‘Horribly uncouth and unkindly weather at this time ... marvellous to see in April! Fishes, fowls, and all other commodities scarce gettable in Aberdeen. White meal at nine pound ... the boll.’ Merchants, expecting still greater prices elsewhere, bought up and exported all the grain they could collect, ‘to the wreck of our country,’ and not without ‘the country people’s malison.’ Spalding, who relates these circumstances, tells us that this malison was ‘heard;’ for on the 29th of May, a ship loading with meal in the Ythan river in Aberdeenshire, slipped a plank, so as to let in the salt water and destroy the cargo. * * * * * [Sidenote: NOV.] ‘There came to Aberdeen ane Doctor Pont[hus], who had some stage plays, whilk drew the people to behold the sport; syne, upon the stage sold certain balms, oils, and other physical ointments, whereof he made great gain. Thereafter he went north to other burghs, and did the like.’--_Spal._ * * * * * [Sidenote: 1643.] If it were allowable to use the language of the day, we might say that the devil had at this time broken out in unusual activity. Accordingly, the public authorities had not only to prepare an army for the aid of the parliament against the king in England, and make vigorous crusades in Strathbogie and other over-loyal districts, but to meet the powers of darkness with all the terrors of the criminal law. The number of old women who suffered for offending at once against the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy and the 73d act of the ninth parliament of Queen Mary,[96] in Fife alone, was thirty.[97] One noted case was that of Agnes Finnie, a poor woman dealing in small articles at the Potterrow Port in Edinburgh, who was convicted and burned in 1644. Mr Charles K. Sharpe has presented us with the articles of her dittay, and as they afford a highly characteristic picture of the acts then attributed to a witch, and give some curious glimpses of the private life of the period, I make no apology for transferring them to these pages. ‘Having threatened Mr William Fairlie’s son to send him halting hame, because, going by her door, he, in a nickname, called her _Annie Winnie_, he within twenty-four hours after, lost the power of his left side by her witchcraft, and languished in so incurable a disease, that the whole physicians called it supernatural, and the haill substance of his body ran out at his cute [ankle]; and the boy laid the whole wyte [blame] of his death constantly upon the panel.