a melancholy ball, dancing and wailing at the same time, which continue till daybreak, and is continued nightly till the interment. This custom is to frighten off or protect the corpse from the attack of wild beasts, and evil spirits from carrying it away.

Another custom of olden times, and which was continued till the beginning of this century, was that of announcing the death of any person by sending a person with a bell-known as the "deid bell"-through the town or neighbourhood. The same was done to invite to the funeral. In all probability, the custom of ringing the bell had its origin in the church custom, being a call to offer prayers for the soul of the departed. Bell-ringing was also considered a means of keeping away evil spirits. Joseph Train, writing in 1814, refers to another practice common in some parts of Scotland. Whenever the corpse is

taken from the house, the bed on which the deceased lay is taken from the house, and all the strȧw or heather of which it was composed is taken out and burned in a place where no beast can get at it, and in the morning the ashes are carefully examined, believing that the footprint of the next person of the family who will die will be seen. This practice of burning the contents of the bed is commendable for sanitary purposes.

CHAPTER V.

WITCHCRAFT, SECOND-SIGHT, AND THE BLACK ART.

HAT the devil gave to certain persons supernatural power, which they might exercise at their pleasure, was a belief prevalent throughout all Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But at the same time this compacting with the devil was reprobated, nay more, was a capital offence, both in civil and ecclesiastical law, and during these two centuries thousands of persons were convicted and executed for this crime. But during the latter part of the seventeenth century the civil courts refused to convict upon the usual evidence, to the great alarm and displeasure of the ecclesiastical authorities, who considered this refusal a great national sin—a direct violation of the law of God, which said "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." To arrest the punishment which this direct violation of God's written law was supposed to incur, prayers were offered, and fasts were appointed.

As samples of the kind of evidence on which reputed witches were convicted and executed, I extract the following from the Records of Lanark Presbytery, 1650: -"Likewise he reported that the Commissioners and "brethren did find these poynts delated against Janet "M'Birnie, one of the suspected women, to wit:

"Ist. That on a time the said Janet M'Birnie follow"ed Wm. Brown, sclater, to Robert Williamson's house "in Water Meetings, to crave somewhat, and fell in evil "words. After which time, and within four and twenty "hours, he fell off ane house and brake his neck."

"2nd. After some outcast between Bessie Achison's "house and Janet M'Birnie's house, the said Janet "M'Birnie prayed that there might be bloody beds and "a light house, and after that the said Bessie Achison "her daughter took sickness, and the lassie said there is "fyre in my bed, and died. And the said Bessie "Achison her gudeman dwyned.

"3rd. It was alleged that the said Janet M'Birnie was "the cause of the dispute between Newton and his wife, "and that she and others were the death of William "Geddese. And also that they fand against Marian "Laidlaw, another suspected, these particulars: that the "said Marian and Jean Blacklaw differed in words for "the said Marian's hay; and after that the said Jean "her kye died."

They were remitted for trial. In these same Records there is in 1697 the following entry:-"Upon the recom"mendation of the Synod, the Presbytery appoynts a "Fast to be keeped upon the 28th instant, in regard to "the great prevalence of witchcraft which abounds at "several places at this time within the bounds of the "Synod."

At this time the laws against witchcraft had become practically a dead letter, but it was not till 1735 that they were repealed. Still, the abolition of the legal penalty did not kill the popular belief in the power and reality of witchcraft; and even now, at this present day,

we find proof every now and again in newspaper reports that this belief still lingers among certain classes. Within these fifty years, in a village a little to the west of Glasgow, lived an old woman, who was not poor, but had a very irritable temper, and was unsocial in her habits. A little boy having called her names and otherwise annoyed her, she scolded him, and, in the heat of her rage, prophesied that before a twelvemonth elapsed the devil would get his own. A few months after this the boy sickened and died, and the villagers had no hesitation in ascribing the cause of death to this old woman. Again, a farmer in the neighbourhood had bought a horse, and in the evening a servant was leading it to the water to drink, when this same old woman, who was sitting near at hand, remarked upon the beauty of the horse, and asked for a few hairs from the tail, which the servant with some roughness refused. When the stable was entered next morning the horse was found dead. On the above circumstance of the old woman's request being related to the farmer, he regretted the servant's refusal of the hairs, and said that, if the same woman had asked him, he would have given every hair in the tail rather than offend her, showing thereby his undoubted belief in the woman's power. Fortunately for her, she lived in a storeyed building-in local vernacular, a land-or in all probability her house would have been set on fire in order to burn her. At the same time, while she was hated and dreaded, everybody for their own safety paid her the most marked respect. Had she lived a century earlier, such evidence would have brought her to the stake. In 1666, before the Lanark Presbytery, a woman was tried for bewitching cattle

"The said William Smith said that she was the death "of twa meires, and Elizabeth Johnstone, his wife, re"ported that she saw her sitting on their black meire's tether, and that she ran over the dyke in the likeness "of a hare."

This belief in the ability of witches to convert themselves into the appearance of animals at pleasure was prevalent even during this century. In 1828, or thereabout, there died an old woman, who when alive had gone about with a crutch, and it was reported of her, and generally believed, that in her younger days she had the power of witchcraft, and that one morning as she was out about some of her unhallowed sports, disporting herself in the shape of a hare, that a man who was out with a gun saw, as he thought, in the moonlight, a hare, and fired at it, breaking its leg; but it took shelter behind a stone, and when he went to get the hare, he found instead a young woman sitting bandaging with a handkerchief her leg, which was bleeding. He knew her, and upon her entreaty promised never to disclose her secret, and ever after she went with a crutch. I have heard similar stories told of other women in other localities, showing the prevalence of this form of belief. As those who had dealings with the devil were believed to have renounced their baptism or their allegiance to Christ, they never went to church, and hated the Bible. Therefore, all who did not follow the custom of believers were not only considered infidels, but as having enlisted in the devil's corps, and such people in small localities were kept at an outside, and suspected, being regarded as capable of any wickedness, and untrustworthy. I remember several persons, both men and women, against