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pg ABAD the TE * he 
3 pee 
By C. RB. Straton, FES. 155 
a table spread with many dishes, at which a tall dark gentleman of 
foreign appearance received all comers. Women were flying about 
as if they were crows, and when the farmer’s wife looked round 
she saw her two neighbours floating in the middle of the river in 
their sieves. She crossed herself and cried out ‘“ Holy Mother, 
confound them!” Yells of despair followed, and then all was dark. 
The farmer’s wife hurried back to her house and barred the door. 
Husband and broom were just as she left them, and she slipped 
unobserved into her place. But the neighbours’ wives never re- 
turned to their homes, and Madge Macdonald, a wise woman, was 
consulted by the husbands of the lost women. Madge muttered 
“ Hast, West, South, North; East, West, South, North” for some 
time, and then asked if a broom ora sieve had been missed. A 
search was made, each husband owned that a broom and a sieve 
were missing. “So I thought,” said Madge, “ Look for your 
wives in the River Spey!’’ The bodies were never found, but the 
sieves were in the Witches’ Pool. 
Besides witches’ brooms flint arrow-heads were another very 
certain sign of the presence of a witch. Lady Fowlis was accused 
of destroying her step-son by the “artillery of elf-land.” Isabella 
_ Gowdie confessed that at Lammas, 1659, she and others were 
rambling through the country as cats and hares, penetrating their 
neighbours’ houses and wasting their goods, when the mountain 
opened and they entered a fair big room as bright as day. At the 
entrance large bulls ramped and roared. Within, the arch-fiend 
and the elves were busy making arrow-heads. 
Tf a witch could not be got to confess she was tried in various 
ways. In Trial by Fleeting the fingers of one hand were tied to 
the toes of the opposite foot and in this way she was dragged by 
ropes through a pond. If she were a witch she floated from the 
lightness the ointment gave her body, and also, as King James 
puts it, “because water refuses to receive into its bosom those who 
have shaken off the waters of baptism.”” The unfortunate part of 
this trial was that it was only by being drowned that she could be 
_ proved innocent. Humane bystanders often suggested another 
_test—weighing the witch against the parish bible. Scripture, it 
