‘The laying on of a grievous sickness on Christian Harlaw, for sending back a plack’s worth of salt which ye had sent her, it being too little; ye having threatened her that it should be the dearest salt that ever she saw with her eyes, and then, at her entreaty, ye came to her house, and she became presently weel; whereon Christian said, that “if ought ailed her thereafter, she should wyte [blame] you.” Christian Simpson being owing you some money, and because she craved only eight days’ delay to pay it, ye threatened in great rage, that “she should have a sore heart ere that day eight days;” according whereto, the said Christian’s husband broke his leg within the said eight days.
1643.
‘John Robison, having called you a witch, you, in malice, laid a flux on him by your sorcery. Appearing to John Cockburn in the night, when both doors and windows were fast closed, and terrifying him in his sleep, because he had discorded with your daughter the day before. Causing all William Smith’s means to evanish, to the intent he might never be able to relieve some clothes he had pawned beside you, worth an 100 lb., for 14 merks Scots only. Onlaying a grievous sickness on Janet Walker lying in childbed; and then ye being sent for, and the said Janet’s sister begging her health at you for God’s sake, ye assented, and she recovered of her sickness presently by your sorcery.
‘Being disappointed of having Alexander Johnston’s bairn’s name, ye, in a great rage and anger, told him, that “it should be telling him 40 lb. betwixt and that time twelvemonth, that he had given you his bairn’s name;” whereon he took a strange sickness, and languished long; and at length, by persuasive of neighbours, he came to your house, and after he had eaten and drunken with you, ye with your sorcery made him whole. Item, the child whose name ye got not was past eleven years ere he could go.
‘Having fallen in a controversy with Margaret Williamson, ye most outrageously wished the devil to blow her blind; after which she by your sorcery took a grievous sickness, whereof she went blind. Laying a madness on Andrew Wilson, conform to your threatening, wishing the devil to rive the soul out of him (which words, the time of his frenzy, were never out of his mouth), and that because he had fallen in a brawling with your daughter. Item, for taking off it.
‘Bearing company with the devil these twenty-eight years by-past; for consulting with him for laying on and taking off diseases, as weel on men as women and bestial; which is notourly known.’
1643.
It clearly appears that this woman had, at the utmost, been guilty of bad wishes towards her neighbours, and that if these had any effect, it was only through their superstitious apprehensions. We may suppose such to be the type of a class of cases—the simply maledictory. It is fairly presumable, however, that, while the community was so ignorant as to believe that malediction could have positively injurious effects, it would occasionally have these effects by its influence on the imagination, and consequently become an active evil. In this we can see a possible cause of the long persistence of the belief in witches. The ignorant, seeing an effect, and not observing the influence of the imagination in the case, would of course find no objection to laying it all to the account of witchcraft. The enlightened, again, disbelieving witchcraft, but at the same time ignorant of the influence of imagination, would have no alternative but to deny the facts; and this unreasoning and unsound scepticism, being contrary to the experience of the ignorant, would fail to disabuse them of their superstitions.
In this year (December 31, 1643) is an entry in the parish register of Markinch, Fifeshire—‘Compeared Janet Brown, and being posed if she used charms, she confessed that she did charm two several persons—viz., James Hullock and Janet Scott, but no moe. The words of the charm are these:
“Our Lord forth raide,