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53,266 published records with substantive text · Page 869 of 1,110
Scottish Trials--Earl of Mar--Lady Glammis--William Barton--Witches of Auldearne--Their Rites and Charms--Their Transformation into Hares--Satan's Severity towards them--Their Crimes--Sir George Mackenzie's Opinion of Witchcraft--Instances of Confessions made
Read record →For many years the Scottish nation had been remarkable for a credulous belief in witchcraft, and repeated examples were supplied by the annals of sanguinary executions on this sad accusation
Read record →One of the earliest real cases of importance founded upon witchcraft was, like those of the Duchess of Gloucester and others in the sister country, mingled with an accusation of a political nature, which, rather than the sorcery, brought the culprits to their
Read record →Previous to this lady's execution there would appear to have been but few prosecuted to death on the score of witchcraft, although the want of the justiciary records of that period leaves us in uncertainty
Read record →Isobel took upon herself, and imputed to her sisters, as already mentioned, the death of sundry persons shot with elf-arrows, because they had omitted to bless themselves as the aerial flight of the hags swept past them.[66] She had herself the temerity to sho
Read record →Other unfortunate persons were betrayed to their own reproof by other means than the derangement of mind which seems to have operated on Isobel Gowdie
Read record →But, 2dly, says Mackenzie, "the persons ordinarily accused of this crime are poor ignorant men, or else women, who understand not the nature of what they are accused of; and many mistake their own fears and apprehensions for witchcraft, of which I shall give t
Read record →"I went when I was a justice-deput to examine some women who had confessed judicially, and one of them, who was a silly creature, told me under secresie, that she had not confest because she was guilty, but being a poor creature who wrought for her meat, and b
Read record →As a corollary to this affecting story, I may quote the case of a woman in Lauder jail, who lay there with other females on a charge of witchcraft
Read record →execution, she remained silent during the first, second, and third prayer, and then perceiving that there remained no more but to rise and go to the stake, she lifted up her body, and with a loud voice cried out, 'Now all you that see me this day, know that I
Read record →This species of search, the practice of the infamous Hopkins, was in Scotland reduced to a trade; and the young witchfinder was allowed to torture the accused party, as if in exercise of a lawful calling, although Sir George Mackenzie stigmatises it as a horri
Read record →From this and other instances it appears that the predominance of the superstition of witchcraft, and the proneness to persecute those accused of such practices in Scotland, were increased by the too great readiness of subordinate judges to interfere in matter
Read record →On 10th June, 1661, as John Stewart, one of a party of stout burghers of Dalkeith appointed to guard an old woman called Christian Wilson from that town to Niddrie, was cleaning his gun, he was slyly questioned by Janet Cocke, another confessing witch, who pro
Read record →Having thus given some reasons why the prosecutions for witchcraft in Scotland were so numerous and fatal, we return to the general history of the trials recorded from the reign of James V
Read record →During the halcyon period of union between kirk and king their hearty agreement on the subject of witchcraft failed not to heat the fires against the persons suspected of such iniquity
Read record →nd described by Archbishop Spottiswood, not as one of the base or ignorant class of ordinary witches, but a grave matron, composed and deliberate in her answers, which were all to some purpose
Read record →At length his constancy, hitherto sustained, as the bystanders supposed, by the help of the devil, was fairly overcome, and he gave an account of a great witch-meeting at North Berwick, where they paced round the church withershinns, that is, in reverse of the
Read record →Through the whole of the sixteenth, and the greater part of the seventeenth century, little abatement in the persecution of this metaphysical crime of witchcraft can be traced in the kingdom
Read record →And immediately after the departing of the two ministers from him, the juggler being sent for at the desire of my Lord of Eglintoune, to be confronted with a woman of the burgh of Air, called Janet Bous, who was apprehended by the magistrates of the burgh of A
Read record →This tragedy happened in the year 1613, and recorded, as it is, very particularly and at considerable length, forms the most detailed specimen I have met with of a Scottish trial for witchcraft--illustrating, in particular, how poor wretches, abandoned, as the
Read record →The disgusting profligacies which he confessed were of such a character that it may be charitably hoped most of them were the fruits of a depraved imagination, though he appears to have been in many respects a wicked and criminal hypocrite
Read record →It is certain that no story of witchcraft or necromancy, so many of which occurred near and in Edinburgh, made such a lasting impression on the public mind as that of Major Weir
Read record →Sir John Clerk, a scholar and an antiquary, the grandfather of the late celebrated John Clerk of Eldin, had the honour to be amongst the first to decline acting as a commissioner on the trial of a witch, to which he was appointed so early as 1678,[81] alleging
Read record →lic and valetudinary habits, believed himself bewitched to death by six witches, one man and five women, who were leagued for the purpose of tormenting a clay image in his likeness
Read record →ns were condemned upon her evidence, of whom five were executed, besides one John Reed, who hanged himself in prison, or, as was charitably said, was strangled by the devil in person, lest he should make disclosures to the detriment of the service
Read record →In the year 1704 a frightful instance of popular bigotry occurred at Pittenweem
Read record →e celebrated lawyer, Robert Dundas of Arniston, then King's Advocate, wrote a severe letter of censure to the Sheriff-depute of Caithness, in the first place, as having neglected to communicate officially certain precognitions which he had led respecting some
Read record →Folklore, fairy tales, legends, and all forms of story telling akin to these are comprehended, in the terminology of the post-Biblical literature of the Jews, under the inclusive description Haggadah, a name that can be explained by a circumlocution, but canno
Read record →ummer solstice, when the strength of behemot is at its height, he roars so loud that all the animals hear it, and for a whole year they are affrighted and timid, and their acts become less ferocious than their nature is
Read record →When God was about to create the world by His word, the twenty-two letters of the alphabet[10] descended from the terrible and august crown of God whereon they were engraved with a pen of flaming fire
Read record →to the second of the heavens; in the third the manna is made for the pious in the hereafter; the fourth contains the celestial Jerusalem together with the Temple, in which Michael ministers as high priest, and offers the souls of the pious as sacrifices
Read record →They embraced each other all the more closely
Read record →When the hour for the glorification of God by the angels draws nigh, the august Divine herald, the angel Sham'iel, steps to the windows[67] of the lowest heaven to hearken to the songs, prayers, and praises that ascend from the synagogues and the houses of lea
Read record →The ruler over the sea-animals is leviathan.[116] With all the other fishes he was made on the fifth day.[117] Originally he was created male and female like all the other animals
Read record →The real purpose of leviathan is to be served up as a dainty to the pious in the world to come
Read record →As the fish were formed out of water, and the birds out of boggy earth well mixed with water, so the mammals were formed out of solid earth,[140] and as leviathan is the most notable representative of the fish kind, and ziz of the bird kind, so behemot is the
Read record →Leviathan, ziz, and behemot are not the only monsters; there are many others, and marvellous ones, like the reem, a giant animal, of which only one couple, male and female, is in existence
Read record →It is kept wrapped up in a woollen cloth, and this in turn is placed in a lead basket filled with barley bran.[163] The shamir was guarded in Paradise until Solomon needed it
Read record →Little lacked and the dog would have lost his life
Read record →While the cunning of the serpent wrought its own undoing, the cunning of the fox stood him in good stead in many an embarrassing situation
Read record →When leviathan passed the animals in review, and missing the fox was informed of the sly way in which he had eluded his authority, he dispatched great and powerful fish on the errand of enticing the truant into the water
Read record →He unites both heavenly and earthly qualities within himself
Read record →s the Red Sea; as on the third day I shall create plants, so I will do for Israel—I will bring forth manna for him in the wilderness; as I shall create luminaries to divide day from night, so I will do for Israel—I will go before him by day in a pillar of clou
Read record →When at last the assent of the angels to the creation of man was given, God said to Gabriel: "Go and fetch Me dust from the four corners of the earth, and I will create man therewith." Gabriel went forth to do the bidding of the Lord, but the earth drove him a
Read record →The soul and body of man are united in this way: When a woman has conceived, the Angel of the Night, Lailah, carries the sperm before God, and God decrees what manner of human being shall become of it—whether it shall be male or female, strong or weak, rich or
Read record →In the evening, the angel takes the soul to hell, and there points out the sinners whom the Angels of Destruction are smiting with fiery scourges, the sinners all the while crying out Woe!
Read record →When the time arrives for her to emerge from the womb into the open world, the same angel addresses the soul, "The time has come for thee to go abroad into the open world." The soul demurs, "Why dost thou want to make me go forth into the open world?" The ange
Read record →When the time arrives for man to quit this world, the same angel appears and asks him, "Dost thou recognize me?" And man replies, "Yes; but why dost thou come to me to-day, and thou didst come on no other day?" The angel says, "To take thee away from the world
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