a
few sorrowful relatives, and in the exultation of those fanatics who
rejoiced when the accursed thing plucked out from them was of more goodly
savour and of a fairer form than usual, and thus was a meeter sacrifice
for the Lord. Of all the heartrending histories to be found in the records
of witchcraft, the history of Margaret Barclay and her "accomplices" is
saddest, most sorrowful, most heartrending.

THE PITIFUL FATE OF MARGARET BARCLAY.[21]

Margaret was a young, beautiful, high-spirited woman, wife of Archibald
Dein, burgess of Irvine, and not on the best of terms with John Dein, her
husband's brother. Indeed, she had had him and his wife before the Kirk
session for slander, and things had not gone quite smoothly with them ever
since. When, therefore, the ship, The Grace of God, in which John Dein was
sailing, sank in sight of land, drowning him and all his men, the old
quarrel was remembered, and Margaret, together with Isobel Insh and John
Stewart, a wandering "spaeman," was accused of having sunk the vessel by
charms and enchantments. Margaret disdainfully denied the charge from
beginning to end: Isobel said she had never seen the spaeman in her life
before; but Stewart "clearly and pounktallie confessit" all the charges
brought against him, and also said that the women had applied to him to be
taught his magic arts, and that once he had found them both modelling
ships and figures in clay for the destruction of the men and vessel
aforesaid. And as it was proved that Stewart had spoken of the wreck
before he could have known it by ordinary means, suspicion of sorcery fell
upon him, and he was taken: and made his confession. He said that he had
visited Margaret to help her to her will, when a black dog, breathing fire
from his nostrils, had formed part of the conclave; and Isobel's own
child, a little girl of eight, added to this, a black man as well.
Isobel, after denying all and sundry of the charges brought against her,
under torture admitted their truth. In the night time she found means to
escape from her prison, bruised and maimed with the torture as she was;
but in scrambling over the roof she fell to the ground, and was so much
injured that she died five days afterwards. Margaret was then tortured:
the spaeman had strangled himself, which was the best thing he could do,
only it was a pity he did not do it before; and poor Margaret was the last
of the trio. The torture they used, said the Lords Commiss