for the imps
which he discovered--such as Pyewacket, Peck-in-the-Crown,
Sack-and-Sugar, News, Vinegar-Tom, and Grizell Greedigut, the broad
vulgarity of which epithets shows what a flat imagination he brought to
support his impudent fictions.

The devil, who commanded the fair sisterhood, being fond of mimicking
the forms of the Christian church, used to rebaptize the witches with
their blood, and in his own great name. The proud-stomached Margaret
Wilson, who scorned to take a blow unrepaid, even from Satan himself,
was called Pickle-nearest-the-Wind; her compeer, Bessie Wilson, was
Throw-the-Cornyard; Elspet Nishe's was Bessie Bald; Bessie Hay's
nickname was Able-and-Stout; and Jane Mairten, the Maiden of the Covine,
was called Ower-the-Dike-with-it.

Isobel took upon herself, and imputed to her sisters, as already
mentioned, the death of sundry persons shot with elf-arrows, because
they had omitted to bless themselves as the aerial flight of the hags
swept past them.[66] She had herself the temerity to shoot at the Laird
of Park as he was riding through a ford, but missed him through the
influence of the running stream, perhaps, for which she thanks God in
her confession; and adds, that at the time she received a great cuff
from Bessie Hay for her awkwardness. They devoted the male children of
this gentleman (of the well-known family of Gordon of Park, I presume)
to wasting illness, by the following lines, placing at the same time in
the fire figures composed of clay mixed with paste, to represent the
object:--

"We put this water amongst this meal,
For long dwining[67] and ill heal;
We put it in into the fire,
To burn them up stook and stour.[68]
That they be burned with our will,
Like any stikkle[69] in a kiln."

[Footnote 66: See p. 136.]

[Footnote 67: Pining.]

[Footnote 68: We should read perhaps, "limb and lire."]

[Footnote 69: Stubble.]

Such was the singular confession of Isobel Gowdie, made voluntarily, it
would seem, and without compulsion of any kind, judicially authenticated
by the subscription of the notary, clergymen, and gentlemen present;
adhered to after their separate _diets_, as they are called, of
examination, and containing no variety or contradiction in its details.
Whatever might be her state of mind in other respects, she seems to have
been perfectly conscious of the perilous consequence of her disclosures
to her own person. "I do not deserve," says she, "to be seated here at