[12] "The witch mark is sometimes like a blewspot, or a little tate, or reid spots, like flea-biting; sometimes also the flesh is sunk in, and hallow, and this is put in secret places, as among the hair of the head, or eyebrows, within the lips, under the armpits, _et sic de ceteris_." Mr Robert, minister at Aberfoill, in his _Secret Commonwealth_, describes the witch's mark--"A spot that I have seen as a small mole, horny, and brown-coloured; through which mark, when a large brass pin was thrust (both in buttock, nose, and rooff of the mouth) till it bowed and became crooked, the witches, both men and women nather felt a pain nor did bleed, nor knew the precise time when this was being done to them (their eyes only being covered)."--_Law's "Memorials," ed. by C. Kirkpatrick Sharpe._
[13] The extreme penalty took two forms. The condemned were either in the first place strangled or, to use an old expression, "wirreit" and then burned; or, worse still, they were straightway burned quick (alive).
[15] Printed in Dumfries by his brother, Robert Rae, 1718.
[16] _The Parish of Glencairn_, Rev. John Monteith.
[17] Coshogle mansion-house or keep, belonging to the Douglases, was situated on the hill overhanging the Enterkine burn, above the farm-house of the same name. A marriage stone, built into a cottage wall, is all that remains of the structure.
[18] Sir James Douglas of Parkhead, styled Lord Torthorwald as having married the heiress of that barony, was afterwards run through the body on the High Street of Edinburgh by a nephew of Captain James Stewart, and died without uttering one word. On clearing away the rubbish, which till lately covered the pavement of the Chapel at Holyrood House, his tombstone was found, with this mutilated inscription:--"Heir lyes ane nobil and potent Lord James Douglas--and Cairlell and Torthorall wha mariet Daime Elizabeth Cairlell, air and heretrix yr. of, wha was slaine in Edinburgh ye 14 day of July, in ye yeir God 1608."--_Law's Memories._
[19] Another theory associates the fairies with the dwarfish Lapps or Finns who, driven out of their own country, settled in the outlying districts of Scotland.
[20] The mother of William Nicholson the poet, a native of Borgue, where her family had long been settled, and a woman of great intelligence, often told that in her day there lived a man belonging to Borgue parish whose mother and grandmother had been examined before the Kirk-Session regarding his having been carried away by the fairies.