For centuries belief in witchcraft was an article of faith with dour and brooding Scots. The Scot was made by Scotland; the country stamped an indelible impress on every characteristic of its inhabitants. With much truth it has been said, "From the cradle to the grave the Scotch peasant went his way attended by the phantoms of this mysterious world; always recognising its warnings, always seeing the shadows which it cast of coming events, and so burdening himself with a weight of grim and eery superstition, that we marvel he did not stumble and grow faint, seeing that his dreary Calvinistic creed could have brought him little hope or comfort. Nay, it is a question whether his superstition did not partly grow out of, or was fostered by, his hard, cold religion. Superstition is the shadow of Religion, and from the shadow we may infer the nature of the substance or object that casts it." There are traditions concerning witchcraft, even earlier than that of the fourth century which credits his Satanic Majesty with such a hatred of St. Patrick's sterling piety that he roused the whole tribe of witches against him. St. Patrick fled from the determined assault, and finding, near the mouth of the Clyde, a boat, set off in haste for Ireland. But running water being ever an insuperable barrier in the path of a witch's progress, these emissaries of Satan tore up a huge rock and hurled it after the departing saint. With the proverbial inaccuracy of feminine aim they missed their mark, but the mass itself ultimately became the fortress of Dumbarton. In those early days the marvels of witchcraft were great and many--Holinshed, among others, has chronicled the same--and, at the close of the seventh century, King Kenneth, fearful of his own safety and the stability of his throne, decreed that jugglers, wizards, necromancers, and such as call up spirits, "and use to seek upon them for helpe, let them be burnt to death." That persons accused of witchcraft suffered death is unquestionably true, as in the cases of the Earl of Mar in 1479, and Lady Janet Douglas in 1537, the executions of whom are foul blots on the pages of history. But it can hardly be said that it was witchcraft as an offence against religion or as mere superstition that was so punished. It was rather witchcraft in its political bearings--generally, in fact, as connected with treason and not with sorcery--that received condemnation.