Isobel Young in East Barns was accused of having stopped by enchantment George Sandie's mill twenty-nine years before; of having prevented his boat from catching fish while all the other boats at the herring-drave, or herring fishery, were successful; and that she was the cause of his failing in his circumstances, and of nothing prospering with him in the world: That she threatened mischief against one Kerse, who thereupon lost the power of his leg and arm: That she entertained several witches in her house, one of whom went out at the roof in likeness of a cat, and then resumed her own shape: That she took a disease off her husband, laid it under the barn floor, and transferred it to his nephew, who when he came into the barn saw the firlot hopping up and down the floor: That she used the following charm to preserve herself and her cattle from an infectious distemper, viz. to bury a white ox and a cat alive throwing in a quantity of salt along with them: That she had the Devil's mark, &c. Mr Laurence Macgill and Mr David Primrose appeared as counsel for the prisoner. They pleaded, that the mill might have stopped, the boat catched no fish, and the man not prospered in the world, from--natural causes; and it was not libelled by what spells she had accomplished them: That as to the man who had lost the power of his leg and arm, first, she never had the least acquaintance with him; secondly, she offered to prove that he was lame previous to the threatening expressions which she was said to have used: That the charge of laying a disease under a barn floor was a ridiculous fable, taken probably from a similar story in Ariosto; and that two years had elapsed between her husband's illness and his nephew's: That what the prosecutor called the Devil's mark was nothing else than the scar of an old ulcer; and that the charge of her burying the white ox and the cat was false. The celebrated Sir Thomas Hope, who was counsel for the prosecution, replied, that these defences ought to be repelled, and no proof allowed of them, because contrary to the libel; that is to say, in other words, because what was urged by the prisoner in her defences contradicted what was charged by the public prosecutor in his indictment.--The defences for the prisoner were overruled.--Is it needful for me to add that she was convicted, strangled, and burned? FOOTNOTES: [14] Rec. of Just. 18th May 1588. [15] In the original it is Queen of Elfland. [16] Good Neighbours was a term for witches. People were afraid to speak of them opprobriously, lest they should provoke their resentment. [17] Records of Justiciary, 7th August 1590. [18] Ibid, 26th December 1590. [19] Rec. of Just. Jan. 27. 1590. A story is told of this woman in Spottiswood's Hist. p. 383. which is nowise confirmed by the record. His fable is absurd; and seems to have been invented by some zealous believer in the divine right of Kings. [20] Rec. of Just., 8th May 1591. [21] Unprinted Acts, A.D. 1592. No. 70.