Andrew Man
In 1597, Andrew Man, an old man from Aberdeen was put on trial when his reputation as a healer put him in the spotlight with the authorities. Man damned himself when he admitted that his abilities came from an entity he called ‘The Queen of Elphame’ and her husband, Christonday.
Mr. Man claimed that he first met his fairy Queen when he was a boy. She appeared at his mother’s house suddenly “where she was delivered of a bairn.” Man was kind to her and brought her water. In return, the fairy promised him “he should know all things and should be able to cure all sorts of sickness.”
Man did not meet the fairy queen again for another 28 years. He came across her for the second time when he found her bewitching his cattle on a piece of land called “Elf Hillock.” When she realized who Man was, the Queen apologized. The two became lovers, and the Queen gave Man the power to steal milk from cows, divine the future and increased his ability to heal.
From that time onwards, Man developed a reputation as a healer and cunning man amongst his neighbors. He practiced a kind of sympathetic magic to affect his cures. One involved passing a patient through a hasp of unwashed wool nine times. A cat then followed nine times through the same hasp (presumably, so it could pick up the ailment). This creature was then killed, destroying the disease and so curing the patient.
Meanwhile, the cuckolded Christonday did not seem to bear any grudges. Indeed, he came to Man whenever he summoned him with the word “Benedicite.” The Queen may have been Man’s lover, but Christonday was his master. According to Man, this was because: “the queen has a grip of all the craft, but Christonday is the gudeman [husband] and so has all power under God.”
Man’s activities were innocent and had harmed no one. However, his descriptions of the fairies had the whiff of brimstone about them in the court’s opinion. His descriptions of feasting and cavorting with beings with the “shapes and claithes like men” who could never the less appear “out of the straw in the likeness of a staig” (a young male horse) smacked of a witch’s Sabbath. Consequently, it duly convicted Man of witchcraft and ordered him burnt.