She was then demanded if she had ever asked any favour of Thom for herself or any other person.  She answered that “when sundrie persons came to her to seek help for their beast, their cow, or ewe, or for any barne that was tane away with ane evill blast of wind, or elf grippit, she gait and speirit[1] at Thom what myght help them; and Thom would pull ane herb and gif her out of his awin hand, and bade her scheir[2] the same with ony other kind of herbis, and oppin the beistes mouth, and put thame in, and the beist wald mend."[3]

[Footnote 1:  Inquired.]

[Footnote 2:  Chop.]

[Footnote 3:  Pitcairn, I. ii. 51, et seq.]

It seems hardly possible to believe that a story like this, which is half marred by the attempt to partially modernize its simple pathetic language, and which would probably bring a tear to the eye, if not a shilling from the pocket, of the most unsympathetic being of the present day, should be considered sufficient three hundred years ago, to convict the narrator of a crime worthy of death; yet so it was.  This sad picture of the breakdown of a poor woman’s intellect in the unequal struggle against poverty and sickness is only made visible to us by the light of the flames that, mercifully to her perhaps, took poor Bessie Dunlop away for ever from the sick husband, and weakly children, and the “ky,” and the humble hovel where they all dwelt together, and from the daily, heart-rending, almost hopeless struggle to obtain enough food to keep life in the bodies of this miserable family.  The historian—­who makes it his chief anxiety to record, to the minutest and most irrelevant details, the deeds, noble or ignoble, of those who have managed to stamp their names upon the muster-roll of Fame—­turns carelessly or scornfully the page which contains such insignificant matter as this; but those who believe

    “That not a worm is cloven in vain;
      That not a moth with vain desire
      Is shrivel’d in a fruitless fire,
    Or but subserves another’s gain,”

will hardly feel that poor Bessie’s life and death were entirely without their meaning.

103.  As the trials for witchcraft increase, however, the details grow more and more revolting; and in the year 1590 we find a most extraordinary batch of cases—­extraordinary for the monstrosity of the charges contained in them, and also for the fact that this feature, so insisted upon in Macbeth, the raising of winds and storms, stands out in extremely bold relief.  The explanation of this is as follows.  In the year 1589, King James VI. brought his bride, Anne of Denmark, home to Scotland.  During the voyage an unusually violent storm raged, which scattered the vessels composing the royal escort, and, it would appear, caused the destruction of one of them.  By a marvellous chance, the king’s ship was driven by a wind which blew directly contrary to that which filled the sails of the other vessels;[1] and the king and queen were