Written by On 13 April 1662, in the village of Auldearn in the Scottish Highlands, a woman walked in from her ordinary life, the milking, the bread-making, the weaving of yarn, and confessed to everything.
She confessed to making a pact with the Devil at Auldearn Kirk, where he stood at the reader’s desk with a black book and baptised her in her own blood, giving her the new name Janet. She confessed to flying through the night sky on corn stalks, crying Horse and Hattock in the Devil’s name! She confessed to feasting in the halls of the Queen of Elfhame beneath the Downy Hills. She confessed to transforming herself into a hare, a crow, a cat. Slipping out of her human skin with a rhyme and returning to it with another. She confessed to making elf arrows, those sharp flint points whittled by elf-boys in the fairy world, and shooting them at the people of Auldearn.
She confessed to all of it. Freely,