Men against whom she had pronounced evil words took deadly sicknesses in consequence, or suffered a decay in their worldly means. Her house being ruinous, the proprietor, Alexander Anderson, had come in her absence, and was proceeding to mend the roof, when she came home, and finding he had uncovered her pantry, where her valuables lay, she said: ‘I shall gar thee forthink it, that thou hast tirrit my house, I being frae hame,’ and glowrit up at him. Immediately Alexander’s speech went from him, and he retired to bed sick, and could get no rest or sleep. Under the threats of his son, she was induced to come and charm this sickness away from him, and ‘gave him droggis, that his speech came to him again.’[221] By the confession of the recently burnt Thomas Lees, Isobel Cockie had been second to himself in the infernal dance at the Fish Cross, ‘and because the devil playit not so melodiously and weel as thou cravit, thou took his instrument out of his mouth, then took him on the chafts therewith, and playit thyself thereon to the haill company.’ Isobel was likewise condemned.
1597.
It would be tedious to enter into the long series of trials which extended over this year in and near Aberdeen; but a few particulars are worth giving. The case of Andrew Man, an aged person, formerly of Tarbrugh, in the parish of Rathven, involves a more imaginative style of warlockry than is common. According to his own confessions—that is to say, the hallucinations which he described—the devil came sixty years ago to his mother’s house, in the form of a woman, called the Queen of Elfen, and was delivered of a bairn; at which time, he being a boy, bringing in water, was promised by this distinguished stranger ‘that thou should know all things; and should help and cure all sorts of sickness, except stand-deid, and that thou should be weel enterteinit, but wald seek thy meat ere thou de’ed, as Thomas Rhymer did.’ Thirty-two years before, he had begun a guilty intercourse with this Queen of Elfen, at whose first coming, ‘she caused ane of thy cattle die upon ane hillock called the Elf-hillock, but promised to do him good thereafter.’ Andrew, according to his own account, could ‘cure the falling-sickness, the bairn-bed, and all other sorts of sickness that ever fell to man or beast, except the stand-deid, by baptising them, reabling them in the auld corunschbald, and striking of the gudis on the face, with ane fowl in thy hand, and by saying thir words: “Gif thou will live, live; and gif thou will die, die!” with sundry other orisons, sic as of Sanct John and the three silly brethren, whilk thou can say when thou please, and by giving of black wool and salt as a remeid for all diseases and for causing a man prosper and that his blude should never be drawn.’ He had cured several persons by his enchantments, one mode being to put the patient nine times through a hasp of unwatered yarn, and then a cat as many times backward through the same hasp, the effect of which was to translate the sickness from the patient to the cat.
The devil, whom Andrew called Christsonday, and believed to be an angel, was raised by the word Benedicite, and laid again by taking a dog under his armpit, casting the same in the devil’s mouth, and speaking the word Maikpeblis. ‘The Queen of Elfen has a grip of all the craft, but Christsonday is the guidman, and has all power under God, and thou kens sundry deid men in their company, and the king that died at Flodden and Thomas Rhymer is there.’
‘Upon Rood-day in harvest, in this present year, whilk fell on a Wednesday, thou saw Christsonday come out of the snaw in likeness of a staig [young male horse], and the Queen of Elfen was there, and others with her, riding upon white hackneys.’ ‘The elves have shapes and claithes like men, and will have fair covered tables, and they are but shadows, but are starker [stronger] nor men, and they have playing and dancing when they please; the queen is very pleasand, and will be auld and young when she pleases; she makes any king whom she pleases.... The elves will make thee appear to be in a fair chalmer, and yet thou will find thyself in a moss on the morn. They will appear to have candles, and licht, and swords, whilk will be nothing else but dead grass and straes.’ Andrew denied his guilt, but was nevertheless convicted, and doubtless burnt.
In the dittay against Marjory Mutch, it was alleged that, having an ill-will against William Smith in Tarserhill, she came to his plough and bewitched the oxen, so that ‘they instantly ran all wood [mad], brak the pleuch, twa thereof ran over the hills to Deer, and other twa thereof up Ithan side, whilk could never be tane nor apprehendit again.’ This woman was said to have destroyed much cattle, laid sickness on many persons, and attended all the witch conventions of the district. In token of her being a witch, there was a spot under her left ear, into which a gentleman had thrust a pin without producing any pain.
1597.
Margaret Clark, being sent for by the wife of Nicol Ross, when she was in childbed, ‘cast the haill dolours, sickness, and pains whilk she should have susteinit, upon Andrew Harper, wha, during all the time of her travelling, was exceedingly and marvellously troubled, in ane fury and madness as it were, and could not be halden; and how soon the said gentlewoman was delivered, the pains departed frae the said Andrew.’
It is alleged of Violet Leys, that, her husband, a mariner, being discharged from William Finlay’s ship, she and her late mother bewitched the said ship, ‘that, since thy husband was put forth of the same, she never made one good voyage, but either the master or merchants at some times through tempest of weather, were forced to cast overboard the greatest part of their lading, or then to perish, men, ship, and geir.’ Several of the other culprits are accused of raising and calming the wind at pleasure.[222]
It appears that at this time twenty-two unfortunate men and women, chiefly the latter, suffered in Aberdeen and its neighbourhood. Such a tremendous sacrifice to superstition would in itself be worthy of special notice here; but it becomes the more so from a probability which appears that Shakspeare must have been acquainted with the details of these trials. It will be found that the chief of his company, Lawrence Fletcher, was in Aberdeen with a party of comedians in October 1601. That Shakspeare was of the party is not certain; but there is no fact to militate against the probability that he was. Mr Charles Knight[223] has shewn that in these trials there occur many things which strongly recall passages in the witch-scenes of Macbeth—as if those scenes had been written by one who had thoroughly studied the dittays against Janet Wishart and her associates. Nearly all of those women—and it is very much a special feature of this group of cases—had laid heavy disease on those whom they held at ill-will, causing them to suffer fearful pains, and their strength to decay.