On one occasion an Irish witch or wise woman was the means of having a Scotch girl delated by the Kirk for using charms at Hallow-Eve apparently for the purpose of discovering who her future husband should be. She confessed that "at the instigation of an old woman from Ireland she brought in a pint of water from a well which brides and burials pass over, and dipt her shirt into it, and hung it before the fire; that she either dreamed, or else there came something and turned about the chair on which her shirt was, but she could not well see what it was." Her sentence was a rebuke before the congregation; considering the state of Scotland at that period it must be admitted she escaped very well.[52]
We now come to the last instance of witches being tried and convicted in Ireland as offenders against the laws of the realm--the celebrated Island-Magee case. There is a very scarce published account of this, said to have been compiled by an eye-witness, and entitled: "A Narrative of the sufferings of a young girl called Mary Dunbar, who was strangely molested by spirits and witches, at Mr. James Haltridge's house, parish of Island Magee, near Carrigfergus, in the County of Antrim, and Province of Ulster, in Ireland, and in some other places to which she was removed during her disorder; as also of the aforesaid Mr. Haltridge's house being haunted by spirits in the latter end of 1710 and beginning of 1711." This continued for many years in manuscript, but in 1822 it was printed as a pamphlet at Belfast, under the editorship of M'Skimin, author of the _History of Carrigfergus_. This pamphlet we have not seen; but full particulars of the entire case can be obtained by combining the following sources of information, viz. Wright's _Narratives of Sorcery and Witchcraft_; the _Dublin University Magazine_, vol. lxxxii.; a letter by Dr. Tisdall, the Vicar of Belfast, in the _Hibernian Magazine_ for January 1775; Classon Porter's pamphlet; M'Skimin's _History of Carrigfergus_ (ed. M'Crum, 1909); while the depositions that were taken are published in Young's _Historical Notices of Old Belfast_, pp. 161-4.
The actual trial of the witches was preceded by a series of most extraordinary incidents. In September 1710, Mrs. Anne Haltridge, widow of the Rev. John Haltridge, late Presbyterian minister at Island Magee, while staying in the house of her son, James Haltridge of the same place, suffered great annoyance every night from some invisible object, which threw stones and turf at her bed, the force of the blow often causing the curtains to open, and even drawing them from one end of the bed to the other. About the same time, also, the pillows were taken from under her head, and the clothes pulled off; and though a strict search was made, nothing could be discovered. Continuing to be annoyed in this way she removed to another room, being afraid to remain in her own any longer.