Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 11 PAULA KEHOE AND THE WITCHES OF IRELAND

00:00:00.200 Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell, QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:05.200 I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases,

00:00:08.740 and we're bringing you this podcast because we want to tell you 0.61

00:00:11.580 about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted,

00:00:15.720 and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.

00:00:18.780 I'm Zoe Vendetotsi, and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches,

00:00:23.040 and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.

00:00:26.480 The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.

00:00:29.600 Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.

00:00:33.240 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

00:00:37.420 And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.

00:00:44.420 Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.

00:00:53.280 Hi, and welcome to episode 11 of Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:57.600 we start as ever by naming some of the women who were accused as witches in scotland so our witches

00:01:04.680 this week that we're going to be talking about and naming are firstly we've got dean weir of

00:01:10.060 edinburgh so she was female unmarried again ongoing theme here and she was executed after

00:01:17.760 a trial on the 6th of april 1670 and that's all we've got for her and then who else have we got

00:01:24.600 Clare. We've also got Margaret Allen. Margaret Allen was a woman who was accused of witchcraft

00:01:30.640 and we actually have a record of hers in 1661. The record dates from the court in 1661 and is dated

00:01:40.060 14th of November and what it says is that she'd been taken to the toll booth of Edinburgh

00:01:46.620 in relation to what's described as points of sorcery and witchcraft mentioned in her ditty.

00:01:53.860 So her ditty was the statement that was taken from her. And what was interesting about this case in particular that caught my eye was that they deserted the allegations against her for some reason.

00:02:08.160 i'm not sure why that was it doesn't record it in the notes but it says that she was ordained to be

00:02:14.060 put at liberty after finding that she wasn't guilty of being a witch and said and she had to

00:02:20.840 act in good behavior for all time coming and that she should never enter upon the boundaries of the

00:02:27.220 lands of new hall at any time coming under pain of death that's quite peculiar so it was like

00:02:34.380 they didn't try her and find her not guilty but then they they let her go with a warning exactly

00:02:40.140 exactly they let her go with a warning but also banished her from her own land from where she was 0.86

00:02:46.020 from they would have effectively sent her out and she would just be wandering until she sort of tried

00:02:50.760 to find another community that might accept her and as i said people might be very suspicious of

00:02:56.200 women turning up alone in new communities it wouldn't be long before further whispers would

00:03:01.440 start about them eh I wonder why they let her go though it's weird it doesn't record it just says

00:03:07.920 the diet was deserted pro loco et compore now we say in the modern day a trial has gone off we see

00:03:16.200 a diet has been adjourned pro loco et tempore but the old way it's recorded is that desertus the

00:03:23.040 diet pro loco et compore which just means that the matter is an end for the time being I suppose

00:03:30.260 it theoretically meant then as now that they could re-raise it again and ordained her to be of good

00:03:36.440 behaviour for all time coming and banished her so poor Margaret Allen was left to wander Scotland

00:03:44.060 having been accused of witchcraft never having come to trial never having there been any proof

00:03:49.520 against her and had been entirely taken out of her local community so that's a bit more we know

00:03:56.060 Margaret Allen of Edinburgh 1661 1661 I was about to say so when was that one because the third one

00:04:03.160 we've got is somebody from November 1579 and that's Bessie Dunlop from Ayrshire again this is

00:04:10.880 quite really quite vague just that she was female and unmarried and sadly she was executed after her

00:04:16.160 child well again that's three more women we can remember and we've got a great person to speak to

00:04:22.320 today Zoe and I know you might have a particular interest in a part of it because she talks about

00:04:27.980 one of the women having poppets having been found with poppets and I think you've done some writing

00:04:33.520 on that I have I wrote a book where there's a character who makes a poppet she's not exactly

00:04:39.620 a witch but she can foretell people's deaths or she thinks she can anyway she may just be mad

00:04:44.680 I think it's up to the reader but she makes a poppet though out of um what does she make it

00:04:49.140 of i think wax and human hair attractively okay well um we come to hear when we're speaking about

00:04:56.400 the witches of ireland and it's it's truly fascinating as we come to to speak about

00:05:01.380 the difference between scotland and ireland and the way the accusations occurred but we come to

00:05:08.120 hear of a poor woman and her daughter and she may only have been making toys for her daughter

00:05:12.460 rather than rather than puppets but we'll come to hear of that shortly so i'll let you introduce

00:05:18.240 our speaker today. Paula Kehoe is an Australian-born filmmaker living and working in the

00:05:24.500 Connemara Gale Tact in Ireland. Her work is informed by an interest in social justice,

00:05:29.880 the environment, language and culture. She's director, co-writer and co-producer of a new series

00:05:35.440 which we're going to be talking about today that she's made in collaboration with the producer and

00:05:40.340 co-writer Aisling Aylward. The six-part series is a Lagging Media production for TG4 and BBC

00:05:46.440 Northern Ireland. Hi Paula, it's lovely to meet you. Lovely to meet you too Zoe. Paula, we're

00:05:51.780 delighted to have you here today particularly because we know that you have been involved in

00:05:57.280 a series which you've been producing about witches I think since 2017. Can you tell us a wee bit about

00:06:03.540 that please? Sure, well Aisling Elwood in fact came up with this series probably even the year before

00:06:10.420 she was fascinated by a figure in Ireland named Biddy Early, I don't know if you guys have heard

00:06:15.560 of her. She lived in 1865. She's known as a wise woman, the wise woman of Clare. She was apparently

00:06:22.140 accused of being a witch. Now I say apparently because there's not a lot of evidence, but her 1.00

00:06:27.720 legend is writ large. Everyone knows Biddy Early in Ireland. That then expanded. Aisling is based

00:06:33.580 in Belfast. So she got interested in the cases of witchcraft accusations in the North because most

00:06:41.020 of them did happen in the north so when she came to me she had a six-part series it was

00:06:47.180 basically a drama series i suppose uh that she was thinking of developing as a documentary series

00:06:52.820 now i have to admit that initially i was reluctant because you spend many years immersed in

00:07:00.300 these subjects when you take on particularly a six-part series and i i thought do i actually

00:07:06.440 want to be immersed in this subject for that amount of time you know this sort of dark subject

00:07:10.700 But when I started to explore the stories a little further, the biggest question that came up for me was, how come these cases in Ireland, there were so few cases on one hand, but why did they just happen mostly in the north or there was one case in 1661 in a Puritan Cromwellian community in Yorl?

00:07:31.380 so that became the backdrop I suppose we redeveloped the series based on this

00:07:37.380 new lens I suppose which gave us a way also of looking at traditional beliefs in Gaelic Ireland

00:07:44.100 at looking at the process of colonization and plantation and why for example when there's so

00:07:50.420 much in common between Ireland and Scotland was there such a differential between the amount of

00:07:56.500 women who were persecuted as witches. Do you know who the women are? Can you tell us the women's

00:08:02.300 names that were affected? Yes, of course. Well, in our program, I mean, there were very few. And

00:08:08.240 in fact, most of them are actually in the series. But there was a case in 1655. A woman named Marion

00:08:15.340 Fisher was accused in Carrick, Fergus, that's in the north, for bewitching a man. But then it was

00:08:20.440 discovered that he died of natural causes. So she was pardoned, which is unusual, but it took two

00:08:25.960 years so you know i'm sure she didn't have a great time in the interim um well it's very lucky they

00:08:31.960 hadn't executed her first because they you know yes and she was still alive she was still alive

00:08:38.800 that's right that's right and that case is not very famous in fact we don't really cover it in

00:08:43.540 the series because it was a case it was it was she was pardoned which is very unusual as well

00:08:49.180 when someone's been accused at that time.

00:08:52.060 But after that, so in 1661,

00:08:54.620 one of the most famous cases in Ireland is Florence Newton. 0.68

00:08:58.380 Now she lived in Yall,

00:09:00.100 which was a Cromwellian Puritan community

00:09:02.560 in the Southeast of Ireland.

00:09:04.920 She basically asked for charity. 0.74

00:09:07.000 So she asked a young maid servant named Mary Longdon

00:09:10.060 for some food and she was refused.

00:09:13.240 And this was quite a big thing to be refused charity.

00:09:16.560 So she met Mary Longden at the well and she gave her a kiss, which was a bit of a malevolent kiss.

00:09:24.160 She said, Mary, Mary, I wish thee well, which I presume could be interpreted as the opposite. 0.96

00:09:29.000 But Mary Longden then proceeded to have fits.

00:09:32.540 She had spectral visions. 0.97

00:09:33.920 She believed that Florence Newton had bewitched her.

00:09:36.500 So Florence Newton was accused of witchcraft and she was interrogated over quite a long period of time.

00:09:43.140 she kissed one of the prison guards and he subsequently died so her case got more and

00:09:49.680 more complicated she was subjected to torture by using an awl which is used for leather work so

00:09:56.460 it's quite a very you know big pin basically and she died during the interrogation so she was in

00:10:04.220 her 60s she was poor she was not under the protection of a man so she didn't really have a

00:10:09.340 chance. Just for context, in Ireland at the time, you know, we're looking at not the beginning of,

00:10:15.680 but the process of colonization is well underway after the Cromwellian Wars. Outside of Yorl,

00:10:21.500 which was a walled community, it was the collapse after the collapse of the Gaelic Order. There was

00:10:26.480 a lot of oppression of the native population. The population would have mostly been Irish-speaking

00:10:33.020 and would have had a traditional belief system that would have been quite different to some of

00:10:38.360 the beliefs I suppose that came in through the Reformation and the recasting I suppose of the

00:10:43.840 supernatural and the other world as a place where the devil and demons existed. We would have had a 0.60

00:10:48.660 tradition of the band Fassa or the wise woman. Goddess worship was still quite prevalent with a

00:10:55.660 kind of a layer of Catholicism over the top. So you know this idea of Mary and Bridget and all of

00:11:01.960 the saints they would have been kind of incarnations of an earlier form of goddess worship in Ireland

00:11:07.660 it was quite strong. So that gives us a kind of a way of, I suppose, interrogating or asking the

00:11:14.960 questions as to what are the possible reasons why the witch hunts didn't take off in the rest of

00:11:19.780 Ireland? Because while there were very few cases anywhere in Ireland, in the north as well, they

00:11:25.520 were all in either Puritan or Ulster Scots communities. So is it a theory that because

00:11:32.740 in the communities the women were already steeped in a culture of wise women being acceptable or

00:11:41.240 perhaps appropriate that the idea of the witch didn't hold the same negative connotation.

00:11:49.120 That's right and I think too I mean the concept of witch in the way that we understand it when

00:11:54.900 we're talking about the witch trials it didn't really exist in the same way. There was you know

00:11:59.920 or this figure of the Kailoch. 1.00

00:12:02.480 Now, a Kailoch can be just an old woman. 0.61

00:12:06.660 It's just a word for an older woman.

00:12:08.800 But there is this mythological Kailoch figure in the mythology

00:12:12.700 that is kind of a creation myth.

00:12:15.560 She creates the landscape.

00:12:16.860 She was there when the mountains were formed and the rivers were formed.

00:12:20.840 It has biblical connotations.

00:12:22.880 There's also the Morrigan, who was a warrior goddess and a shapeshifter,

00:12:26.920 and she became a crow.

00:12:28.080 And in the mythology, for example, in the Tyne, we have Queen Maeve, who was a wild woman, and she was not a good woman.

00:12:36.800 You know, they were kind of bawdy, lusty, independent, uncontrollable figures.

00:12:42.580 And so I think it's easy to romanticize it, perhaps. 0.99

00:12:46.480 And there's been suggestions that women had more agency under the Gaelic order and under Brehon law.

00:12:53.860 I don't really think that's the case.

00:12:56.080 That doesn't seem to be the case.

00:12:57.660 However, there was something that women in particular had access to in the other world that may have protected them in some way or they could find protection in it because it was both respected and feared.

00:13:12.100 Ah, OK. So because of that respect and because of that fear, people might be less likely to cast aspersions about them.

00:13:21.880 True. And also, though, this idea of the other world, everyone believed in it, where the fairies lived. It was a parallel dimension. You know, it wasn't like Tinkerbell type of fairy. There were all kinds of people there. It was the realm of the gods. It was a place that people lived with. The devil didn't live there. It wasn't a place full of demons. It wasn't an underworld. It was an other world.

00:13:47.180 So it existed in a parallel dimension.

00:13:49.880 Portals to it were in the landscape.

00:13:52.020 They were in holy wells, in hills, under the earth.

00:13:56.440 And it goes back to the ancient legend of the Tuatha de Danann.

00:14:00.140 You know, when the Malaysians came to Ireland,

00:14:02.580 the Tuatha de Danann went underground. 1.00

00:14:05.640 Sorry, I was just going to say, because I'm really quite taken with that,

00:14:08.440 that one thing you just said there was there was no devil in the fairy world.

00:14:12.760 No, no.

00:14:14.000 The devil wasn't part of that.

00:14:16.640 pantheon of characters. No, fairies weren't exactly like Tinkerbell. There were good fairies 0.95

00:14:22.520 and bad fairies, but it wasn't such a binary dichotomy, I suppose. It was a complicated

00:14:27.880 relationship between, I suppose, people in the landscape. You could interpret it in that way as

00:14:32.780 well. There were ways of behaving towards the landscape encoded in these beliefs. For example,

00:14:38.480 certain wild areas where you didn't mess with them. If there was a circle of hawthorn trees,

00:14:44.920 for example you didn't cultivate that area you left it because this was an area where the fairies

00:14:51.260 lived now how do you interpret that today perhaps there were reasons for that perhaps to do with

00:14:57.400 biodiversity I don't know I mean that's me probably making things up there but I would

00:15:02.280 like to think that there were was an understanding of the environment that perhaps we couldn't even

00:15:07.880 possibly understand today because we're quite disconnected from it yeah certainly I think I

00:15:16.080 mean you only have to go camping to make you more appreciative of the land around us and to make us

00:15:24.360 more appreciative of what we see and what we hear even when we're out camping yeah for a weekend

00:15:29.340 you can imagine living on the land and in the land in that very practical way where you weren't

00:15:35.480 separated from it being a whole different matter that people were very in tune with what they heard

00:15:40.880 and how they interpreted it exactly and water is life wells were places where you could get clean

00:15:48.100 water and that the water would have different qualities depending on the land depending on how

00:15:52.940 it was filtered whether it came through the earth so there was a lot of you know ways of respecting

00:15:58.160 the landscape I mean look that's one way of thinking about it but I suppose through this

00:16:02.560 process I've started to develop an appreciation for that or perhaps I'm just attracted to that

00:16:09.100 idea and I think a lot of a lot of the kind of new pagan worship which is associated with

00:16:15.360 you know an idea of respecting the environment I think that that's trying to reconnect with that

00:16:20.400 idea. We've had Julian Goodyear talking on about pagans sort of connecting with the history of

00:16:26.320 women that were accused as witches and saying actually that wasn't the right connection to

00:16:30.540 make. It wasn't there, but perhaps paganism reaches back before that, the times of the persecution.

00:16:37.420 I would like to come on and speak about the television series in a further bit. I think

00:16:41.860 you've mentioned a couple of women. Were there any more women that you'd like to name?

00:16:45.860 Yes, I'll just list them for you if you like. So then we're looking at a case in 1688 in Boston,

00:16:52.060 and the reason we're looking at this case is because it is about an Irish-speaking woman who

00:16:58.360 was living in Boston Puritan community there as an indentured servant. Her name was Anne Glover.

00:17:05.520 It's believed she lost her husband in the Caribbean as an indentured servant, although

00:17:10.440 this can't be proven. But we know that she was in Boston as a widow with a young daughter in the

00:17:16.860 1680s. And she was working for the family of John Goodwin. And she was, as an Irish speaker,

00:17:23.900 English was her second language, so she really didn't have a lot of English, which may have made

00:17:29.440 life a little bit difficult. However, she was involved with menial work. When the daughter of

00:17:35.400 John Goodwin, Martha Goodwin, she accused Anne's daughter, Mary, of stealing laundry, and there was 1.00

00:17:42.580 an argument that ensued. And from that, Martha then believed that she had been bewitched by

00:17:49.220 Goody Glover, Anne Glover. And in fact, that her three brothers and sisters were also bewitched.

00:17:55.620 So the four Goodwin children. So you were saying that the four Goodwin children were said to have

00:18:01.340 been bewitched by her. That's right. And this just came from an initial allegation of the theft of

00:18:07.200 laundry. It is, yeah. To which Goody Glover objected and she defended herself and her daughter.

00:18:13.680 But then this is what played out. So what happened, you know, as an Irish speaker,

00:18:18.260 she was a catholic too so this wouldn't have been viewed very positively in a puritan community in

00:18:24.360 boston um it was a very controlled environment i mean if people dozed in church they would be hit

00:18:29.760 with a stick it was a very very very you know fierce culture of control and perhaps this

00:18:35.340 community could be even seen as more extreme in terms of puritanism than others because that's

00:18:39.960 why they went there in the first place was to establish a kind of a new order so she was hung

00:18:45.780 on Boston Common as a witch and you know when she was being interrogated she was actually

00:18:53.440 assessed psychologically by six doctors to see if she was in inverted commas crazed in her

00:18:59.440 intellectuals. Did I catch you correctly there she was actually assessed by six doctors?

00:19:04.880 She was. What was the reason for that? Well you see she was an Irish speaker so therefore they

00:19:11.500 couldn't probably make head nor tail of a lot of what she was saying even in English so they might

00:19:17.960 have just thought she was mad. And so they got doctors to assess her to assess that she wasn't

00:19:24.180 mad and then on finding out that she wasn't mad they executed her as a witch. They did and in fact 0.87

00:19:30.260 she also was reciting the Lord's Prayer in Irish and this was interpreted as satanic incantations.

00:19:38.540 Yeah, it is tragic. It is tragic. So that case gives us a lens on the colonial context as well. And also the linguistic divide. There is a memorial plaque in Boston that suggests that she was a Catholic martyr. I don't think that was the case. It just happened that she was Catholic.

00:20:00.180 I see. There's a great irony there in having so many doctors trying to assess somebody to see whether they're mad or not and then finding out they're not mad, they execute them as a witch. 0.71

00:20:09.460 They should really have been looking at themselves and assessing whether or not they were mad.

00:20:13.700 Well, exactly, exactly. And they also found puppets, little puppets that she had made out of cloth.

00:20:20.680 And so there was this association, possible association with voodoo.

00:20:24.720 However, you know, she could have been making them for her child.

00:20:28.280 You know, they could have been child's dolls.

00:20:29.720 They could have been anything.

00:20:31.080 But these kinds of little icons, I'd say they would have been quite common at the time.

00:20:36.520 I don't know that you could project any kind of demonic associations onto them.

00:20:41.260 So one way or another, the evidence stacked against her.

00:20:45.720 Absolutely terrible.

00:20:46.620 So I think we've covered maybe about three or four women that were convicted as witches.

00:20:51.380 How many of them were there in total that you're looking at?

00:20:54.620 We look at two other cases.

00:20:56.360 One was in Antrim in 1698.

00:20:58.560 An unknown peasant woman was accused of bewitching a child,

00:21:02.740 but it never went to court because she was strangled and burned by a mob.

00:21:06.200 So there was just mob justice.

00:21:08.220 There was no trial.

00:21:09.620 That's right.

00:21:10.180 That was an extrajudicial killing of a suspected witch in Antrim town in 1698.

00:21:16.440 That case, obviously, we don't know anything.

00:21:18.340 We don't know the woman's name.

00:21:19.900 We know very little about her.

00:21:21.500 And so then we come to the biggest trial in Ireland in terms of witchcraft trials, which was in Ireland McGee in 1711.

00:21:30.040 And eight women and one man were accused of being witches. 0.90

00:21:33.700 So it's a classic case of a younger woman, which happens a lot.

00:21:38.160 This is a dynamic in many of these cases that we're exploring, is there's a younger woman, often a servant, who accuses an older woman, often a beggar.

00:21:45.300 basically an elderly widow of a presbyterian minister who was staying in her son's house

00:21:50.560 started to have spectral visions she was having demonic apparitions and suddenly she died so

00:21:57.860 this was interpreted as a bewitchment but at the time there was no one under the um under the

00:22:04.180 spotlight for the crime if you like a visitor comes to stay with her son's daughter and she

00:22:10.040 starts to experience supernatural disturbances. And she accuses eight women from the surrounding 0.98

00:22:17.920 area of bewitching her. So she accuses, I'll name the women, Janet Carson. There's a lot of 1.00

00:22:25.340 Janets in this list. Janet Carson, Janet Seller, her daughter, Elizabeth Seller, Catherine

00:22:31.920 McCalmond, Janet Mean, Janet Latimer, Janet Miller, and Margaret Mitchell. And later,

00:22:39.120 William Seller who's the husband and father to the convicted women Janet and Elizabeth Seller

00:22:44.220 he was later executed as a witch so just to tell you what happened they were all of these women

00:22:52.760 were either disabled they were old they were poor they were hard drinking hard smoking ladies they

00:23:00.440 were wild women they weren't executed as witches they were convicted of bewitching Mary Dunbar 0.73

00:23:07.800 but they were not convicted of the murder of Anna Holtridge.

00:23:11.460 So therefore their punishment was a year in jail

00:23:15.680 and then four sessions in the pillory in the market,

00:23:19.180 which is in the stocks, where people could throw things at them.

00:23:22.620 And in fact, one woman lost an eye in the process.

00:23:24.540 I mean, it's interesting about that.

00:23:26.360 Even over in Ireland, when people were being convicted of the crime,

00:23:31.400 they weren't receiving a mandatory execution.

00:23:34.820 it appears that there were lesser sentences that could be carried out on them that's true ireland

00:23:41.700 was under british law there were more barriers to executing a witch than there were in scotland i

00:23:46.840 believe you'd be probably more of an expert on this claire but i believe that it wasn't as easy

00:23:51.700 if you like to carry out the witchcraft act that we're talking about in in our podcast the witchcraft

00:23:58.500 act gave the mandatory sentence and the mandatory sentence was execution so there were no bars to

00:24:04.560 it. In fact, that was what you got. Some people weren't executed. And we've had an example before

00:24:10.440 of someone being described as half guilty. That seems like a little bit of a dodge, but they

00:24:15.280 managed to escape being executed. But certainly from what you've said to me in Ireland, it's quite

00:24:21.080 clear that it wasn't a mandatory execution. No, but Mary Dunbar, who made the accusations,

00:24:27.680 she died three weeks later. And so William Seller, who was the husband and father to two of the

00:24:33.340 convicted women he was he was um he was executed for witchcraft which caused the accuser's death

00:24:40.600 he was and andrew snedden very recently um andrew snedden a historian in ireland he recently

00:24:47.540 found this out so this evidence has really just come to light so this was a male witch who was

00:24:52.820 executed um yeah we find i mean we've spoken about the numbers in scotland before and the fact that

00:24:59.140 Across Europe, it was about 80%.

00:25:01.020 That's obviously broadly, and some higher, some was lower,

00:25:03.900 but about 80% over Europe.

00:25:06.120 In Scotland, it was about 85%, so even more were women,

00:25:10.960 and possibly appears the split would be even higher in Ireland, 0.98

00:25:14.900 albeit so few women, thankfully so few women,

00:25:18.180 executed as witches in Ireland. 0.98

00:25:20.240 We're obviously at Witches of Scotland

00:25:22.100 trying to get a national memorial for the women and men

00:25:26.760 that were convicted as witches.

00:25:28.200 was there any attempt or has there been any attempt to memorialise those women killed as

00:25:33.420 witches in Ireland? Not in a collective way, no. However, in Ireland of Magee, which was the biggest

00:25:39.440 case where there were eight women and one man, there was an effort to establish a memorial there.

00:25:46.280 However, a local councillor objected to the memorial and he believed that it would become

00:25:51.960 a shrine to paganism and he remained to be convinced that the women were not actually

00:25:57.320 guilty of devil worship. So he thought that people would then come as pagans to worship

00:26:05.420 there or something? Was that the idea? I have no idea. I suppose that you can presume from that

00:26:12.860 that he still believes in the idea of witches. To be perfectly honest as well, looking at all

00:26:19.820 of these cases, you know, for example, if you do a Google search on Florence Newton, you'll see the

00:26:25.080 witch of your Florence Newton and you know there's all they use lithographs of you know various

00:26:30.480 different depictions of the court cases at the time with this woman pointing and all the men

00:26:35.840 around looking horrified so you know we would really like to add some new narratives into the

00:26:42.380 algorithm as in just the hashtag Florence Newton not a witch a powerful woman just so that people

00:26:48.120 have alternative stories that they could find in the machine because I find that really problematic

00:26:53.260 that she's still called that, that that hasn't been addressed.

00:26:57.440 And perhaps, too, because we're looking at the history of colonisation,

00:27:00.620 I suppose, as well, that those narratives are not,

00:27:03.840 they don't come into the kind of history of women

00:27:06.480 or the studies of women in Ireland because they're seen as kind of separate.

00:27:10.740 Yeah, I mean, we called our campaign Witches of Scotland

00:27:14.040 and people were quite surprised.

00:27:16.340 You know, these women weren't witches, and that's absolutely my point.

00:27:19.300 They weren't witches, but they've been convicted as people 0.61

00:27:21.960 under the Witchcraft Act.

00:27:23.840 So they were known as witches.

00:27:25.480 And my point is, we really want to change that narrative

00:27:28.440 and we want to get these women pardoned

00:27:30.160 so we can change the phrase, 0.99

00:27:31.980 the witches of Scotland to the women of Scotland. 0.55

00:27:35.960 Exactly.

00:27:36.760 And I was really taken by the story you told of Lillias Adie.

00:27:41.340 Just the idea of humanising her.

00:27:45.040 You know, I can see her in my mind's eye now as a young woman.

00:27:48.240 And then when you put that in context of what happened to her,

00:27:51.380 it's just it's really difficult to believe so you know the idea of reclaiming these women's names

00:27:58.000 now is very powerful we feel so we feel it's important now you are going to be bringing this

00:28:05.580 to us on the screen as it were you've got the six-part show can you tell us a wee bit more

00:28:11.100 about it where we can see it things like that sure so the series is called Mrawa Locked the

00:28:17.440 persecuted. And Mural Wallacht is a strange word. It's a word I found in an old dictionary,

00:28:23.160 and it translates as womenish ways in the sense that, you know, you can't quite trust them. 0.76

00:28:28.420 So because that was sort of, I suppose, the view of women at the time. Also, it's just a really 0.67

00:28:34.060 lovely, it's just really nice to say in Irish, Mural Wallacht. But the series will be examining

00:28:39.840 the cases in Ireland, but also looking at the context of Gaelic Ireland and why the witch hunts

00:28:45.280 didn't take off in the same way in Ireland.

00:28:47.880 It's quite an exception in Europe.

00:28:49.600 So we have a lot of people theorising about this.

00:28:52.340 There's many, many different views.

00:28:55.760 The series will be broadcast in 2021, probably around Halloween,

00:28:59.640 which is quite interesting, of course.

00:29:01.900 A series about anything to do with witches will be broadcast at Halloween,

00:29:04.880 but I like to think that this will give people something

00:29:07.400 that they weren't quite expecting.

00:29:09.460 And it will be on TGCARA, which is the Irish language TV channel,

00:29:13.280 So hopefully there might be a possibility that we'll be able to see it at some point, be it put online or something like that?

00:29:20.280 Absolutely. Yes, it will be put online.

00:29:23.220 And also, you know, Scotland's just become a lot bigger in the series because we realise that there's the Ulster-Scots connection.

00:29:30.560 But there's so much in common between Scotland and Ireland culturally and with regard to traditional beliefs.

00:29:36.960 But also there's this religious divide, I suppose.

00:29:40.400 And then with plantation, we had so many Scottish people coming in as plantation people in Northern

00:29:45.640 Ireland.

00:29:46.360 So the connection is so strong.

00:29:48.040 In order to give us a clear picture of what happened during the witch hunts, going to

00:29:52.520 Scotland was really important.

00:29:54.060 And it started to become, I hate to say that Scotland's the mother ship, but in a way,

00:29:58.480 we felt that we couldn't tell this story without speaking to people in Scotland.

00:30:02.200 and particularly hearing that there is a campaign

00:30:05.720 to clear the women's names, to pardon them.

00:30:08.720 It felt like it was really, really amazing timing.

00:30:11.300 I was so delighted to hear about the work that you were doing

00:30:14.140 and I just felt it was so interesting.

00:30:16.960 And being of Irish descent myself,

00:30:19.200 I was very interested to see the very different way

00:30:22.240 that the allegations of witchcraft were dealt with in Ireland

00:30:25.460 than in Scotland and what the various reasons for that might be,

00:30:29.500 both in Southern Ireland and in Northern Ireland.

00:30:33.140 Am I right in saying that in Southern Ireland

00:30:35.160 there was only one recorded instance of witchcraft?

00:30:39.920 That's right, yes.

00:30:41.300 I mean, there is the Alice Keitler case

00:30:43.420 where her servant Petronella de Meath was executed,

00:30:48.020 but that was a heresy case.

00:30:49.860 It's quite incredible, such a short distance across the water

00:30:52.920 of what was happening in Scotland.

00:30:54.720 Well, true.

00:30:55.400 And also, that was a Cromwellian community.

00:30:57.560 That was a walled community. 0.72

00:30:59.420 It was a colonial enclave to keep the Gaelic native population out.

00:31:05.040 I really, really look forward to the programme to look at the different theories that are no doubt abound as to why that is.

00:31:13.020 Why people thought Southern Ireland and the native Gaelic people of Ireland were immune from the allegations of witchcraft.

00:31:21.140 It seems bizarre, but it definitely seems something, because it's so unusual throughout the whole of Europe, 0.90

00:31:26.580 It definitely seems something very, very worthwhile.

00:31:29.300 So I'm absolutely delighted that you're doing your programme

00:31:31.820 and we're going to be able to find out about that.

00:31:42.300 Once again this week, thank you so much for listening

00:31:44.880 to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:31:47.180 We're really hitting some really good numbers for people listening,

00:31:50.340 but it's important as ever when you listen, if you can,

00:31:53.720 please recommend us to other people.

00:31:55.080 please share on social media and please rate us because, of course, the more listeners,

00:32:00.300 the more people that are engaged with the campaign, the higher the chance of success we have.

00:32:06.600 If you'd like to learn more about the Witches of Scotland, please subscribe wherever you get your

00:32:11.080 podcasts. Sign up for our mailing list at www.witchesofscotland.com to keep updated with

00:32:19.020 the campaign. On that site, you'll be able to find how to link with us on Twitter, Facebook

00:32:24.760 and Instagram.

Witches of Scotland - December 06, 2020

EPISODE 11 PAULA KEHOE AND THE WITCHES OF IRELAND

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