"[107] Sometimes they were baptized anew. Sometimes they
renounced the Virgin, whom they called in their rites _extensam
mulierem_. If the Ave Mary bell should ring while the demon is conveying
home his witch, he lets her drop. In the confession of Agnes Simpson the
meeting place was North Berwick Kirk. "The Devil started up himself in
the pulpit, like a meikle black man, and calling the row [roll] every one
answered, _Here_. At his command they opened up three graves and cutted
off from the dead corpses the joints of their fingers, toes, and nose,
and parted them amongst them, and the said Agnes Simpson got for her part
a winding-sheet and two joints. The Devil commanded them to keep the
joints upon them while [till] they were dry, and then to make a powder of
them to do evil withal." This confession is sadly memorable, for it was
made before James I., then king of Scots, and is said to have convinced
him of the reality of witchcraft. Hence the act passed in the first year
of his reign in England, and not repealed till 1736, under which, perhaps
in consequence of which, so many suffered.
The notion of these witch-gatherings was first suggested, there can be
little doubt, by secret conventicles of persisting or relapsed pagans, or
of heretics.
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