Innumerable other instances might be cited.
IV.
THE BRODDER.
As stated in the text, this was an indispensable legal functionary, whose name occurs frequently in all trials for witchcraft in Scotland. Among the expenses for burning Margaret Denholm, is the following item:—"To Jhone Kinked, for ye brodding of her, vi. lib. Scotts."—Pit. Crim. Trials.
In March, 1619, the magistrates of Newcastle employed a noted Scottish witch-pricker, to discover all those who dabbled in sorcery within the walls of their town, "offering him twenty shillings a-piece for all he should condemn as witches, and a free passage thither and back" to Scotland. A proclamation by bell summoned all persons to give information of witchcraft. Thirty women were brought to the Town Hall, stripped nude, had a pin thrust into their flesh by this charlatan, who acquainted Lieut.-Colonel Hobson, the English commandant, that they were guilty, and that "he knew whether women were witches or no by their look; but when the said person was searching of a personable and goodlike woman, the Colonel said, 'surely this woman is none, and need not be tried;' but the Scotsman said she was, and therefore he would try her; and presently he ran a pin into her, and set her aside as a guilty person and child of the devil, and fell to try others whom he pronounced guilty. Lieut.-Colonel Hobson proved upon the spot the fallacy of the fellow's trial of the woman; and then the Scotsman cleared her, and said she was not a child of the devil." After being paid in Newcastle, this witch-finder went into Northumberland, to prove women at the rate of "three pounds a-piece;" but, on returning into Scotland, his villany came to light, and he was hanged, confessing "at the gallows, that he had been the death of above two hundred and twenty women in Scotland and England, for the gain of twenty shillings a-piece."—See Sykes's Local Records of Newcastle.
As mentioned in the romance, the brod, or steel pin, used in piercing the devil's mark, is now supposed to have been made to slip into its handle, thus giving the appearance of entering the body without producing pain—an infallible sign of sorcery.
Within two years after the publication of James the Sixth's Demonologie, twenty-six persons were tortured for witchcraft, at Aberdeen, and twenty-one were condemned to the flames. "It would have been considered a prodigal wasting of such a happy windfall, to have burned all these wretches at once; and accordingly," says the Book of Bon Accord, "by judicious management, and by bringing two or three to the stake at a time, it was contrived to delight the public with incremations on the Castle-hill for upwards of a twelvemonth."
The last witch in Scotland, was accused of transforming her daughter into a pony, and getting her shod by the devil, for which she was burned in 1722, near the Earl's Cross at Dornoch, in Sutherland.
Of the last witch in England, a curious account will be found in the Courier, of the 28th of February, 1834, which records one of the most gross and startling instances of superstition ever known; it concerned the enchantment of a herd of pigs in the Forest of Dean. See also the Monmouth Merlin, of the same date.
The Act against Witchcraft was not repealed in Scotland and England until about 1750; and not in Ireland until 1821!
THE END.