There is another power given to them, which is a most mischievous one, and proves the fruitful source of almost all the crimes and miseries which deluge the land,—that of sowing the seeds of discord amongst mankind in public and private life. We will say nothing of the degree of secret influence which these worthies probably enjoy in overruling the councils of our nation, and thwarting the judgment of our ministers, so as to answer their private purposes, as it would be out of our strict line of delineation. But we speak from the best authority when we say, that they are the common and secret instigators of those deplorable quarrels and divisions which sometimes happen between those who ought to be one flesh. Whenever we see a broken-hearted wife mourning over the misconduct of her husband, who, once tenderly affectionate and attentive to the discharge of his domestic duties, is now changed into the domestic tyrant and whisky-bibber, we need never hesitate for a moment to pronounce the cause to be witchcraft. And the same rule holds good in regard to the misconduct of the wife, vice versa. Behold, again, the man of sin, clothed in the garment of disgrace, that sits “girnan on the creepy.” Ask him what blind-fold infatuation could have induced him to have defiled his neighbour’s bed, and he will tell you, with a groan, it was “Buchuchd.”[F]
Nor are their operations confined to the injury of a person’s spiritual interest alone—they even descend to the lowest incidents in a man’s calling. If the reader should see a termagant of a wife raise over the caput of her poor cuckold of a husband the tongs or spurtle, demanding of him, with vehement eloquence, the cause of purchasing a horse or a cow at double its value, his answer to her will certainly be—“Me ve ar mu Buchuchd.”
Thus the ruination of our spiritual interest is not enough to satisfy their inveterate malignity,—they must likewise injure our temporal interests, which, however incomparable to the former in point of intrinsic importance, yet cause the sufferer fully as much grief. Indeed, so dearly do the most of the people of this world love their temporal means and estate, that we feel fully persuaded, that did those agents confine their operations to the injury of our spiritual interests alone, which, as Satan’s instruments, we should naturally suppose to be their proper line of business, the clamour against their ruinous and abominable practices would be much less violent than it is. This much, however, of the Highlander’s liberal disposition the sly sounding witch is intimately acquainted with, and for this very reason she redoubles her diligence to cause him all the loss in her power, as the most effectual way of completing his misery. Hence it oftens happens, that should a horse, an ox, or a cow, of unequalled symmetry and beauty, be so unlucky as to attract the favour of its affectionate owner;—by whatever means the sagacious witch discovers the secret we know not, but certain annihilation, accomplished by some means or other, will be the poor animal’s lot. Such a calamity as this is sufficiently mortifying, but it is a small one when compared to the loss of a person’s whole stock, which too frequently follows the loss of one. Having once inserted the infernal pillow into some snug corner, its influence will give the finishing stroke to all the cattle and creeping things on a farm. This pillow, not to give it a worse name, is a little four-cornered bag, packed with divers exterminating diseases, in the familiar likeness of hair, grease, parings of nails, shoe tackets, salt, powder, and other infernal knick-knacks, too tedious to be described, which, when thrown into the fire, makes a noise the like of which has seldom been heard.
No sooner is this bag deposited in a cleft in the stable or byre than it commences its destructive career, producing the death of the bestial in whole lots, until the last hen on the roost will fall a sacrifice to its deadly influence. Nor is this all; they will attach some infernal cantrips to the farming-utensils that no good crop will follow their operations, and what may escape the influence of the baggie is commonly destroyed by frost, rain, lightning, and other calamities, which the craft can produce at their pleasure, so that it is unfit for the use of man or beast. In short, of all the ills incident to the life of man, none are so formidable as witchcraft, before the combined influence of which, to use the language of an honest man who had himself severely suffered from its effects, “the great Laird of Grant himself could not stand them if they should fairly yoke upon him.”
CHAPTER V.
OF THE WITCH’S POWERS OF TRANSFORMATION.
Those of our readers who are not very well acquainted with the theory of witchcraft will not be a little surprised, at the unaccountable activity of its agents, who are capable of paying not only proper attention to their own private affairs, but likewise of carrying on almost all the business of the Evil One in this land. In order to obviate all surprise on this head, be it remembered, that they are endowed with as ample powers of transmigration (at their institution into the craft) as any other of Satan’s spiritual agents; consequently there is no similitude from their own proper likenesses to that of a cat or a stone, but they can assume at pleasure. Hence the speed and privacy with which they attain their evil ends.
One of the most ordinary disguises of a “Ban-Buchichd”[G] is the similitude of a hare. This transformation she finds exceedingly convenient while performing her cantrips in the field—bewitching farming implements—destroying corn and grass—holding communion with the sisterhood, and similar pieces of business. It enables her to execute her undertakings with greater expedition, and flee more fleetly on any emergency, than she could do in any other character.
A second is the likeness of a cat—by personating which, she procures admission to the inmost recesses of a house, to deposit her infernal machinery, without exciting the least suspicions of her real character and intentions.
A third is her transformation into a stone, which is a common practice with the witch in the season of agricultural operations, by which she is afforded great opportunities of mischief to the farmer’s interest. The wily witch will penetrate into the ground, and place herself in the line of the plough, and as it passes her she will creep in betwixt the sock and the culter. The plough is consequently expelled from the ground for a considerable space, and a “bauk” is the consequence. For these insidious and barefaced acts of iniquity, the witch, if discovered, seldom escapes with impunity. Stopping the cattle, the ploughman will take hold of the stone, bestowing upon it the most abusive and opprobrious epithets, and dashes her with all his might against the hardest substance he can find, as a mark of his hatred and contempt for her character.
A fourth is her transformation into the shape of a raven; which now in a great measure supersedes the use of her ancient and renowned hobby-horse the broom, on which she formerly walloped with such surprising velocity. This similitude is commonly assumed by her when on excursions to any distance, to attend the counsels of Satan—to hold communion with the sisterhood—or to attend some important enterprise.