“ All in ye Merrie Month of May ” 
while the fierce and credulous bystanders looked confidently 
to see the Deil come in the form of a Corbie Craw and fly 
away “wi’ his ain!” It is curious to look at the quiet, sober 
folk gathered every Sabbath in our little ancient grey kirk, 
and think how their forebears could be so cruel and lawless. 
The worst one hears now is of mole-catchers stealing 
bicycles, or poachers and water-bailiffs having frays on the 
banks of Tweed. 
About 1634 there was a most celebrated witch called 
Betty Bathcat. The story of her indictment may be read 
with other curious matter in a book called “ Pitcairn’s 
Criminal Trials.” They were said to use many strange 
charms, some of them not unlike those of the Obi women 
of the present day in the West Indies. There are docu- 
ments, I believe, still preserved on the heavily-laden shelves 
of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh, showing that the 
Privy Council were in the habit of granting commissions to 
gentlemen and to ministers of parishes all over Scotland 
to examine, try, and execute witches. But I suppose we 
should not judge too hardly the old-time justices who 
passed sentences or the villagers who carried them out, 
since within the last ten years, in spite of all the much- 
boasted enlightenment of this nineteenth century, a poor 
old wife was accused of witchcraft in Ireland by her own 
folk ! And a case somewhat similar occurred in Galloway, 
and, I believe, many a cottage cradle may be found in 
Wigtonshire and Galloway with the big ha’ Bible hidden 
under the pillow when the baby has to be left awhile alone, 
that the baby may be there when the mother returns, and 
not have been spirited away by “ those we dinna mention.” 
The fairies seem to have frequented here in the same 
neighbourhood where the witches were rife, if the tale of 
the herd’s wife of “ Little Billy ” is to be credited, who was 
carried off in a sheet by the “ gude neighbours.” She 
had forgotten, when her baby was born, to put either the 
big Bible or her husband’s breeks (an equally effective 
safeguard apparently) on the shelf in the box-bed, and so 
was stolen away. The Scotch fairies, as also the Cornish 
139 
