reared the early part of their histories may greatly incline us to doubt whether a king named Duffus ever reigned in Scotland, and, still more, whether he died by the agency of a gang of witches, who inflicted torments upon an image made in his name, for the sake of compassing his death.  In the tale of Macbeth, which is another early instance of Demonology in Scottish history, the weird-sisters, who were the original prophetesses, appeared to the usurper in a dream, and are described as volae, or sibyls, rather than as witches, though Shakspeare has stamped the latter character indelibly upon them.

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 fate.  The Earl of Mar, brother of James III. of Scotland, fell under the king’s suspicion for consulting with witches and sorcerers how to shorten the king’s days.  On such a charge, very inexplicitly stated, the unhappy Mar was bled to death in his own lodgings without either trial or conviction; immediately after which catastrophe twelve women of obscure rank and three or four wizards, or warlocks, as they were termed, were burnt at Edinburgh, to give a colour to the Earl’s guilt.

In the year 1537 a noble matron fell a victim to a similar charge.  This was Janet Douglas, Lady Glammis, who, with her son, her second husband, and several others, stood accused of attempting James’s life by poison, with a view to the restoration of the Douglas family, of which Lady Glammis’s brother, the Earl of Angus, was the head.  She died much pitied by the people, who seem to have thought the articles against her forged for the purpose of taking her life, her kindred and very name being so obnoxious to the King.

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.  But in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, when such charges grew general over Europe, cases of the kind occurred very often in Scotland, and, as we have already noticed, were sometimes of a peculiar character.  There is, indeed, a certain monotony in most tales of the kind.  The vassals are usually induced to sell themselves at a small price to the Author of Ill, who, having commonly to do with women, drives a very hard bargain.  On the contrary, when he was pleased to enact the female on a similar occasion, he brought his gallant, one William Barton, a fortune of no less than fifteen pounds, which, even supposing it to have been the Scottish denomination of coin, was a very liberal endowment compared with his niggardly conduct towards the fair sex on such an occasion.  Neither did he pass false coin on this occasion, but, on the contrary,