One of their evil doings was to take away the strength of the manure of such as they wished ill to, or to make their lands unproductive. ‘Before Candlemas, we went be-east Kinloss, and there we yoked a pleuch of paddocks. The devil held the pleuch, and John Young in Mebestown, our officer, did drive the pleuch. Paddocks did draw the pleuch as oxen. Quickens [dog-grass] were soams [traces]; a riglen’s [ram’s] horn was a coulter; and a piece of a riglen’s horn was a sock. We went several times about, and all we of the _covin_ went still up and down with the pleuch, praying to the devil for the fruit of that land, and that thistles and briers might grow there.’ When they wished to have fish, they had only to go to the shore just before the boats came home and say three several times: ‘The fishers are gone to the sea, And they will bring home fish to me; They will bring them home intill the boat, But they sall get of them but the smaller sort.’ Accordingly, they obtained all the fishes in the boats, leaving the fishermen nothing but slime behind. [Sidenote: 1662.] Having conceived a design of destroying all the Laird of Park’s male children, they made a small effigy of a child in clay, and having learned the proper charm from their master, fell down before him on their knees, with their hair hanging over their eyes, and looking steadily at him, said: ‘In the devil’s name We pour this water amang the meal, For lang dwining and ill heal; We put it intill the fire, That it may be burned baith stick and stour. It sall be brunt with our will, As any stickle[205] upon a kiln.’ ‘Then, in the devil’s name,’ says the culprit, ‘we did put it in, in the midst of the fire. After it was red like a coal, we took it out in the devil’s name. Till it be broken, it will be the death of all the male children that the Laird of Park will ever get.... It was roasten each other day at the fire; sometimes one part of it, sometimes another part of it, would be wet with water, and then roasten. The bairn would be burnt and roasten, even as it was by us.’ One child having died, the hags laid up the image till the next baby was born, and ‘within half a year after that bairn was born, we took it out again, and would dip it now and then in water, and beek and roast it at the fire, each other day once, untill that bairn died also.’ The devil made elf-arrows for them, and, learning to shoot these by an adroit use of the thumb, they killed several persons with them, also some cattle. ‘I shot at the Laird of Park,’ says Isobel, ‘as he was crossing the Burn of Boath; but, thanks be to God that he preserved him. Bessie Hay gave me a great cuff because I missed him.’ She spoke of having herself shot a man engaged in ploughing, and also a woman. [Sidenote: 1662.]