[[546]] Numb. xxii. 5, &c.
[[547]] Peir. lib. iii. c. 5; xxviii. c. 2.
[[548]] Macrobius, lib. iii. c. 9.
[[549]] Tacit. Ann. lib. ii. art. 69.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
INSTANCES OF DEVOTING OR DOOMING AMONGST CHRISTIANS.
Hector Boëthius,[[550]] in his History of Scotland, relates that Duffus, king of that country, falling ill of a disorder unknown to the physicians, was consumed by a slow fever, passed his nights without sleep, and insensibly wasted away; his body melted in perspiration every night; he became weak, languid, and in a dying state, without, however, his pulse undergoing any alteration. Everything was done to relieve him, but uselessly. His life was despaired of, and those about him began to suspect some evil spell. In the mean time, the people of Moray, a county of Scotland, mutinied, supposing that the king must soon sink under his malady.
It was whispered abroad that the king had been bewitched by some witches who lived at Forres, a little town in the north of Scotland. People were sent there to arrest them, and they were surprised in their dwellings, where one of them was basting an image of King Duffus, made of wax, turning on a wooden spit before a large fire, before which she was reciting certain magical prayers; and she affirmed that as the figure melted the king would lose his strength, and at last he would die when the figure should be entirely melted. These women declared that they had been hired to perform these evil spells by the principal men of the county of Moray, who only awaited the king's decease to burst into open revolt.