therein. When they were drawn out—that is, after some further torture—he confessed anything which it pleased his tormentors to demand of him, saying how, just now, the devil had been to him all in black, but with a white wand in his hand; and how, on his, Fian’s, renouncing him, he had brake his wand, and disappeared. The next day he recanted this confession. He was then somewhat restored to himself, and had mastered the weakness of his agony. Whereupon it was assumed that the devil had visited him through the night, and had marked him afresh. They searched him—pulling off every nail with a turkas, or smith’s pincers, and then thrusting in needles up to their heads; but finding nothing more satanic than blood and nerves, they put him to worse tortures, as a revenge. He made no other relapse, but remained constant now to the end; bearing his grievous pains with patience and fortitude, and dying as a brave man always knows how to die, whatever the occasion. Finding that nothing more could be made of him, they mercifully came to an end. He was strangled and burnt “in the Castle Hill of Edinbrough, on a Saterdaie, in the ende of Januarie last past 1591;” ending a may be loose and not over-heroic life in a manner worthy of the most glorious martyr of history. John Fian, schoolmaster of Saltpans, with no great idea to support him, and no admiring friends to cheer him on, bore himself as nobly as any hero of them all, and vindicated the honour of manhood and natural strength in a way that exalts our common human nature into something godlike and divine.

THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH AND HER CUMMERS.[6]

Fian was the first victim in the grand battue offered now to the royal witchfinder; others were to follow, the manner of whose discovery was singular enough. Deputy Bailie David Seaton of Tranent, had a half-crazed servant-girl, one Geillis Duncan, whose conduct in suddenly taking “in hand to helpe all such as were troubled or grieved with anie kinde of sicknes or infirmitie,” excited the righteous suspicions of her master. To make sure he tortured her, without trial, judge, or jury; first, by the “pillie-winks” or thumbscrews, and then by “thrawing,”—wrenching, or binding her head with a rope—an intensely agonizing process, and one that generally comes in as part of the service of justice done to witch and wizard. Not confessing, even under these persuasions, she was “searched,” and the mark was found on her throat: whereupon she at once confessed; accusing, among others, the defunct John Fian, or Cuningham, Agnes Sampson at Haddington, “the eldest witch of them all,” Agnes Tompson of Edinburgh, and Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, one of the senators of the College of Justice. Agnes Sampson’s trial came first. She was a grave, matronlike, well-educated woman, “of a rank and comprehension above the vulgar, grave and settled in her answers, which were to some purpose,” and altogether a woman of mark and character. She was commonly called the “grace wyff” or “wise wyff” of Keith; and, doubtless, her superior reputation brought on her the fateful notice of the half-crazed girl; also it procured her the doubtful honour of being carried to Holyrood, there to be examined by the king himself. At first she quietly and firmly denied all that she was charged with, but after having been fastened to the witches’ bridle,[7] kept without sleep, her head shaved and thrawn with a rope, searched, and pricked, she, too, confessed whatever blasphemous nonsense her accusers chose to charge her with, to the wondrous edification of her kingly inquisitor. She said that she and two hundred other witches went to sea on All-Halloween, in riddles or sieves, making merry and drinking by the way: that they landed at North Berwick church, where, taking hands, they danced around, saying—

“Commer goe ye before! commer goe ye!
Gif ye will not goe before, commer let me!”

Here they met the devil, like a mickle black man, as John Fian had said, and he marked her on the right knee; and this was the time when he made them all so angry by calling Robert Grierson by his right name, instead of Rob the Rower, or Ro’ the Comptroller. When they rifled the graves, as Fian had said, she got two joints, a winding-sheet, and an enchanted ring for love-charms. She also said that Geillis Duncan, the informer, went before them, playing on the Jew’s harp, and the dance she played was Gyllatripes; which so delighted gracious Majesty, greedy of infernal news, that he sent on the instant to Geillis, to play the same tune before him; which she did “to his great pleasure and amazement.” Furthermore, Agnes Sampson confessed that, on asking Satan why he hated King James, and so greatly wished to destroy him, the foul fiend answered: “Because he is the greatest enemy I have;” adding, that he was “un homme de Dieu,” and that Satan had no power against him. A pretty piece of flattery, but availing the poor wise wife nothing as time went on. Her indictment was very heavy; fifty-three counts in all; for the most part relating to the curing of disease by charm and incantation, and to foreknowledge of sickness or death. Thus, she took on herself the sickness of Robert Kerse in Dalkeith, then cast it back, by mistake, on Alexander Douglas, intending it for a cat or a dog: and she put a powder containing dead men’s bones under the pillow of Euphemia Macalzean, when in the pains of childbirth, and so got her safely through. As she went on, and grew more thoroughly weakened in mind and body, she owned to still more monstrous things. Item, to having a familiar, in shape of a dog by name Elva, whom she called to her by “Holà! master!” and conjured away “by the law he lived on.” This dog or devil once came so near to her that she was “fleyt,” but she charged him by the law he lived on to come no nearer to her, but to answer her honestly—“Should old Lady Edmistoune live?” “Her days were gane,” said Elva; “and where were the daughters?” “They said they would be there,” said Agnes. He answered, one of them should be in peril, and that he should have one of them. “It sould nocht be sa,” cried the wise wife; so he growled and went back into the well. Another time she brought him forth out of the well to show to Lady Edmistoune’s daughters, and he frightened them half to death, and would have devoured one of them had not Agnes and the rest gotten a grip of her and drawn her back. She sent a letter to Marian Leuchope, to raise a wind that should prevent the queen from coming; and she caused a ship, ‘The Grace of God,’ to perish—the devil going before, while she and the rest sailed over in a flat boat, entered unseen, ate of the best, and swamped the vessel afterwards. For helping her in this nefarious deed, she gave twenty shillings to Grey Meill, “ane auld, sely, pure plowman,” who usually kept the door at the witches’ conventions, and who had attended her in this shipwreck adventure. Then, she was one of the foremost and most active in the celebrated storm-raising for the destruction, or at least the damage of the king on his return from Denmark; giving some curious particulars in addition to what we have already had in Fian’s indictment; as, that she and her sister witches baptized the cat by which they raised the storm, by putting it, with various ceremonies, thrice through the chimney crook. “Fyrst