When the stable was entered next morning the horse was found
dead. On the above circumstance of the old woman's request being related
to the farmer, he regretted the servant's refusal of the hairs, and said
that, if the same woman had asked him, he would have given every hair in
the tail rather than offend her, showing thereby his undoubted belief in
the woman's power. Fortunately for her, she lived in a storeyed
building--in local vernacular, a _land_--or in all probability her house
would have been set on fire in order to burn her. At the same time,
while she was hated and dreaded, everybody for their own safety paid her
the most marked respect. Had she lived a century earlier, such evidence
would have brought her to the stake. In 1666, before the Lanark
Presbytery, a woman was tried for bewitching cattle:--
"The said William Smith said that she was the death of twa meires, and
Elizabeth Johnstone, his wife, reported that she saw her sitting on
their black meire's tether, and that she ran over the dyke in the
likeness of a hare.
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