itch she would die. And had not the devil
once, when she was a young lassie, kissed her, and given her a new name?
Reason enough why she should die, if even nothing worse lay behind. At
last the day of her execution came, and she was taken out to be burnt with
the rest. On her way to the scaffold she made this lamentable
speech:--"Now all you that see me this day, know that I am now to die a
witch by my own confession; and I free all men, especially the ministers
and magistrates, of the guilt of my blood. I take it wholly on myself. My
blood be upon my own head; and as I must make answer to the God of heaven
presently, I declare I am as free of witchcraft as any child; but being
delated by a malicious woman, and put in prison under the name of a witch,
disowned by my husband and friends, and seeing no ground of hope of my
coming out of prison or ever coming in credit again, through a temptation
of the devil, I made up that confession on purpose to destroy my own life,
being weary of it, and choosing rather to die than to live." How many poor
wretches had been like this unhappy creature--disowned by husband and
friends, seeing no ground of hope of ever coming in credit again, and
therefore in despair choosing rather to die than to live! In this special
case even the magistrates, usually so passionately determined that all the
accused should be found guilty and suffer death, even they seem to have
sought her release, and to have refused the evidence of her confession as
long as they could; but the times were not sufficiently enlightened for
them to refuse it altogether; and so she gained the fiery goal whither her
anguish and despair impelled her.

MANIE HALIBURTON.[43]

In 1649, John Kinnaird, the witch-finder, made deposition that he had
"pricked" Patrik Watson, of West Fenton, and Manie Haliburton, his spouse,
and that he had found the devil's mark on Patrik's back a little under the
point of his left shoulder, and on Manie's neck a little above her left
shoulder; of which marks they were not sensible (had no feeling in them),
neither came there any blood when pricked. So Manie, seeing that the scent
was hot and the game up, made confession, and saved further trouble. She
said that eighteen years ago, the devil had come to her in likeness of a
man, calling himself a physician, saying that he had good salves, and
specially oylispek (oil of spike or spikenard), wherewith he would cure
her daughter, then sick. So she bo