it rain or hail when and where I list." He asked from whom she had
obtained such power. She replied, from her mother, who had forbidden
her to divulge the secret. In violation, however, of a solemn promise,
she said her mother had committed her to a master that did everything
she desired. "Why, then," said her father, "make it rain, but only on
one field." So she went to a stream, threw up water in her master's
name, and presently it rained. Proceeding further, she made it hail on
another field, when no hail fell elsewhere. Hereupon the father
accused his wife of witchcraft, caused her to be burned, and of new
had his child christened.

Witchcraft continued in all its phases in the first quarter of the
eighteenth century. In the year 1718 the Caithness witches were
particularly active. Margaret Olson, one of the evil sisterhood,
tormented William Montgomerie, a mason at Scrabster, and his family.
She became displeased at him in consequence of his coming into
possession of a property from which she had been expelled. To work out
her evil design, she and certain associates transformed themselves
into the form of cats. One night there appeared in Montgomerie's house
no fewer than eight cats, not mewing nor caterwauling, but speaking
with human voices. As this kind of annoyance could not be endured, the
mason boldly attacked them with a sword, and so seriously cut one of
the feline crew that it appeared to be dead. Mangled, and seemingly
lifeless, the carcass was cast into the open air. Next morning it
could not be seen. A few nights afterwards the cats or fiends appeared
again in full force, less one, and attacked a servant-man as he lay in
bed. Montgomerie rushed to the rescue, thrust a dirk through the body
of one of the intruders, beat it on the head with an axe, and threw
the dead-like cat out before the door, as he had done with its former
companion. Next day it could not be found. Rumour, with its thousand
tongues, spread the report that Margaret Nin-Gilbert, a confederate of
Olson, was one of the cats which had been seemingly killed. Proof was
adduced that one of Margaret's neighbours saw her at her own door drop
one of her legs, black and putrefied. The Sheriff-depute of
Caithness-shire ordered her to be apprehended, and, when judicially
interrogated, she confessed being the devil's servant. She also
admitted it was she who, in the similitude of a cat, had been thrust
through with a dirk and smashed by William Mo