‘John Lockhart tells me (1727) that he was in company with an old Christian who was a young man in the time of the famous Stewarton Sickness.... In a great many, it came to a kindly conversion ... but in severals it came to nothing, and in a little time wore off, and the persons became just what they were formerly.’--_Wodrow._[29] * * * * * [Sidenote: JULY.] [Sidenote: 1630.] At this time there lived near the town of Dunse a poor woman generally believed to be possessed by an evil spirit. The Earl (afterwards Duke) of Lauderdale, when a prisoner in Windsor Castle in 1659, sent an account of her to Mr Richard Baxter, who has published it in his _Certainty of the World of Spirits_. The earl, then a boy at school, used to hear conversations about the possessed woman between his father and the minister of Dunse, who was fully convinced of the fact of the possession. This clergyman and some other clergymen proposed to the Privy Council a fast for her benefit; but it was not allowed by the bishops. ‘I will not,’ says the earl, ‘trouble you with many circumstances; one only I shall tell you, which I think will evince a real possession. The report being spread in the country, a knight of the name of Forbes, who lived in the north of Scotland, being come to Edinburgh, meeting there with a minister of the north, and both of them desirous to see the woman, the northern minister invited the knight to my father’s house (which was within ten or twelve miles of the woman), whither they came, and next morning went to see the woman. They found her a poor ignorant creature, and seeing nothing extraordinary, the minister says in Latin to the knight: “Nondum audivimus spiritum loquentem.” Presently a voice comes out of the woman’s mouth: “Audis loquentem, audis loquentem.” This put the minister into some amazement (which I think made him not mind his own Latin); he took off his hat, and said: “Misereatur Deus peccatoris!” The voice presently out of the woman’s mouth said: “Dic peccatricis, dic peccatricis;” whereupon both of them came out of the house fully satisfied, took horse immediately, and returned to my father’s house at Thirlstane Castle, in Lauderdale, where they related this passage. This I do exactly remember. Many more particulars might be got in that part of the country; but this Latin criticism, in a most illiterate ignorant woman, where there was no pretence to dispossessing, is enough, I think.’