much. Once though, she was nearly caught
as a hare; she had just time to run behind a
chest, the dogs panting after her, and to
say:—
    "Hair! hair! God send thé cair!
    I am in a hearis liknes now,
    Bot I sall be a woman ewin now!
    Hair! hair! God send thé cair!"
which restored her to her proper shape
again. But they had a hard task-master in
Satan. He often beat them; especially for
calling him Black Johnie, which they
would do amongst themselves; when he
would suddenly appear in the midst of
them, saying, "I ken weel enough what ye
are saying of me!" and fall to scourging
them like a fierce school-master with his
scholars. Alexander Elder was very often
beaten. He was very "soft," and did
nothing but howl and cry, not defending
himself in the least. But, Margaret
Wilson defended herself with her hands, and
Bessie Wilson "would speak crusty with
her tongue, and would be belling at him
soundly:" so that on the whole the fiend
had but a riotous set of servants after all.

Janet Braidhead succeeded Isobell Gowdie
in her madness. Her confession, made
between Isobell's third and fourth, follows
in precisely the same track. She, like her
unhappy predecessor, gave the names of
numerous respectable people whom she
asserted were belonging to the various
covens. She even accused her own husband of
presenting her for the infernal baptism; and
as the confession of one witch was sufficient
for the condemnation of all named therein,
it is mournful to reflect on the number of
innocent people the wild ravings of one or
two lunatics could doom to misery and
shame, and a felon's cruel death.
Anything was enough for a conviction in those
days. A muttered curse, an angry threat,
a little more knowledge than the rest of the
neighbours, a taste for natural history, an
evil temper, or a lonely life, anything was
sufficient to fasten the reputation of sorcery
on man or woman; and that repuation
once fastened, then indeed the happiest, as
the most fatally certain, thing for the
sufferer was death. Life would have been but
one long martyrdom of want and shame and
insult.

The delusion at last wore itself out. The
latest execution in Scotland for witchcraft was
that of an old idiot-woman in seventeen
hundred and twenty-two; but even before then,
in sixteen hundred and seventy-eight, a
suspected witch had known how to get legal
redress against some who had tormented and
pricked her. Sir George Mackenzie, "that
noble wit of Scotland," was mainly instrumental
in putting down the horrible phantasy
which lay like a curse on the land, and blighted
the whole race on which it fell. His
eloquent, forcible, and manly reasonings let a
little light into the heavy brains of the
ignorant and superstitious' rulers; for though
even he dared not go so far as to deny the
existence of witchcraft altogether like the
"Sadducees" of England, yet he condemned
"next to the wretches themselves, those cruel
and too forward judges who burn persons by
thousands as guilty of this crime." He
instanced out of his own knowledge, a
poor weaver convicted of sorcery, who, on
being asked what the devil was like when
he appeared to him, answered, "like flies
dancing about the candle;" and a poor
woman asked him seriously when she was
accused if a person could be a witch and not
know it? Another, who had confessed
judicially, told him, under secrecy, that she had
not confest because she was guilty ; but, being
a poor creature who wrought for her meat,
she knew she would starve; for no person
thereafter would either give her meat or
lodging, and that all men would beat her
and hound dogs at her, and that, therefore,
she desired to be out of the world; whereupon
she wept most bitterly, and upon her
knees called God to witness what she said."
Another told him that, "she was afraid the
devil would challenge a right to her after she
was said to be his servant, and would haunt
her, as the minister said, when he was
desiring her to confess, and therefore she
desired to die."

A poor woman in Lauder jail, lying there
on charge of witchcraft, sent for the minister
of the town to make her true confession: which
was of reiterated acts of sorcery. The
minister did not believe her, but ascribed
this confession to the devil. However, the
woman persisted, and was taken out with the
rest to be burnt. Just before her execution,
she cried out: "Now, all you that see me
this day, know that I am now to die a witch
by my own confession and I free all men,
especially the ministers and magistrates, of
the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly on
myself. My blood be upon my own head;
and as I must make answer to the God of
heaven presently, I declare I am as free of
witchcraft as any child; but being delated
by a malicious woman, and put in prison
under the name of a witch, disowned by my
husband and friends, and seeing no ground of
hope of my coming out of prison, or ever
coming in credit again, through the temptation
of the devil I made up that confession,
on purpose to destroy my own life, being
weary of it, and choosing rather to die than
to live;" and so died. Even after Sir
George Mackenzie's noble book, however,
the witch-fires were still kept burning;
hundreds of innocent creatures, hundreds of
desperate, insane, or ruined wretches were
bound to the stake and burnt to ashes, on
these foul and ridiculous charges. The
young, the old, the beautiful, the noble, the
mean and the wealthy, all were fair game
alike. For witnesses,—the testimony of a