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.