eighbourhood), he called on her next day, and found her in bed. She
complained of being ill. After conversing with her for a short time,
he rose to take his leave, and held out his hand to shake hands with
her. She offered him her left hand; but he refused to take it, saying
it was unfriendly to use the left hand for such a friendly purpose.
After a good deal of hesitation, she admitted that she had lost her
right hand in an encounter she had the previous night when out on
witch business. The gentleman produced the hand, and, on it being
compared with her stump, it fitted exactly. The question then came to
be, how the stroke took effect, for no ordinary sword could have
injured the witch; and it turned out that it had been charmed by the
owner's grandmother, a sensible old woman.

CHAPTER LX.

Edinburgh and Leith Witches--Black Catalogue--Witches
Burned and Drowned--James VI. and the
Witches--Complaint to the Scottish Privy Council of
Barbarous Conduct--Relics of Superstition--Images
found at Arthur Seat--Witch-finders in Edinburgh and
Leith--Royal Commission to Magistrates and Ministers
to search for and put Witches to Death--Wife of a
Judge in Edinburgh meeting a Witch's Fate--Repeal of
the Laws against Witchcraft--Opposition to Acts being
Repealed--Judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland
against a Change of the Law--Witches in Edinburgh and
Leith in the Sixteenth Century--James Reid--Agnes
Finnie, the Potter-row Witch--Alexander Hamilton, the
Warlock--The Devil and Hamilton burning a Provost's
Mill--Janet Barker curing a Bewitched Man--Margaret
Hutchison, a habit-and-repute Witch--Young Laird of
Duddingston--Major Weir and his Magical Staff--A
Magical Distaff--Agnes Williamson, a Haddingtonshire
Witch--Elizabeth Bathgate of Eyemouth--Isabella Young
of Eastbarns burned at the Castlehill.

Against Edinburgh and Leith stands a black catalogue of judicial
murders of supposed witches and warlocks. At the Cross, Gallow Lee,
between Edinburgh and Leith, and on the sands of the latter town,
unknown numbers of unhappy creatures, male and female, were executed
in a most barbarous manner, for the imaginary crime of witchcraft.
Nearly all the victims were first tortured to make them confess, and
afterwards some of them were worried, and then burned; others were
hanged at the Cross, Gallow Lee; and