hich was the manner of the charm.
Drawing his sword, this husband's brother's son ran on the pannel (the
accused) to kill her, but was witch-disabled, and only struck the lintel
of the door instead; so he went home and died, and Isobel Young was the
cause of his death by the cantrip wrought in the locomotive firlott and
the poppling grain. Forbye all this, she was seen riding on "ane mare"--at
least her apparition was seen so riding--and by her sorcery and devilish
handling the mare was made to cast its foal, and since died. So Isobel
Young was of no more value to the world or its inheritors, and died by the
cord and the faggot, decently, as a convicted witch should. And Margaret
Maxwell and her daughter Jane were haled before the Lords of Secret
Council for having procured the death of Edward Thomson, Jane's husband,
"by the devilish and detestable practice of witchcraft;" and Janet Boyd
was tried for "the foul and detestable crime" of receiving the devil's
mark, besides being otherwise dishonestly intimate with him; but this was
in 1628, and we are now in 1629: and then the Lords of the Privy Council
published a thundering edict, forbidding all persons to have recourse to
holy words, or to make pilgrimages to chapels, and requiring of its
Commissioners to make diligent search in all parts for persons guilty of
this superstitious practice, and to have up and put in ward all such as
were known to be specially devoted thereto. The meaning of the decree was
to plague the Catholics, and Hibbert quotes part of this "Commission
against Jesuits, Priests, or Communicants and Papists, going in
pilgrimage." But whatever the political significance of the edict, the
social effect was to make the search after the White Witches, or Black,
hotter and more bitter than ever.

ELSPETH CURSETTER AND HER FRIENDS.[29]

Elspeth Cursetter was tried, May 29 (still in 1629), for all sorts of bad
actions. She bade one of her victims "get the bones of ane tequhyt
(linnet), and carry thame in your claithes"; and she gave herself out as
knowing evil, and able to do it too, when and to whomsoever she would; and
she sat down before the house of a man who refused her admittance--for she
was an ill-famed old witch, and every one dreaded her--saying, "Ill might
they all thrive, and ill may they speed," whereby in fourteen days' time
the man's horse fell just where she had sat, and was killed most
lamentably. But she cured a neighbour's cow by drawing