Happily now, however, the roads are better, and travellers more cautious. All the glittering meteors of the spunkie cannot make the knowing Highlander of the present day turn to the right or to the left. So that the spunkie has now shut shop, and become bankrupt in his department.
PART VI.
Witchcraft.
When Satan, for weighty dispatches,
Sought messengers cunning and bold,
He pass’d by the beautiful faces,
And pick’d out the ugly and old.
Volle.
CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF WITCHCRAFT.
We are now come to consider and describe the ancient and well-known order of Witchcraft; the nature and object of which require very little explanation in a country where it has been so long established as in Scotland. Taking a retrospective view of the rise and progress of this once flourishing institution, we are told it was founded by the Grand Master, shortly after the creation of the world. That the wickedness of the inhabitants having kept pace with their increase, Satan found work multiplying so fast on his hands, that his own spiritual minions, numerous as they were, became inadequate to their employment. Being seldom blind to his own interest, the idea of enlisting a few human instruments to supply their deficiencies naturally suggested itself to his fertile genius, and such has been the thirst for magic and power, which has at all times pervaded the old women of those countries, that he never had great difficulty in procuring abundance of volunteers to join his banners.