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MAGUS

7 treatise dedicated solely to an Irish witchcraft trial. A copy may be found in Glasgow University Library. Daniel Higgs, The Wonderfull and True Relation of the Bewitching a Young Girle in Ireland (Glasgow[?], 1699), pp 6-8. ‘But now to come to this true relation which my eyes did see all along and many Hundreds did see which they can atest to this day say Atheists what they will I was not blinded in it. At Antrim in Ireland a little girle in the ninthe year of hir age, for beauty, education, or birth inferior to none where she lived, having innocently put into hir mouth a Sorrel leaf, which was given her by a Witch that begged at the door, to whom she had first give a piece of bread, and then some beer, it was scarce swallowed by her, when she began to be tortured in her bowels, to tremble all over, and then to be convulst, and in tine [time?], to swon away & fall as one dead. Severall doctors being cal[l]ed (for at the forsaid place wher[e] these things happened in May 1698, it is customary to practise physic)6 tho’ they for manie Days experimented with the remedie usual in this Case; the Child found no respite, but was still afflicted with very frequent and most terrible Paroxisms; whereupon, as the custom of the Country is, they consult the minister of the place,7 but they had scarce laid their hands on her when the child was transformed by the Daemon into such shape as a man that hath not beheld it with his eyes, would hardly be brought to imagine. It began to first to rowl itself about, and nixt to vomit Horse Dung, Needles, Pins, Hairs, Feathers, bottoms of Thread, Pieces of glass, Window nails draven out of a Cart or Coach wheels, an iron knife above a span long, Eggs and Fish shells. In the mean while, hir parants and those of the neighbourhodd, observe that whensover the Witch came near the house, or so much as turned her eye towards it, even at the distance of two hundred paces, the poor Child was in much greater torment than befor[e], in so much as she could by no means be easie of her fit, or shew one sign of life until she was a very great distance from Her. This Witch was soon [damaged] apprehended, and confest, both this [damaged] other the like Feats, for when [damaged] strangled and burnt,8 being desired by the Minister who assisted Her in Her last Agony, and at that Moment on which depends Eternity; when the Executioner had not fitted the Rope to her Neck, that she would dissolve the spell, and ease the Child, she said it was not in her Power because the Ember-Weeks were past since she had bewitched Her; adding, that should she undo the 6 To work as a general practitioner or doctor. 7 Rev. William Adair, minister of Antrim Presbyterian Church. 8 This was the Scottish style of execution of convicted witches.

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