CLAY CORPSE.
The greatest evil that witches can do is to make, for a person whose death they desire, a clay body or image (corp creadha), into which pins are stuck, to produce a slow and painful disease, terminating in dissolution. Waxen figures for the same purpose, and melted by exposure to a slow fire, were known to Lowland superstition. In the Highlands wax was not accessible to poor bodies, and they had to make clay serve the turn. It is said that when a person wants a limb he cannot be destroyed by witches in this manner.
MacIain Ghiarr, the Ardnamurchan thief, stole so many cattle from MacLean of Dowart that he made that chief his deadly enemy. On one of his roving expeditions he was passing at midnight the chapel or burying-ground of Pennygown (caibeal Peighinn-a-ghobhan), on the Sound of Mull. Seeing a light in the chapel, he entered, and found three witches sticking pins in a clay body (corp creadha) intended to represent MacLean of Dowart. As each pin was stuck in, MacLean was seized with a stitch in the corresponding part of his body. Only the last pin remained to be stuck in. It was to be in the heart, and to cause death. MacIain Ghiarr scattered the witches, took with him the clay corpse, and made his way to MacLean, whom he found at death’s door. He took out in his presence the pins one by one, and when the last was taken out MacLean jumped up a hale man, and remained ever after the warm friend of MacIain Ghiarr.
MacGilvray, a former minister of Strathfillan, in Perthshire, was seized with burning pains all over his body, and was slowly wasting away by some malady, of which the nature could not be understood. He lived at Clachan in that strath, and one morning early a woman from the opposite side of the river, on her way to call and ask for him, saw another woman going along before her, who had the reputation of being a witch. Wondering what her neighbour was about at that early hour, she kept well behind and watched. The foremost woman, on coming to a hollow, stooped down, buried something in the ground, and then walked on towards the minister’s house. The other came and dug up what had been buried. It proved to be a piece of wood stuck all over with pins. She took it with her to the manse, and produced it, to the confusion of the witch. On the pins being withdrawn the minister was freed from his pains and got quite well again.
Ross-shire witches could not destroy ‘Donald of the Ear’ (Do’uill na Cluaise), of whom they had made a clay figure, from being unable to put on the ear. Donald had lost the ear in battle. Similarly a corp creadha made for Lord Macdonald by Raonaid a Chreagain failed, because the witches never could put the arm on.
Witches could also produce disease in other ways. Thus, a young man in Perthshire—the tailor Cumming in Drimachastle, Rannoch—fell into a decline. He accounted himself for the loss of health, decay, and sweats at night by witches coming at night when he was in Badenoch (a district at the time celebrated for witchcraft), and converting him into a horse, on which they rode through the air to Edinburgh and other places to spend the night carousing in well-stored cellars. He now saw them often passing in different shapes and in eggshells, etc. The poor young man did not understand the sweats of consumption, and his imagination was disordered by the many tales of witchcraft he had heard.
The same tale, of converting men into horses, is with slight variations common. In Lorn, a woman came night after night and shook a bridle at the son of a neighbouring farmer. He immediately became a horse, on which she rode to London, etc. A younger brother exchanged beds with him, and when the witches were carousing, secured the magic bridle, converted the witch herself into a horse, rode home, and before taking off the bridle took his horse to a smithy, and put on four shoes. Next day an old woman of the neighbourhood was found with her feet and hands horribly mangled.