.[13]

Aberdeen was not behind her elder sister. One man and twenty-three women
were burned in one year alone for the crime of witchcraft and magic; and
the Records of the Dean of Guild faithfully detail the expenses which the
town was put to in the process. On the 23rd of February, 1597, Thomas
Leyis cost them two pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence, for "peattis,
tar barrelis, fir, and coallis, to burn the said Thomas, and to Jon
Justice for his fie in executing him;" but Jonet Wischart (his mother),
and Isobel Cocker, cost eleven pounds ten shillings for their joint
cremation; with ten shillings added to the account for "trailling of
Monteithe (another witch of the same gang) through the streits of the town
in ane cart, quha hangit herself in prison, and eirding (burying) her."
The dittay against these several persons set forth various crimes. Janet
Wischart, who was an old woman notorious for her evil eye, was convicted,
amongst other things, of having "in the moneth of Aprile or thairby, in
anno nyntie ane yeiris, being the first moneth in the raith (the first
quarter) at the greiking" (breaking) of the day, cast her cantrips in
Alexander Thomson's way, so that one half of the day his body was "rossin"
(burned or roasted) as if in an oven, with an extreme burning drought, and
the other half melting away with a cold sweat. Upon Andrew Wobster--who
had put a linen towel round her throat, half choking her, and to whom she
said angrily, "Quhat wirreys thow me? thow salt lie: I sall give breid to
my bairnis this towmound, and thou sall nocht byd ane moneth with thin, to
gif tham breid"--she had laid such sore cantrips, that he died as she
predicted: which was a cruel and foul murder in the eyes of the law,
forbye the sin of witchcraft. But she had other victims as well. James
Low, a stabler, refused to lend her his kiln and barn, so he took a
"dwining" illness in consequence, "melting away like ane burning candle
till he died." His wife and only son died too, and his "haill geir,
surmounting three thousand pounds, are altogether wrackit and away."
Beside this evidence there was his own testimony availing; for he had
often said on his death-bed, that if he had lent Jonet what she had
demanded, he would never have suffered loss. She had also once brought
down a dozen fowls off a roost, dead at her feet; and had ruined a woman
and her husband, by bidding them take nine grains or ears of wheat, and a
bit of rowan tree, a