Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ...

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prevalent in Scotland among the lower orders. It was
the practice, when a murder was committed, and where
the circumstances attending- it were mysterious, or the
proof doubtful, to have recourse to the ordeal of making
the suspected person lay his hand upon the dead body,
in order to discover his guilt; for it was believed that if
guilty, the wounds would instantly bleed at the touch.
The Editor recollects of this ordeal having been prac-
tised at Aberdeen, about twenty years ago, on the
occasion of the dead body of a pregnant woman having
been found in the neighbouring canal. It was suspected
that she had been murdered by her sweetheart, the re-
puted father of the unborn infant, who was accordingly
seized by the populace, and taken by force to the
place where the dead body lay, in order to undergo
this ordeal as a test of his guilt. It was said, that as
soon as he touched the body, blood flowed from the
nostrils; a circumstance, which, though it may have
proceeded from natural causes, was decisive of his guilt
in the eyes of the vulgar. As there was, however, no
other proof against him, he was permitted to escape.
This ordeal was also practised on human bones which
had remained long undiscovered, and which were be-
lieved to be the remains of some one who had been
murdered and secretly buried.—In these cases, as sus-
picion could fall on no particular person, the people in
the neighbourhood were assembled by the civil Magis-
trate to evince their innocence by this mode of purgation.—
" As the said Andrew Mackie, his wife went
to bring in some peets for the fire, when she came to
the door she found a broad stone to shake under her