| suspicions respecting the existence of witchcraft, another warrant | | was issued on the 5th of April, 1697, to Lord Hallcraig, Sir | | John Houston, and four others, “to try the persons accused of | | witchcraft, and to sentence the guilty to be burned, or otherwise | | executed to death, as the commission should incline.” | | | | The commissioners, thus empowered, were not remiss in the discharge | | of their duty. After twenty hours were spent in the examination | | of witnesses, and counsel heard on both sides, the counsel for | | the prosecution “exhorted the jury to beware of condemning the | | innocent; but at the same time, should they acquit the prisoners in | | opposition to legal evidence, they would be accessory to all the | | blasphemies, apostacies, murders, tortures, and seductions, whereof | | these enemies of heaven and earth should hereafter be guilty.” | | After the jury had spent six hours in deliberation, seven of the | | miserable wretches, three men and four women, were condemned to | | the flames, and the sentence faithfully executed at Paisley, on | | the 10th of June, 1697.—_Medico-Chirurg. Trans._ Vol. V. p. 20, et | | seq.—_Transl. note._ | | | | [245] Compare _Olaus Magnus_, de gentibus septentrionalibus. Lib. | | XVIII. Ch. 45–47. p. 642, seq. Rom. 1555. fol. | | | | [246] _Burton_, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, has the following | | observations, which, with the ample references by which they are | | accompanied, will furnish materials for such a history. | | | | “_Lycanthropia_, which _Avicenna_ calls _cucubuth_, others _lupinam | | insaniam_, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves | | and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they | | are wolves, or some such beasts. _Aëtius_ (Lib. 6. cap. 11.) and | | _Paulus_ (Lib. 3. cap. 16.) call it a kind of _melancholy_; but I | | should rather refer it to _madness_, as most do. Some make a doubt | | of it, whether there be any such disease. _Donat. ab Altomari_ | | (Cap. 9. Art. Med.) saith, that he saw two of them in his time: | | _Wierus_ (De Præstig. Demonum, 1. 3. cap. 21.) tells a story of | | such a one at Padua, 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, | | but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who | | thought himself a bear. _Forestus_ (Observat. lib. 10. de Morbis | | Cerebri, c. 15.) confirms as much by many examples; one, among the | | rest, of which he was an eye-witness, at Alcmaer in Holland.—A poor |