of the Reformation “novus rerum nascitur ordo.” Far from divesting themselves of the dark and bloody superstitions which Innocent’s bull had systematized and propagated, the German reformers had preserved this, while they demolished every other idol, and moving
“In dismal dance around the furnace blue,”
had made even children pass through the fire to Moloch. Their Scottish brethren, adopting implicitly the creed of their continental prototypes, transplanted to our own country, a soil unfortunately but too well prepared for such a seed, the whole doctrine of Satan’s visible agency on earth, with all the grotesque horrors of his commerce with mankind. The aid of the sword of justice was immediately found to be indispensable to the weapons of the spirit; and the verse of Moses which declares that a witch shall not be suffered to live, was forthwith made the groundwork of the Act 73 of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary, which enacted the punishment of death against witches or consulters with witches.
The consequences of this authoritative recognition of the creed of witchcraft became immediately obvious with the reign of James which followed. Witchcraft became the all-engrossing topic of the day, and the ordinary accusation resorted to whenever it was the object of one individual to ruin another, just as certain other offences were during the reign of Justinian, and during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy. In Scotland the evil was not less busy in high places, than among the humbler beings, who had generally been professors of the art magic. A sort of relation of clientage seems to have been established between the operative performers, and those noble patrons (chiefly, we regret to say, of the fair sex) by whom their services were put in requisition. The Lady Buccleugh, of Branxholm Hall, whose spells have furnished our own Northern Wizard with some of his most striking pictures,—the Countess of Athol, the Countess of Huntly, the wife of the Chancellor Arran, the Lady Ker, wife of James, Master of Requests, the Countess of Lothian, the Countess of Angus, (more fortunate in her generation than her grandmother Lady Glammis), were all, if we are to believe the scandal of Scotstarvet, either protectors of witches or themselves dabblers in the art43. Even Knox himself did not escape the accusation of witchcraft; the power and energy of mind with which Providence had gifted him, the enemies of the Reformation attributed to a darker source. He was accused of having attempted to raise “some sanctes” in the churchyard of St. Andrew’s; but in the course of this resuscitation upstarted the devil himself, having a huge pair of horns on his head, at which terrible sight Knox’s secretary became mad with fear, and shortly after died. Nay, to such a height had the mania gone, that Scot of Scotstarvet mentions that Sir Lewis Ballantyne, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland, “by curiosity dealt with a warlock called Richard Grahame,” (the same person who figures in the trial of Alison Balfour, as a confederate of Bothwell), “to raise the devil, who having raised him in his own yard in the Canongate, he was thereby so terrified that he took sickness and thereof died.” This was a “staggering state of Scots statesmen” indeed, when even the supreme criminal judge of Scotland was thus at the head of the delinquents. Well might any unfortunate criminal have said with Angelo—
“Thieves for their robbery have authority,
When judges steal themselves.”
Measure f. Measure, ii. 2.
Nor, in fact, was the Church less deeply implicated than the court and the hall of justice; for in the case of Alison Pearson (1588) we find the celebrated Patrick Adamson, Archbishop of St. Andrew’s, laying aside the fear of the Act of Parliament, and condescending to apply to this poor wretch for a potion to cure him of his sickness!
A faith so strong and so general could not be long in manifesting itself in works. In 1572 occurs the first entry in the Justiciary Record, the trial of Janet Bowman, of which no particulars are given, except the emphatic sentence “Convict: and Brynt.” No fewer than thirty-five trials appear to have taken place before the Court of Justiciary during the remainder of James’s reign, (to 1625), in almost all of which the result is the same as in the case of Bowman.
Two or three of these are peculiarly interesting; one, from the difference between its details and those which form the usual materials of the witch trials; the others, from the high rank of some of those involved in them, and the strange and almost inexplicable extent of the delusion. The first to which we allude is that of Bessie Dunlop44, convicted on her own confession; the peculiarity in this case is that, instead of the devil himself in propriâ personâ, the spiritual beings to whom we are introduced are our old friends the fairies, the same sweet elves whom Paracelsus defends, and old Aubrey delighted to honour. Bessie’s familiar was a being whom she calls Thom Reed, and whom she describes in her judicial declaration45 as “an honest weel elderlie man, gray bairdit, and had ane gray coitt with Lumbard sleeves of the auld fassoun, ane pair of gray brekis, and quhyte schankis gartarrit abone the kne.” Their first meeting took place as she was going to the pasture, “gretand (weeping) verrie fast for her kow that was dead, and her husband and child that were lyand sick in the land-ill (some epidemic of the time), and she new risen out of gissane (childbed).” Thom, who took care that his character should open upon her in a favourable light, chid her for her distrust in Providence, and told her that her sheep and her child would both die, but that her husband should recover, which comforted her a little. His true character, however, appeared at a second “forgathering,” when he unblushingly urged her “to denye her christendom and renounce her baptism, and the faith she took at the fount stane.” The poor witch answered, that “though she should be riven at horse-tails she would never do that,” but promised him obedience in all things else,—a qualified concession with which he rather grumblingly departed. His third appearance took place in her own house, in presence of her husband and three tailors (three!). To the infinite consternation of this trio and of the gudeman, he took her by the apron and led her out of the house to the kiln-end, where she saw eight women and four men sitting; the men in gentlemen’s clothing, and the women with plaids round about them, and “very seemly to see.” They said to her, “Welcome Bessie, wilt thou go with us?” but as she made no answer to this invitation, they, after some conversation among themselves which she could not understand, disappeared of a sudden, and “a hideous ugly sough of wind followed them.” She was told by Thom, after their departure, that these “were the gude wights that wonned in the Court of Elfane,” and that she ought to have accepted their invitation. She afterwards received a visit from the Queen of Elfane in person, who condescendingly asked a drink of her, and prophesied the death of her child and the recovery of her husband. The use which poor Bessie made of her privileges was of the most harmless kind, for her spells seem to have been all exerted to cure, and not to kill. Most of the articles of her indictment are for cures performed, nor is there any charge against her of exerting her powers for a malicious purpose. As usual however she was convicted and burnt.
This was evidently a pure case of mental delusion, but it was soon followed by one of a darker and more complex character, in which, as far as the principal actor was concerned, it seems doubtful whether the mummery of witchcraft formed anything more than a mere pageant in the dark drama of human passions and crimes. We allude to the trials of Lady Fowlis and of Hector Munro of Fowlis, for witchcraft and poisoning, in 1590. This is one of those cases which might plausibly be quoted in support of the ground on which the witch trials have been defended by Selden, Bayle, and the writers of the Encyclopédie,—namely, the necessity of punishing the pretensions to such powers, or the belief in their existence, with as great rigour as if their exercise had been real. “The law against witches,” says Selden, “does not prove there be any, but it punishes the malice of those people that use such means to take away men’s lives. If one should profess that, by turning his hat and crying buz, he could take away a man’s life, though in truth he could do no such thing, yet this were a just law made by the state, that whoever should turn his hat thrice and cry buz, with an intention to take away a man’s life, shall be put to death.” We shall hardly stop to expose the absurdity of this doctrine of Selden in the
