The passage occurs where "Bauldy," love-stricken and despairing, goes to seek the aid of "Mause," an old woman supposed to be a witch:-- "'Tis sair to thole; I'll try some witchcraft art. * * * * * Here Mausey lives, a witch that for sma' price Can cast her cantraips, and gie me advice, She can o'ercast the night and cloud the moon, And mak the deils obedient to her crune; At midnight hours, o'er the kirkyard she raves, And howks unchristen'd weans out of their graves; Boils up their livers in a warlock's pow, Rins withershins about the hemlock low; And seven times does her prayers backwards pray, Till Plotcock comes with lumps of Lapland clay, Mixt with the venom of black taids and snakes; Of this unsonsy pictures aft she makes Of ony ane she hates, and gars expire, With slow and racking pains afore a fire, Stuck fu' of pins; the devilish pictures melt; The pain by fowk they represent is felt." An old form of incantation extracted from a witch confession in 1662[4] refers to the form of witchcraft just alluded to in the _Gentle Shepherd_--the modelling in clay of the object of resentment and the piercing and maiming of such effigies to compass corresponding bodily harm. In this instance, wasting illness was intended to be induced by subjecting the diminutive clay figure to roasting over a fire:-- "In the Divellis nam, we powr in this water amang this mowld (meall) For long duyning[5] and ill heall; We putt it into the fyre, That it may be brunt both stick and stowre, It salbe[6] brunt with owr will As any sticle[7] upon a kill.[8]" A further forceful illustration of this particular form of spell-casting may be quoted from the confession of a reputed witch, "Janet Breadheid," who was brought before the Sheriff-Principal of Elgin and Forres in 1662. It is here referred to as the family against whom the evil was directed was that of "Hay of Park," an evident off-shoot of a main stem of the Hays--the Hays of Errol (Perthshire)--a family represented in the south-west of Scotland by the Hays of Park, who inherited part of the lands of the Abbey of Glenluce immediately after the Reformation. The old family seat, now tenanted by farm servants, is generally described as the "Old House of Park."