Shetland charmer, Barbara Thomas's dochter, used for this purpose 66 ane selch bone." Observing one of her acquaintance labouring at the churn in vain, she offered to give her something that would do her good; and opened her purs and tuik ane bone forth thereof, quhilk was the bone of ane man's finger, great at the one end and small at the other, of twa insh lang or thereby, and bad her stir her milk with it and she wald get her profit." It was explained on her trial that the bone was not human, but a seal's, nevertheless she was convicted of superstitious practices. Even mothers were not safe from these incantations. To gratify the malevolent, the fountains of nutrition could be dried up or turned to blood. A woman nursing a child, having entered the same house with Bessie Roy, found on departing that she had lost her milk. Another suffered a like deprivation from having an enchanted vegetable flung at her; and Janet Cock drained George Haldanc's nurse "by comeing and macking a fashione of looking at hir breast." There can be little doubt but that, in a superstitious age, an individual consulted and treated as a common charmer would in time become herself impressed with the same conceit; being strongly tempted to make a free surrender of her mind to this self-delusion in consequence of the supernatural character attributed to her. An old writer on magic says, "Children cannot smile upon a witch without the hazard of a perpetual wry mouth; a very nobleman's request may be denied more safely than her petitions for milk, butter, or small-beer; and a great lady's or queen's name be less doubtfully derided." Among the numerous antidotes against a witch's spells, none was so effectual as drawing some of her blood. To "score her above the breath," was like shearing of Samson's locks; it disabled her of her power of sorcery, and at the same time healed the patient. A young woman upon whom the Hillswick hag, Marion Pardone, had cast" a terrible and fearful madness," was counselled to draw blood of the witch; and this she performed by running foul upon her and biting two of her fingers, when a recovery took place. But Marion's veneficial pranks were cut short by attempting deeds rather beyond the province of ane common rank witch, charmer, and deceiver." The Shetland sorceress had the power, like Odin, of undergoing a transmutation of form resembling various animals; and Marion, availing herself of this gift, assumed the shape or likeness of a pellack-whale, or porpoise, for the purpose of upsetting a fishing-boat, against the crew of which she had conceived a malice. She was convicted of the crime by the confession of another witch, and by the well-known test of the bahr-recht, or law of the bier; for being commanded, along with her husband Swene, to lay hands on two of the dead bodies that were found, one of them bled at the craig-bane, and another in the head and fingers, “gushing out bluid thereat, to the great admiration of the beholders and revelation of the judgment of the Almightie." Both the civil and ecclesiastical courts concurred in the necessity of ridding the islands of such a dangerous personage as Marion; and accordingly she was sentenced to be executed on the Hill of Burra (March, 1645); " and there worried at the stake and burnt in ashes, betwixt the hours of twelve and two in the afternoon." Her "ditay" was one of the blackest that ever stained the records of the Presbytery, whose libel or indictment against her thus concludes: Lykwise you have not onlie behavid yourself as said is, as ane common rank witch, always giving yourself to charmis, and never knowing the true God, not so much as to learn the Lordis Prayer, nor to repeat the samen in all your lyfe, but are reprobate from God; has given yourself, baith saul and bodie, to serving the devill, and bund up in him, that you will not muster power nor will cof of the devil sa mutch as to follow learning to repeat the Lordis Prayer amangst Goddis ministers and children; but are and has been all your days ane wicked, devilish, fearful, and abominable curser. Whaever ye ever cursed, on them ye disendit and wisht evil to, everie evil, sicknesse, harme, and death, followit thereupon through your diabolical tongue, &c.; and has ever behavit yourself as ane common witch and charmer, taken away of your nybers' profits of their roumes, landes, corns, grass, butter, kye, sheip, and wull; and a charmer and healer of some, and caster of sickness upon uthers, and everie way living a damnable, wicked, and diabolícal lyfe, contrarie to God and his commandements," &c. At a more recent date, towards the end of the last century, there lived in Papa Stour a famous warlock, called John Sutherland, who acquired no little repute for his sorceries, which he employed for good as well as for bad purposes. If a boat was wind-bound, he could procure a fair breeze; but his art was equally potent in working mischief. In that part of the country there is a tradition connected with a melancholy disaster that befell a respectable Shetland family, relative to a Norwegian lady, who, being slighted by a young gentleman, bribed a hag to bring the direst misery on the house with which she had been refused an alliance. The time selected for the purpose was when the sons were about to be ferried across a voe; and in order that the whole might perish, the shelty upon which one of them intended to take a journey was, in a mysterious manner, conveyed away from his tether. The four youths, accompanied by a cousin, set sail at the close of the evening; there was scarcely a ripple on the water, nor a cry heard; yet when the anxious parents, impatient for their return, began to make search for them, they found nothing but the boat, which had drifted ashore with little damage. The shelty, which had been made to act a part in the dark deed of enchantment, was again brought back to his tether in as secret a manner as he had disappeared. In this case the pony, doubtless, was an unconscious agent; but it is well known that spiritual shelties, of a very mischievous disposition, figured in our northern superstitions. These were a species of trows called neagles, somewhat akin to the water-kelpies of other countries; their frolics were carried on about mills, particularly when grinding; and it was their custom to appear in the form of a beautiful pony, in order to attract the miller's attention. They would seize and hold fast the mill-wheel; and when he came out to examine the cause of the stoppage, he was astonished to find a smart shelty, sad VOL. XXXIV. NO. CCII. dled and bridled, and ready to be mounted. The opportunity was tempting; but should the infatuated man neglect warning and unguardedly put his foot in the stirrup, his doom was sealed. Neither bit nor bridle could avail him. Off like an arrow went the pony, regardless of bog or bank, until he threw his rider in the deep sea; and then, with loud laughter, vanished in a flash of light. Sometimes people were more wary, and, instead of taking a ride, they would salute his neagleship with a fiery brand through the lightningtree hole, which always made him scamper off in a hurry. Nowhere in Scotland, perhaps in Europe, are there more habitations or deeper awe remaining of unclean spirits than in Shetland. All these, as I have observed, had their origin in the mythology of the ancient Scandinavians; and when Christianity first visited our shores, a belief in the existence of gods, giants, dwarfs, &c., still continued, with this qualification, that they were fallen angels of various ranks belonging to the kingdom of darkness, who, in their degraded state, had been compelled to take up their abode in mountains, springs, or seas. These were tenets conveniently subservient to the office of exorcism, which constituted a lucrative part of the emoluments of the inferior Roman Catholic clergy, with whom Orkney and Shetland were in former times overrun. The clergy of those days thus acted as a kind of spiritual police to keep demons, trows, &c. in order, preventing them from breaking into houses, or trespassing on the lands of the Udallers, to the injury of his stock and the fruits of the earth. The effects of witchcraft were also obviated by means of crosses, spells, amulets, prayers, "and other godly gear." Such virtues were attributed to mummeries of this kind, that the true warlocks were the Romish clergy, who, by the arts of priestcraft, could at any time produce the accomplishment of objects which, in times of paganism, depended on incantations, knots, and Runic cha racters. But when the doctrines of the Reformation were introduced, and when the rites and ceremonies of Popery were condemned as idolatrous, it was still found not very easy to shake K K the popular faith in the efficacy of many of the ancient practices of Catholicism; such, for example, as those employed to ensure success in fishing or during harvest. Accordingly, a class of persons was greatly encouraged who performed numerous ceremonies, which had evidently a Popish origin, intended to counteract the malevolence of demons and witches, to heal diseases, procure good fortune in worldly affairs, &c. Like the Catholic priests, the religious charmer of Shetland would mutter some words over water, and the element thus sained was named forespoken water. Boats were then sprinkled, and limbs washed with it, for the purpose of telling out pains. It was a remedy against the effects of an evil eye or an evil tongue; and the elf-shot beast was healed by bathing with this fluid the hole where the arrow had entered. There was considerable advantage in exercising a profession of witchcraft thus modified, which admitted into it Christian ceremonies, inasmuch as it had for its avowed object deeds that were opposed to the designs of the devil. Nor would a collusion with Satan be suspected, so that the operator incurred less risk than the common sorcerer of a capital conviction from the law. The mixture of Pagan, Popish, and Gospel superstition which prevailed about the beginning of the last century so astonished the missionary Brand, who visited Orkney and Shetland expressly to combat the works of the devil, that he acknowledged himself totally unable to justify any of them as authorised by Scripture, but denounced them as a hellish art and tremendous devilry, and not the product of Nature's operation "to "God so permitting it," he says, be in His holy and wise providence, for the further punishment and judicial blinding of those who follow such unlawful courses, and the devil thereby engaging his slaves more in his service. Yet not always the effects desired and expressed do follow, that all may know the devil is a chained one, and can do nothing without the permission of a sovereign God." No instrument, however, was found so successful in combating the arts of the Shetland magicians and enchantresses as the terror of the law, and in no part of Christendom was there more active and persevering search made after them. The rapacity of Earls Patrick and Robert Steuart in seizing the lands of the Udallers, caused them to bring to immediate justice all impious charmers, in order to obtain possession of those estates which became due to them by forfeiture. Nor were those who succeeded them in the government of the islands less negligent, for thirty or forty years afterwards, in following their example. Even so late as 1700 the Shetland witches, according to Brand, were so much talked of for their devilry, that he was told it was dangerous for a person to go or reside in this their abode. By the old laws of the country, as I have mentioned already, each rouselman was directed to inquire in his district "anent those using any manner of witchcraft, charms, or any abominable or devilish superstitions," that they might be brought to condign punishment. Intrusted with such powers, and aided by the exertions of the church, there is no doubt that these industrious officers would find in every parish some old woman who would shew the usual manifestation of a Shetland hag,-"one who was a devilish, fearful, and abominable curser, a taker away of her neighbours' profits, a charmer and healer of some, and a caster of sickness upon others." The Reformed religion had long been established in Scotland before it was able to make head against the rampant agencies of Satan, even in more enlightened districts of the country than our northern islands. When Presbytery had fairly emancipated itself from the control of the civil government, as it did it 1638, the General Assembly waged a determined warfare against witchcraft, sorcery, magic, pilgrimages to wells, chapels, &c., which were all condemned as remnants of the abominable idolatries of Rome. In the hands of the Presbyterian clergy the Scripture became the principal weapon for suppressing superstitious practices. The Catholic priests never arrogated to themselves the power of banishing evil spirits in Shetland from their native rocks and seas; all that they pretended to do was by means of aves and exorcisms to resist them, or exclude them from certain particular localities. But the Reformed divines taught a different doctrine. They believed in the absolute efficacy of the Gospel to drive out Satan and his imps. They supposed that the light of truth would, by its own effulgence, penetrate into the very domiciles of unclean spirits, and expel them to unknown regions. The missionary Brand, after he had visited Shetland, took back to the church a very flattering account of the triumphs which the "New Light" had won over the arts and agents of superstition : "Now do I not hear of any such appearances the devil makes in these isles, so great and many are the blessings which attend a Gospel dispensation. The brownies, fairies, and other evil spirits, that haunted and were familiar in our houses, were dismissed and fled at the breaking out of our Reformation (if we may except a few places not yet well reformed from popish dregs), as the Heathen oracles were silenced at the coming of our Lord and the going forth of the Apostles; so that our first noble Reformers might have returned and said to their Master as the seventy did,' Lord, even the devils are subject to us through thy name.' And though this restraint put upon the devil was far later in these northern places than with us, to whom the light of a preached Gospel did more easily shine, yet now also do these northern isles enjoy the fruits of this restraint." The prevalence of these opinions, as might have been expected, gave rise to abuses hardly less pernicious than those they were supposed to have eradicated. The Bible itself became an instrument of conjuration, and one not less useful in the hands of charmers than crosses, benedictions, holy water, &c. To the lonely wanderer at night among the bleak Shetland hills, it was recommended that he should carry about his person the Sacred Scriptures, as a shield to screen him from the attacks of demons and fairies. The sacred volume was also employed in detecting theft, and the ceremony of " turning the Key and the Bible" was reputed one of the high points of witchcraft. It was thus performed: The charmer waited upon the suspected person, holding a key upon his or her finger, and this being put in a Bible, certain words were repeated, mentioning the suspected person's Christian name and sirname; whereupon the Bible turned round immediately, which was held to be incontestable evidence of guilt. An instance of the superstitious veneration paid to the Gospels is recorded so lately as 1708, in the case of William Sinclair, who was confined by a rheumatism in his limbs, but cured by a poor cripple beggar-woman, a professor of evangelical pharmacy, who was sent to him "to tell out the pain." The sibyl came to him about an hour before sunrise, and, by her directions, he followed her to a slap, or grind (an opening), in the dyke, she carrying with her a stoup of water. Here she halted, and the patient laying bare his knee, she touched it with her hand, and, pretending to have received instructions from the Lord Jesus Christ, she said to the lame man, "Thou shalt go to the holy kirk, and thou shalt gang it round about, and then sit down upon thy knees and say thy prayers to the Lord, and then thou shalt be as heal as the hour when Christ was born." After this fanatical ebullition, she applied to the knee the lawful charm of the Gospel by repeating over it the twenty-third Psalm. Upon which the evil spirit that caused the disease was telled out, and straightway transferred into the stoup of water. The vessel was then emptied of its enchanted contents, which were thrown into the slap with the malevolent intention that the pain might be transferred to the individual who should first step through the opening. This may serve as an illustration of the "Gospel sorcery," which was a natural result of the superstitious notion entertained by the early Reformers respecting the power of the Scriptures in expelling demons. Among the spiritual denizens of Shetland whom the light of the Reformation is alleged to have scared away, was the well-known goblin called Brownie, the Robin Goodfellow of English demonology. In almost every county brownie had his habitat, and was rewarded for his labours with the same fare, a table being placed every night for his use in the barn, covered with bread, butter, cheese, and ale. So recently as the seventeenth century he was an inmate in many houses, and would assist in threshing the corn, churning, grinding malt or mustard, and sweeping the house at midnight, his retaining fee for these performances being a little wheaten bread, with a bowl of milk or cream. In Shetland the "lubbar fiend" was dressed in a brown garb of wadmel; and if his good graces were propitiated, he would ensure a good grinding of corn, a lucky brewing of beer, a safe churning, and a protection for cornstacks against the hardest storm that could blow. In return for these kindly offices, it was usual to apply to brownie's use a sacrificial stone, within which was a small cavity for holding a little wort upon the occasion of brewing; or when milk was to be churned, it was necessary that some of it should be sprinkled with the same intent in every corner of the house. A brownie was thus a useful kind of inmate, and as the acknowledgments he required were so moderate, a Shetlander, in the days of Popery, would have thought he had ill-spent his money had he employed exorcism to banish the harmless drudge. There was also another reason for not molesting him. According to Olaus Magnus, the northern nations regarded this kind of domestic spirits as the souls of men who had given themselves up in this life to illicit pleasures, and were doomed, as a punishment, to wander about the earth for a certain time in the peculiar shape that they assumed, and to be bound to mortals in a conditional servitude. It would have been an act, therefore, of opposition to Heaven's decree to refuse the penal labours of such slaves; and it would have been bad policy in a temporal point of view, as no equal amount of work could have been procured at so cheap a rate of wages. In those days the Shetlander could, like Milton's villagers,― "Tell how the drudging goblin swet Basks at the fire his hairy strength." All these domestic arrangements were broken up by the preaching of the Reformed religion. It is true the brownie was a saucy, captious fellow, easily affronted; for if a present or an extra allowance was offered him he took his departure. But the introduction of the Calvinistic divinity secured his final exit, for the stern Presbyterian denounced him as a fallen spirit leagued with Satan, and maintained that offerings rendered to him were sacrifices to the devil. Brand, who was informed that almost every family in Shetland had a brownie, mentions the way in which they were expelled. A minister told him, he says, "That he had conversed with an old man who, when young, used to brew ale and read upon his Bible; to whom an old woman in the house said that brownie was displeased with that book, which, if he continued to read, they would get no more service of brownie. But he being better instructed from that book, which was brownie's eye-sore and the object of his wrath, when he brewed he would not suffer any sacrifice to be given to brownie. Whereupon the first and second brewing were spoiled and for no use; but of the third browst, or brewing, he had all very good, though he would not give any sacrifice to brownie, with whom afterwards they were no more troubled." Another story of the same kind is of a lady in Unst, who refused on religious grounds the customary offering to this domestic spirit. The first and second brewings failed, but the third succeeded; and thus when brownie lost the perquisite of office, he abandoned the inhospitable mansion where his services had so long been faithfully rendered. "Which fact," says honest Brand, "cleareth that scripture, 'Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.'" It is not improbable, however, that in hastening the flight of brownies from the shores of Thule, the Bible had a powerful auxiliary in the shape of a tax; for when the British government laid such an exorbitant duty on malt as to render it inadmissible into families, the services of this fiend, chiefly valuable in brewing operations, fell into disuse far more generally and rapidly than could have been accomplished by the exhortations of the clergy. The tax that prohibited home-made ale banished along with it the honest, faithful brownie. Since the time of Brand's visit a |