Please activate JavaScript!
Please install Adobe Flash Player, click here for download
ePaper created 2014-04-08, 18:05:31 | version 1.29.01
60 They blest the Cow but curst the witches: Had Sawney summoned all his wits, And sent awa for Huie Mertin, He could have gall’t the witches guts An’cur’t the kye to Nannie Barton; But he may show the farmer’s wab43 An’lang wade through Carmoney gutters, Alas’ it was a sore mis’jab When he empoly’d auld Mary Butters; The sorcerest open’d the scene, With magic words of her invention, To make the foolish people keen Who did not know her base intention, She drew a circle round the churn, An’ wash’d the staff in south run water An’swore the witches she would burn,44 But she would have the tailor’s butter. When fable night her curtain spread, The she got on a flaming fire, The tailor stood at the Cow’s head With his turn’d waistcoat in the byer; The chimney cover’d with a scraw, An’ ev’ry crevice where it smoak’d, But long before the cock did craw The people in the house were choak’d, The muckle45 pot hung on all night As Mary Butters had been brewing, In hopes to fetch some witch or wight Whas entrails by her art was stewing In this her magic a’ did fail Nae witch or wizard was detected; 43 Web or weave: as in a web of fine thread, possibly linen. 44 Convicted witches were hung in early modern England and Ireland, but in Scotland they were strangled, then burned. 45 Large.