try.--_Vide Acta Judiciaria
contra Johannam D'Arceam, vulgo vocutam Johanne la Pucelle._

The Reformation swept away many of the corruptions of the church of
Rome; but the purifying torrent remained itself somewhat tinctured by
the superstitious impurities of the soil over which it had passed. The
trials of sorcerers and witches, which disgrace our criminal records,
become even more frequent after the Reformation of the church; as if
human credulity, no longer amused by the miracles of Rome, had sought
for food in the traditionary records of popular superstition. A Judaical
observation of the precepts of the Old Testament also characterized the
Presbyterian reformers. _"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,"_ was
a text, which at once (as they conceived) authorized their belief in
sorcery, and sanctioned the penalty which they denounced against it. The
Fairies were, therefore, in no better credit after the Reformation than
before, being still regarded as actual daemons, or something very little
better. A famous divine, Doctor Jasper Brokeman, teaches us, in his
system of divinity, "that they inhabit in those places that are polluted
with any crying sin, as effusion of blood, or where unbelief or
superstitione have gotten the upper hand."--_Description of Feroe._ The
Fairies being on such bad terms with the divines, those, who pretended
to intercourse with them, were, without scruple, punished as sorcerers;
and such absurd charges are frequently stated as exaggerations of
crimes, in themselves sufficiently heinous.

Such is the case in the trial of the noted Major Weir, and his sister;
where the following mummery interlards a criminal indictment, too
infamously flagitious to be farther detailed: "9th April, 1670. Jean
Weir, indicted of sorceries, committed by her when she lived and kept a
school at Dalkeith: that she took employment from a woman, to speak in
her behalf to the _Queen of Fairii, meaning the Devil_; and that another
woman gave her a piece of a tree, or root, the next day, and did tell
her, that as long as she kept the same, she should be able to do what
she pleased; and that same woman, from whom she got the tree, caused her
spread a cloth before her door, and set her foot upon it, and to repeat
thrice, in the posture foresaid, these words, _'All her losses and
crosses go alongst to the doors,'_ which was truly a consulting with the
devil, and an act of sorcery, &c. That after the spirit, in the shape of