Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott].

  • Scott, Walter, 1771-1832
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letters on demonology and witchcraft / [Sir Walter Scott]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    remained was, whether any process should be directed against persons whom, in her compelled confession, she had as usual, informed against. The Lord Advocate, as may be supposed, quashed all farther procedure. In 1720, an unlucky boy, the third son of James, Lord Torpichen, took it into his head, under instruc- tions, it is said, from a knavish governor, to play the possessed and bewitched person, laying the cause of his distress on certain old witches in Calder, near to which village his father had his mansion. The women were imprisoned, and one or two of them died; but the crown counsel would not proceed to trial. The noble family also began to see through the cheat. The boy was sent to sea, and though he is said at one time to have been disposed to try his fits while on board, when the discipline of the navy proved too severe for his cunning, in process of time he became a good sailor, assisted gallantly in defence of the ves- sel against the pirates of Angria, and finally was drowned in a storm. In the year 1722, a Sheriff-depute of Sutherland, Captain David Ross of Littledean, took it upon him, in flagrant violation of the then established rules of jurisdiction, to pronounce the last sentence of death for witchcraft which was ever passed in Scotland. The victim was an insane old woman belonging to the parish of Loth, who had so little idea of her situ- ation as to rejoice at the sight of the fire which was destined to consume her. She had a daughter lame both of hands and feet, a circumstance attributed to the witch’s having been used to transform her into a pony, and get her shod by the Devil. It does not appear that any punishment was inflicted for this cruel abuse of the law on the person of a creature so helpless ; but the son of the lame daughter, he him- self distinguished by the same misfortune, was living so lately as to receive the charity of the present Marchioness of Stafford, Countess of Sutherland in