This tale was collected by J. J. Haldane Burgess and printed in the Folk-Lore Society volume of 1903. In the parish of Whiteness a man's wife lay very ill and nothing had helped. He thought of asking an old woman with a name for doing curious things with help from the trows. He went to her cottage and explained, and she said she would come, telling him to go home before her.
As he went up the path he looked behind and saw nothing. At the door he heard quick steps, turned, and found the old woman beside him. She told him to lift the latch, went to the bed, looked at the sick woman and said she could set her on her feet, but asked what he had to give. In the house at the time was an old silly kind of man who wandered about begging from the neighbours. The husband said he knew of nothing except the old man in the but-room by the fire. She said Kettie would be able to go out and milk the cows before the week was out, and left.
The next morning the wandering man was found dead on the hillside not far from the cottage, and from then on the wife got better quickly. It is a folk tale of a witch taking a life as her fee, not a trial record.
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