t with these
words:--

"Our Lord forth did raide,
His foal's foot slade;
Our Lord down lighted,
His foal's foot righted;
Saying flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and stane to stane,
In our Lord his name."

She said this was a charm that had been learnt her by a nameless man from
Strathmiglo; but Margaret Fisher,[40] in Weardie, spoke it somewhat
differently. She had for her spell:--

"Our Lord to hunting red,
His sool-soot sled,
Down he lighted,
His sool-soot righted;
Blod to blod,
Shinew to shinew,
To the other sent in God's name,
In the name of the Father, Sone, and Holy Ghost."

Either version was equally efficacious as a cure to the sick and a curse
to the whole; and equally deadly as a crime in those who used it. And
there was Margaret Young, "ane honest young woman of good reputation,
without any scandal or blot," who lay miserably in prison for ten weeks,
without trial or release; but she got off at last on her husband's
becoming her surety. And Jonet Thomeson, who bewitched Andrew Burwick's
corn, so that when carried to the mill it leapt up into his wife's face
like mites, and as it were "nipped" her face until it swelled; and when it
was made into "meat," neither he nor his wife could abide the smell of it;
and when they did manage to eat it, it tasted like pins ("went owre lyke
prinsis"), and could not be quenched for thirst: and the dogs would not
eat of it, and the neighbours would not buy it; so poor Andrew Burwick's
gear was destroyed, and his means most sorely diminished. For all which
deadly sorcery and malice Jonet Thomeson, _alias_ Greibok, was made to
smart severely.

Marion Peebles[41] came to an untimely end, not unreasonably, according to
the witch-haters. She was "a wicked, devilish, fearful, and abominable
curser," and the world could not be too soon rid of her; for had she not
changed herself into the likeness of an unchristian beast, a mere
shapeless monster, a huge and ugly "pellack-quhaill" (porpoise), and in
this form wrecked the boat of Edward Halcro, to whom she and her husband
had "ane deadlie and veneficial malice?" Halcro and four other men were in
the boat, and public suspicion pointed at once to Marion, and affirmed
this wreck to be caused by her wicked deed. So when two of the dead bodies
were brought to land, she and her husband had to undergo the
_bahr-recht_--the ordeal by touch of the dead--to prove themselves
innocent or guilty. When they