came where they lay the "said umquhile
Edward bled at the collar-bane or craig-bane;" the other in the hand and
fingers, "gushing out bluid thairat, to the great admiration of the
beholders, and judgment of the Almytie." Many and heavy were Marion's
misdeeds. She cursed Janet Robinson, and "accordingly showers of pains and
fits fell upon the victim." She looked upon a cow, and it "crappit
togidder till no lyfe was leukit for her." She took away the profit of
Edward Halcro's brewing, and destroyed the milk of Andrew Erasmusson's kye
for thirteen days. Indeed, her character was so well known that when
Swene, her husband, was working in a peat moss where a sickly fellow was
one of the gang, his fellows would ask him seriously "if he could not make
his wife go to her pobe (foster-father) the devil, and bid him loose a
knot, so that the man might get back his health?" Once she cast a sickness
on a woman, then took it from her and flung it on a calf, which went mad
and died; and she crippled a man, then cured him under compulsion, by
putting her fingers first to his leg and then to the ground, which she did
twice, muttering to herself; but the report of this getting about, she was
angry and banned the man once more, yet once more was forced to cure
him;--this time by means of a bannock prepared with her own hands, whereby
she cast his malady on a cow. Poor cowey died of her strange sickness, and
poor Marion died of a worse disease--the rope and the faggot: and then the
neighbourhood slept in peace.

SINCLAIR'S STORIES.[42]

On a certain day in a certain month, A.D. 1644, a woman went to the house
of another woman in Borrowstonness. She went early, and instantly fell to
mauling and pulling her, crying, "Thou traitour thief, thou thought to
destroy my son this morning, but it was not in thy power!" And then she
pulled her mutch from off her head, and mauled and maltreated her anew.
Now the meaning of the row was, that this woman had a son out at sea, whom
she, so cruelly assaulted, had sought to destroy by means of a sudden
storm raised by magic means this very day. The storm was actually raised,
and many of the crew suffered; but the son of the woman at Borrowstonness
was washed overboard by one wave, and washed on board again by another
wave, which so filled all the mariners with amaze that they came ashore.
The dispute between the two women becoming noised abroad, and the thing
being as the one had said, it was found that