f banning; nor was the Black more definite. It was shorter, which
ought to have ranked as a merit:--

Black Pater Noster.
"Four newks in this house, for holy angels,
A post in the midst, that's Christ Jesus,
Lucas, Marcus, Matthew, Joannes,
God be into this house and all that belongs us."

To "sain" or charm her bed she used to say,--

"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John
The bed be blest that I ly on."

And when the butter was slow in coming, it was enough if she chanted
slowly--

"Come, butter, come!
Come, butter, come!
Peter stands at the gate.
Waiting for a buttered cake,
Come, butter, come,"

said with faith and unction, she was sure to have at once a lucky
churn-full.

These queer bits of half-papistical, half-nonsensical doggerel were
considered tremendous sins in those days, and the use of them was quite
sufficient to bring any one to the scaffold; as their application would,
for a certainty, destroy health, and gear, and life, if it were so willed.
And for all these crimes--storm-raising, cat-baptizing, and the
rest--Agnes Sampson, the grave, matronlike, well-educated grace wife of
Keith, was bound to a stake, strangled, and burnt on the Castle Hill, with
no one to seek to save her, and no one to bid her weary soul God-speed!

Barbara Napier, wife to a burgess of Edinburgh, and sister-in-law to the
Laird of Carschoggill, was then seized--accused of consorting with Agnes
Simpson, and consulting with Richard Grahame, a notorious necromancer, to
whom she gave "3 ells of bombezie for his paynes," all that she might gain
the love and gifts of Dame Jeane Lyon, Lady Angus; also of having procured
the witch's help to keep the said Dame Jeane "fra wometing quhen she was
in bredin of barne." She was accused of other and more malicious things;
but acquitted of these: indeed the "assisa" which tried her was
contumacious and humane, and pronounced no doom; whereon King James wrote
a letter demanding that she be strangled, then burnt at the stake, and all
her goods escheated to himself. But Barbara pleaded that she was with
child; so her execution was delayed until she was delivered, when "nobody
insisting in the persute of her, she was set at libertie." The
contumacious majority was tried for "wilful error on assize--acquitting a
witch," but got off with more luck than usual.[8]

Euphemia Macalzean,[9] or as we should say, Maclean, was even higher game.
She was the daughter of Lord