pen and manifest oppression," and demanded vengeance
and restitution in loud and vigorous terms. The Council, unaccustomed to
this sort of thing, and used only to victims as tame as they were
considered powerful, soon released her, dropping her like hot iron, and
condemning Rutherford and his associates as too hasty and ill-advised:
then, somewhat further redeemed themselves by an unusual act of justice
and common sense, in sentencing David Cowan, "pricker"--the one who had
been the most active of her tormentors--to be confined during pleasure in
the Tolbooth.

Katherine Liddell did not do much good to her afflicted sisterhood, though
she had helped herself: for that same year, in August,[61] "the devil had
a great meeting of witches in Loudian, where, among others, was a warlock
who formerly had been admitted to the ministrie in the Presbyterian tymes,
and when the bishops came in conformed with them." This warlock minister
was Mr. Gideon Penman, minister of Crighton, and a man of notoriously
loose life; but whether he carried his defiance of good so far as to dance
with the hags at the Sabbath, and "beat up those that were slow," and
preach damnable doctrines and blasphemous travesties of the Christian
faith in the devil's services, or whether he was only an immoral
man--better out of the ministry than in it--remains for each reader's
private judgment to determine. Ten of the accused stoutly affirmed that
Mr. Gideon Penman was their devil's parson; but as he as stoutly denied
it, he was liberated on his own security, while nine out of the ten were
condemned to be strangled and burnt, which was done accordingly. They
gave some curious details, as, that, when they renounced their baptism and
gave themselves over to Satan by laying one hand on their head and the
other on their feet he kissed them, and that he was cold to the touch, and
his breath like a damp air; that he scourged them oft, and was a most
"wicked and barbarous master;" and that when he administered the sacrament
to them the bread was like wafers, and the drink like blood or black
moss-water: that he transformed them to the likeness of bees, and crows,
and ravens, when they flew about from place to place as he ordered.

THE DEVIL IN HIS CUPS.[62]

On December 19, 1679, the parish of Borrowstonness was again in an uproar
concerning the evil doings of witches and wizards, the chief of whom was
Annaple Thomson, once a widow, but now a wife. She was charged