Gowdie made four confessions over a period of six weeks; the first is dated 13 April 1662 at Auldearn. It is uncertain why she came forward; the historian John Callow, who authored her
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article, suggests it was because of her involvement in a conspiracy to torment the local minister, Harry Forbes, a zealous extremist who had a fear of witchcraft. Forbes was a witness at each of Gowdie's four interrogations. Accusations against Gowdie would have circulated for a lengthy period before she confessed. She would have been detained in
solitary confinement, most probably in the
tolbooth in Auldearn, throughout the six-week time span of her confessions. Her first confession described an encounter with the
Devil after she arranged to meet him in the
kirk at Auldearn at night. Naming several others who attended including Janet Breadhead and Margret Brodie, she said she renounced her
baptism and the Devil put his
mark on her shoulder then sucked blood from it. Other meetings took place at several locations, for instance Nairn and Inshoch. She touched on having
sexual intercourse with the Devil who she described as a very cold "meikle, blak, roch man". He had forked and cloven feet that were sometimes covered with shoes or boots. Details were given of taking a child's body from a grave and spoiling crops together with information about
covens and where they danced. She explained that brooms were laid beside her husband in his bed so he would not notice she was absent. The coven ate and drank the best of food at houses they reached by flying through the air on magical horses and entered via the windows. They were entertained by the
Queen of the Fairies, also known as the
Queen of Elphame, in her home at Downie Hill which was filled with
water bulls that frightened her. Gowdie claimed to have made clay effigies of the Laird of Park's male children to cause them suffering or death and that she had assumed the form of a jackdaw and, with other members of the coven who had transformed into animals like cats and hares, visited the house of Alexander Cumings. Some parts of her testimony, like her description of the king and queen of fairies, has been cut short when the notaries have just noted
et cetera, a frequent occurrence when the material was deemed irrelevant or, if it did not comply with the inference the interrogators intended, it was abruptly ended. Alternatively it may have happened when the scribes were unable to keep pace with the volume of information being narrated by Gowdie. A little over two weeks later, on 3 May 1662, Gowdie's second confession was transcribed. She expanded on details about the coven by providing the nicknames of its members and as many of the spirits that waited on them as she could remember; her own servant spirit, dressed in black, was called the Read Reiver. Claims included having the ability to
transform into animals with the individual chants used to turn into a cat, horse or various other animals supplied. Over the duration of all her confessions a total of twenty-seven benevolent or malevolent chants were given, more than in any other British witchcraft case; three were transcribed twice but with significant differences. Gowdie testified the Devil handmade elf arrows that were then enhanced by small roughly-spoken "elf-boys". The Devil allocated a number of arrows to each coven member with instructions they were to be fired in his name; no bows were supplied so the arrows were flicked by thumb. The witches were not always accurate when they fired the arrows but if the intended target, whether it was a woman, a man or an animal, was touched by the implement, she claimed they would die even if wearing a protective armour. Spells used to inflict illness and torment on Harry Forbes, the minister, were also described. On 15 May 1662 Gowdie was brought before her interrogators for a third time. Like her first and second confessions, and in common with many other Scottish witchcraft testimonies, the transcript begins by detailing her
pact with the Devil after she encountered him and agreed to meet him at Auldearn kirk. Taking the information she provided previously about the elf arrows a step further, she revealed the names of those killed, expressing regret for the deaths she caused and supplied names of other coven members with details of who they had murdered too. She gave an account of the Devil sending her on an errand to Auldearn disguised as a hare. Her narrative went on to describe how while in that form she was chased by a pack of dogs; she escaped from them by running from house to house until eventually she had the opportunity to utter the chant to transform herself back into a human. She added that sometimes the dogs would be able to bite a witch when she took the form of a hare; although the dogs could not kill the
shapeshifter, the bite marks and scars would still be evident once the human form was reinstated. Descriptions of dining with the Devil and his beating of coven members and their responses to it are recounted. Salacious details concerning sexual relations with the Devil together with broad characteristics of his
genitalia are chronicled. Continuing on from the tale in her first testimony about the methods undertaken to kill any male children of the Laird of Park, the verse the Devil had taught them to chant while burning the effigies was relayed. The fourth and final confession, dated 27 May 1662, is, according to the historian
Robert Pitcairn who first reproduced Gowdie's testimonies in 1833, basically to confirm the three previous testimonies coupled with an attempt to elicit more information about the members of the coven to enable charges to be brought against them. Forty-one people were arrested as the result of Breadhead and Gowdie's statements. ==Aftermath==