1643.
If it were allowable to use the language of the day, we might say that the devil had at this time broken out in unusual activity. Accordingly, the public authorities had not only to prepare an army for the aid of the parliament against the king in England, and make vigorous crusades in Strathbogie and other over-loyal districts, but to meet the powers of darkness with all the terrors of the criminal law. The number of old women who suffered for offending at once against the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy and the 73d act of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary,[96] in Fife alone, was thirty.[97] One noted case was that of Agnes Finnie, a poor woman dealing in small articles at the Potterrow Port in Edinburgh, who was convicted and burned in 1644. Mr Charles K. Sharpe has presented us with the articles of her dittay, and as they afford a highly characteristic picture of the acts then attributed to a witch, and give some curious glimpses of the private life of the period, I make no apology for transferring them to these pages.
‘Having threatened Mr William Fairlie’s son to send him halting hame, because, going by her door, he, in a nickname, called her Annie Winnie, he within twenty-four hours after, lost the power of his left side by her witchcraft, and languished in so incurable a disease, that the whole physicians called it supernatural, and the haill substance of his body ran out at his cute [ankle]; and the boy laid the whole wyte [blame] of his death constantly upon the panel.
‘She laid upon Beatrix Nisbet a fearful disease, so that she lost the power of her tongue! because she paying the said Agnes two dollars owing her by her father, would not give her annual rent [interest] therefor. She laid a grievous sickness upon Jonet Grinton, whom ye threatened that she should never eat more in this world, because she had brought again two herring she had bought from you, they not being caller [fresh], and sought back her eight pennies [two-thirds of a penny sterling], and of which she died, without eating or drinking conform to your threatening.
‘Ye came in to visit John Buchanan’s bairn, being sick of a palsy, and bade the father and mother go ben the house [remove to the inner apartment] a while and pray to God for him; and in the meanwhile ye stayed with him, and when they returned, they fand him violently sick that he could neither stir hand nor foot, and that by your devilry; and fand on his right buttock about the breadth of one’s loof, the same so sore as if a collop had been ta’en out of it; and he died in eight days in great dolour.
1643.
‘Falling a scolding with Betty Currie, the said bairn’s mother, about the changing of a sixpence which ye alleged to be ill, ye, in great rage, threatened that ye should gar [cause] the devil tak a bite of her. Ye laid a grievous sickness on her husband, John Buchanan, that he burned a whole night as if he had been in a fire, for taking his wife Betty Currie’s part against you, and boasting [threatening] to cast you over the stair, and calling you a witch; whereon ye threatened to make him repent his speeches; and for taking the same off him, he coming the next day and drinking a pint of ale with you, and telling you that if you tormented him so another night, he should make all the town hear tell of it; whereon he was weel. The said John being offended at you because ye would not trust his wife a twelvepenny cake [penny roll], ye bade him go his way, and as he had begun with witches, so he should end; after which threatening, he straight contracted a long and grievous sickness, whereof he was like to melt away in sweating.
‘In your scolding with Euphame Kincaid, ye calling her a drunkard, and she calling you a witch, ye replied: “That if ye was a witch, she and hers should have better cause to call ye so;” accordingly, a great joist fell on the said Euphame’s daughter’s leg, being playing near your house, and crushed the same, and that by your sorcery.
‘Ye, ending an account with Isobel Acheson, and because ye could not get all your unreasonable demands, bade the devil ride about the town with her and hers; whereupon, the next day, she brake her leg by a fall from a horse, and ye came and saw her, and said: “See that ye say not that I have bewitched you, as other neighbours say.”
‘Robert Watt, deacon of the cordwainers, having fined Robert Pursell, your son-in-law, for a riot, ye came where he and the rest of the craft were convened, and cursed them most outrageously, whereon Robert Watt broke the cap upon your head; since which time he fell away in his worldly means, till long after, he being in your good-son’s house, where ye likewise was, ye asked “if he remembered since he broke the cap on your head? and that he had never thriven since, nor should, till you had amends of him;” whereon, he being reconciled with you, he prospered in his worldly state as before.