in which not a few ingenious persons came to be recognized as experts and practical authorities. In Scotland, especially, the “prickers,” as they were called, formed a regular gild. They received a good fee for every witch they discovered, and, as might be expected, they did not fail to reap a golden harvest. At the trial of Janet Peaston, in 1646, the magistrates of Dalkeith “caused John Kincaid of Tranent, the common pricker, to exercise his craft upon her. He found two marks of the Devil’s making; for she could not feel the pin when it was put into either of the said marks, nor did the marks bleed when the pin was taken out again. When she was asked where she thought the pins were put into her, she pointed to a part of her body distant from the real place. They were pins of three inches in length.”60 Another notorious pricker was John Bain, upon whose unsupported evidence a large number of unfortunate wretches were sentenced to death. About 1634 John Balfour of Corhouse was feared over all the countryside for his exploits; whilst twenty years later one John Dick proved a rival to Kincaid himself. The regular trade of these “common prickers” came to be a serious nuisance, and confessedly opened the door to all sorts of roguery. The following extraordinary incident shows how dangerous and villainous in mountebank hands the examinations could become, which, if conducted at all, ought at least to be safeguarded by every precaution and only entrusted to skilled physicians, who should report the result to grave and learned divines. “There came then to Inverness one Mr. Paterson, who had run over the kingdom for triall off witches, and was ordinarily called the Pricker, because his way of triall was with a long brass pin. Stripping them naked, he alledged that the spell spot was seen and discovered. After rubbing over the whole body with his palms he slips in the pin, and, it seemes, with shame and fear being dasht, they felt it not, but he left it in the flesh, deep to the head, and desired them to find and take it out. It is sure some witches were discovered but many honest men and women were blotted and break by this trick. In Elgin there were two killed; in Forres two; and one Margret Duff, a rank witch, burned in Inverness. This Paterson came up to the Church of Wardlaw, and within the church pricked 14 women and one man brought thither by the Chisholm of
