and stane,
In the name of the Father, the Sone, and Haly Ghaist. Amen."

So the law put a stop to his incantations, and he was strangled and
burnt, and all his goods escheit to the crown. But the crown did not get a
very full haul, for poor Bartie was scarce removed from beggary.

BEIGIS TOD AND HER COMPEERS.[19]

In 1608, on May the 27th, Beigis Tod in Lang Nydrie came to her fate. She
had long been a frequenter of Sabbaths, and once was reproved by the devil
for being late, when she answered respectfully, "Sir, I could wyn na
soner!" Immediately thereafter she passed to her own house, took a cat,
and put it nine times through the chimney work, and then sped to Seaton
Thorne "be north the yet," where the devil called Cristiane Tod, her
younger sister, and brought her out. But Cristiane took a great fright and
said, "Lord, what wilt thou do with me?" to whom he answered, "Tak na
feir, for ye sall gang to your sister Beigis, to ye rest of hir cumpanie
quha are stayand vpoun your cuming at the Thorne." Cristiane Tod, John
Graymeill, Ersche (Irish), Marion, and Margaret Dwn, who were of that
company that night, had all been burnt, so now Beigis had her turn. She
fell out with Alexander Fairlie, and made his son vanish away by continual
sweating and burning at his heart, during which time Beigis appeared to
him nightly in her own person, but during the day in the similitude of a
dog, and put him almost out of his wits. Alexander went to her to be
reconciled, and asked her to take the sickness off his son, which at first
she refused, but afterwards consenting, she went and healed the youth, a
short time before she was arrested--to be burnt. Two years after this
Grissel Gairdner was burnt for casting sickness upon people; and in 1613
Robert Erskine and his three sisters were executed--he was beheaded--for
poisoning and treasonable murder against his two nephews. But before this,
in 1608, the Earl of Mar brought word to the Privy Council that some women
taken at Broughton or Breichin, accused of witchcraft, and being put to
"ane assize and convict albeit they persevered constant in their deniall
to the end, yet they wes burnet _quick_ after sic ane crewell maner that
sum of thame deit in dispair, renunceand and blasphemand, and vtheris,
half brunt, brak out of the fyre and wes cassin _quick_ into it againe,
quhill they war brunt to the deid." Even this horrible scene does not seem
to have had any effect in humanizing men