because she was seen going from Hilswick to Brecon with a couple
of familiars in the form of black crows or corbies, which hopped on each
side of her, all the way. Which thing, not being in the honest nature of
these fowls to do, she was strangled and burnt. But most frequently the
imp took the form of a cat or dog; sometimes of a respectable human being;
as was the case about seventy years ago, when it was notorious that the
devil, as a good braw countryman, helped a warlock's wife to delve while
her husband was engaged at the Haaf. According to the same authority
too,[65] not longer ago than this time, when the devil dug like any navvy,
a woman of the parish of Dunrossness was known to have a deadly enmity
against a boat's crew that had set off from the Haaf. The day was
cloudless, but the woman was a witch, and storms were as easy for her to
raise as to blow a kiss from the hand. She took a wooden basin, called a
_cap_, and set it afloat in a tub of water; then, as if to disarm
suspicion, went about her household work, chanting softly to herself an
old Norse ditty. After she had sung a verse or two she sent her little
child to look at the tub, and see whether the cap was _whummilled_ (turned
upside down) or no. The child said the water was stirring but the bowl was
afloat. The woman went on singing a little louder; and presently sent the
child again to see how matters stood. This time the child said there was a
strange swell in the water, but the cap still floated. The woman then sang
more loud and fierce; and again she sent. The child came back saying the
waters were strangely troubled, and the cap was whummilled. Then she cried
out, "The turn is done!" and left off singing. On the same day came word
that a fishing yawl had been lost in the Roust, and all on board drowned.
The same story is told of some women in the island of Fetlar, who, when a
boat's crew had perished in the Bay of Funzie, were found sitting round a
well, muttering mysterious words over a wooden bowl supernaturally
agitated. The whole thing, as Hibbert says, forcibly reminds one of the
old Norse superstition of the Quern Song.

It was no unusual thing for men and women of otherwise peaceable and
cleanly life to tamper with the elements in those dim and distant days.
Even seventy years ago a man named John Sutherland of Papa Stour was in
the habit of getting a fair wind for weather-bound vessels: and the Knoll
of Kibister, in the island of Bressay, n