She can overcast the night and cloud the moon,

and make the Devil obedient to her croon.

At midnight hours over the kirkyard she raves,

Digging unchristened weans out of their graves;

Boils up their livers in a warlock's pow,

Runs widdershins about the hemlocks low;

And seven times does her prayers backwards pray,

Then, mixed with venom of black toads and snakes,

Of this unsousy pictures oft she makes

Of anyone she hates -- and makes them expire

With cruel and racking pains afore a fire:

Stuck full of pins the devilish pictures melt;

The pain by folks they represent is felt

Whilst she and her cat sit howling in her yard.

-- Allan Ramsay,
Seventeenth-century Scottish poet