Christian Shaw, Bargarran's daughter, was a little girl of about eleven years of age, "of a lively character and well inclined." On the 17th of August, 1696, she saw the woman servant, Katherine Campbell, steal a drink of milk from the can, whereupon she threatened to tell her mother; but Campbell, "being a young woman of a proud and revengeful temper, and much addicted to cursing and swearing upon any light occasion," turned against her vehemently, wishing "that the Devil might harle her soul through hell," and cursing her with violent imprecations. Five days after this, Agnes Naismith, an old woman of bad fame, came into the courtyard, and asked Christian how old she was, and how she did, inquiring also after the health of other members of the family. Christian gave her a pert answer, and there the matter ended; but the next night the young girl was taken with fits, and the first act of the long and mournful tragedy began. In her fits she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith, saying they were cutting her side and otherwise tormenting her; then she struggled as with an unseen enemy, and her body was, now bowed stiff and rigid, resting in an arch on her head and her heels alone, and now shaken with such a strange motion of rising and falling, as it had been a pair of bellows; her tongue was drawn into her throat, and even the great Dr. Brisbane of Glasgow himself was puzzled by what name to call her passion, for she began to vomit strange things, which she said the witches, her tormentors, forced upon her--such as crooked pins, small fowl bones, sticks of candle fir, filthy hay, gravel stones, lumps of candle-grease, and egg-shells. And still she cried out against Katherine Campbell and Agnes Naismith; holding long conversations with the former, whom she affirmed to be sitting close by when she was perhaps many miles away, and arguing with her out of the Bible: exhorting her to repent of her sins with more unction than logical clearness of reasoning. Agnes Naismith she took somewhat into favour again; for the poor old woman, having been brought by the parents into the chamber where she lay, and having prayed for her a little simple prayer very heartily, the afflicted damsel condescended to exempt her from further persecution for the moment, saying that she was now her defender and did protect her from the fury of the rest. For the crafty child had seen too well how her first venture had sped not to venture on a broader cast. One day being in her fits she made a grip with her hands as if to catch something, then exclaimed that J. P. was then tormenting her, and that she had got a grip of his jerkin which was "duddie" (tattered) at the elbows; and immediately her mother and aunt heard the tearing of cloth, and the girl showed them in her hands two pieces of red cloth newly torn, where never a bit of red cloth had been before. Then she went off into a swoon or "swerf," and lay as if dead a considerable time.