Her devotion to the sendee of the devil took place in the kirk of Auldearn, where she was baptized by him with the name of Janet, being held up by a companion, and the devil sucking the blood from her shoulder*. The band or coven to which they belonged consisted of thirteen (whose names she enumerates, and some of whom appear to have been apprehended upon her delation), that being the usual number of the covens. Each is provided with an officer, whose duty it is to repeat the names of the party after Satan ; and a maiden, who seems to hold swav over the women, and who is the particular favourite of the devil, is placed at his right hand at feasts. A grand meeting of the covens takes place quarterly, when a ball is given. Each witch has a " sprite" to wait upon her, some appearing "in sad dim, some in grass green, some in sea green, some in yellow." Those of Gowdie's coven were, " Robert the Jakes, Sanders the Reed-Reever, Thomas the Fairy, Swein the Roaring Lion, Thief of Hell wait-upon-herself, Mac I lector," and so on. Some of these spirits, it would appear, did not stand high in IsobeFs opinion ; for Robert the Jakes, she says, was aged, and seemed to be " a gowkit glaikit Spirit." Each of the witches too received a sobriquet, by which they were generally known*. Satan himself had several spirits to wait upon him ; " sometimes he had boots and sometimes shoes upon his feet, but still his feet are forked and cloven." The witches, it appears, occasionally took considerable liberties with his character, on which occasions Satan, on detecting the calumny, used to beat the delinquents "up and down like naked gaists" with a stick, as Charon does the naked spirits in the ' Inferno/ with his oar. (Cant, iii.) He found it much more easy however to deal with the warlocks than with the fair sex. " Alexander Elder," says the confessing witch, " was soft, and could not defend himself, and did naething but greit and crye while he will be scourging him; but Margaret Wilson in Auldearn would defend herself finely, and cast up her hands to cape the blows, and Bessie Wilson would speak crustily with her tongue, and would be bellin again to him stoutly".

* Her fellow-witch, Braidhead, was baptized by the very inappropriate name of Christian.

* This seems to have been a common practice in the Infernal ritual. Law gives the nicknames of the Renfrewshire witches, in the Bangarran Case. (Memorials, p. 122).