er to her than Thome Reid had done to her predecessor. The margin
of the court-book again bears the melancholy and brief record,
"_Convicta et combusta_."

[Footnote 34: See "Scottish Poems," edited by John G. Dalzell, p. 321.]

The two poor women last mentioned are the more to be pitied as, whether
enthusiasts or impostors, they practised their supposed art exclusively
for the advantage of mankind. The following extraordinary detail
involves persons of far higher quality, and who sought to familiars for
more baneful purposes.

Katherine Munro, Lady Fowlis, by birth Katherine Ross of Balnagowan, of
high rank, both by her own family and that of her husband, who was the
fifteenth Baron of Fowlis, and chief of the warlike clan of Munro, had a
stepmother's quarrel with Robert Munro, eldest son of her husband, which
she gratified by forming a scheme for compassing his death by unlawful
arts. Her proposed advantage in this was, that the widow of Robert, when
he was thus removed, should marry with her brother, George Ross of
Balnagowan; and for this purpose, her sister-in-law, the present Lady
Balnagowan, was also to be removed. Lady Fowlis, if the indictment had a
syllable of truth, carried on her practices with the least possible
disguise. She assembled persons of the lowest order, stamped with an
infamous celebrity as witches; and, besides making pictures or models in
clay, by which they hoped to bewitch Robert Munro and Lady Balnagowan,
they brewed, upon one occasion, poison so strong that a page tasting of
it immediately took sickness. Another earthen jar (Scottice _pig_) of
the same deleterious liquor was prepared by the Lady Fowlis, and sent
with her own nurse for the purpose of administering it to Robert Munro.
The messenger having stumbled in the dark, broke the jar, and a rank
grass grew on the spot where it fell, which sheep and cattle abhorred to
touch; but the nurse, having less sense than the brute beasts, and
tasting of the liquor which had been spilled, presently died. What is
more to our present purpose, Lady Fowlis made use of the artillery of
Elfland in order to destroy her stepson and sister-in-law. Laskie
Loncart, one of the assistant hags, produced two of what the common
people call elf-arrow heads, being, in fact, the points of flint used
for arming the ends of arrow-shafts in the most ancient times, but
accounted by the superstitious the weapons by which the fairies were
wont to destroy both man and b