h promise, broken and set
aside, had made such a slander and scandal of her marriage with Patrick
Moscrop. And it was proved--or what went for proof in those days--that
Agnes Sampson, the wise wife, had made a clay image of John Moscrop, the
father-in-law, who should thereupon have pined away and died, according to
the law of these enchantments, but, failing in this obedience, lived
instead, to the grief and confusion of his daughter-in-law. All these
crimes, and others like unto them, were quite sufficient legal causes of
death; and James could gratify his superstitious fears and political
animosity at the same time, while Euphemia Maclean--the fine, brave,
handsome Euphemia--writhed in agony at the stake to which she was bound
when burned alive in the flames: "brunt in assis quick to the deid," says
the Record--the severest sentence ever passed on a witch. This murder was
done on the 25th July, 1591.

"The last of Februarie, 1592, Richard Grahame wes brant at y{e} Cross of
Edinburghe for vitchcrafte and sorcery," says succinctly Robert Birrel,
"burges of Edinburghe," in his "Diarey containing divers Passages of
Staite and uthers memorable Accidents, from y{e} 1532 zeir of our
Redemption, till y{e} beginning of the zeir 1605." "And in 1593, Katherine
Muirhead was brunt for vitchcrafte, quha confest sundrie poynts yrof."
Richard Graham was the "Rychie Graham, ane necromancer," consulted by
Barbara Napier; the same who gave the Earl of Bothwell some drug to make
the king's majesty "lyke weill of him," if he could but touch king's
majesty on the face therewith; it was he also who raised the devil for Sir
Lewis Ballantyne, in his own yard in the Canongate, whereby Sir Lewis was
so terrified that he took sickness and died. Even in the presence of the
king himself, Rychie boasted that "he had a familiar spirit which showed
him many things;" but which somehow forgot to show him the stake and the
rope and the faggot, which yet were the bold necromancer's end, little as
the poor cozening wretch merited such an awful doom.

THE TWO ALISONS.

June, 1596, had nearly seen a nobler victim than those usually accorded.
John Stuart, Master of Orkney, and brother of the Earl, "was dilatit of
consulting with umquhile Margaret Balfour, ane wich, for the
destructionne of Patrik Erll of Orkney, be poysoning." In the dittay she
is called "Alysoun Balfour, ane knawin notorious wich." Alisoun, after
being kept forty-eight hours in the "cas