kindness,
if there was a suspicion that the power had been got uncannily, or that
the drugs had more virtue than common.

WHITE WITCHES.[16]

Thus on November the 12th, 1597, Janet Stewart in the Canongate, Christian
Levingstone in Leith, Bessie Aiken, also of Leith, and Christian Sadler of
Blackhouse, were brought to trial for no worse crimes than healing and
helping sundry of their neighbours. Christian Levingstone was "fylit and
convict" for abusing (deceiving) Thomas Gothray, who went to her
complaining that his gear went from him, and that he was bewitched; which
she said was true; promising to help him, and "let him see where the
witchcraft was laid." So she took him down his own stair, and dug a hole
with her knife, and took out a little bag of black plaid, wherein were
some grains of wheat, worsted threads of many colours, some hair, and
nails of men's fingers, affirming that he was bewitched by these means,
and bidding his wife catch them in her apron. If this bag had not been
found, said Christian, he would have been wrackit both in mind and body;
which was a clear case of "abusing," if you will. This "scho deponit in
presens of my Lord Justice vpoun the tent day of Julij last past to be of
veritie." She also said that her daughter had been taken away by fairy
folk, and that she had learnt all her wise-wife knowledge from her, and as
a proof of this knowledge, she prophesied that Gothray's wife, then "being
with barne," should bear a man child; which proved to be true, to the sad
strengthening of the accusations against her. Another time she and
Christian Sadler were prayed by Robert Bailie, mason in Haddington, to go
and cure his wife. Christian Sadler recommended her to take three pints of
sweet wort, and boil it with a quantity of fresh butter; which she did,
and drank it too, but with no good effects of healing, as we may suppose.
Again, shortly before her accusation, she was sent for by Christian
Sadler, on some other devil's deed; and together they made Andrew
Pennycuik a cake baked with the blood of a red cock; but he could not eat
it. Then they took his shirt and dipped it in the well at the back of his
house, and brought it to him and put it on him, dripping as it was,
"quhairthrow he maist haif sownit amang their hands," giving him to
understand that now he would be mended, "albeit that it was onlie plane
abusione, as the event declarit." Not finding the cake of red cock's
blood or the dripping s