“I sall go intill a hare,
With sorrow, sigh, and muckle care;
And I sall go in the devil’s name,
Ay while I come back again.”
This from her Confessions, as reported in the Appendix to Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, is of interest:—“He (the devil) would send me now and then to Auldern on some errands to my neighbours, in the shape of a hare, and Patrick Papley’s servants, in Kilhill, being going to their labouring, his hounds being with them, ran after me, being in the shape of a hare. I ran very long, but was forced, being weary, at last to take to my own house. The door being left open I ran in behind a chest, and the hounds followed in; but they went to the other side of the chest, and I was forced to run forth again, and ran into another house, and there took leisure to say—
‘Hare, hare, God send thee care;
I am in a hare’s likeness now,
But I sall be a woman e’en now;
Hare, hare, God send thee care,’
and so I returned to my own shape, as I am at this instant, again. The dogs will sometimes get some bites of us when we are in hares, but will not get us killed. When we turn out of a hare’s likeness to our own shape we will have the bites and rives and scratches on our bodies. When we would be in the shape of cats we did nothing but cry and wraw, and riving, and, as it were, worrying one another; and when we come to our shapes again we will find the scratches and rives on our skin very sore. When one of us, or more, are in the shape of cats, and meet with any others, our neighbours, we will say—