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Page 20
CHAPTER V.
_WITCHCRAFT, SECOND-SIGHT, AND THE BLACK ART._
That the devil gave to certain persons supernatural power, which they
might exercise at their pleasure, was a belief prevalent throughout all
Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But at the same
time this compacting with the devil was reprobated, nay more, was a
capital offence, both in civil and ecclesiastical law, and during these
two centuries thousands of persons were convicted and executed for this
crime. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century the civil
courts refused to convict upon the usual evidence, to the great alarm
and displeasure of the ecclesiastical authorities, who considered this
refusal a great national sin--a direct violation of the law of God,
which said--"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." To arrest the
punishment which this direct violation of God's written law was supposed
to incur, prayers were offered, and fasts were appointed.
As samples of the kind of evidence on which reputed witches were
convicted and executed, I extract the following from the Records of
Lanark Presbytery, 1650:--"Likewise he reported that the Commissioners
and brethren did find these poynts delated against Janet M'Birnie, one
of the suspected women, to wit:
"1st. That on a time the said Janet M'Birnie followed Wm. Brown,
sclater, to Robert Williamson's house in Water Meetings, to crave
somewhat, and fell in evil words. After which time, and within four and
twenty hours, he fell off ane house and brake his neck.
"2nd. After some outcast between Bessie Achison's house and Janet
M'Birnie's house, the said Janet M'Birnie prayed that there might be
bloody beds and a light house, and after that the said Bessie Achison
her daughter took sickness, and the lassie said there is fyre in my bed,
and died. And the said Bessie Achison her gudeman dwyned.
"3rd. It was alleged that the said Janet M'Birnie was the cause of the
dispute between Newton and his wife, and that she and others were the
death of William Geddese. And also that they fand against Marian
Laidlaw, another suspected, these particulars: that the said Marian and
Jean Blacklaw differed in words for the said Marian's hay; and after
that the said Jean her kye died."
They were remitted for trial. In these same Records there is in 1697 the
following entry:--"Upon the recommendation of the Synod, the Presbytery
appoynts a Fast to be keeped upon the 28th instant, in regard to the
great prevalence of witchcraft which abounds at several places at this
time within the bounds of the Synod."
At this time the laws against witchcraft had become practically a dead
letter, but it was not till 1735 that they were repealed. Still, the
abolition of the legal penalty did not kill the popular belief in the
power and reality of witchcraft; and even now, at this present day, we
find proof every now and again in newspaper reports that this belief
still lingers among certain classes. Within these fifty years, in a
village a little to the west of Glasgow, lived an old woman, who was not
poor, but had a very irritable temper, and was unsocial in her habits. A
little boy having called her names and otherwise annoyed her, she
scolded him, and, in the heat of her rage, prophesied that before a
twelvemonth elapsed the devil would get his own. A few months after this
the boy sickened and died, and the villagers had no hesitation in
ascribing the cause of death to this old woman. Again, a farmer in the
neighbourhood had bought a horse, and in the evening a servant was
leading it to the water to drink, when this same old woman, who was
sitting near at hand, remarked upon the beauty of the horse, and asked
for a few hairs from the tail, which the servant with some roughness
refused. When the stable was entered next morning the horse was found
dead. On the above circumstance of the old woman's request being related
to the farmer, he regretted the servant's refusal of the hairs, and said
that, if the same woman had asked him, he would have given every hair in
the tail rather than offend her, showing thereby his undoubted belief in
the woman's power. Fortunately for her, she lived in a storeyed
building--in local vernacular, a _land_--or in all probability her house
would have been set on fire in order to burn her. At the same time,
while she was hated and dreaded, everybody for their own safety paid her
the most marked respect. Had she lived a century earlier, such evidence
would have brought her to the stake. In 1666, before the Lanark
Presbytery, a woman was tried for bewitching cattle:--
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