Y 3 a. “The said Iennet Preston comming to touch the dead corpes, they bled fresh bloud presently.”] On the popular superstition of touching the corpse of a murdered person, as an ordeal or test for the discovery of the innocence or guilt of suspected murderers, the reader cannot better be referred than to the very learned and elaborate essay in Pitcairne’s Criminal Trials, vol. iii. p. 182-189.  Amongst the authors there quoted, Webster is omitted, who, (see Displaying of supposed Witchcraft, p. 304,) discusses the point at considerable length, and with an earnest and implicit faith singularly at variance with his enlightened scepticism in other matters.  But there were regions of superstition in which even this Sampson of logic became imbecile and powerless.  The rationale of the bleeding of a murdered corpse at the touch of the murderer is given by Sir Kenelm Digby with his usual force and spirit: 

To this cause, peradventure, may be reduced the strange effect which is frequently seen in England, when, at the approach of the Murderer, the slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh.  For certainly the Souls of them that are treacherously murdered by surprise, use to leaue their bodies with extreme unwillingness, and with vehement indignation against them that force them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage!  That Soul, then, to wreak its evil talent against the hated Murderer, and to draw a just and desired revenge upon his head, would do all it can to manifest the author of the fact!  To speak it cannot—­for in itself it wanteth the organs of voice; and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy, and are too benummed, for to give motion unto:  Yet some change it desireth to make in the body, which it hath so vehement inclination to; and therefore is the aptest for it to work upon.  It must then endeavour to cause a motion in the subtilest and most fluid parts (and consequently the most moveable ones) of it.  This can be nothing but THE BLOOD, which then being violently moved, must needs gush out at those places where it findeth issue!

In the two following Scotch cases of witchcraft, this test was resorted to.  The first was that of

MARIOUN PEEBLES,[79] alias Pardone, spouse to SWENE, in Hildiswick, who was, on March 22, 1644, sentenced to be strangled at a stake, and burnt to ashes, at the Hill of Berrie, for WITCHCRAFT and MURDER.  Marion and her husband having ‘ane deadlie and venefical malice in her heart’ against Edward Halero in Overure, and being determined ’to destroy and put him down,’ being ’transformed in the lyknes of ane pellack-quhaill, (the Devill changing her spirit, quhilk fled in the same quhaill,’) and the said Edward and other four individuals being in a fishing-boat, coming from the Sea, at the North-banks of Hildiswick, ’on ane fair morning, did cum under the said boat, and overturnit her with ease, and drowned and