00:00:00.160Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast
00:00:10.120because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted
00:00:15.240and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.780I'm Zoe Vendetotsi and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches
00:00:22.780and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.500The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.420And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over 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.
00:00:53.800Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:56.940quite unbelievably this is actually episode 17 which i think claire and i are both quite shocked
00:01:03.220that we've done so many episodes thank you so much for listening because our numbers are going
00:01:07.300up every week which is great because it means the campaign has a much greater sense of idea of
00:01:12.620success so thank you very much for listening so this week we're going to kick off the way that we
00:01:17.660we often do where we're going to talk about some of the witches that were charged and executed so
00:01:24.820Claire can you give us some details about the witches for this week please? Yes sure the women0.99
00:01:29.260killed as witches I've looked up three from different sources the first is Marion Dwin now
00:01:36.600I don't quite know how to pronounce it the surname is spelt D-W-N-E so I don't know whether that's a
00:01:44.140recorded spelling error and it's just been recorded in history as that there's been some kind of
00:01:49.620mistake or that is actually her name. We know that in 1594 she was sent to trial as a witch
00:01:58.940and what's recorded about her was, and again this is something that we find very often,
00:02:04.680she was female, she was unmarried and unfortunately for Marianne when she went to trial she was
00:02:11.580convicted and she was thereafter executed as a witch, so strangled and then burned. And the only
00:02:18.640other thing that we know is that trial took place in Long Nidri. That's all the information we have
00:02:24.780about Marion. Another woman that we want to tell you about is one that I looked at and read about0.87
00:02:31.020in Heather Upfield's booklet. This is the booklet we've spoken about before. It's published by
00:02:36.560Kilwinning Heritage and Heather Upfield has written it. It's called Five Women of Kilwinning.
00:02:42.400What is known about this woman, the information that Heather has gathered together, is that her
00:02:47.920name is Margaret Isset, I-S-S-E-T. There's very little information available about Margaret.
00:02:56.720It said that she had a local trial, which I think would have been in Kilwinning, and
00:03:01.720the trial ended on the 30th of April, 1650. And that trial ended, and it says in brackets,
00:03:09.640she having made her confession so Margaret actually made her confession that was recorded
00:03:18.920in the minutes of the presbytery of the Kirk and Heather actually has copied out for us to see
00:03:26.160the part confession of Margaret and it goes in the following way sick like of Margaret Issa
00:03:34.780Inkle Winning who had confessed ilk in one of them to their guiltiness of the sin of witchcraft
00:03:40.740and after examination of the foresaid confessions they are found relevant to be recommended for
00:03:47.880issuing for a commission to put them to assize. So what that was saying was that she'd made her
00:03:54.840confession at that point and as a result of her confession she was to be put to trial
00:03:59.900and there isn't any further record of Margaret Isset
00:07:06.540just for purposes of our podcast I don't think I'll bother reading them out. The final woman today
00:07:12.660that was killed as a witch was a woman called Catherine Muirhead. She went to trial in 1593.0.51
00:07:21.080The last woman we have to speak about today who was killed as a witch was Catherine Muirhead.
00:07:26.760We know even less about her than we usually know Zoe. We don't even know where the place was that
00:07:33.300she was executed. We only know her name. We know that she went to trial in 1593. We know that she
00:07:39.720is female, unmarried, and after trial she was executed. That's all. So Marion Down, Margaret0.78
00:07:48.240Isset, and Catherine Muirhead are the women that we remember today.
00:07:51.560one of the things that happened this week on social media with the twitter account was that
00:08:05.580one of our long-term listeners loretta mulholland posed an interesting question via a tweet claire
00:08:10.700yes it's a question that we've asked before and we've talked about before but again it's so
00:08:16.000interesting that people respond to it and the ways in which they respond. And Loretta
00:08:21.380tweeted, if you'd been alive in the 16th or 17th century, would you have been accused of being a
00:08:28.000witch? Great question in episode 16 of Witches of Scotland. So we just spoke about it in the last
00:08:34.100episode. And again, loads of people responded. So Claire, why do you think it is that so many
00:08:41.660women would say now when asked that question and we know this we've got tons of evidence of women
00:08:46.480getting back in touch with us about this and about people we've spoken to in actual real life that0.98
00:08:51.360have expressed this idea why do you think so many women think if it was now and there were witch1.00
00:08:56.840trials now i would definitely be accused as a witch i think that it's because the woman that
00:09:04.420resonates with our strong, maybe independently minded feminist, that there are things in the
00:09:13.040modern day that would have been the absolute antithesis of what the church wanted from you
00:09:18.780as a woman at that time. So I suppose we're bringing our 21st century ethos and overlaying
00:09:25.800it on the top of what it would have been like at that time. But of course, if we had been alive at
00:09:30.820that time we would have been very different I mean there would have been no such concept of
00:09:35.760feminism I suppose we would have been living in a world that was completely differently constructed
00:09:40.580yeah I know and I think it I sort of on the one hand you and I've obviously talked about this at
00:09:46.680length in the past about whether we think that we would have been accused as witches and one of the
00:09:51.380things that I said was well if you're if you're looking at sort of like the identifiers of that
00:09:56.140as being somebody who's like maybe mouthy and kind of strong and is annoying to people then0.56
00:10:00.620And yes, I totally would have been, you know, executed as a witch.
00:10:03.640But like, what would I have been like in those days?
00:10:07.280You know, would I have just kept my head down and just, you know, behaved properly, you know, properly as obviously in inverted commas?
00:10:13.220You know, it's really hard to tell because we just don't know really what women acted like in those days.
00:10:20.600You know, we've got some interesting conversation coming up with the forthcoming guest that you'll hear in the forthcoming weeks where we have some information about one particular woman who was accused.
00:10:29.780and it sounds to me I think maybe this is where the discomfort I have with this conversation is
00:10:35.080sometimes is that a lot of the time it seems to be that it wasn't necessarily that women
00:10:39.560were these like remarkable strident feminists that we sort of think of now it might have just
00:10:46.140been that they just were strange in some way or that there was women in their community that for1.00
00:10:51.300whatever reason you know were against them and were gossipy and you know took their power from
00:10:58.180taking away somebody else's power so it's kind of a strange one isn't it Claire yeah I mean I mean
00:11:02.900sadly we do know that that some people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time
00:11:07.860yeah we know that people were outsiders in the sense that they perhaps didn't have
00:11:13.440the support of the community we know that people were called witches for reasons of pettiness
00:11:22.900and once an allegation had took hold it was very difficult to shake but we didn't need to be0.75
00:11:30.860bullshit or loud or opinionated or anything like that for those allegations to have happened and
00:11:38.300really the totally sad thing about it is when we say now do you think that you would have been0.99
00:11:43.460killed as a witch back then the answer to that probably is yes because it's as likely as any of
00:11:49.740us that would have been killed as a witch back then it didn't really matter what you yeah what
00:11:54.420you brought to things you were you were under suspicion of you know acting in a way which0.58
00:12:01.240wasn't godly that just must have been horrific so maybe really the criteria then was you know
00:12:07.880would you have been accused of being a witch really all you really needed to have was just0.66
00:12:12.240you know what female anatomy you know that to the extent that that might have been like the one0.86
00:12:18.120piece of criteria was you're a woman and and as long as you were a woman you were unsafe you know1.00
00:12:23.620indeed and the reason for that was of course Julian Goodyear told us about it much earlier0.87
00:12:28.760was that they believed that women were less able to fend off the devil that they were weaker
00:12:37.020yeah or therefore they wouldn't be able to resist the devil's advances and the devil would be able
00:12:43.440to trick them into doing his bidding and you know it was all based on the fact that men would be much
00:12:50.560more likely to be able to resist the devil and that's why that's why it was particularly women0.76
00:12:56.940that were got so underlying it was the clear understanding is that women were not as
00:13:05.180intellectually able as men to resist the devil that was the underlying theory of all and of
00:13:13.000course as Julian Goodyear said because the devil was a man then you know there was this whole0.93
00:13:19.280perverse sexuality wrapped up in it as well that of course women would want to have sex with the0.99
00:13:26.600devil or the devil would want to have sex with women you know that that that added again to the0.99
00:13:31.140narrative of course why it would be a woman because the devil was always a man. Yeah of course and0.99
00:13:36.920it's just just that's why I think it still resonates as you used that word which I think
00:13:40.780really good for this it really still resonates with women because we're not in a position where
00:13:45.340women can just kind of do their own thing and be quite happy with that we both know that quite
00:13:51.220often when you raise your head above the parapet in different ways particularly unfortunately with0.70
00:13:55.580social media and we all know that sort of the problems with social media and anonymity and
00:14:00.920that people feel emboldened by being you know not in the same room as somebody else but and all the0.99
00:14:06.620nonsense that's spoken on social media that that is the playground now where women can be just
00:14:12.320horribly attacked and it tends to you know it's not just i disagree with your idea or you know i
00:14:18.740don't you've got no understanding of what you talk of it's not just that it's that often it's
00:14:23.160accompanied by really really grotesque sort of sexual commentary and you know violence threats
00:14:29.660of violence things like that we see it happening again and again and again particularly played out
00:14:34.840on social media so I think that's something that we'll come back to maybe in later episodes but I
00:14:40.000think for me I think that's why so many women connect with this idea is because we still our0.81
00:14:45.340coat is still on a shaky peg in many ways yes we might not actually be strangled and burned you
00:14:50.740know but we're still not feeling completely at ease and stable in our position in society
00:14:57.420indeed and when you say yes we're not strangled and burned the unfortunate thing is of course
00:15:02.240women are much more likely to be victims of violence in some settings
00:15:08.540we're more likely to be victims of violence such as in the domestic setting
00:15:13.340so you know there is again still there is still a fear that exists in women
00:15:20.320I think that's that's the underlying resonance
00:15:23.800that keeps shuddering through the generations is you know this fear that as a as a woman that
00:15:28.960you're not entirely safe and you should be but you're not and I think that's what what clicks
00:15:34.060with women is the fact that at any moment because of your sex you're in a vulnerable position yeah0.97
00:15:41.240there was a thing on twitter where somebody had discussed with their boyfriend how they didn't
00:15:48.780feel safe walking down the road and he was amazed that they didn't feel safe walking down a street
00:15:55.840on any given day and that they'd got sort of ideas about how if someone came up to them they
00:16:01.820would clench their key between their fingers to make a makeshift sort of implement if someone
00:16:08.000tried to attack them or and their partner was absolutely amazed that they thought this they0.86
00:16:12.920didn't realize that that this was what went through women's heads and again there was an
00:16:16.920outpouring of women saying yeah we think that all the time we're weird all the time we think about
00:16:21.880when we're walking alone down a dark street if someone is following us we're we're worried about
00:16:27.340that that level of underlying fear is is an odd thing to live with yeah so I think I can completely
00:16:35.600see why there's just an immediate connection for women with this with this issue and with
00:16:41.000understanding what had happened in the past and and thinking about it in more clear terms than
00:16:45.820we're brought up thinking about it I think I think that's why it's so interesting to people
00:16:49.780you've said before that there's no what's what was the quote about justice that there's no
00:16:54.340no time limit on justice yeah i think that's why people connect with it i hope so i hope so well
00:17:00.780i hope everyone out there who is listening does connect with it and and supports the idea that
00:17:06.760we should have justice for these women yeah i'm sure us talking you're you're already halfway
00:17:13.900so we can now lead on to this week's guest who is absolutely fascinating and knows a great deal
00:17:27.980about these issues that we're talking about Claire would you like to introduce our guest
00:17:31.760yes we are joined today by the fabulous Karen Strang she is an artist who has for a long time
00:17:39.620been involved in the questions of what it was like for women at the time of the witch trials
00:17:47.540to have been alive and what they would have felt what they would have seen and she has considered
00:17:54.840all these things and turned them into amazing pieces of visual art her artwork I have only
00:18:01.480been able to see so far in a book that she has sent me called the burn and the tide and it's a
00:18:07.620great book because it not only shows Karen's work but there are also interviews with her and with
00:18:13.400other people who were involved in the process and I've really really enjoyed it and without further
00:18:19.300ado let's introduce you to the fabulous Karen Strang. Welcome Karen. Oh thank you so much for
00:18:25.940inviting me on I think your podcasts are fantastic and the whole project is amazing so I'm delighted
00:18:32.520to be in this talk today. Can you tell our listeners a wee bit about what you do and who
00:18:39.180you are? Sure, so I'm a visual artist, I trained as a painter and I've been involved in looking at
00:18:46.500the theme of Scottish witchcraft and Scottish witchcraft trials for decades now, that's how old
00:18:52.520I am. So in the mid-1990s I got the opportunity of working with a group of other local artists in
00:19:00.620the Stirling area, or a project in the toll booth, what was the old toll booth, before
00:19:05.540it was redone as a fantastic music space. And we got into the building and it triggered
00:19:12.800these ideas of women who had been imprisoned. And then that's when the research really got
00:19:18.500off the ground. I had a look at the various trial records for Stirling at the time. And
00:19:25.000And really, that was the, if I could say, inspiration for continuing along that vein of work throughout.
00:19:31.960So although I do other types of painting and other types of installation and video in the past, I've always come back to the witchcraft trials and particularly the local witchcraft trials.
00:19:45.020I grew up in the central belt of Scotland and the place is basically hoaching with witchcraft trials.
00:19:50.640But, of course, I'm that generation where we never really talked about it.
00:19:55.360It wasn't on the curriculum at school.
00:19:59.800And it's really just, I think, in the last 15 years that more and more information has been emerging slowly.
00:20:08.900So I grew up most of the time, I say, because I've moved around as a child, in Clutmanningshire.
00:20:14.880And that's a place that is really so many witchcraft trials that are coming to light in what is the smallest county in Scotland.
00:20:24.120And it's a very good place to start on the research because it's, in a sense, confined within a small space so that the research information is within the sort of boundary of maybe, say, 10 miles all around as the pro flies.
00:20:41.160And I thought originally, I'm going to stick with that.
00:20:43.960However, as you'll know, these trials did spread over into what was then different parishes.
00:20:50.700And then I found that I was looking at West Fife because obviously Alaw was on the 1st of 4th
00:20:56.220and then you travel down towards Curus and Toriburn and Newmills and across the water to Bowness.
00:21:04.360And all these places had connections with various witchcraft trials.
00:21:10.860To go back to the beginning, I have to mention that the person that really inspired me to go back and do some really fulsome research on the Cutman and Shire witchcraft trials is the late Jeanette Archibald.
00:21:24.900She was an historian, a playwright, a curator and born and bred in Alawa.
00:21:31.820And she was very, very passionate about bringing voice back to these women.
00:21:36.480And I think if she was alive today, she would certainly be one of the people on the forefront working alongside you to get some memorial for these women.
00:21:48.700And it's her spirit that's kind of been driving me on, really, to continue.
00:23:25.060When I say research, we're not doing it academically.
00:23:28.080We're doing it as creatives, as artists.
00:23:31.420So the first thing we did was we went to the sites that we felt would maybe explain to us something of the feelings that these women might have felt.
00:24:36.260could you describe what you work in I mean you said you trained as a painter so are these paintings
00:24:41.200talking about yes so I returned to full-time painting about 10 years ago and prior to that
00:24:49.560I was working in installation and performance and all my work is connected in some way to
00:24:54.320what I call herstory women's herstory and a lot of it is connected directly to witchcraft trials
00:25:00.200but in the last few years I've decided to go back to the traditional roots and that's been great
00:25:05.160in the sense that it's really helped me understand the language of the landscape.
00:25:12.980And the landscape is very important, I think, to give a kind of background
00:25:15.860to the trials visually as well as, obviously, historically.
00:25:21.820And I discovered that the landscape itself was very much part of the ideas
00:25:26.740of land control, power, the proto-industrialisation of Scotland.
00:25:31.460And basically, if you were to overlap the areas where there were hubs of trials, you could see that there was also coal mining and salt panning, as well as rural agricultural communities there.
00:25:45.360And the women certainly in the 1st and 4th up to Aloha, that area, they were very much involved in salt panning industries.
00:25:53.300And these two industries are kind of, they work together. You need one for the other.1.00
00:25:58.000but I didn't realise that salt panning was an absolutely disgusting thing to be involved in
00:26:03.180boiling blood um not human blood obviously but cattle blood in order to purify the salt
00:26:11.360and it finally stank and basically you think now we've got industrialized smoky landscapes back
00:26:19.540then the whole of the first before we just covered in this horrible smoky smelly mist
00:26:26.500you'd think oh well I'd rather do salt panning than be a coal miner any day but I don't actually
00:26:31.300think it was it was it was any better and of course think of places like Salem which also
00:26:37.840started as a salt panning port area so there are links if you think about it and the more I kind of
00:26:44.180looked into the connections between let's say the landscape and what the landscape can throw up
00:26:49.960such as the sea coal and of course you've got King James who was very much interested in trying to
00:27:53.980Yeah, I was absolutely fascinated when I was reading the book that you sent me about the detail that you went into to inform your art pieces, in particular, the communication between the land and the art that you produced.
00:28:10.200It was quite amazing to me, the effect that that had and the fact that when you started considering it, you actually were drawing landscapes to start with.
00:28:19.080That was part of the process to orientate yourself, as it were.
00:28:23.520Yes, I'm not a landscape painter. And, you know, Joseph Boyce, the great artist, always said, paraphrase him, always paint what you're uncomfortable painting. And for me, landscape was the thing I just wasn't interested in doing. And I just initially forced myself to go out there. And it's not a pretty landscape, generally. I mean, first of all, you know, you think, oh, that's going to be nice. But it's not.
00:28:49.300Most of it at Toryburn New Mills is very industrialised and you can't actually access the coastline.
00:28:56.720You're sort of these lagoons and they're not nice lagoons, they're industrialised lagoons.
00:29:02.700And I remember Catherine and I taking this long walk and, you know, walking is a great way just to get the creative juices flowing.
00:29:11.040So the two of us were just taking this walk. Neither of us were enjoying the walk as such.
00:29:18.840You've got on the one side this big fence up saying, do not enter.
00:29:22.960And on the other side, you've got the hills and you feel very enclosed.
00:29:26.780And it gave us that sense of what these women must have felt like.1.00
00:29:30.800They didn't have the industrialised fencing, but they would have had all that smoke and boiled blood rising up.
00:29:36.820And it's just very evocative of what you could imagine the hell of the 17th century, how it would be portrayed.
00:29:44.960I was really affected by the landscapes. I mean, there are one or two other pictures that I want to speak to you about, but I was surprised at how oppressive and, I think that's the word, oppressive, they were just dark and craggy and it looked dangerous. It did not look like a safe place to be. I just felt that that came across really, really strongly.
00:30:05.240yes so the landscape was paramount it's understanding that landscape for me really
00:30:12.780kind of explained not just about how these superstitious events triggered a horrible
00:30:21.760execution of women but it also explained to me where these women were living how they were
00:30:28.200and bearing in mind they didn't have the voices that we have they didn't they hadn't the possibility1.00
00:30:34.420to articulate in a very patriarchal system you know so women have always been traditionally the
00:30:43.560healers the carers even to this day and of course you know that that's an element that I think0.96
00:30:49.640carries through but I'll talk about that maybe later if I get a chance the fact that these women
00:30:54.640were very intelligent that had a lot of wisdom and were crucial in the maintenance of these1.00
00:31:01.380communities but because they were not part of that male empowerment dominating the whole control
00:31:11.220of the of the communities they literally had no voice and how then could they have explained or
00:31:20.980said this is not right or that there's no justice here so that's why I thought well although I think0.83
00:31:29.600there is a very political aspect of this that majority of the women were let's say didn't have1.00
00:31:37.220anything economically they had no control no power there was that sweep that women of the gentry were0.99
00:31:44.680also scooped up as well and that's where I got to that point of they did have representation0.96
00:31:50.900in the courts and in some cases they actually were not executed they were safe but the treatment of
00:31:58.600all these women seem to me to be equally horrible whether you were a lady or whether you were a
00:32:06.680worker you could expect to be deprived of all basic human needs food and of course sleep
00:32:15.240deprivation and sleep deprivation was a very big for me it was one of the the most fascinating
00:32:21.520aspects of the torturing of these women and you know yourself if you've had a bad night
00:32:28.640or two bad nights you go crazy and you imagine you're in this space and you've not been able to
00:32:35.220sleep and of course some of them were actually physically forced to lean against things that
00:32:41.280meant that if they slumped down they would you know cut themselves open and so it wasn't entirely
00:32:48.060even an emotional or psychological torture, there was a physical aspect to it. So that
00:32:54.380got me thinking, what is it like to have this disassociation? And I think that's what can
00:32:59.560happen if you're put in that position of fear and stress and sleep deprivation, you then
00:33:06.300become disassociated with reality. And that's what some of the paintings then wanted to
00:33:14.860express so there's a series of five very large paintings that I then did and these paintings
00:33:21.380were life-size so the figures in them are life-size and the idea was that I was confronting
00:33:27.500the figures so that in a sense that I was I was listening to them talking back to me
00:33:33.340and I actually put myself into a kind of sort of state of almost like a trance when I was painting
00:33:40.340them and i think that's why i've got this feeling that i could connect in some way to how
00:33:48.520how these women must have felt no one knows absolutely but for me that's a way in a way
00:33:55.220in of trying to understand the absolute horrendous nature of these trials you're putting yourself in
00:34:01.920a very sort of vulnerable place there visiting that you know you're you're really exposing
00:34:07.160yourself to the the worst of it by placing yourself in that position did it affect you
00:34:13.120yes i absolutely did and i think as a painter people don't realize maybe sometimes that
00:34:20.600painting is is quite a it well not quite it's a very physical process as well as a mental one
00:34:28.560and when you're painting large scale when you're painting so that you're having to sweep your whole
00:34:34.020arms and your whole body in order to reach up to get one corner or another and using large paint
00:34:39.040brushes it becomes quite a almost like a performance as well a very active piece of work
00:34:45.980it was very physically demanding and I pushed myself physically because I wanted to create
00:34:51.380these paintings as quickly as I could I was fortunate enough I had a large room a very large
00:34:58.100empty white room where I work in Aloha in my studio and I just placed these five canvases
00:35:03.660all around the room and locked myself in the room and just painted it took days and days and days to
00:35:10.740do but I just basically put myself and almost as if I was containing myself that I couldn't get out
00:35:17.420of this room you know that there was a canvas propped against the door so I couldn't get out
00:35:21.620and just painting basically so obviously it's much more comfortable and I could get out if I
00:35:28.840wanted to but it gave me some sense of what it must be like to be in a space where you don't0.52
00:35:35.200have anything but yourself in that space and what can you create and of course these these women1.00
00:35:41.160didn't even have a piece of charcoal to sort of scrub an image on the floor with they were1.00
00:35:46.620completely deprived of everything did you plan those images what what came from those five big
00:35:52.580pieces if you can tell the listeners what what images came from that so i thought about the tides
00:36:01.040at the first or fourth and the first or fourth is unique i believe in that it has a a double
00:36:08.260double tide so instead of having two tides it actually has four tides but it's very unusual
00:36:15.300And depending on the moon, obviously, and the weather and the seasons, sometimes these secondary tides are much more obvious and sometimes they're less obvious.
00:36:29.240But this can create problems for fishermen, let's say, if they're not used to the fact that there's going to be another tide on top of the usual tide.
00:36:38.340And it was actually a friend of mine, Murdoch, who's a sailor, and he's got a boat out in Lime Kilns that told me all this.
00:36:44.580And this was fascinating. And so this might be another reason why the Firth of Fourth is also redolent with witchcraft and superstition and women taking sailors away and killing.0.62
00:36:57.540It's a very dangerous place to be, the Firth of Fourth, at the wrong time.
00:37:01.660So I used the aspect of the tides and the levels of the water against the sandbanks to create the initial composition.
00:37:11.640because I was thinking these women were incarcerated in Kouris
00:37:16.740and say they did have a wee window looking out,0.61
00:37:19.520they would maybe see the tides coming in and out.