a neighbour sat milking, shot the calf
dead and dried up and sickened the cow, "by the venomous glance of her
evill eye." But perhaps she had got that venom by covenant with the devil;
for this was one of the prescriptive possessions of a witch, and ever the
first dole from the Satanic treasury. When Janet Irving was brought to
trial (1616) for unholy dealings with the foul fiend, it was proved--for
was it not sworn to? and that was quite sufficient legal proof in all
witchcraft cases--that he had told her "yf schoe bure ill-will to onie
bodie, to look on them with opin eyis, and pray evill for thame in his
name, and schoe sould get hir hartis desyre;" and in almost every witch
trial in Scotland the "evil eye" formed part of the counts of indictment
against the accused. The curse was as efficacious. Did a foul-mouthed old
dame give a neighbour a handful of words more forcible than courteous, and
did terror, or revenge, induce, or simulate, a nervous seizure in
consequence, the old dame was at once carried off to the lock-up, and but
few chances of escape lay between her and the stake beyond. To be skilful
in healing, too, was just as dangerous as to be powerful in sickening; and
to the godly and unclean of the period all sorts of devilish cantrips lay
in "south-running waters" and herb drinks, and salves made of simples;
while the use of bored stones, of prayers said thrice or backwards, of
"mwildis" powders, or any other more patent form of witchcraft, though it
might restore the sick to health, yet was fatally sure to land the user
thereof at the foot of the gallows, and the testimony of the healed friend
was the strongest strand in the hangman's cord. This, indeed, was the
saddest feature in the whole matter--the total want of all gratitude,
reliance, trustiness, or affection between a "witch" and her friends. The
dearest intimate she had gave evidence against her frankly, and without a
second thought of the long years of mutual help and kindliness that had
gone before; the neighbour whom she had nursed night and day with all
imaginable tenderness and self-devotion, if he took a craze and dreamed of
witchcraft, came forward to distort and exaggerate every remedy she had
used, and every art she had employed; her very children turned against her
without pity or remorse, and little lips, scarce dry from the milk of her
own breasts, lisped out the glibbest lies of all. Most pitiful, most sad,
was the state of these poor wre