who were yearly strangled and burnt on such
charges as, "casting sickness on such an one
by means of ane blak clout," &c.; raising the
devil; curing diseases by incantations;
foretelling events; charming to death, or to love,
as the case might be; sending visions to
'frighten silly men and half-crazed women;
cursing land with a paddock, or toad-drawn
plough, &c., &c. Curious as the various trials
are, we cannot give even the names of the
sufferers; witch-finding increased so rapidly
in Scotland. In sixteen hundred and sixty-one,
the most fertile and the most fatal year
of all, no fewer than fourteen special
commissions were granted for the purpose of
trying witches for the sederunt of November
the seventh; how many unfortunates
were murdered on this charge Heaven only
knows. We have the records of but one—
the Justiciary Court; and they were tried
by all sorts of courts, ordinary and
extraordinary. It was the popular amusement;
and it would have taken a wiser and a
braver man than any living at that time to
have turned the tide in favour of the poor,
persecuted servants of the "deil." Though
it was the Catholic Bull of Innocent the
Eighth, in fourteen hundred and eighty-four,
which first stirred up the persecuting zeal of
the godly against witchcraft, yet Calvinistic
Scotland soon outstripped the papacy in her
zealous hate, and poured out blood that will
leave a stain on her history, so long as that
history shall endure.

We turn now those crimson pages rapidly,
till we come to the witches of Auldearne,
and Isobell Gowdie's confessions.

It does not seem that Isobell Gowdie was
either pricked by John Kincaid, the
"common pricker "—the Scottish Matthew
Hopkins—or tortured before she made her
confessions. She was probably a wild,
excited lunatic, whose ravings ran in the
popular groove, rather than on any purely
personal matters; and who was not so much
deceiving, as self-deceived by insanity. She
began by stating how, that one day she met
the devil; and denying her baptism, put one
of her hands to the crown of her head, and
the other to the sole of her foot, making over
to him all that lay between; he, as a
"mickle, black, hairy man," standing in the
pulpit of the church at Auldearne, reading
out of a black book. Isobell was baptized by
him in her own blood, by the name of Janet,
and henceforth was one of the most devoted
of her coven, or company. For, they were
divided into covens, or bands, under proper
officers and leaders. John Young was officer
to her coven, and the number composing it was
thirteen. They went through the ordinary
misdeeds of witchcraft. They destroyed
corn-fields; spoilt brewings; dug up
unchristened children, and cut them into
charms; ploughed with toads and frogs,
cursing the land as they went, to make it
barren: they rode on straws, which they
made into horses, by putting them between
their feet, saying, "Horse and hattock in the
devil's name;" and Isobell went to the land
of faërie, where she got meat from the
"Queen of Faerie," more than she could eat.
The queen was a comely woman, bravely
dressed in white linen, and white and brown
clothes; and the king was a fine man, well
favoured, and broad-faced; but there were
elf bulls, "roytting and skoilling up and
down there," which frightened poor Isobell
sorely. They took away cow's milk, too, in a
very odd manner,—by platting a tether
the wrong way, and drawing it between the cow's hind and fore feet; then, milking the tether,
they drew the cow's milk clean away. To
restore it, it was necessary to cut the witch-line,
and the milk would flow back. Of
course there were clay pictures of any who
offended the witches, and therefore were
desired to be put out of the way. All the
male children of the laird of Parkis were
doomed to perish because of a clay picture of
a little child, which was every now and then
laid by the fire till it shrivelled and withered.
As jackdaws, hares, cats, &c., our witches
passed from house to house, destroying dyeing
vats, and beer-casks, and all sorts of
things, which their owners had forgotten to
"sanctify;" and which omission gave the
witches their power.

In her next confession. Isobell went into
further particulars respecting the constitution
of her coven. Each of the thirteen witches
had a spirit appointed to wait on her. Swein,
clothed in grass-green, waited on Margaret
Wilson, called Pickle-nearest-the-wind;
Rorie, in yellow, waited on Throw-the-corn-yard.
The Roaring Lion, in sea-green, waited
on Bessie Bule. Mak Hector, in grass-green,
(a young devil this!) accompanied the Maiden
of the Coven, daughter to Pickle-nearest-the-wind,
and called Over-the-dyke-with-it.
Robert the Rule, in sad dun, a commander
of the spirits, waited on Margaret Bodie.
Thief-of-hell-wait-upon-herself waited on
Bessie Wilson. Isobell's own spirit was
the Red Riever, and he was ever in black.
The eighth spirit was Robert-the-jakes,
aged, and clothe in dun, "ane glaiked
gowked spirit," waiting on Able-and-Stout;
the ninth was Laing, serving Bessie
Bauld; the tenth was Thomas, a fairy;
but there Isobell's questioners stopped her,
and no more information was given of the
spirits of the coven. She then told them
that to raise a wind they took a rag of cloth,
and wetted it in the water, then knocked it
on a stone with a flat piece of wood, singing
a doggerel rhyme. She gave them, too, the
rhymes necessary for tranformation into a
hare, cat, crow, &c., and for turning back into
their own shapes again. The rhymes are
unique; the only rhymes of the kind to be
found in the whole history of witchcraft;
but we have not space to transcribe them;
for Isobell was a mighty talker, and told