Alice Cowley of Ballaugh was brought before the Consistory Court in 1713 as a regular dealer in charms. The charges against her, as Moore summarises them, were many. She had sold a love powder to young people for ninepence, telling them it was made of powdered bright stones from Foxdale. She had given married women remedies to help them conceive, sold charms to farmers for their crops, helped young women who wanted to win a man, and sold medicines to parents to bring sick children back to health.
The court found every charge proved. Her sentence was thirty days in prison, followed by a very public penance. She was to stand for two hours at the market crosses of four towns on the island, dressed in a white sheet and carrying a white wand, with the words "for charming and sorcery" written on her breast. After that she was to do penance in Ballaugh church.
Moore's chapter has other cases from the same courts: Jony Tear, cleared in 1638 after being seen gathering herbs with an Irish woman; Jane Cesar, acquitted in 1659 but made to renounce charming before the Malew congregation; and Alice Knakill of Lonan, who in 1712 confessed to burning earth from a neighbour's threshold to make her own cows give more milk.
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