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Issue 9 - Gone to the devil

History & Heritage

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Scotland Magazine Issue 9

Scotland Magazine Issue 9
July 2003

 

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Gone to the devil

DIANE MACLEAN LOOKS INTO THE STRANGE AND DISTURBING INSTANCES OF WITCH-HUNTS IN SCOTLAND

Gone to the devil (Issue 9)
When Rabbie Burns wrote his poem Address To The Deil in 1785, he could afford to make light of the idea of ‘warlocks grim’ flying into the Galloway twilight. Scotland had burnt her last witch nearly 80 years previously, and the hysteria that had infected the country had died away.

Witch-hunting came to Scotland in the 16th century when The Witchcraft Act of 1563 pushed through by the newly created Church of Scotland made it illegal both to practice sorcery or to consult a witch. It remained on the Statute books until 1736.

It the intervening years, it is estimated that some 2,000 to 3,000 witches were either strangled or burnt to death.

At the time, belief in magic was widespread. Most villages had a ‘cunning woman’, whose knowledge of herbs and wise reputation made her the first port of call for many villagers seeking help. These women were said to cure illness, find lost objects and intercede with spirits. On the negative side, they could also use curses and cause great harm to either you or your livestock.

There was also a commonly held belief in witches – people who had made an alliance with the devil enabling them to get up to all sorts of mischief. Witches could curse too, but they could also fly using twigs or branches and even shape-shift, changing into animals at will in order to travel great distances to attend witches sabbats. Although there were instances of male ‘wizards’, as Christine Larner wrote in her book Enemies of God: “The witch was old, ugly and female.”

After the passing of the Witchcraft Act, cunning women and ‘renowned witches’ were amongst the first to stand accused as Church and Crown acted to stamp out everything they considered to be the ‘the Devil’s work’. There was only a trickle of cases initially, but as word and fear spread, the numbers increased. It was time for what historian Trevor-Roper called “the climax of the European witch-craze.”

If ill befell a village, a crop failed or there was an unexplained death, people were encouraged to look for an answer close to home. Neighbours with a reputation for meddling were hauled forward. Mumbled remarks were interpreted as curses, dark looks misconstrued as devilry, and herbal remedies deemed to be magic potions.

As the hysteria spread, so did the type of person being accused. The net widened to take in the local herbalists, midwives, anyone on the fringes of society, those with a squint, or women who just looked ‘odd’.

Once accused of witchcraft, the woman was imprisoned in the local tollbooth whilst the church investigated the evidence. They took statements from villagers, and then started interrogating the ‘witch’, who from the time of her arrest suffered the most terrible torture. Scotland pioneered the idea of mental torture, known as ‘the waking’, in which the suspect was deprived of light and kept awake for days and nights on end. When they were sufficiently softened up, the physical torture began.

A contemporary 1662 document outlines some of the practices used against women. They make for chilling reading. The women were: most cruelly and barbarously tortured by waking, hanging them up by the thumbs, holding the soles of their feet to the fire, burning of them, and drawing of others at a horse’s tail, binding them with withes about the neck and feet.

Unsurprisingly, many people confessed first to ‘Malefice’ – which was the legal term for cursing and doing evil, and also to having taken part in a ‘Demonic Pact’.

Whilst Malefice was usually what brought them to the attention of their neighbours, the Church always sought proof of the Pact. For them, this was at the centre of the witch’s unchristian behaviour.

During this most diabolical of rituals, the witch took a ‘nickname’ and renounced her baptism. The novice then received the devil’s mark – usually a mole – that the devil or others could suck.

The searching out of the devil’s mark formed a pivotal part of the accused’s interrogation and led to the rise of a new occupation. The witch-pricker travelled the country rooting out witches, using long pins on the bodies of women until a mark was discovered.

This was the final incontrovertible proof of the Demonic Pact. The woman’s fate was by now sealed. She was sent to court where, without benefit of legal representation, the evidence went unchallenged. The verdict of ‘culpable and fylit’ (guilty) was entered, and the convicted witch was either strangled, burnt at the stake, or set alight in a barrel of tar.

During the period of the Witchcraft Act there were two or three intense periods of fervent witch-hunting. One episode was triggered by the famous case of the North Berwick witches.

It is said that on Halloween 1590, a group of witches in North Berwick met to summon up a wind to shipwreck King James VI of Scotland, who was returning home from Denmark with his new bride, Anne.

A grand Sabbat was held, where the devil appeared and gave instruction. A cat was baptised and thrown into the sea causing the water to churn. Graves were robbed for the purpose of ingredients. Church doors were opened by means of a ‘hand of glory’ – the hand of a murderer cut from his corpse as it swung on the gibbet. Incantations were recited and cauldrons bubbled.

When all this was done, the witches danced and frolicked in the kirk yard at North Berwick. Coincidentally, the ship that the King was travelling in was disturbed by a storm.

On his return to Scotland, and much preoccupied with the notion of witchcraft, he set about tracking down the culprits. Agnes Simpson, the principal witch, was tortured first, and she gave a number of names, among them the Earl of Bothwell.

This was all the King needed. Fearing for his life, a huge witch-hunt got underway and swept the country.

The last main witch-hunt in Europe took place in Renfrewshire in 1697. Christian Shaw, the 11-year-old daughter of the Laird of Bargarran, accused a number of tenants and servants of bewitching her.

She was an ill child who spent a lot of her time with the local minister – who no doubt encouraged her in her accusations. Twenty people were accused on her evidence, and, seven people were executed.

With the coming of the age of enlightenment the idea of flying, shape-changing witches lost favour, and the Act was quietly dropped. But it came too late for Janet Horne, who was accused of turning her daughter into a donkey and riding her to witches sabbats. For this, she was burnt alive, the last person in Scotland to be executed for the crime of witchcraft.