treatise on witchcraft, and was vastly proud of his gift as a witch-finder. The story begins with a certain Jeillie Duncan, a servant-girl at Tranent; she made so many cures that she was presently suspected of witchcraft. She was treated to orthodox modes of torture; her fingers were pinched with the pilliwinks, her forehead was wrenched with a rope, but she would say nothing until the Devil’s mark was found on her throat, when she gave in and confessed herself a servant of Satan. Presently there was no end to her confessions! She accused all the old women in the neighbourhood, especially Agnes Sampson “the eldest witch of them all resident in Haddington,” and one man, “Dr. Fian alias John Cunningham, Master of the Schoole at Saltpans in Lowthian.” Agnes Sampson was taken to Holyrood for personal examination by the King. At first she was obdurate, but after the usual tortures she developed a story of the most extraordinary description. She told how she was one of two hundred witches who sailed over the sea in riddles or sieves, with flagons of wine, to the old kirk of North Berwick. Jeillie Duncan preceded them to the kirk dancing and playing on the jews’ harp, chanting the while a mad rhyme. Nothing would serve the King but to have Jeillie brought before him. She played a solo accompaniment the while Agnes Sampson went on with her story. She described how the Devil appeared in the kirk, and preached a wretched sermon, mixed with obscene rites and loaded with much abuse of the King of Scotland, “at which time the witches demanded of the Devill why he did beare such hatred to the King?” who answered, “by reason the King is the greatest enemie hee hath in the world.” Solomon listened with mouth and ears agape, and eyes sticking out of his head in delighted horror, yet even for him the flattery was a little too gross or the wonders were too astounding. “They were all extreame lyears,” he roundly declared. But Agnes was equal to the occasion. She took His Highness aside, and told him the “verie wordes which passed betweene the Kinges majestie and his queene at Upslo in Norway, the first night of mariage, with there answere ech to other, wherat the Kinges majestie wondered greatly and swore by the living God that he believed that all the devils in hell could not have discovered the same, acknowledging her words to be most true, and therefore gave the more credit to the rest that is before declared.”