Confession of Agnes Samsone of witchcraft

Transcript

[Page one, first eight lines]

Certain notes of Agnes Samsone her

confession 27 January 1590 whereupon she was

convicted by an Assize [legal court] &

burned in Edinburgh, 28 day

for a witch

Imprimis [Firstly] the said Agnes confesses that after the death of her hus-

band the devil appeared unto her in the night till she was

[?] and pensive [thinking] for the sustentation [keeping]of her and her bairns [babies]

bidding her be of good cheer and leave of that care for her

children, promising that if she would serve him she nor

they should lack nothing. And being motivated with her poverty

and his fair promises of riches and revenge of her enemies,

took him for her master and renounced Christ.

[Page two, third paragraph]

Item, she confesses that upon a complaint of a woman of the

frowardness [person who is difficult to deal with] of her father-in-law and her earnest desire

to be quit of him, she made a picture of wax and raised

a spirit at a waterside beside a brier bush [prickly shrub], desiring her

to enchant it to serve for his destruction, and send it to the said

woman to be put under his bed sheet or bed head.

[Page four, second paragraph]

Item, she confesses that she raised the devil by her

evocations [act of summoning the spirits] to ask if a gentlewoman should live or die.

He appeared to her in likeness of a black dog before supper,

she being alone. But after supper, having the gentle-

woman’s three daughters with her, of whom one

would have drowned herself in the well out of the which

the dog came and whether he went, and was hardly

stayed through the violent pulling and holding of

her sisters and the said Agnes Samsone the said

gentlewoman was made a quarter of an hour thereafter.