder; others were to follow, the manner of whose discovery was singular enough. Deputy Bailie David Seaton of Tranent, had a half-crazed servant-girl, one Geillis Duncan, whose conduct in suddenly taking “in hand to helpe all such as were troubled or grieved with anie kinde of sicknes or infirmitie,” excited the righteous suspicions of her master. To make sure he tortured her, without trial, judge, or jury; first, by the “pillie-winks” or thumbscrews, and then by “thrawing,”—wrenching, or binding her head with a rope—an intensely agonizing process, and one that generally comes in as part of the service of justice done to witch and wizard. Not confessing, even under these persuasions, she was “searched,” and the mark was found on her throat: whereupon she at once confessed; accusing, among others, the defunct John Fian, or Cuningham, Agnes Sampson at Haddington, “the eldest witch of them all,” Agnes Tompson of Edinburgh, and Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of Justice. Agnes Sampson’s trial came first. She was a grave, matronlike, well-educated woman, “of a rank and comprehension above the vulgar, grave and settled in her answers, which were to some purpose,” and altogether a woman of mark and character. She was commonly called the “grace wyff” or “wise wyff” of Keith; and, doubtless, her superior reputation brought on her the fateful notice of the half-crazed girl; also it procured her the doubtful honour of being carried to Holyrood, there to be examined by 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,[7] 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 her kingly inquisitor. She said that she and two hundred other 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 around, saying—
“Commer goe ye before! commer goe ye!
Gif ye will not goe before, commer let me!”
Here they met the devil, like a mickle black man, as John Fian had said, and he marked her on the right knee; and this was the time when he made them all so angry by calling Robert Grierson by his right name, instead of Rob the Rower, or Ro’ the Comptroller. When they rifled the graves, as Fian had said, she got two joints, a winding-sheet, and an enchanted ring for love-charms. She also said that Geillis Duncan, the informer, went before them, playing on the Jew’s harp, and the dance she played was Gyllatripes; which so delighted gracious Majesty, greedy of infernal news, that he sent on the instant to Geillis, to play the same tune before him; which she did “to his great pleasure and amazement.” Furthermore, Agnes Sampson confessed that, on asking Satan why he hated King James, and so greatly wished to destroy him, the foul fiend answered: “Because he is the greatest enemy I have;” adding, that he was “un homme de Dieu,” and that Satan had no power against him. A pretty piece of flattery, but availing the poor wise wife nothing as time went on. Her indictment was very heavy; fifty-three counts in all; for the most part relating to the curing of disease by charm and incantation, and to foreknowledge of sickness or death. Thus, she took on herself the sickness of Robert Kerse in Dalkeith, then cast it back, by mistake, on Alexander Douglas, intending it for a cat or a dog: and she put a powder containing dead men’s bones under the pillow of Euphemia Macalzean, when in the pains of childbirth, and so got her safely through. As she went on, and grew more thoroughly weakened in mind and body, she owned to still more monstrous things. Item, to having a familiar, in shape of a dog by name Elva, whom she called to her by “Holà! master!” and conjured away “by the law he lived on.” This dog or devil once came so near to her that she was “fleyt,” but she charged him by the law he lived on to come no nearer to her, but to answer her honestly—“Should old Lady Edmistoune live?” “Her days were gane,” said Elva; “and where were the daughters?” “They said they would be there,” said Agnes. He answered, one of them should be in peril, and that he should have one of them. “It sould nocht be sa,” cried the wise wife; so he growled and went back into the well. Another time she brought him forth out of the well to show to Lady Edmistoune’s daughters, and he frightened them half to death, and would have devoured one of them had not Agnes and the rest gotten a grip of her and drawn her back. She sent a letter to Marian Leuchope, to raise a wind that should prevent the queen from coming; and she caused a ship, ‘The Grace of God,’ to perish—the devil going before, while she and the rest sailed over in a flat boat, entered unseen, ate of the best, and swamped the vessel afterwards. 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 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 had in Fian’s indictment; as, that she and her sister witches baptized the cat by which they raised the storm, by putting it, with various ceremonies, thrice through the chimney crook. “Fyrst twa of thame held ane fingar, in the ane syd of the chimnay cruik, and ane vther held ane vther fingar in the vther syd, the twa nebbis of the fingaris meting togidder; than they patt the catt thryis throw the linkis of the cruik, and passit it thryis vnder the chimnay;” afterwards they knit four dead men’s joints to the four feet of the cat, and cast it into the sea, ready now to work any amount of mischief that Satan might command. Then she made a “picture,” or clay image, of Mr. John Moscrop, father-in-law to Euphemia Macalzean, to destroy him, at the said Euphemia’s desire. She was also at all the famous North Berwick meetings, where Dr. Fian was secretary, registrar, and lock-opener; where they were baptized 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. She also confessed to taking a black toad, and hanging him up by his heels, collecting all his venom in an oyster shell for three days, and she told the king that it was then she wanted his fouled linen, when she would have enchanted him to death—but she never got it. She had two Pater Nosters, the white and the black. The white ran thus:—
“White Pater Noster,
God was my Foster,
He fostered me,
Under the Book of Palm Tree.
Saint Michael was my Dame,
He was born at Bethlehem,
He was made of flesh and blood,
God send me my right food:
My right food and dyne two
That I may to yon kirk go,
To read upon yon sweet book,
Which the mighty God of Heaven shoop.
Open, open, Heaven’s yaits,
Stick, stick, Hell’s yaits.
All Saints be the better,
That hear the white prayer Pater Noster.”
There was no harm in this doggerel, nor yet much good; little of blessing, if less of banning; nor was the Black more definite. It was shorter, which ought to have ranked as a merit:—
Black Pater Noster.
“Four newks in this house, for holy angels,
A post in the midst, that’s Christ Jesus,
Lucas, Marcus, Matthew, Joannes,
God be into this house and all that belongs us.”
To “sain” or charm her bed she used to say,—
“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
The bed be blest that I ly on.”
And when the butter was slow in coming, it was enough if she chanted slowly—
“Come, butter, come!
Come, butter, come!
Peter stands at the gate.
Waiting for a buttered cake,
Come, butter, come,”
said with faith and unction, she was sure to have at once a lucky churn-full.
These queer bits of half-papistical, half-nonsensical doggerel were considered tremendous sins in those days, and the use of them was quite sufficient to bring any one to the scaffold; as their application would, for a certainty, destroy health, and gear, and life, if it were so willed. And for all these crimes—storm-raising, cat-baptizing, and the rest—Agnes Sampson, the grave, matronlike, well-educated grace wife of Keith, was bound to a stake, strangled, and burnt on the Castle Hill, with no one to seek to save her, and no one to bid her weary soul God-speed!
Barbara Napier, wife to a burgess of Edinburgh, and sister-in-law to the Laird of Carschoggill, was then seized—accused of consorting with Agnes Simpson, and consulting with Richard Grahame, a notorious necromancer, to whom she gave “3 ells of bombezie for his paynes,” all that she might gain the love and gifts of Dame Jeane Lyon, Lady Angus; also of having procured the witch’s help to keep the said Dame Jeane “fra wometing quhen she was in bredin of barne.” She was accused of other and more malicious things; but acquitted of these: indeed the “assisa” which tried her was contumacious and humane, and pronounced no doom; whereon King James wrote a letter demanding that she be strangled, then burnt at the stake, and all her goods escheated to himself. But Barbara pleaded that she was with child; so her execution was delayed until she was delivered, when “nobody insisting in the persute of her, she was set at libertie.” The contumacious majority was tried for “wilful error on assize—acquitting a witch,” but got off with more luck than usual.[8]
Euphemia Macalzean,[9] or as we should say, Maclean, was even higher game. She was the daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, and wife of Patrick Moscrop, a man of wealth and standing; a firm, passionate, heroic woman, whom no tortures could weaken into confession, no threats terrify into submission. She fought her way, inch by inch, but she was “convict” at last, and condemned to be burnt alive: the severest sentence ever pronounced against a witch. In general they were “wirreit” or strangled before being burnt. There is good reason to believe that her witchcraft was made merely the pretence, while her political predilections, her friendship for the Earl of Bothwell, and her Catholic religion, were the real grounds of the king’s enmity to her, and the causes of the severity with which she was treated. Her indictment contains the ordinary list of witch-crimes, diversified with the additional charge of bewitching a certain young Joseph Douglas, whose love she craved and found impossible to obtain, or rather, to retain. She was accused of giving him, for unlawful purposes, “ane craig cheinzie (neck chain), twa belt cheinzies, ane ring, ane emiraut,” and other jewels; trying also to prevent his marriage with Marie Sandilands, and making Agnes Simpson get back the jewels, when her spells had failed. The young wife whom Douglas married, and the two children she bore him, also came in for part of her alleged maleficent enchantments. She “did the barnes to death,” and struck the wife with deadly sickness. She was also accused of casting her own childbirth pains, once on a dog, and once on the “wantoune cat;” whereupon the poor beasts ran distractedly out of the house, as well they might, and were never seen again. She managed this marvellous piece of sleight-of-hand by getting a bored stone from Agnes Sampson, and rolling “enchanted mwildis”—earth from dead men’s graves—in her hair. Another time she got her husband’s shirt, and caused it to be “woumplit” (folded up) and put under her bolster, whereby she sought to throw her labour pains upon him, but without effect; as is not to be wondered at. She bewitched John M‘Gillie’s wife by sending her the vision of a naked man, with only a white sheet about him; and Jonett Aitcheson saw him with the sleeves of his shirt “vpoune leggis, and taile about his heid.” She was also accused of endeavouring to poison her husband; and it was manifest that their union was not happy—he being for the most part away from home, and she perhaps thinking of the other husband promised her, Archibald Ruthven; which promise, broken and set aside, had made such a slander and scandal of her marriage with Patrick Moscrop. And it was proved—or what went for proof in those days—that Agnes Sampson, the wise wife, had made a clay image of John Moscrop, the father-in-law, who should thereupon have pined away and died, according to the law of these enchantments, but, failing in this obedience, lived instead, to the grief and confusion of his daughter-in-law. All these crimes, and others like unto them, were quite sufficient legal causes of death; and James could gratify his superstitious fears and political animosity at the same time, while Euphemia Maclean—the fine, brave, handsome Euphemia—writhed in agony at the stake to which she was bound when burned alive in the flames: “brunt in assis quick to the deid,” says the Record—the severest sentence ever passed on a witch. This murder was done on the 25th July, 1591.
“The last of Februarie, 1592, Richard Grahame wes brant at ye Cross of Edinburghe for vitchcrafte and sorcery,” says succinctly Robert Birrel, “burges of Edinburghe,” in his “Diarey containing divers Passages of Staite and uthers memorable Accidents, from ye 1532 zeir of our Redemption, till ye beginning of the zeir 1605.” “And in 1593, Katherine Muirhead was brunt for vitchcrafte, quha confest sundrie poynts yrof.” Richard Graham was the “Rychie Graham, ane necromancer,” consulted by Barbara Napier; the same who gave the Earl of Bothwell some drug to make the king’s majesty “lyke weill of him,” if he could but touch king’s majesty on the face therewith; it was he also who raised the devil for Sir Lewis Ballantyne, in his own yard in the Canongate, whereby Sir Lewis was so terrified that he took sickness and died. Even in the presence of the king himself, Rychie boasted that “he had a familiar spirit which showed him many things;” but which somehow forgot to show him the stake and the rope and the faggot, which yet were the bold necromancer’s end, little as the poor cozening wretch merited such an awful doom.