Thom Reid Again

Thom Reid Again By E. Lynn Linton

Isobell Haldane confessed before the Session of Perth, May 15, 1623, that she had cured Andro Duncan’s bairn by washing it and its sark in water brought from the Turret Port, then casting the water into a burn; but in the going “scho skaillit (spilt) swm quhilk schmo rewis ane evill rew, becaus that if onye had gone ower it they had gottyn the ill.” She confessed, too, that about ten years since, she, lying in her bed, was taken forth, whether by God or the devil she knows not, and carried to a hill: the hill-side opened, and she went in and stayed there from Thursday to Sunday at eleven o’clock, when an old man with a gray beard brought her forth. The old man with the gray beard, who seems to have been poor Bessie Dunlop’s old acquaintance, told her many things after this visit. He told her that John Roch, who came to the wright’s shop for a cradle, need not be so hasty, for his wife would not be lighter for five weeks, and then the bairn should never lie in the cradle, but would die when baptized: as it proved, and as John Roch deposed on her trial. Also, he told her that Margaret Buchanan, then in good health, should prepare herself for death before Fastings Even, which was a few days hence; and Margaret died as she predicted. And Patrick Ruthven deposed that he, being sick—bewitched by one Margaret Hornseleugh—Isabell came to see hinin, and stretched herself upon him, her head to his head, her hands on his, and so forth, mumbling same words, he knew not what. And Stephen Ray deposed that three years since he had detected Isobell in a theft, whereon she clapped him on the back, and said, “Go thy way; thaw sall nocht win thyself ane bannok of breid for yeir and ane day;” and so it proved. He pined away, heavily diseased, and did not do a stroke of work for just three hundred and sixty-six days, of the full four-and-twenty hours’ count. But Isobehl said that her sole words were, “He that delyueret me frome the ffairy ffalk sall tak amends on thé:” and that she had never meaned to harm him, nor even to answer him ungently. But she confessed to various charms; such as a cake made of small handsful of meal, gotten from nine several women who had been married, virgins—through a hole in which sick children were to be passed, to their decided cure; and she confessed to getting water, silently going, and silently returning, from the well of Ruthven, in which to bathe John Gow’s child; and to having made a drink of focksterrie1 leaves for Dan Morris’s child, who “wes ane scharge” (changeling or fairy child), which focksterrie drink she made it swallow; when it died soon after. So Isobell Haldane shook hands with life, and went back to Thorn Reid and the fairy folk on the hill, helped thither by the hangman.

1

Star-grass, queries Pitcairn; but is it not rather fox-tree—foxglove?