y, one John Reed, who was also
condemned, hanged himself in prison. It was the general belief in Paisley
that the devil had strangled him lest he should have revealed in his last
moments too many of the unholy secrets of witchcraft. This trial excited
considerable disgust in Scotland. The Rev. Mr. Bell, a contemporary
writer, observed that, in this business, "persons of more goodness and
esteem than most of their calumniators were defamed for witches." He adds,
that the persons chiefly to blame were "certain ministers of too much
forwardness and absurd credulity, and some topping professors in and about
Glasgow."[34]

[34] Preface to _Law's Memorials_, edited by Sharpe.

After this trial, there again occurs a lapse of seven years, when the
subject was painfully forced upon public attention by the brutal cruelty
of the mob at Pittenween. Two women were accused of having bewitched a
strolling beggar who was subject to fits, or who pretended to be so, for
the purpose of exciting commiseration. They were cast into prison, and
tortured until they confessed. One of them, named Janet Cornfoot,
contrived to escape, but was brought back to Pittenween next day by a
party of soldiers. On her approach to the town she was unfortunately met
by a furious mob, composed principally of fishermen and their wives, who
seized upon her with the intention of swimming her. They forced her away
to the sea-shore, and tying a rope around her body, secured the end of it
to the mast of a fishing-boat lying alongside. In this manner they ducked
her several times. When she was half dead, a sailor in the boat cut away
the rope, and the mob dragged her through the sea to the beach. Here, as
she lay quite insensible, a brawny ruffian took down the door of his hut,
close by, and placed it on her back. The mob gathered large stones from
the beach and piled them upon her till the wretched woman was pressed to
death. No magistrate made the slightest attempt to interfere; and the
soldiers looked on, delighted spectators. A great outcry was raised
against this culpable remissness, but no judicial inquiry was set on foot.
This happened in 1704.

The next case we hear of is that of Elspeth Rule, found guilty of
witchcraft before Lord Anstruther, at the Dumfries circuit, in 1708. She
was sentenced to be marked in the cheek with a red-hot iron, and banished
the realm of Scotland for life.

Again there is a long interval. In 1718, the remote county of Caith