‘Bearing company with the devil these twenty-eight years by-past; for consulting with him for laying on and taking off diseases, as weel on men as women and bestial; which is notourly known.’ [Sidenote: 1643.] It clearly appears that this woman had, at the utmost, been guilty of bad wishes towards her neighbours, and that if these had any effect, it was only through their superstitious apprehensions. We may suppose such to be the type of a class of cases--the _simply maledictory_. It is fairly presumable, however, that, while the community was so ignorant as to believe that malediction could have positively injurious effects, it _would occasionally have these effects by its influence on the imagination_, and consequently become an active evil. In this we can see a possible cause of the long persistence of the belief in witches. The ignorant, seeing an effect, and not observing the influence of the imagination in the case, would of course find no objection to laying it all to the account of witchcraft. The enlightened, again, disbelieving witchcraft, but at the same time ignorant of the influence of imagination, would have no alternative but to deny the facts; and this unreasoning and unsound scepticism, being contrary to the experience of the ignorant, would fail to disabuse them of their superstitions. In this year (December 31, 1643) is an entry in the parish register of Markinch, Fifeshire--‘Compeared Janet Brown, and being posed if she used charms, she confessed that she did charm two several persons--viz., James Hullock and Janet Scott, but no moe. The words of the charm are these: “Our Lord forth raide, His foal’s foot slade: Our Lord down lighted, His foal’s foot righted; Saying: Flesh to flesh, blood to blood, and bane to bane, In our Lord his name.” Being posed who learned her the foresaid charm, answered, ane man in the parish of Strathmiglo.’[98] There is reason to believe that this is a charm of great antiquity for the healing of bruises and sprains.[99] [Sidenote: 1643.]