In February, 1759, Susannah Hannaker, of Wingrove, Wilts, was put to the ordeal of weighing, but fortunately for herself outweighed the church Bible, against which she was tested. In June, 1760, at Leicester; in June, 1785, at Northampton; and in April, 1829, at Monmouth, persons were tried for ducking supposed witches. Similar cases have occurred in our own time. On September 4, 1863, a paralytic Frenchman died of an illness induced by his having been ducked as a wizard in a pond at Castle Hedingham, in Essex. And an aged woman, named Anne Turner, reputed to be a witch, was killed by a man, partially insane, at the village of Long Compton, in Warwickshire, on September 17, 1875. But the reader needs no further illustrations of the longevity of human error, or the terrible vitality of prejudice, especially among the uneducated. The thaumaturgist or necromancer, with his wand, his magic circle, his alembics and crucibles, disappeared long ago, because, as I have already pointed out, his support depended upon a class of society whose intelligence was rapidly developed by the healthy influences of literature and science; but the sham astrologer and the pseudo-witch linger still in obscure corners, because they find their prey among the credulous and the ignorant. The more widely we extend the bounds of knowledge, the more certainly shall we prevent the recrudescence of such forms of imposture and aspects of delusion as in the preceding pages I have attempted to describe.
CHAPTER IV.
THE WITCHES OF SCOTLAND.
Among the people of Scotland, a more serious-minded and imaginative race than the English, the superstition of witchcraft was deeply rooted at an early period. Its development was encouraged not only by the idiosyncrasies of the national character, but also by the nature of the country and the climate in which they lived. The lofty mountains, with their misty summits and shadowy ravines—their deep obscure glens—were the fitting homes of the wildest fancies, the eëriest legends; and the storm crashing through the forests, and the surf beating on the rocky shore, suggested to the ear of the peasant or the fisherman the voices of unseen creatures—of the dread spirits of the waters and the air. To men who believed in kelpie and wraith and the second sight, a belief in witch and warlock was easy enough. And it was not until the Calvinist reformers imported into Scotland their austere and rigid creed, with its literal interpretation of Biblical imagery, that witchcraft came to be regarded as a crime. It was not until 1563 that the Parliament of Scotland passed a statute constituting ‘witchcraft and dealing with witches’ a capital offence. It is true that persons accused of witchcraft had already suffered death—as the Earl of Mar, brother of James III., who was suspected of intriguing with witches and sorcerers in order to compass his brother’s death, and Lady Glamis, in 1532, charged with a similar plot against James V.—but in both these cases it was the treason which was punished rather than the sorcery.
In the Scottish criminal records the first person who suffered death for the practice of witchcraft was a Janet Bowman, in 1572. No particulars of her offence are given; and against her name are written only the significant words, ‘convict and byrnt.’
A remarkable case, that of Bessie Dunlop, belongs to 1576.[44] She was the wife of an Ayrshire peasant, Andrew Jack. According to her own statement, she was going one day from her house to the yard of Monkcastle, driving her cows to the pasture, and greeting over her troubles—for she had a milch-cow nigh sick to death, and her husband and child were lying ill, and she herself had but recently risen from childbed—when a strange man met her, and saluted her with the words, ‘Gude day, Bessie!’ She answered civilly, and, in reply to his questions, acquainted him with her anxieties; whereupon he informed her that her cow, her two sheep, and her child would die, but that her gude man would recover. She described this stranger in graphic language as ‘an honest, wele-elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gray coat with Lumbart slevis of the auld fassoun; ane pair of gray brekis and quhyte schankis, gartaurt above the knee; ane black bonnet on his heid, cloise behind and plane before, with silkin laissis drawin throw the lippis thairof; and ane quhyte wand in his hand.’ He told Bessie that his name was Thomas Reid, and that he had been killed at the Battle of Pinkie. Extraordinary as was this information, it did not seem improbable to her when she noted the manner of his disappearance through the yard of Monkcastle: ‘I thocht he gait in at ane narroware hoill of the dyke [wall], nor ony erdlie man culd haif gaun throw; and swa I was sumthing fleit [terrified].’
Thomas Reid’s sinister predictions were duly fulfilled. Soon afterwards, he again met Bessie, and boldly invited her to deny her religion, and the faith in which she was christened, in return for certain worldly advantages. But Bessie steadfastly refused.
This visitor of hers was under no fear of the ordinance which is supposed to limit the mundane excursions of ‘spiritual creatures’ to the hours between sunset and cockcrow; for he generally made his appearance at mid-day. It is not less singular that he made no objection to the presence of humanity. On one occasion he called at her house, where she sat conversing with her husband and three tailors, and, invisible to them, plucked her by the apron, and led her to the door, and thence up the hill-end, where he bade her stand, and be silent, whatever she might hear or see. And suddenly she beheld twelve persons, eight women and four men; the men clad in gentlemen’s clothing, and the women with plaids round about them, very seemly to look at. Thomas was among them. They bade her sit down, and said: ‘Welcome, Bessie; wilt thou go with us?’ But she made no answer, and after some conversation among themselves, they disappeared in a hideous whirlwind.
When Thomas returned, he informed her that the persons she had seen were the ‘good wights,’ who dwell in the Court of Faëry, and he brought her an invitation to accompany them thither—an invitation which he repeated with much earnestness. She answered, with true Scotch caution: ‘She saw no profit to gang that kind of gates, unless she knew wherefore.’
‘Seest thou not me,’ he rejoined, ‘worth meat and worth clothes, and good enough like in person?’