imes which he had committed. From this time he would
answer no interrogatory, nor would he have recourse to prayer, arguing
that, as he had no hope whatever of escaping Satan, there was no need of
incensing him by vain efforts at repentance. His witchcraft seems to
have been taken for granted on his own confession, as his indictment was
chiefly founded on the same document, in which he alleged he had never
seen the devil, but any feeling he had of him was in the dark. He
received sentence of death, which he suffered 12th April, 1670, at the
Gallow-hill, between Leith and Edinburgh. He died so stupidly sullen and
impenitent as to justify the opinion that he was oppressed with a kind
of melancholy frenzy, the consequence perhaps of remorse, but such as
urged him not to repent, but to despair. It seems probable that he was
burnt alive. His sister, with whom he was supposed to have had an
incestuous connexion, was condemned also to death, leaving a stronger
and more explicit testimony of their mutual sins than could be extracted
from the Major. She gave, as usual, some account of her connexion with
the queen of the fairies, and acknowledged the assistance she received
from that sovereign in spinning an unusual quantity of yam. Of her
brother she said that one day a friend called upon them at noonday with
a fiery chariot, and invited them to visit a friend at Dalkeith, and
that while there her brother received information of the event of the
battle of Worcester. No one saw the style of their equipage except
themselves. On the scaffold this woman, determining, as she said, to die
"with the greatest shame possible," was with difficulty prevented from
throwing off her clothes before the people, and with scarce less trouble
was she flung from the ladder by the executioner. Her last words were in
the tone of the sect to which her brother had so long affected to
belong: "Many," she said, "weep and lament for a poor old wretch like
me; but alas! few are weeping for a broken Covenant."

The Scottish prelatists, upon whom the Covenanters used to throw many
aspersions respecting their receiving proof against shot from the devil,
and other infernal practices, rejoiced to have an opportunity, in their
turn, to retort on their adversaries the charge of sorcery. Dr. Hickes,
the author of "Thesaurus Septentrionalis," published on the subject of
Major Weir, and the case of Mitchell, who fired at the Archbishop of St.
Andrews his book called