Isobel stated that when the married witches went out to these nocturnal conventions, they put a besom into their place in bed, which prevented their husbands from missing them. When they had feasted in a house and wished to depart, a corn-straw put between their legs served them as a horse; and on their crying, ‘Horse and hattock in the devil’s name!’ they would fly away, ‘even as straws would fly upon a highway.’ She once feasted in Darnaway Castle, and left it in this manner. On another occasion, the party went to the Downy Hills, where the hill opened, and they went into a well-lighted room, where they were entertained by the queen of Faery. This personage was ‘brawly clothed in white linens and in white and brown clothes;’ while her husband, the king of Faery, was ‘a braw man, weel-favoured, and broad-faced.’ ‘On that occasion,’ says Isobel, ‘there were elf-bulls routing up and down, and affrighted me’--a trait which bears so much the character of a dream, as to be highly useful in deciding that the whole was mere hallucination. The covin were empowered to take the shapes of hares, cats, and crows. On assuming the first of these forms, it was necessary to say: ‘I sall go intill a hare, With sorrow, sich, and mickle care; And I sall go in the devil’s name, Aye while I come home again.’ ‘I was one morning,’ says Isobel, ‘about the break of day, going to Auldearn in the shape of ane hare, and Patrick Papley’s servants, going to their labour, his hounds being with them, ran after me. I ran very long, but was forced, being weary, at last to take my own house. The door being left open, I ran in behind a chest, and the hounds followed in; but they went to the other side of the chest, and I was forced to run forth again, and wan into ane other house, and there took leisure to say: “Hare, hare, God send thee care! I am in a hare’s likeness now, But I sall be a woman even now! Hare, hare, God send thee care!” [Sidenote: 1662.] And so I returned to my own shape again. The dogs,’ she added, ‘will sometimes get bits of us, but will not get us killed. When we turn to our own shape, we will have the bits, and rives, and scarts in our bodies.’ Sometimes they would engage in cures, using of course the power derived from their infernal master. For a sore or a broken limb there was a charm in verse, which they said thrice over, _stroking the sore_, and it was sure to heal. They had a similar charm for the _bean-shaw_ or sciatica: ‘We are three maidens charming for the bean-shaw, The man of the middle earth, Blue bearer, land fever, Manners of stoors, The Lord flegged the Fiend with his holy candles and yird-fast stone; There she sits and here she is gone: Let her never come here again!’ Another was for cases of fever: