38 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



sit at night upon the bed of one Cicely Balyer with 

 whom she had grievously quarrelled. 



This kind of visitation was not infrequent, nor 

 altogether surprising when one considers the noc 

 turnal habits of cats, and the accessibility of cottage 

 chimneys, but the horror of it brought many an 

 old wife to the scaffold. Janet Wishart and Alice 

 Kyteler were both convicted of sending a &quot;wan- 

 toune cat &quot; to work evil upon such as had offended 

 them ; and a nameless English witch, hanged in 

 King Jamie s reign, confessed that she wrought all 

 her charms with the help of a dun-coloured cat, 

 that came one night to her cottage when she was 

 cowering over her fire, nursing angry thoughts 

 against a farmer s wife. This beast dwelt with her 

 for months, stealing forth night after night to obey 

 her foul behests, until there was scarce a woman in 

 the village who had not suffered from its malignity. 



Apparently there was no piece of mischief too 

 great or too trivial for an energetic and evilly dis 

 posed cat. The mere presence of Isobel Grierson s 

 pussy in broad daylight would turn sound ale sour ; 

 and the most damning evidence brought against 

 John Fian, a Scottish schoolmaster, strangled as a 

 warlock in 1591, was that he had been seen by 

 neighbours in hot pursuit of a cat, leaping over 

 hedges and ditches like one with wings, so furious 

 was the chase. When questioned as to why he 



