We shall destroy house and hald,
Both sheep and nolt intill the fauld:
Little good shall come to the fore
Of all the rest of the little store.’
And when supper was done, the company looked steadily at their grizly president, and bowing to him, said: ‘We thank thee, our Lord, for this.’
1662.
Occasionally he was very cruel to them. ‘Sometimes, among ourselves,’ says Isobel, ‘we would be calling him Black John, or the like, and he would ken it, and hear us weel eneuch, and he even then come to us and say: “I ken weel eneuch what ye are saying of me!” And then he would beat and buffet us very sore. We would be beaten if we were absent any time, or neglect anything that would be appointed to be done. Alexander Elder in Earl-seat would be beaten very often. He is but soft, and could never defend himself in the least, but would greet and cry when he would be scourging him. But Margaret Wilson would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to keep the strokes off her; and Bessie Wilson would speak crusty, and be belling again to him stoutly. He would be beating us all up and down with cords and other sharp scourges, like naked ghaists, and we would still be crying: “Pity, pity, mercy, mercy, our Lord!” But he would have neither pity nor mercy. When angry at us, he would girn at us like a dog, as if he would swallow us up. Sometimes he would be like a stirk, a bull, a deer, a rae,’ &c.
Isobel stated that when the married witches went out to these nocturnal conventions, they put a besom into their place in bed, which prevented their husbands from missing them. When they had feasted in a house and wished to depart, a corn-straw put between their legs served them as a horse; and on their crying, ‘Horse and hattock in the devil’s name!’ they would fly away, ‘even as straws would fly upon a highway.’ She once feasted in Darnaway Castle, and left it in this manner. On another occasion, the party went to the Downy Hills, where the hill opened, and they went into a well-lighted room, where they were entertained by the queen of Faery. This personage was ‘brawly clothed in white linens and in white and brown clothes;’ while her husband, the king of Faery, was ‘a braw man, weel-favoured, and broad-faced.’ ‘On that occasion,’ says Isobel, ‘there were elf-bulls routing up and down, and affrighted me’—a trait which bears so much the character of a dream, as to be highly useful in deciding that the whole was mere hallucination.
The covin were empowered to take the shapes of hares, cats, and crows. On assuming the first of these forms, it was necessary to say:
‘I sall go intill a hare,