ve beliefs, nor give rationality in place of folly. Not more than
sixty years ago an old woman named Elizabeth M'Whirter[79] was "scratched"
by one Eaglesham, in the parish of Colmonel, Ayrshire, because his son had
fallen sick, and the neighbours said he was bewitched. Poor old Bessie
M'Whirter was forced over the hills to the young man's house, a distance
of three miles, and there made to kneel by his bedside and repeat the
Lord's Prayer. When she had finished, the youth's father took a rusty nail
and scratched the poor old creature's brow in the form of a cross;
scratched it so effectually that it was many weeks in healing, and the
scar remained to the last day of her life. If Elizabeth M'Whirter had
lived a generation earlier, she might have run a race with death and a tar
barrel, and been defeated at the end, like the poor old wretch at Dornoch.

But still the old faith lingers in those beautiful vales, and hides in the
fastnesses of the mountain glens; still brownies haunt the ruined places,
and witches send forth blight and bale at their will; still the elfin
people ride on the whirlwind and dance in the moonlight; and the hill and
the flood and the brae and the streamlet have their attendant spirits
which vie with the churchyard ghost in impotent malevolence to men. And
the gift of second sight, though dying out because of these degenerate
times of utilitarianism and power-loom weaving, is yet to be found where
the old blood runs thickest, and the old ideas are least disturbed; and
still the whole nation clings with spasmodic force to its gloomy creed of
the Predestined and the Elect, and holds by the early faith from whose
narrow bounds others have emerged into a brighter and a wider path. No
more witch-fires are now lighted on the Castle Hill; no more grave and
reverend divines give themselves up, like Mr. John Aird, to discovering
the devil's mark stamped visibly on human flesh; yet the heart of the
people has not abandoned its ancient God, and though the altars may be
dressed with the flowers of another season, and the name upon the plinth
be carved in other characters, yet is the indwelling idol the same. The
God which Calvinistic Scotland yet worships is the same God as that to
which the witches and wizards of old were sacrificed; he is the God of
Superstition, the God of Condemnation, in whose temple Nature has no
place, and Humanity no rights.

The Witches of England.

"Every old woman with a wr