[Satan’s Invisible World Contents]
EARLY in the year 1704 there was a remarkable outbreak of Diablerie – a frightful instance of popular bigotry – at the small seaport Burgh of Pittenweem, in the eastern part of Fife, which excited a considerable degree of interest, as it involved the clerical debates of two Ministers, one Episcopal, and the other Presbyterian, and was marked with the barbarous murder of a poor woman, Janet Cornfoot, who fell a victim to the spite of the clergyman, the indolence of the magistrates, and the fury of a brutish rabble. Her accuser, a fellow who pretended to take fits till he found them no longer profitable, delated her, together with Beatrix Laing and other women, for having afflicted him with this disorder. Immediately the witches were seized, and thrown into the jail of the Burgh by the minister and magistrates, with a guard of drunken fellows to watch over them. Janet Cornfoot was put in confinement under a specific charge from Alexander Macgregor, a fisherman and strolling vagabond, to the effect that he “had been beset by her and two others one night, along with the Devil, while sleeping in his bed.” By torture Cornfoot was forced into acknowledging this fact, which she afterwards denied privately, under equal terror for the confession and the retractation, declaring “that the Minister himself beat her with his staff in order to make her speak out.” However, her case beginning to attract attention from some persons of rank and education in the neighbourhood, the minister became somewhat doubtful of it, and by his connivance she escaped. Almost immediately, an officious clergyman of the neighbourhood apprehended her again, and sent her back to Pittenweem in the custody of two men. Falling there into the hands of the populace, the wretched woman was tied hard up in a rope, beaten unmercifully, and then dragged by the heels through the streets and along the shore. The appearance of a Baillie for a brief space dispersed the crowd, but only to show how easily the authorities might have protected the victim, if they had chosen. Resuming their horrible work, the rabble tied Janet to a rope stretching between a vessel in the harbour and the shore, swinging her to and fro, and amusing themselves by pelting her with stones. Tiring at length of this sport, they let her down with a sharp fall upon the beach, beat her again unmercifully, and, finally covering her with a heavy door, pressed her to death. A daughter of the unhappy woman was in the town, aware of what was going on, but prevented by terror from interceding. This barbarity lasted altogether three hours, without any adequate interruption from either Minister or Magistrates. As respects Beatrix Laing, she steadily refused to confess being a witch, and was subjected to pricking, and kept awake for five days and nights, in order to bring her to a different frame of mind. Sorely wounded, and her life a burden to her, she at length was forced, in order to be rid of the torment, to admit what was imputed to her. The poor woman afterwards avowing that what she had told them of her seeing the Devil and so forth was false, “They put her in the stocks, and then carried her to the Thieves’ Hole, and from that transported her to a dark dungeon, where she was allowed no manner of light, or human converse, and in this condition she lay for five months.” During this interval, the sapient Magistrates, with their parish Minister, were dealing with the Privy Council to get the alleged witches brought to trial. At first, the design was entertained of taking them to Edinburgh for that purpose; but ultimately, through the humane interference of the Earl of Balcarres and Lord Anstruther, the poor women were set at liberty on bail. This, however, was so much in opposition to the rabble, that Beatrix Laing was obliged to decamp from her native town. “She wandered about in strange places, in the extremity of hunger and cold, though she had a competency at home, but dared not come near her own house for fear of the fury and rage of the people.” It was indeed well for this apparently respectable woman (Spouse to William Brown, Tailor, late Treasurer of the Burgh) that she, for the meantime, remained at a distance away from home. After a few months wandering about, beginning to gather courage she did return, yet not without being threatened by the rabble with the fate of Janet Cornfoot; wherefore it became necessary for her to apply to the Privy Council for a protection. By that Court an order was accordingly issued to the Pittenweem Magistrates, commanding them to defend her from any tumults, insults, or violence, that might be offered to her. The matter having thus attracted the attention of the Privy Council, they appointed a Committee to enquire into it; but the ringleaders of the mob had fled, so nothing could be immediately done. After some time, they were allowed to return to the town free of molestation on account of the murder.1
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1 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s “Notes to Law’s Memorialls,” and Dr. Robert Chambers “Domestic Annals of Scotland,” passim.
