ABSTRACT
Butt to returne againe to my present indisposition for wch I intend this day to take Phisicke wch if the Lord vouchsafe to blese so as to make itt contribute to the recouery of my health I will indeauer to imploy <itt> to the vttmost of my power wholy to serue my God in all ways that I am most capable of. Butt if the Lord denys mee health I must then Lay aside what by his blesing I haue beene most instrumentall in. In helping the sicke & deseased wch as the Lord in many extreordinary Cures hath shewed itt was his imediate hand So to him bee euerlasting praise. As one which I knew nott of till Last night And therfore shall recorded itt here while itt is fresh in my Memory[,] related to mee by Mr Marshall Minister of the place who saw her when shee was a Child And Mrs Cobreth whom shee had serued & was a [267] Lusty heathfull woman. The account was this[.] When shee was a Child4 aboutt foure yeare old shee was so extreamely extenuate that none thought that saw her shee could Liue[.] And noe wonder for all her vrine & excrements came outt of her Nauell[,] wch was so extreordinary a thing that Mr Marshall tooke Docter Crafford (who was his wiues Brother) to see the Child5 who could nott beleeue itt till hee saw what came that way[,] wch both for couler & smell was the same yt comes vsually the right way. When the
1 John Hay, Marquess of Tweeddale (Young, ODNB). 2 Lord Polwarth was appointed chancellor of Scotland on 2 May 1696 (Young, ‘Hume’,
ODNB). 3 Halkett leaves a one line gap between paragraphs here. 4 This girl presumably suffered from symptoms similar to those of the boy described
above, x-x. 5 Halkett’s syntax is confusing here. By the end of the paragraph it becomes clear that this
is a retrospective account of events that took place when the girl was still only four years old.
