Common-sense and everyday experience are at constant war with superstition. But superstition dies hard; like a noxious weed which has spread in a fair garden, if plucked up in one place it will appear unexpectedly in another. The Reformers rejected the alleged daily miracle of the Romish mass; in spite of the prayers, the genuflections, and the Hoc est Corpus of the priest, the bread and wine still remained bread and wine. They rejected other alleged miracles of the Catholic Church—the healings and other benefits from relics, and pilgrimages, and holy wells. But an influx of belief in witchcraft set in on the ebb-tide of the old faith. Men and women—especially women—were supposed to have entered into league with the spirit of evil; by selling their souls to him, they had conferred upon them in return certain supernatural powers,—generally to the injury of their fellows.

In the latter portion of the sixteenth, and throughout the seventeenth century, a belief in witchcraft was very general in Scotland; and prosecutions for the alleged crime very frequent. That royal pedant, James VI., wrote a treatise against witchcraft. He had himself been the object of witchly machinations. Witches conspired with Satan to raise a tempest and wreck the ship in which, in 1590, he was bringing home his bride, Anne of Denmark. In May, 1591, a Convention sat in Edinburgh, “anent order to be tane with sorcerers and certain practisers against his Majesty’s person.” An assize was then sitting upon witches, in the business of which the King took an active part. Under torture the wretched creatures made extraordinary confessions,—one was of a meeting which they had with the Devil in North Berwick Church, when, after casting sundry spells upon the King and Queen, they concluded their revels with a dance, the music for which was played by one of the women on a jew’s-harp,—and this she repeated at the trial, upon his Majesty’s request, for his particular delectation!

As to the punishment on conviction,—about this there could be no dispute. Had not Moses, more than two thousand years previously, written in his law:—“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live?” No use saying that this law had only reference to circumstances in old Hebrew history, or that the newer teaching was the more enlightened, the more humane, the more generally applicable gospel of Christ. What were now called witches had to die.

Most of those who were thus put to death as witches were poor old women,—often soured and peevish in temper, ready to resent any slight, and to croak out evil wishes and forebodings. And when evils did occur, when sickness came into a house, or blight into its orchard, or the cows’ yield of milk was scanty, or the butter would not form in the churn, then the cause was assigned to the spells and cantrips of the “ill-wisher.” Often, to raise their own importance, and make themselves feared, these women would pretend to the possession of occult powers,—to the knowledge of potions and charms,—both for the infliction and the recovery of disease; as also of philters to induce love. And they would themselves come to believe in their possession of such powers. And hence on trial, under torture, or after sentence, they would make confession of witchcraft, with strange disordered narratives of Satanic leagues and unholy revellings. A woman was called a white witch whose specialty was the cure of disease, or the recovery of lost or stolen property; but none the less was she liable—like Rebecca in “Ivanhoe”—to be tried as a sorceress, and suffer the penalty thereof.

It was not alone the old or the poor who were accused of witchcraft. At times young women, and even young men,—and persons in a good social position were so accused. And as an outcome of the crusade against witchcraft, there arose a tribe of “witch-finders.” Pretenders to a knowledge of indicative marks and moles and other signs, were permitted to torture the suspects—to extort confession—being then paid their professional fees.

A witch was supposed to have as an accomplice, a familiar spirit,—often in the shape of a black cat,—an incarnation of the Evil one, or of one of his imps. Sometimes the master-fiend held provincial Walpurgis nights, when he assembled all his subjects in a neighbourhood to a high-jinks festival—a scene of wild riot, of blasphemy, and of conspiracy to do evil.

It is to one of these orgies in Auld Alloway Kirk that Burns introduces his bemuddled hero, Tam o’ Shanter. But this poetical phantasy hardly surpasses in absurdity the plain prose of the following indictment against Thomas Leyis, of Aberdeen:—

“Imprimis, upon Hallowein last by past (1596) at twelff houris of even or thairby, thou the said Thomas Leyis, accompaneit with Janett Wischert, Isobel Coker, Isobell Monteithe, and Kathren Mitchell, sorceroris and witches, with ane gryt number of ither witches, cam to the mercat and fish cross of Aberdene, under the conduct and gyding of the dewill—present with you all in company, playing before you on his kynd of instruments. Ye all dansit about baythe the said crosse and the meill mercate ane lang space of tym; in the quhilk dewill’s dans, thou, the said Thomas, was foremost and led the ring, and dang [struck] the said Kathren Mitchell, because she spoilt your dans, and ran nocht so fast about as the rest. Testifeit be the said Kathren Mitchell, wha was present at the time aforesaid, dansin with the dewill.”

The items of expenses in the burning of Thomas Leyis, Janet Wischert, and Isobel Coker, viz.: for peats, tar barrels, coals, and tow,—and to Jon Justice for their execution, as they are to-day found in the Town’s Accounts, are a fearful indictment against the enlightenment and humanity of three hundred years ago. But perhaps the last item in the costs of that veritable devil’s festival is the most gruesome and repulsive:—

“For trailing Isobell Monteithe through the streets of the town in ane cart, quha hangit herself in prison, and burying of her, 10s.”

In that year, 1597, twenty-three women and one man were burned in the university city of Aberdeen for witchcraft.