Grampian Club > Scotland, social and domestic

302 Scotland, Social and Domestic.
struck heavily against the bank. Sixteen passengers
were thrown into the water and drowned. A
woman, who lived in the adjoining hamlet of West-
houses, made a public declaration that she was invisibly-
present in the boat, accompanied by the devil. When
the fatal occurrence took place, she and " her lord were
sitting on the boat's prow like twa corbies." As her
reward for drowning the sixteen persons, " the foul
fiend," she said, " had entertained her to a rich haggis
in the town steeple of Selkirk."
On the 24th June, 1735, the penal statutes against
witchcraft were abolished. From the year 1479, when
the first capital sentence against witchcraft was carried
out, to the period we have now reached, about 30,000
persons were executed in Great Britain on the charge
of sorcery. A fourth of that number perished in
Scotland.
The Act of 1735 was most obnoxious to a section of
the Scottish clergy, who continued to point to the
words of the divine law, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch
to live," as binding on all time. In 1743, the
Associate Presbytery of Edinburgh issued a Pastoral
Address, which they enjoined should be read annually
to their flocks. In this document the repeal of the
penal laws against witchcraft was described as " contrary
to the express law of God," and as a great national sin.
A belief in witchcraft has lingered in certain districts.
Till the close of the last century many farmers in the
county of Forfar were content to bestow on the ill-
favoured old women of their neighbourhood meal and
potatoes to avert "ill weirds." The Ettrick Shepherd,
writing in 1813, relates that he was acquainted with
two Border farmers, then living, who had seriously