rth to have ony
sic craft or knowledge thereof therethrough abusing the people;' also,
that 'nae person seek ony help, response, or consultation, at ony sic
users or abusers of witchcrafts ... under pain of death.' This is the
statute under which all the subsequent witch trials took place." But bad
as it was under the Presbyterians and the Elders, it is true that under
the Restoration the witch persecutions in Scotland were even more
excessive than during the reign of the Covenanters, and that the return of
Charles II. brought satisfaction and pleasure to the younger women only of
his dominions, but nothing save torture to the old, the poor, and the
despised. Ray says that about a hundred and twenty witches suffered in the
year 1661, the year after the Restoration had brought joy and gladness to
all loyal hearts; so that it mattered little whether Puritan or Cavalier,
Presbyterian or Episcopalian, had the upper hand. Superstition was the
greatest lord of all, and a slavish adherence to a few words fettered men
down hopelessly to ignorance and wickedness.

At this time (1661) John Kincaid and John Dick were the most notorious
prickers; and they let no one escape whom they had the chance of hurting.
One John Hay, an old man of sixty, and of untarnished reputation, fell
into Dick's hands, accused of sorcery by "a distracted woman," whose words
were not worth the wind that wafted them. But Dick shaved him, and pricked
him, and tortured him in all allowable ways, then sent him off to
Edinburgh, two hundred miles away, to be locked up in the Tolbooth,
pending further proceedings. The case against him was too slight for even
those times to entertain, and he was liberated on his own petition, and a
few testimonials: but John Dick was not reproved, nor was his zeal thought
extreme or passionate.

MISCELLANEOUS.

Margaret Bryson[51] quarrelled with her husband about the selling of a
cow; she went to the house-door, "and there did imprecate that God or the
devil might take her from her husband;" which naturally ended in the
devil's appearing and forcing her into the covenant with him that had its
final expression at the stake.

Margaret Hutchison was a witch, too. She laid on Henry Balfour the pains
of a child-bed woman, and caused such a universal swelling of his body
that he died thereof; and she threatened John Boost for calling her a
witch, and threw a piece of raw flesh against his house, which the very
dogs and cats wo