Luckier than poor Jonet Rendall was, who, on the 11th of November (1629), was proved a witch by the bleeding of the corpse of the poor wretch whom she had "enchanted" to his death. For "as soon as she came in the corpse having lain a good space, and not having bled any, immediately bled much blood, as a sure token that she was the author of his death." And had she not said, too, when a certain man refused her a Christmas lodging, "that it wald be weill if the gude man of that hous sould make ane other yule banket" (Christmas banquet); by which curse had he not died in fifteen days after? Wherefore was she a proved murderess as well as witch, and received the doom appointed to both alike. Alexander Drummond was a warlock who cured all kinds of horrid diseases, the very names of which are enough to make one ill; and he had a familiar, which had attended him for "neir this fifty yeiris:" so he was convicted and burnt. Then came Jonet Forsyth, great in her art. She could cast sickness on any one at sea, and cure him again by a salt-water bath; she could transfer any disease from man to beast, so that when the beast died and was opened, nothing could be found where its heart should have been but "a blob of water;" she knew how to charm and sain all kinds of cattle by taking three drops of a beastie's blood on All Hallow E'en, and sprinkling the same in the fire within the innermost chamber; she went at seed time and bewitched a stack of barley belonging to Michael Reid, so that for many years he could never make it into wholesome malt; and this she did for the gain of Robert Reid, changing the "profit" of the grain backwards and forwards between the two, according as they challenged or displeased her. All this did Jonet Forsyth of Birsay, to the terror of her neighbours and the ultimate ruin of herself, both in soul and body. Then came Catherine Oswald,[30] spouse to Robert Aitcheson, in Niddrie, who was brought to trial for being "habite and repute" a witch--defamed by Elizabeth Toppock herself a witch and, as is so often the case, a dear friend of Katie's. Elizabeth need not have been so eager to get rid of her dear friend and gossip, for she was burnt afterwards for the same crimes as those for which poor Catherine suffered the halter and the stake. It seems that Katie was bad for her enemies. She was offended at Adam Fairbairn and his wife, so she made their "twa kye run mad and rammish to died," and also made a gentleman's bairn that they had a-fostering run wood (mad) and die. And she fired William Heriot's kiln, full of grain; and burnt all his goods before his eyes; and made his wife, in a "frantick humour," drown herself; and she cursed John Clark's ground, so that for four years after "by hir sorceries, naether kaill, lint, hempe, nor any other graine" would grow thereon, though doubly "laboured and sowen." She bewitched Thomas Scott by telling him that he looked as well as when Bessie Dobie was