The next year, “The Rigwoodie Witch,” lean Marion Lillie of Spott, was had before the Kirk Session to account for her dealings in the village. She was a passionate-tongued old dame, who had handled roughly one of her neighbours while in the condition that looked forward to Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup; so roughly, indeed, that Mrs. Gamp and the caudle-cup were forestalled, and the poor woman was brought to an unpleasant pass; so the Rigwoodie witch got something not so pleasant as a month’s nursing, and was put out of the way of handling pregnant women roughly for the future.
THE STIRK’S FOOT.[72]
Jean Neilson lived in Torryburn, a village in the west of Fife, and she and Lillias Adie, a woman of more than equivocal reputation, were not on the best of terms. Jean Neilson was but a poor sickly body, full of fancies and uncatalogued ailments; and because she had no scientific name to give them, she gave Lillias the credit of having created them by her magic. She swore that she was bewitched, and that old Lillias was the bewitcher. Upon which the ministers and elders of the kirk in Torryburn met in solemn conclave on the 29th of July, and called Lillias before them to give an account of her bad practices. Lillias had no mind that they should lose their trouble. She confessed herself a witch without further ado; said how that she had met the devil by the side of a “stook” in the harvest field, where she had renounced her baptism and accepted him on the instant as her lord and lover; how he had embraced her, when she found his skin cold, and saw his feet cloven like a “stirk’s.” Since then she had joined in dances with him and others whom she named; for Lillias, like all the rest, seemed to think there was safety in a multitude, and delated several of the parish, to bear her company in her uncomfortable position; and she told how, at the back of Patrick Sands’ house in Vellyfield, they were lighted by a mysterious light, just sufficient to let them see each other’s faces, and to show the devil with a cap covering his ears and neck. The minister and elders had now rich game in view, and they held meeting after meeting to examine those whom Lillias accused, and feed their ears with all the wild and monstrous tales they chose to pour into them. But what became of them eventually no one now knows: only of a surety Lillias Adie was burned “within the sea mark,” and Jean Neilson might now bear her uncatalogued ailments in peace. The minister of Torryburn at that time was one Allen Logan—the Reverend Allen Logan—notorious for his skill in detecting witches, and his zeal in hunting them down. When administering the communion he would flash his eye through the congregation and say harshly, as by knowledge, “You witch-wife, get up from the table of the Lord,” casting a ball for the conscience-stricken to kick at; when, ten to one, some poor old trembling wretch would totter up, and so go mumbling through the doors, “thus exposing herself to the hazard of a regular accusation afterwards.” He was always “dinging” against witchcraft; and one day a woman called Helen Kay took up her stool and went out of the church. She said she thought he was “daft” “to be always dinging against witches thae’ gait;” but the elders thought differently, and Helen Kay was convicted of profanity, and ordained to sit before the congregation and be openly rebuked.
THE HORRIBLE MURDER OF JANET CORNFOOT.[73]
While Lillias Adie was being burned in the west of Fife, Beatrix Laing, at Pittenweem in the east, was put to sore trouble. Patrick Morton, a youth of sixteen “free from any known vice,” sent up a petition to the Privy Council (June 13, 1704), stating, that being employed by his father to make some nails for a ship lying off Pittenweem, Beatrix Laing, spouse to William Brown, tailor, and late treasurer of the burgh, came and demanded some nails. He “modestly” refused her, saying that he was engaged in another job, and could not therefore work for her; whereupon she went away, “threatening to be revenged, which did somewhat frighten him, because he knew she was under a bad fame and reputed for a witch.” The next day, on passing Beatrix’s door, “he observed a timber vessel with some water and fire coal in it at the door, which made him apprehend that it was a charm laid for him, and the effect of her threatening; and immediately he was seized with such a weakness in his limbs that he could hardly stand or walk.” For many weeks this strange kind of lingering disease and discomfort went on, he “still growing worse, having no appetite, and his body strangely emaciated,” all because of Beatrix having “slockened” fire coals in a vessel as a malevolent charm for him; till about May the disease ripened, and the symptoms of hysteria and epilepsy presented themselves. He swelled prodigiously; his breathing was like the blowing of a pair of bellows; his body was rigid and inflexible; his tongue was drawn into his mouth; and he cried out vehemently against Beatrix Laing and others—for these accusations never came alone; professing to know his tormentors by their touch if brought to him, although his eyes were blinded, and the bystanders held their peace. In short, he played the same antics here in the east as Bargarran’s daughter had played in the west. Beatrix and the rest were flung into prison, and every effort was made to induce them to confess. Beatrix was pricked, and kept without sleep for five days and nights; but she held out manfully. She would not consent to accept the modest youth’s interpretation of his illness, and denied strongly all hand in it, and all trafficking with witch charms or unholy arts. At last she was conquered. Sleeplessness and torture did their appointed work, and she made a rambling statement of baptismal renunciation, and the like, delating Janet Cornfort and others, which confession she recanted as soon as she had got a little strength; and specially that part where she had spoken of her fine packs of wool which she had sold so well at the market, coming home afterwards on a big black horse, which she gave into her husband’s hands. Her husband, she had said, was embarrassed with this big black horse, and asked what he should do with it? to which she had answered, “Cast his bridle on his neck and you will be quit of him.” So the horse flew off overhead with a great noise, and Beatrix Laing’s startled husband for the first time understood its real character.
In revenge at her obduracy the magistrates “put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves’ Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse; and in this condition she lay for five months.” All this while the magistrates of the burgh were pressing on the Privy Council the absolute need of trying her; but the Earl of Balcarres and Lord Anstruther, two members of the council connected with the district, interposed their influence, and got the poor creature set at liberty;—“brought her off as a dreamer,” says the anonymous pamphlet angrily. But she was forced to turn her face from Pittenweem, and “wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house,” for fear of the fury and rage of the people: dying at last “undesired” in her bed at St. Andrews.
Beatrix was wandering about in strange places, safe if sorrowful, but Alexander Macgregor clinched her muttered charge against Janet Cornfoot by accusing her of perpetually haunting him—she and two other witches, and his Cloutieship along with them. They tormented him chiefly in the night time, while he was sleeping in his bed. Janet, under torture confessed; but retracted immediately after, saying that the minister himself had beaten her with his staff to make her speak out: and there being considerable doubt of her guilt in the minds of the gentry of the district, even of the chastising minister himself, she was allowed to escape, by connivance. But another minister of the neighbourhood, with more zeal than humanity and more grace than knowledge, stopped her in her flight, and sent her back to Pittenweem. There the mob got hold of her. They had been fearfully excited by Beatrix Laing’s acquittal and Janet’s escape, and they were not disposed to let this unexpected glut to their vengeance go. They seized poor Janet Cornfoot, tied her up hard in a rope, beat her unmercifully, then dragged her by the heels through the streets and along the shore. “The appearance of a bailie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to show how easily the authorities might have protected their victim if they had chosen.” Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and finally covering her with a door, pressed her to death (Jan. 30, 1705). Janet’s daughter was in the town, and knew what was taking place down by that blood-stained shore, but she dared not interfere; and during all the time this hideous murder was going on—lasting for nearly three hours—neither magistrate nor minister came forward to protect or interpose. Are verily and in truth “the powers that be ordained of God,” or has not the devil sometimes something to do with the laying on of hands?—so much of the devil, at least, as is represented by ignorance, inhumanity, superstition, and cowardice, always conspicuous qualities of the more zealous of every denomination.
About this time,[74] Thomas Brown, another of the accused, died of “hunger and hardship” in prison; and at the close of the year, two Inverness men, George and Lachlan Rattray, were executed, being found “guilty of the horrid crimes of mischievous charms, by witchcraft and malefice, sorcery or necromancy.” And many witches were also burnt on the top of Spott Loan.
THE SPELL OF THE SLAP.[75]
In 1708, William Stensgar, of Southside, in Orkney, had rheumatism. He sent to an old beggar-woman, called Catherine Taylor—a cripple herself, but none the less qualified to heal others by her magic arts. She came to him about an hour before sunrise and took the case in hand, bidding him follow her till they came to a certain kind of gate or stile, called a slap or grind; William’s wife accompanying them with a stoup of water. At this slap Catherine touched his knee, saying, “As I was going by the way I met the Lord Jesus Christ in the likeness of another man; he asked me what tidings I had to tell? I said I had no tidings to tell, but I am full of pain, and can neither gang nor stand. Thou shalt go to the holy kirk, and thou shalt gang round about, and then sit down upon thy knees, and say thy prayers to the Lord, and then thou shalt be as heal as the hour when Christ was born.” After this precious charm, which the old cripple said had been taught her when a child, she repeated the 23rd Psalm; and then the evil spirit which had caused the rheumatism was assumed to be “telled out” into the stoup of water; at all events William Stensgar would have no more of it. Then the water was emptied out over the slap or gate so that the next person passing by the stile might get it instead of William. One man who had watched this devilry from the beginning, evaded the foul fiend by pushing his way through the hedge higher up; but another unfortunate wretch, not so lucky or not so early a riser, coming blundering over the stile as usual, got laid hold of by the fiend which William Stensgar had shaken off, and was holden by it hardly.