ught some of his salves, and gave him
two English shillings for her bargain, forbye bread and milk and a pint of
ale. In eight days' time he came again, and stayed all night; and the next
morning, Patrik being "forth" and Manie yet in bed, she became more
intimately acquainted with the devil than an honest woman should. We do
not read that Manie was tortured, and, considering that it was not an
unusual thing to keep suspected witches twenty-eight days and nights on
bread and water, they being stripped stark naked, with only a haircloth
over them, and laid on a cold stone, or to put them into hair-shirts
steeped in vinegar, so that the skin might be pulled from off them, we
feel that poor Manie got off pretty well with only cremation as the result
of her mad confessions.
But one of the most extraordinary things of all was that wonderful bit of
knavery and credulity called
THE DEVIL OF GLENLUCE,[44]
when Master Tom Campbell set the whole country in a flame, and brought no
end of notice and sympathy upon his house and family. In 1654 one Gilbert
Campbell was a weaver in Glenluce, a small village not far from Newton
Stewart. Tom, his eldest son, and the most important personage in the
drama, was a student at Glasgow College; and there was a certain old
blaspheming beggar, called Andrew Agnew--afterwards hanged at Dumfries for
his atheism, having said, in the hearing of credible witnesses, that
"there was no God but salt, meal, and water"--who every now and then came
to Glenluce to ask alms. One day old Andrew visited the Campbells as
usual, but got nothing; at which he cursed and swore roundly, and
forthwith sent a devil to haunt the house, for it was soon after this
refusal that the stirs began, and the connection was too apparent to be
denied. For what could they be but the malice of the devil sent by old
Andrew in revenge? Young Tom Campbell was the worst beset of all, the
demon perpetually whistling and rioting about him, and playing him all
sorts of diabolical and malevolent tricks. Once, too, Jennet, the young
daughter, going to the well, heard a whistling behind her like that
produced by "the small slender glass whistles of children," and a voice
like the damsel's, saying, "I'll cast thee, Jennet, into the well! I'll
cast thee, Jennet, into the well!" About the middle of November, when the
days were dark and the nights long, things got very bad. The foul fiend
threw stones in at the doors and windows, and down
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