Heritable jurisdictions were abolished in Scotland soon after the Stuart rising of 1745. This privilege, enjoyed till then by many landowners north of the Tweed, was popularly known as the "right of pit and gallows," the pit being for the drowning of women and the gallows for the hanging of men. In 1679, a certain woman, Janet Grant by name, was convicted of theft in the baronial court of Sir Robert Gordon of Gordonstone, held at Drainie, in Elginshire, and was sentenced to be drowned in Spynie Loch. In this and other similar cases water was used as a means of execution. In the case of witchcraft it was called in as a witness in the trial. The criminal proceedings for the detection and punishment of so-called witches form a painfully dark chapter in Scottish history. As Mr. W. H. Davenport Adams pointedly puts it, in his "Witch, Warlock, and Magician," "The common people for a time might have been divided into two classes, 'witches and witchfinders.'" The same writer observes, "Among the people of Scotland, a more serious-minded and imaginative race than the English, the superstition of witchcraft was deeply rooted at an early period. Its development was encouraged not only by the idiosyncracies of the national character, but also by the nature of the country and the climate in which they lived. The lofty mountains, with their misty summits and shadowy ravines, their deep obscure glens, were the fitting homes of the wildest fancies, the eeriest legends, and the storm--crashing through the forests, and the surf beating on the rocky shore, suggested to the ear of the peasant or fisherman the voices of unseen creatures--of the dread spirits of the waters and the air." A favourite method of discovering whether an accused person was guilty or not, was that technically known as pricking. It was confidently believed that every witch had the "devil's mark" somewhere on her person. The existence of this mark could be determined: for if a pin was thrust into the flesh with the result that neither blood came, nor pain was felt, the spot so punctured was the mark in question. This showed, without doubt, that the accused was guilty of the heinous crime laid to her charge. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his "History of Witchcraft in Scotland," gives instances of the finding of the "devil's mark." He mentions the case of Janet Barker, a servant in Edinburgh, who acknowledged that she possessed this particular mark between her shoulders. A pin was stuck into the spot and remained there for an hour without her being aware of its presence. Such, at least, was the way of stating the case in 1643. With this simple test at command it is not easy to understand why water should have been required to give evidence. But so it was. Among various nations the water-ordeal has been in fashion. It was specially popular in Scotland a couple of centuries ago. Part of the bay at St. Andrews is still styled the Witches' Lake, recalling by its name the crude notions and