‘Then we fell down upon our knees, with our hair down over our shoulders and eyes, and our hands lifted up, and our eyes steadfastly fixed upon the devil, and said the foresaid words thrice over.... In the night-time, we came into Mr Harry Forbes’s chalmer, with our hands all smeared, to swing [the bag] upon Mr Harry, where he was sick in his bed; and in the daytime [there came ane of our number] to swing the bag [upon the said Mr Harry, as we could][204] not prevail in the night-time against him.’
Isobel stated the charm for taking away a cow’s milk. ‘We pull the tow [rope] and twine it, and plait it the wrong way in the devil’s name; and we draw the tether, sae made, in betwixt the cow’s hinder feet, and out betwixt the cow’s forward feet, in the devil’s name; and thereby takes with us the cow’s milk.... The way to give back the milk again is to cut the tether. When we take away the strength of any person’s ale, and gives it to another, we take a little quantity out of each barrel or stand of ale, and puts it in a stoup, in the devil’s name; and, in his name, with our awn hands, puts it amang another’s ale, and gives her the strength and substance of her neighbour’s ale. [The way] to keep the ale from us, that we have no power of it, is to sanctify it weel.’
One of their evil doings was to take away the strength of the manure of such as they wished ill to, or to make their lands unproductive. ‘Before Candlemas, we went be-east Kinloss, and there we yoked a pleuch of paddocks. The devil held the pleuch, and John Young in Mebestown, our officer, did drive the pleuch. Paddocks did draw the pleuch as oxen. Quickens [dog-grass] were soams [traces]; a riglen’s [ram’s] horn was a coulter; and a piece of a riglen’s horn was a sock. We went several times about, and all we of the covin went still up and down with the pleuch, praying to the devil for the fruit of that land, and that thistles and briers might grow there.’ When they wished to have fish, they had only to go to the shore just before the boats came home and say three several times:
‘The fishers are gone to the sea,
And they will bring home fish to me;
They will bring them home intill the boat,
But they sall get of them but the smaller sort.’
Accordingly, they obtained all the fishes in the boats, leaving the fishermen nothing but slime behind.
1662.
Having conceived a design of destroying all the Laird of Park’s male children, they made a small effigy of a child in clay, and having learned the proper charm from their master, fell down before him on their knees, with their hair hanging over their eyes, and looking steadily at him, said: