Witch, Warlock, and Magician

The principal parties in it were Dr. Fian, or Frain, a reputed wizard, also known as John Cunningham; a grave matron, named Agnes Sampson; Euphemia Macalzean, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall; and Barbara Napier. Fian, or Cunningham, was a schoolmaster of Tranent, and a man of ability and education; but his life had been evil – he was a vendor of poisons – and, though innocent of the preposterous crimes alleged against him, had dabbled in the practices of the so-called sorcery. When a twisted cord was bound round his bursting temples, he would confess nothing; and, exasperated by his fortitude, the authorities subjected him to the terrible torture of ‘the boots.’ Even this he endured in silence, until exhausted nature came to his relief with an interval of unconsciousness. He was then released; restoratives were applied; and, while he hovered on the border of sensibility, he was induced to sign ‘a full confession.’ Being remanded to his prison, he contrived, two days afterwards, to escape; but was recaptured, and brought before the High Court of Justiciary, King James himself being present. Fian strenuously repudiated the so-called confession which had been foisted upon him in his swoon, declaring that his signature had been obtained by a fraud. Whereupon King James, enraged at what he conceived to be the man’s stubborn wilfulness, ordered him again to the torture. His fingernails were torn out with pincers, and long needles thrust into the quick; but the courageous man made no sign. He was then subjected once more to the barbarous ‘boots,’ in which he continued so long, and endured so many blows, that ‘his legs were crushed and beaten together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh so bruised, that the blood and marrow spouted forth in great abundance, whereby they were made unserviceable for ever.’

As ultimately extorted from the unfortunate Fian, his confession shows a remarkable mixture of imposture and self-deception – a patchwork of the falsehoods he believed and those he invented. Singularly grotesque is his account of his introduction to the devil: He was lodging at Tranent, in the house of one Thomas Trumbill, who had offended him by neglecting to ‘sparge’ or whitewash his chamber, as he had promised; and, while lying in his bed, meditating how he might be revenged of the said Thomas, the devil, clothed in white raiment, suddenly appeared, and said: ‘Will ye be my servant, and adore me and all my servants, and ye shall never want?’ Never want! The bribe to a poor Scotch dominie was immense; Fian could not withstand it, and at once enlisted among ‘the Devil’s Own.’ As his first act of service, he had the pleasure of burning down Master Trumbill’s house. The next night Beelzebub paid him another visit, and put his mark upon him with a rod. Thereafter he was found lying in his chamber in a trance, during which, he said, he was carried in the spirit over many mountains, and accomplished an aërial circumnavigation of the globe. In the future he attended all the nightly conferences of witches and fiends held throughout Lothian, displaying so much energy and capacity that the devil appointed him to be his ‘registrar and secretary.’

The first convention at which he was present assembled in the parish church of North Berwick, a breezy, picturesque seaport at the mouth of the Forth, about sixteen miles from Preston Pans. Satan occupied the pulpit, and delivered ‘a sermon of doubtful speeches,’ designed for their encouragement. His servants, he said, should never want, and should ail nothing, so long as their hairs were on, and they let no tears fall from their eyes. He bade them spare not to do evil, and advised them to eat, drink, and be merry: after which edifying discourse they did homage to him in the usual indecent manner. Fian, as I have said, was an evil-living man, and needed no exhortation from the devil to do wicked things. In the course of his testimony he invented, as was so frequently the strange practice of persons accused of witchcraft, the most extravagant fictions – as, for instance: One night he supped at the miller’s, a few miles from Tranent; and as it was late when the revel ended, one of the miller’s men carried him home on horseback. To light them on their way through the dark of night, Fian raised up four candles on the horse’s ears, and one on the staff which his guide carried; their great brightness made the midnight appear as noonday; but the miller’s man was so terrified by the phenomenon that, on his return home, he fell dead.

Let us next turn to the confession of Agnes Sampson, ‘the wise wife of Keith,’ as she was popularly called. She was charged with having done grave injury to persons who had incurred her displeasure; but she seems, when all fictitious details are thrust aside, to have been simply a shrewd and sagacious old Scotchwoman, with much force of character, who made a decent living as a herb-doctor. Archbishop Spottiswoode describes her as matronly in appearance, and grave of demeanour, and adds that she was composed in her answers. Yet were those answers the wildest and most extraordinary utterances imaginable, and, if they be truly recorded, they convict her of unscrupulous audacity and unfailing ingenuity.

She affirmed that her service to the devil began after her husband’s death, when he appeared to her in mortal likeness, and commanded her to renounce Christ, and obey him as her master. For the sake of the riches he promised to herself and her children, she consented; and thereafter he came in the guise of a dog, of which she asked questions, always receiving appropriate replies. On one occasion, having been summoned by the Lady Edmaston, who was lying sick, she went out into the garden at night, and called the devil by his terrestrial or mundane alias of Elva. He bounded over the stone wall in the likeness of a dog, and approached her so close that she was frightened, and charged him by ‘the law he believed in’ to keep his distance. She then asked him if the lady would recover; he replied in the negative. In his turn he inquired where the gentlewomen, her daughters, were; and being informed that they were to meet her in the garden, said that one of them should be his leman. ‘Not so,’ exclaimed the wise wife undauntedly; and the devil then went away howling, like a whipped schoolboy, and hid himself in the well until after supper. The young gentlewomen coming into the bloom and perfumes of the garden, he suddenly emerged, seized the Lady Torsenye, and attempted to drag her into the well; but Agnes gripped him firmly, and by her superior strength delivered her from his clutches. Then, with a terrible yell, he disappeared.

Yet another story: Agnes, with Geillis Duncan and other witches, desiring to be revenged on the deputy bailiff, met on the bridge at Fowlistruther, and dropped a cord into the river, Agnes Sampson crying, ‘Hail! Holloa!’ Immediately they felt the end of the cord dragged down by a great weight; and on drawing it up, up came the devil along with it! He inquired if they had all been good servants, and gave them a charm to blight Seton and his property; but it was accidentally diverted in its operation, and fell upon another person– a touch of realism worthy of Defoe!

Euphemia Macalzean, a lady of high social position, daughter and heiress of Lord Cliftonhall (who was eminent as lawyer, statesman, and scholar), seems to have been involved in this welter of intrigue, conspiracy, and deception, through her adherence to Bothwell’s faction, and her devotion to the Roman communion. Her confession was as grotesque and unveracious as that of any of her associates. She was made a witch (she said) through the agency of an Irishwoman ‘with a fallen nose,’ and, to perfect herself in the craft, had paid another witch, who resided in St. Ninian’s Row, Edinburgh, for ‘inaugurating’ her with ‘the girth of ane gret bikar,’ revolving it ‘oft round her head and neck, and ofttimes round her head.’ She was accused of having administered poison to her husband, her father-in-law, and some other persons; and whatever may be thought of the allegations of sorcery and witchcraft, this heavier charge seems to have been well-founded. Euphemia said that her acquaintance with Agnes Sampson began with her first accouchement, when she applied to her to mitigate her pains, and she did so by transferring them to a dog. At her second accouchement, Agnes transferred them to a cat.

As a determined enemy of the Protestant religion, Satan was inimical to King James’s marriage with a Protestant princess, and to break up an alliance which would greatly limit his power for evil, he determined to sink the ship that carried the newly-married couple on their homeward voyage. His first device was to hang over the sea a very dense mist, in the hope that the royal ship would miss her course, and strike on some dangerous rock. When this device failed, Dr. Fian was ordered to summon all the witches to meet their master at the haunted kirk of North Berwick. Accordingly, on All-Hallow-mass Eve, they assembled there to the number of two hundred; and each one embarking in ‘a riddle,’ or sieve,46 they sailed over the ocean ‘very substantially,’ carrying with them flagons of wine, and making merry, and drinking ‘by the way.’ After sailing about for some time, they met with their master, bearing in his claws a cat, which had previously been drawn nine times through the fire. Handing it to one of the warlocks, he bade him cast it into the sea, and shout ‘Hola!’ whereupon the ocean became convulsed, and the waters seethed, and the billows rose like heaving mountains. On through the storm sailed this eerie company until they reached the Scottish coast, where they landed, and, joining hands, danced in procession to the kirk of North Berwick, Geillis Duncan going before them, playing a reel upon her Jew’s-harp, or trump – formerly a favourite musical instrument with the Scotch peasantry – and singing:

‘Cummer, go ye before; cummer, go ye;Gif ye will not go before, cummer, let me!’

Having arrived at their rendezvous, they danced round it ‘withershins’ – that is, in reverse of the apparent motion of the sun. Dr. Fian then blew into the keyhole of the door, which opened immediately, and all the witches and warlocks entered in. It was pitch-dark; but Fian lighted the tapers by merely blowing on them, and their sudden blaze revealed the devil in the pulpit, attired in a black gown and hat. The description given of the fiend reveals the stern imagination of the North, and is characteristic of the ‘weird sisters’ of Scotland, who form, as Dr. Burton remarks, so grand a contrast to ‘the vulgar grovelling parochial witches of England.’ His body was hard as iron; his face terrible, with a nose like an eagle’s beak; his eyes glared like fire; his voice was gruff as the sound of the east wind; his hands and legs were covered with hair, and his hands and feet were armed with long claws. On beholding him, witches and warlocks, with one accord, cried: ‘All hail, master!’ He then called over their names, and demanded of them severally whether they had been good and faithful servants, and what measure of success had attended their operations against the lives of King James and his bride – which surely he ought to have known! Gray Malkin, a foolish old warlock, who officiated as beadle or janitor, heedlessly answered, That nothing ailed the King yet, God be thanked! At which the devil, in a fury, leaped from the pulpit, and lustily smote him on the ears. He then resumed his position, and delivered his sermon, commanding them to act faithfully in their service, and do all the evil they could. Euphemia Macalzean and Agnes Sampson summoned up courage enough to ask him whether he had brought an image or picture of the King, that, by pricking it with pins, they might inflict upon its living pattern all kinds of pain and disease. The devil was fain to acknowledge that he had forgotten it, and was soundly rated by Euphemia for his carelessness, Agnes Sampson and several other women seizing the opportunity to load him with reproaches on their respective accounts.

On another occasion, according to Agnes Sampson, she, Dr. Fian, and a wizard of some energy, named Robert Grierson, with several others, left Grierson’s house at Preston Pans in a boat, and went out to sea to ‘a tryst.’ Embarking on board a ship, they drank copiously of good wine and ale, after which they sank the ship and her crew, and returned home. And again, sailing from North Berwick in a boat like a chimney, they saw the devil – in shape and size resembling a huge hayrick – rolling over the great waves in front of them. They went on board a vessel called The Grace of God, where they enjoyed, as before, an abundance of wine and ‘other good cheer.’ On leaving it, the devil, who was underneath the ship, raised an evil wind, and it perished.

Some of these stories proved to be too highly coloured even for the credulity of King James; and he rightly enough exclaimed that the witches were, like their master, ‘extraordinary liars.’ It is said, however, that he changed his opinion after Agnes Sampson, in a private conference which he accorded to her, related the details of a conversation between himself and the Queen that had taken place under such circumstances as to ensure inviolable secrecy. It is curious that a very similar story is told of Jeanne Darc – whom our ancestors burned as a witch – and King Charles VI. of France.

Despite the machinations of the devil and the witches, King James and Queen Anne, as we know, escaped every peril, and reached Leith in safety. The devil sourly remarked that James was ‘a man of God,’ and was evidently inclined to let him alone severely; but the Preston Pans conspirators, instigated, perhaps, by some powerful personages who kept prudently in the background, resolved on another attempt against their sovereign’s life. On Lammas Eve (July 31, 1590), nine of the ringleaders, including Dr. Fian, Agnes Sampson, Euphemia Macalzean, and Barbara Napier, with some thirty confederates, assembled at the New Haven, between Musselburgh and Preston Pans, at a spot called the Fairy Holes, where they were met by the devil in the shape of a black man, which was ‘thought most meet to do the turn for the which they were convened.’ Agnes Sampson at once proposed that they should make a final effort for the King’s destruction. The devil took an unfavourable view of the prospects of their schemes; but he promised them a waxen image, and directed them to hang up and roast a toad, and to lay its drippings – mixed with strong wash, an adder’s skin, and ‘the thing on the forehead of a new-foaled foal’ – in James’s path, or to suspend it in such a position that it might drip upon his body. This precious injunction was duly obeyed, and the toad hung up where the dripping would fall upon the King, ‘during his Majesty’s being at the Brig of Dee, the day before the common bell rang, for fear the Earl Bothwell should have entered Edinburgh.’ But the devil’s foreboding was fulfilled, and the conspirators missed their aim, the King happening to take a different route to that by which he had been expected.

It is useless to repeat more of these wild and desperate stories, or to inquire too closely into their origin. Fact and fiction are so mixed up in them, and the embellishments are so many and so bold, that it is difficult to get at the nucleus of truth; but, setting aside the witch or supernatural element, we seem driven to the conclusion that these persons had combined together for some nefarious purpose. Whether they intended to compass the King’s death by the superstitious practices which the credulity of the age supposed to be effective, or whether these practices were intended as a cover for surer means, cannot now be determined. Nor can we pretend to say whether all who were implicated in the plot by the confession of Geillis Duncan were really guilty. Dr. Fian, at all events, protested his innocence to the last; and with regard to him and others, the evidence adduced was painfully inadequate. But they were all convicted and sentenced to death. In the case of Barbara Napier, the majority of the jury at first acquitted her on the principal charges; but the King was highly indignant, and threatened them with a trial for ‘wilful error upon an assize.’ To avoid the consequences, they threw themselves upon the King’s mercy, and were benevolently ‘pardoned.’ Poor Barbara Napier was hanged. So was Dr. Fian, on Castle Hill, Edinburgh (in January, 1592), and burned afterwards. So were Agnes Sampson, Agnes Thomson, and their real or supposed confederates. The punishment of Euphemia Macalzean was exceptionally severe. Instead of the ordinary sentence, directing the criminal to be first strangled and then burnt, it was ordered that she should be ‘bound to a stake, and burned in ashes, quick to the death.’ This fate befell her on June 25, 1591.

It was an unhappy result of this remarkable trial that it confirmed King James in his belief that he possessed a rare faculty for the detection of witches and the discovery of witchcraft. Continuing his investigation of the subject with fanatical zeal, he published in Edinburgh, in 1597, the outcome of his researches in his ‘Dæmonologie’ – an elaborate treatise, written in the form of a dialogue, the spirit of which may be inferred from its author’s prefatory observations: ‘The fearful abounding,’ he says, ‘at this time and in this country, of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me (beloved reader) to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a show of mine own learning and ingene, but only (moved of conscience) to press thereby, so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of many, both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instrument thereof merits most severely to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two, principally in our age; whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in denying of spirits. The other, called Wierus, a German physician, sets out a public apology for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for them impunity, he plainly betrays himself to have been one of that profession.’

Not only is King James fully convinced of the existence of witchcraft, but he is determined to treat it as a capital crime. ‘Witches,’ he affirms, ‘ought to be put to death, according to the laws of God, the civil and imperial law, and the municipal law of all Christian nations; yea, to spare the life, and not strike whom God bids strike, and so severely punish so odious a treason against God, is not only unlawful, but, doubtless, as great a sin in the magistrate as was Saul’s sparing Agag.’ Conscious that the evidence brought against the unfortunate victims was generally of the weakest possible character, he contends that because the crime is generally abominable, evidence in proof of it may be accepted which would be refused in other offences; as, for example, that of young children who are ignorant of the nature of an oath, and that of persons of notoriously ill-repute. And the sole chance of escape which he offers to the accused is that of the ordeal. ‘Two good helps,’ he says, ‘may be used: the one is the finding of their marks, and the trying the insensibleness thereof; the other is their floating on the water, for, as in a secret murther, if the dead carcase be at any time thereafter handled by the murtherer, it will gush out of blood, as if the blood were raging to the Heaven, for revenge of the murtherer (God having appointed that secret supernatural sign for trial of that secret unnatural crime), so that it appears that God hath appointed (for a supernatural sign of the monstrous impiety of witches), that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosom that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptism, and wilfully refused the benefit thereof; no, not so much as their eyes are able to shed tears at every light occasion when they will; yea, although it were dissembling like the crocodiles, God not permitting them to dissemble their obstinacy in so horrible a crime.’

Encouraged by the practice and teaching of their sovereign, the people of Scotland, whom the anthropomorphism of their religious creed naturally predisposed to believe in the personal appearances of the devil, undertook a regular campaign against those ill-fated individuals whom malice or ignorance, or their own mental or physical peculiarities, or other causes, branded as his bond-slaves and accomplices. Religious animosity, moreover, was a powerful factor in stimulating and sustaining the mania; and the Scotch Calvinist enjoyed a double gratification when some poor old woman was burned both as a witch and a Roman Catholic. It has been calculated that, in the period of thirty-nine years, between the enactment of the Statute of Queen Mary and the accession of James to the English throne, the average number of persons executed for witchcraft was 200 annually, making an aggregate of nearly 8,000. For the first nine years about 30 or 40 suffered yearly; but latterly the annual death-roll mounted up to 400 and 500. James at last grew alarmed at the prevalence of witchcraft in his kingdom, and seems to have devoted no small portion of his time to attempts to detect and exterminate it.

In 1591 the Earl of Bothwell was imprisoned for having conspired the King’s death by sorcery, in conjunction with a warlock named Richie Graham. Graham was burned on March 8, 1592. Bothwell was not brought to trial until August 10, 1593, when several witches bore testimony against him, but he obtained an acquittal.

In 1597, on November 12, four women were tried by the High Court of Justiciary, in Edinburgh, on various charges of witchcraft. Their names are recorded as Christina Livingstone, Janet Stewart, Bessie Aikin, and Christina Sadler. Their trials, however, present no special features of interest.

Passing over half a century, we come to the recrudescence of the witch-mania, which followed on the restoration of Charles II. Mr. R. Burns Begg has recently edited for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland a report of various witch trials in Forfar and Kincardineshire, in the opening years of that monarch’s reign, which supplies some further illustrations of the characteristics of Scottish witchcraft. Here we meet with the strange word ‘Covin’ or ‘Coven’ (apparently connected with ‘Covenant’ or ‘Convention’) as applied to an organization or guild of witches. In 1662 the Judge-General-Depute for Scotland tried thirteen ‘Coviners,’ who had been detected by the efforts of a committee consisting of the ministers and schoolmasters of the district, together with the ‘Laird of Tullibole.’ Of these thirteen unfortunate victims only one was a man. All were found guilty by the jury, and sentenced to death. Eleven suffered at the stake; one died before the day of execution, and one was respited on account of her pregnancy. The evidence was of the usual extraordinary tenor, and the so-called ‘confessions’ of the accused were not less puzzling than in other cases. In Mr. Begg’s opinion, which seems to me well founded, there really was in and around the Crook of Devon a local Covin, or regularly organized band of so-called witches who acted under the direction of a person whom they believed to be Satan. He suggests that at this period there would be many wild and unscrupulous characters, disbanded soldiers, and others, who found their profit in the ‘blinded allegiance’ of the witches and warlocks. The difficulty is, what was this profit? The witches do not seem to have paid anything in money or in kind. There are allusions which point to acts of immorality, and in several instances one can understand that personal enmities were gratified; but on the whole the personators of Satan had scant reward for all their trouble. And how was it that they were never denounced by any of their victims? How was it that the vigilance which detected the witches never tripped up their master? How are we to explain the diversity of Satan’s appearances? At one time he was ‘ane bonnie lad;’ at another, an ‘unco-like man, in black-coloured clothes and ane blue bonnet;’ at another, a ‘black iron-hard man;’ and yet again, ‘ane little man in rough gray clothes.’ Occasionally he brought with him a piper, and the witches danced together, and the ground under them was all fireflaughts, and Andrew Watson had his usual staff in his hand, and although he is a blind man, yet danced he as nimbly as any of the company, and made also great merriment by singing his old ballads; and Isabel Shyrrie did sing her song called ‘Tinkletum, Tankletum.’ Alas, that no obliging pen has transmitted ‘Tinkletum, Tankletum’ to posterity! One could point to a good many songs which the world could have better spared. ‘Tinkletum, Tankletum’ – there is something amazingly suggestive in the words; possibilities of humour, perhaps of satire; humour and satire which might have secured for Isabel Shyrrie a place among Scottish poetesses, whereas now she comes before us in no more attractive character than that of a Coviner – a deluded or self-deluding witch.