Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 21 - DOUGLAS SPEIRS - ARCHAEOLOGIST

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

00:00:05.220 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.

00:00:26.720 The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.

00:00:29.580 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.

00:00:51.440 hello and welcome to the witches of scotland episode 21 today which is quite remarkable

00:01:00.140 and today we're going to be speaking to the archaeologist doug spears i can guarantee you

00:01:05.500 this is the most fascinating stuff that we're going to be talking about today

00:01:09.080 but before that we obviously had some big news this week claire would you like to talk about

00:01:13.760 that? Yes the big news is that our petition went live to the Scottish Parliament and it's now up

00:01:22.460 live online for anyone to sign that they want. We have had an amazing immediate response to it

00:01:28.240 with over 500 signatures in the first couple of days. The signatures have mostly been from Scotland

00:01:34.140 but they've also been from elsewhere in the world. We've got United States, we've got New Zealand,

00:01:38.920 we've got Canada, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany. So it's really, really great that we've

00:01:46.580 had this uptake and that people worldwide are supportive of the campaign. And we've also had

00:01:52.700 a great response with newspapers in particular, the Scotsman did a leader on it. We've also had

00:01:59.580 great online coverage. And we're really, really hoping that all this publicity galvanises people

00:02:07.080 to actually sign the petition

00:02:08.540 because if we have as much support

00:02:10.600 as we've had so far with the campaign

00:02:12.700 if all those people that support the campaign

00:02:14.620 sign the petition

00:02:16.100 then it sends a really really powerful message

00:02:18.280 so I'm really really excited about that

00:02:20.900 so get signing and tell your pals to sign too

00:02:23.100 and there are links on Twitter

00:02:25.320 and on our website

00:02:26.920 and things like that as well

00:02:28.080 we've also got a Facebook page

00:02:29.800 which would be great to get more people to join that one

00:02:32.400 because it's not everybody that uses Twitter obviously

00:02:34.720 so if you can sign up on Facebook

00:02:36.660 will be in the millions very quickly that'll be great so today we're going to be looking at three

00:02:43.080 witches as we do every episode and we're going to be focusing particularly today on witches from

00:02:49.120 Dalkeith the first witch that we're going to look at today was called Elspeth Graham she was married

00:02:56.220 and had two children and she was deleted which is apparently an old word for accused by Jonnet

00:03:02.300 Watson. Her accusation was made on the 11th of July 1661 and the case itself ended on the 3rd

00:03:09.360 of August 1661. No less than 12 men were supposedly official witnesses to her confession

00:03:16.020 and she was tortured by way of having the witch prick her, the infamous John Kincaid come along 0.94

00:03:21.920 and prick her. She was found to have what was described as a devil's mark under her left papy

00:03:27.320 which we're guessing is breast she confessed to witches meetings at a local dam which was the 0.95

00:03:34.060 newton dime dime head dame head one took place on the last beale fire night meaning beltane

00:03:40.880 apparently the devil appeared when she was angry with her son i mean i've got sons i could see how

00:03:48.080 that could happen she spoke with the devil in the form of a black dog at the mill while her daughter

00:03:52.900 was there the devil kissed her and called her bunteen which is bunting meaning plump short and

00:03:58.720 dumpy and we don't know the outcome for that one the second person that we're looking at today

00:04:04.940 was Bessie Moffat she was also accused or deleted by Janet Watson same as above she had no less than

00:04:12.520 13 confessors and also was subject to being pricked by the witch pricker John Kincaid

00:04:17.840 she had the devil's mark identified on her shoulder her right arm and her craigie which

00:04:23.340 apparently is an old word for throat yeah when you said the old word for throat i was thinking

00:04:28.380 that's really funny craigie but we say that really sticks in your crawl meaning sticks in your throat

00:04:34.880 don't we yeah i wonder if they're the same route then i don't know yeah so she confessed to having

00:04:44.060 met the devil after discord with her husband she knew it was the devil because he vanished more

00:04:49.880 quickly than a normal man i'm not really sure if that's coded or if that's actually what she means

00:04:54.400 um she had a witch's name of bessie the sponger or spounder yeah and she confessed also to having

00:05:01.360 met at newton dimehead on belting so i wonder if these two women bessie moffat and elspeth graham

00:05:07.780 were friends there's not enough detail about dates and stuff to be able to tell us there

00:05:12.340 no I think that Bessie Moffat was around 1661 as well I mean they were both accused by the same

00:05:19.520 person and that being Janet Watson so that probably means that they were around at the same

00:05:25.600 time and possibly in the same confession I tried to look up to see in the survey of Scottish

00:05:32.200 witchcraft this is the database online as ever we're getting all this information for I tried

00:05:37.640 to look up Janet Watson and maybe what I should have done is looked up Janet Watson because it's

00:05:42.980 sometimes spelt differently but I couldn't find whether or not she was a woman who was also

00:05:47.720 accused and then under torture you know maybe gave out the names of other women. She gave their name.

00:05:53.660 Yeah it seems likely. I saw on the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database that in relation

00:05:59.060 to Dalkeith there were in fact 22 specific accusations but I think it's likely that

00:06:04.980 Elspeth Graham and Bessie Moffat it was at the same time and they knew one another what's so

00:06:10.200 frustrating about both of these is that they give you so much detail but they don't tell you what

00:06:16.080 the outcome of the case is and I think that's it's so annoying particularly also from a legal point

00:06:20.760 of view because you think yeah the whole point of these trials was to ascertain whether or not

00:06:25.840 they were guilty or innocent as the law then saw it so why don't you record that most important

00:06:32.460 part it's really really aggravating i wonder if i'm being too cynical and saying that the reason

00:06:37.980 that the the outcome isn't noted down is because i don't know would they maybe think why bother they

00:06:43.120 clearly had made confessions to all these kind of venerable men and if you made a confession like

00:06:48.740 that then clearly you were a witch and clearly you would be executed so i wonder if maybe they

00:06:53.920 don't have it written down because you know they just were executed yeah i don't know i don't know

00:06:59.400 it seems very odd that they weren't now I know I know sometimes that what happened was you know

00:07:04.900 that commissions were granted centrally so you had to go somewhere central like to the Privy Council

00:07:10.300 to ask can I have a warrant to prosecute a person and then those people would go away with their

00:07:18.180 warrant and prosecute that person and so what was important really is the authority to be allowed

00:07:23.660 to prosecute them and that's why we know stories of them but what then didn't happen was they

00:07:29.240 didn't go back to the Privy Council and then say by the way we prosecuted this woman and this is

00:07:35.280 the outcome of it so I suspect I suspect it's more likely to be that that simply that the records

00:07:42.440 that we have don't show it because the people didn't come back and tell them what the outcome

00:07:46.940 was and indeed the Privy Council wasn't really interested it was only interested in trying to

00:07:51.680 control what had inverted

00:07:53.640 commas got out of control

00:07:55.500 with witchcraft trials 1.00

00:07:57.320 so I think it's

00:07:59.780 more likely to be that the case than

00:08:01.580 anything else because

00:08:03.320 there was some detail taken

00:08:05.840 like the nature of the

00:08:07.480 allegations and what

00:08:09.640 they said about the devil and stuff like that

00:08:11.440 you would think if it was just oh they confessed to

00:08:13.500 witchcraft they wouldn't bother writing any of it down

00:08:15.680 Yeah

00:08:17.340 you've got to wonder what the purpose

00:08:19.400 was of them writing it down if they weren't

00:08:21.400 going to write a complete detail of what actually happened or is it that it was written down and

00:08:25.960 part of it's gotten lost or it doesn't seem to be because there seem to be records um for example

00:08:32.460 we hear a later stage about lily sadie that she's talked about in the records and then one day she's

00:08:38.560 simply not talked about anymore yeah it's familiar yeah they know she didn't have a trial but at most

00:08:45.840 most aggravating particularly for somebody who likes to know the outcome of a trial

00:08:51.040 that's for sure aggravating now because we'll never know the exact numbers that were involved

00:08:56.120 I'll take us on to the the third woman who was convicted as a witch and we know that the outcome

00:09:02.880 of this was convicted as a witch but interestingly we only know that because we know the names of

00:09:09.780 the clerk and the three investigators against her we were of course men and it is noted that

00:09:16.740 one of the people who were the investigators was asked to, inverted commas, execute her sentence.

00:09:24.360 So we know that she was convicted of witchcraft and that one of them was asked to execute her

00:09:31.240 sentence and presumably that was for her to be strangled and then to be burned. Janet Cock,

00:09:37.480 her accusations began on the 11th of June 1661 and strangely in fact the allegations went on

00:09:46.800 and the case wasn't concluded until some six months later which is unusual in a particularly

00:09:52.700 long length of time between accusation and trial but the reason is that she went through not only

00:09:58.280 one trial but two trials. In the first trial I understand that she was acquitted and the second

00:10:04.700 as I've said convicted. She was apparently party to several healing attempts so she was trying to

00:10:11.680 use healing powers said to be witchcraft by transferring a disease from a child onto a dog. 0.93

00:10:20.560 It was said that she wasn't the main person that was involved in this healing process but an

00:10:24.660 assistant and that was in relation to the first trial. In the second trial she appears more of a

00:10:30.700 healer, turning up when people were ill and then it's noted or bewitched by a different witch

00:10:36.520 and offering a diagnosis and cure. As we've said in the first trial she was acquitted but in the

00:10:43.240 second trial she was convicted and the database has some real detail here about the actual jury

00:10:50.960 that were on the case. They said the makeup of the assize in the first trial was seven from Edinburgh,

00:10:56.940 one from Canongate and seven from Dalkeith and here we see the Scottish jury system which is we

00:11:05.180 have 15 jurors in a criminal trial which is different from other jurisdictions which only

00:11:13.460 have 12 so we see the numbers are made up there for the second trial there were six from Edinburgh

00:11:19.440 one from Canongate and eight from Dalkeith and what's noticed noted here is giving the Dalkeithers

00:11:26.460 a swing vote. So there were eight from the local area of Dalkeith that she was from and clearly

00:11:33.480 whoever has written this thinks that that may have had some bearing on the matter. It says that the

00:11:38.540 first Chancellor was from Edinburgh, the second was from Dalkeith and by Chancellor I think they

00:11:43.740 mean jury foreperson. I think I'm not too sure about that. So again the second time round not

00:11:49.720 only were most of the people, the majority of people on the jury from Dalkeith but the foreman

00:11:55.800 or Chancellor was from Dalkeith and it is said somebody wanted her to be found guilty and changed

00:12:02.340 the jury by just one person. So that's an intriguing bit of information there and I'm not

00:12:08.100 too sure what it means. Did someone prior to the trial make sure that there were eight people from

00:12:13.980 Dalkeith on it thinking the people of Dalkeith would vote that way but who or why it was changed

00:12:19.960 we don't know. So the three women that we wish to remember today that were accused as witches

00:12:25.420 are Elspeth Graham, Bessie Moffat and Janet Cock.

00:12:42.580 We were absolutely delighted to have the eminent archaeologist Douglas Spears joining us.

00:12:48.800 We're going to be talking about Lilius Aedi and anything else that comes up during the conversation.

00:12:54.060 So without any further ado, we'd like to welcome Douglas to our podcast.

00:12:58.580 Doug, can you tell us a wee bit about what your role is and a wee bit about yourself, please?

00:13:04.100 Certainly. I am the county archaeologist for Fife. I actually cover Dundee these days as well.

00:13:10.320 And I've been in this role for the past 20 years.

00:13:13.220 And my job is essentially to quantify, understand, curate, promote and protect the archaeological and heritage resource of Fife.

00:13:22.520 wow that's such an interesting job that must be fantastic well it's certainly very varied

00:13:29.560 of course we have evidence of human activity in Fife and in this part of southeast Scotland

00:13:36.720 covering the last 11,000 years and because of the nature of my work it's principally

00:13:43.340 related to development control and planning and so on and so whenever a house or a pipeline or

00:13:49.380 a shop or a road is built I have to have a look to see if that development might have an impact

00:13:54.020 on the historic environment and if it does I have to arrange and manage excavations to try and

00:13:59.020 mitigate and offset that impact so it's quite a changeable sort of subject it's never a dull

00:14:05.680 moment and we cover everything from 10,000 year old metolithic flint middens right up to post-war

00:14:12.500 buildings and so on so it really covers absolutely everything that you can imagine

00:14:19.440 Douglas do you know that I wanted to be an archaeologist when I was wee

00:14:23.020 we did a topic in school about the ancient Egyptians and I became obsessed and I mean

00:14:31.340 obsessed not in the way people say they're now obsessed about a song or obsessed about

00:14:35.640 lipsticks i mean genuinely obsessed with with the with archaeology archaeological digs etc

00:14:44.820 so um but for a long time i thought i was going to be an archaeologist but for some reason

00:14:49.620 i just went into law but i find your job absolutely fascinating i have to say

00:14:54.220 i'm sure you would have done great things well do you know pretty similar techniques though it's

00:15:00.040 pretty similar skills in some ways that you've got to have the attention to detail and you've

00:15:04.140 got to understand like the bigger picture as well. I do spend a lot of time ferreting around in old

00:15:09.160 books that is one thing that perhaps we have in common Douglas. I think so I think as Zoe says

00:15:17.560 there must be a huge amount of similarity and crossover it is about attention to detail it's

00:15:23.380 about looking at the evidence it's about looking at patterns it's about trying to build up and

00:15:28.580 synthesize pictures of past events from fragmentary evidence and whether that evidence is documentary

00:15:34.860 or whether it's artifactual whether it's environmental a whole raft of different issues

00:15:42.060 and people and personalities of the past come together and you have to try and synthesize a

00:15:46.360 picture and kind of explain what's going on so here now are you looking are you looking for a

00:15:51.480 trainee i'd be right i know um so douglas we do have another crossover which is our huge interest

00:16:01.700 in a particular area of scottish history that being the witchcraft trials and you have a

00:16:07.380 particular person of interest don't you i certainly do i think they were talking here about lilius

00:16:13.520 adie and the fantastically interesting but yet desperately sad case of this poor woman from

00:16:21.640 toryburn in west fife accused as a witch or accused of witchcraft in 1704 and sadly taken

00:16:29.520 into custody maltreated she died in custody and then was given this most remarkably unusual

00:16:37.080 utterly unique in scotland revenant burial so this is a subject that was taken up an awful lot

00:16:42.420 of my time since 2014 when I first started investigating this story. Can you tell us how

00:16:49.480 you became involved? I can indeed. I'd never heard of Lilius Ady or the Lilius Ady witchcraft case.

00:16:57.100 It was a very minor obscure case, perhaps known to only a handful of people, but one of Scotland's

00:17:03.800 very eminent and talented early modern historians and a specialist in witchcraft, Louise Yeoman,

00:17:10.260 contacted me back in 2014 and asked if I knew anything about the case of Lilius Adie and I

00:17:19.380 confessed no I know absolutely nothing whatsoever but Louise explained that there was a remarkably

00:17:25.700 unusual case in that it included lots of references to revenant burial now what on earth is revenant

00:17:33.920 burial I said at the time. I'm glad you said that because I was just about to say that so

00:17:40.740 and then I was going to pretend I already knew and it was really clever but you know people

00:17:46.520 would hear this and they would rumble my game. So Louise of course explained revenant from the

00:17:52.720 French verb revenir to return was a form of burial practiced in very extreme cases in relation to

00:18:01.740 witchcraft which burial and which steps were taken to stop the deceased witch from leaving

00:18:09.160 the grave coming back to life and terrorizing the living community the belief was in 16th 17th and

00:18:16.440 18th century scotland that an individual a witch who had got into compact with satan and who had

00:18:23.560 given her renounced her christian baptism and given possession of her soul to satan

00:18:28.180 the belief was that after her death I say her usually her could have been a man

00:18:33.920 that the devil had the power to reanimate that dead individual to bring them back from life

00:18:41.540 and to do his evil bidding so we have in the literature relating to witchcraft a number of

00:18:47.840 references to this belief to the belief that witches could come back from the grave and terrorize

00:18:53.100 living and we have in the literature a number of claimed examples of this actually happening in

00:19:00.680 various places with witches coming out of the grave and walking down the road and terrorizing

00:19:05.460 the minister and others and so on and uniquely in this case that Louise described was that there

00:19:12.620 were historic references to Lilius's revenant burial on Torreyburn foreshore out in the bay

00:19:19.660 And she asked if I'd heard of this. I promptly said no, but my interest was so tweaked, I immediately made up an excuse to go and survey Toryburn Bay and look for this site.

00:19:30.480 Because fortunately, the historic references describe a very large doorstop-shaped sandstone slab covering her grave.

00:19:40.000 The idea being that this individual had been buried in the intertidal foreshore muds in that liminal place, not quite land, not quite sea, but covered by sea for most of the day, locked in a box, buried in these muds, and with a big sandstone slab dropped on top of her for good measure, of course, to stop her pushing her way out of the coffin and grave and coming back.

00:20:02.220 So I thought this was too good not to go and investigate. So off I went with my colleague, Steve Liscoe, and we spent almost three days surveying Torreyburn Bay, looking to see if we could find this gravesite.

00:20:15.120 Wow. So physically, you spent your time in Torreyburn, presumably walking up and down when the tide was out. What was it that you were looking for?

00:20:23.580 well that's a good point we didn't really know to tell the truth but the only clue we had we had a

00:20:29.800 few geographical clues the historic references told us that um it was in the intertidal area

00:20:37.500 so when the tide went out it was in the foreshore muds somewhere the clues told us we were looking

00:20:43.000 for a big sandstone shaped doorstep as how it was described lump of stone and that's about all we

00:20:51.360 had to go on. Now, Torreburn Bay is quite a big area. So off we went. And as you say, we got very

00:20:56.540 muddy, very wet, very cold, very dispirited. And after about three days, we'd found absolutely

00:21:02.360 nothing. But one thing we did notice was that the geology, the solid geology, the rocks of Torreburn

00:21:08.640 Bay are all very distinctive. All the rock in that area is a volcanic rock. It's a

00:21:14.500 Tescanitic ortsdolorite, commonly known as windstone, a really hard blue stone. And it's

00:21:19.000 quite a nice looking stone but it's very distinctive because it's all blue and it's not sandstone so

00:21:24.560 after looking up and down for days looking for a doorstop shaped block of sandstone and we found

00:21:31.340 absolutely nothing we'd all but given up we came back to the foreshore just about to go home after

00:21:37.940 three days and we saw this got a large rectangular six feet by three feet block of seaweed and thought

00:21:46.580 oh I wonder what that is and it was also about two meters from the edge of land so it wasn't

00:21:53.420 way out in the bay and we'd been trundling a quarter of a mile out into the bay and things

00:21:58.300 and this was almost on the beach we saw this big block and what would you know we scraped off all

00:22:03.460 the seaweed and we had this doorstep shaped six foot by three foot sandstone block quarter of a

00:22:11.280 with a dimple in the middle showing it being lifted from a quarry in shape and it was completely

00:22:16.720 alien to all the natural rock in the bay and it fitted the bill exactly both geographically in

00:22:23.580 terms of its location its shape its size and its description so we put all the clues together and

00:22:30.040 concluded this pretty much has to be the site of lily's east grave it's pretty big actually the

00:22:37.760 the dimensions you've described there the six feet by three feet because Claire and I have seen it

00:22:42.860 in fact that's where we met you Doug was when we went down there when Claire was helping to open up

00:22:47.640 the Witch's Walk in Coorice and we went out to Toryburn obviously and had a look and you can see

00:22:52.720 it from the shoreline and we've said this before but I'd very much recommend anybody that's able to

00:22:57.820 post lockdown to get out there and have a look because it's the walk itself is totally fascinating

00:23:03.040 it's a really amazing piece of the world i'm i'm sort of tenuously a fifer but i've never been there

00:23:08.800 before um and it's definitely worth the visit but when you go you can see exactly what you're

00:23:13.960 talking about as you're saying it's not far from the edge and you can you can have a good look at

00:23:18.040 it but i'm surprised it's so big because my idea of people from those days is that they would be

00:23:23.940 and this might be completely erroneous that they're quite small so six by three really shows

00:23:30.280 like they're presumably they're they were getting that job done they're making sure there was no way

00:23:35.760 it was going to be getting shifted that uh that's exactly it and that's that's the the real deal

00:23:42.860 here this is a big big heavy stone and of course it had financial cost a big piece of stone like

00:23:48.940 that's expensive it has to be quarried and it has to be moved and moving a big piece of stone like

00:23:54.920 that isn't easy at all this is like a a huge big heavy gravestone and so it's probably quarter of

00:24:01.880 a ton in weight in that and they would have had to have used either a horse and cart and pulleys

00:24:07.400 or more likely a device called a yanker which is um it's a wheeled cart which is a specifically

00:24:15.020 used for lifting and moving big heavy stones but it wouldn't have been an easy job it certainly

00:24:20.880 would have been a bit of a bind doing all this, but it just reflects that this wasn't some

00:24:26.760 titular action. This wasn't some kind of token religious observance. This was the real deal.

00:24:33.980 They were genuinely worried in 1704 in West Fife and held the belief that there was the distinct

00:24:40.460 and very real possibility that this accused witch, this poor woman who died in custody and was buried

00:24:46.540 on the foreshore could rise from her grave after death and if they didn't put a stone there that

00:24:53.720 was big enough to keep her in that grave you know the living community might very well face a real

00:25:00.840 problem because of course you can imagine that a reanimated essentially murdered woman who was

00:25:08.260 in league with satan and hell-bent on doing his bidding she probably wouldn't have a good word 0.63

00:25:14.820 to say about the local community the minister and the Kirk Sessions so that was their insurance

00:25:20.140 policy that stone had to do its job just really strange because I think that we've got obviously

00:25:26.140 we're looking at things through the modern lens and we we really sort of as in a kind of a post

00:25:31.960 feminist or or you know current feminist society tend to sort of think well these were women that

00:25:37.720 were that were seen as being dangerous or they had land or they spoke out too much or whatever

00:25:42.040 and they were just shut down they were just quieting down i think it's really easy to

00:25:45.740 actually forget or neglect to consider and sort of more deeply the absolute terror that these people

00:25:51.960 clearly really really believe that there really were witches it's just it's really hard to get

00:25:58.220 your head around i think in the modern day that's again a really really great point because of course

00:26:03.860 witchcraft or the persecution of individuals accused of witchcraft predominantly women in

00:26:09.900 excess of 80% were women though there were of course perhaps not quite 20% men accused but

00:26:17.080 it changed over time because witches or individuals were persecuted as accused witches

00:26:25.080 from the 1540s right through to the almost the 1730s so that's quite a long span of time

00:26:33.340 and when you're persecuting people from that length of time of course there are different

00:26:39.480 motivations and drivers and reasons for each individual case and some were purely malicious

00:26:45.300 and they were just you know trumped up nonsensical charges but we shouldn't ever forget that by and

00:26:52.420 large there was a very real genuine solid concrete immovable belief in the reality of witchcraft the

00:27:01.660 reality and the physical reality of the devil the fact that he was waging a relentless evil war

00:27:09.440 against christian society that he was recruiting individuals corrupting their souls and then using

00:27:15.260 them to doing his evil bidding in living communities and just as we are appalled today by

00:27:21.080 terrible heinous crimes when we hear about people doing really really evilly horrible things and

00:27:26.960 gangs and secret rings and things like that you know we're absolutely outraged by it good decent 0.67

00:27:33.600 likable people in the historic period genuinely believed in witchcraft. And the chap who was

00:27:42.940 behind this whole case, Reverend Alan Logan, the parish minister in Toryburn in the late 17th and

00:27:50.560 early 18th century, the guy who was behind this whole case and so on, he was an incredibly clever,

00:27:56.120 talented, semi-aristocratic, blairly class of informed erudite individual. He was the author

00:28:02.740 of many, many, many books on church discipline and works. He wasn't just some country bumpkin

00:28:09.740 who was easily led. This man was an intellectual, and we can see from his actions that although we

00:28:16.480 might condemn them hugely and criticize him today, the only redeeming thing we can say in his favor

00:28:23.520 was it wasn't malice that drove him. It was a genuine religious belief that he was doing God's

00:28:30.240 work and that he had found an evil agent of Satan in his parish. Well now that we're at that point

00:28:39.200 I wonder if you can take us back to that parish at that time and perhaps we can start to tell the

00:28:45.620 story. We're delighted to say to the listeners of the Witches of Scotland podcast that Douglas

00:28:50.460 because Douglas is such an expert on this and it's so much information he's agreed to come back

00:28:55.860 over a number of days and tell us the story of Lillis Aidy and tell us as much as he knows.

00:29:02.920 And the first part we thought we'd break it down into is telling you about the parish at that time,

00:29:08.380 the parties that were involved, namely Lillis, those people around her and the Reverend as well.

00:29:16.940 So I wonder if you could paint a picture for us, as it were, Doug, of Torreyburn at that time,

00:29:23.680 Where Lillis was born, what her life would have been like, any information that you would have on her?

00:29:30.860 Certainly, Clare. Well, almost, not almost, in fact, everything we know of Lillis and her life and existence

00:29:38.820 is contained within the Kirk Session minutes for Toryburn Parish Church for the period 30th of June 1704 to the 3rd of September 1704.

00:29:51.440 So we have a couple of months of snapshot of life in this small parish in West Fife in early 18th century Scotland.

00:30:02.380 And it's from these minutes that we learn everything we know about Lily.

00:30:06.040 She's not otherwise recorded. We know nothing about her apart from what's contained in these minutes.

00:30:11.120 And to put it in context, what we have in these Kirk Session minutes.

00:30:14.840 So firstly, the Kirk Session, of course, is the local church court.

00:30:19.620 It's the body which is presided over by the minister and his elders.

00:30:25.100 Anybody who goes to a Church of Scotland today will know exactly the same structure.

00:30:30.280 It's been current essentially since the later 16th century in the post-Reformation period.

00:30:36.960 And so back in the 18th century, it was the local discipline.

00:30:40.820 It was the authority. It was the minister.

00:30:43.940 He had incredible control over life, particularly the morals of society.

00:30:48.980 And it was his job to institute godliness in his parish.

00:30:53.280 And so he was really concerned about swearing and lying and fornication and drunkenness and licentious behavior and all the things that are enjoyable and good in life.

00:31:02.560 It was his job to put a stop to.

00:31:05.300 And so what we know of Torreyburn in this period is really well illuminated in these minutes.

00:31:13.240 So we know it's a small community.

00:31:17.440 It's a tiny little hamlet.

00:31:18.640 it's about 200 people it's right bang slap on the coast the waves actually pretty much like the

00:31:24.480 doorsteps of the little houses were then there it's a close-knit tiny little community it's

00:31:31.200 people are largely poor working people employed in agriculture in some fishing minor coastal

00:31:38.340 trading there's some stone masons and so on so this tiny little hamlet huddled on the seaside

00:31:45.540 which pretty much nothing ever happens there nobody really goes anywhere nobody leaves nothing

00:31:51.760 hugely eventful people work hard rather miserable lives and the only recreation they have is a

00:31:57.080 little bit of partying and drinking and so on which of course the minister is desperate to

00:32:01.660 clamp down on all the time so that's the picture we get of Torreyburn in 1704 and we find out about

00:32:12.740 Lilius from these Kirk Session minutes, these records of this church court. And what we find

00:32:18.740 is that on the 30th of June, 1704, the minister is really alarmed by the fact that he's heard all

00:32:25.640 this village gossip about a case of witchcraft in his parish, in his little hamlet. And he's

00:32:31.660 outraged, frightened and horrified by this. So he immediately calls an emergency sitting

00:32:38.140 of the Kirk session, which is essentially a court, and he calls all the witnesses and those involved

00:32:44.240 in the case in front of him over a period of several hours, interrogates them, asks them

00:32:49.900 questions, and they all give evidence. And it's from this evidence that we find out exactly what's

00:32:54.720 going on and what life was like back in Toryburn in June 1704. So that must be an incredibly rich

00:33:03.440 source compared to sometimes what what you're looking for in your day job presumably it is

00:33:09.020 what's lovely about this source is it includes that minutiae of detail about people's you know

00:33:16.800 daily lives or activities it's gossip it's literally like being back in Torreyburn in a

00:33:22.560 tiny little Scottish hamlet in 1704 you get to know the personalities of the people and you can

00:33:28.620 understand the people and you say goodness there was somebody at school who was just like that or

00:33:33.240 my neighbours like that or you know their motivations and their thinking and their feelings

00:33:38.220 and you feel very close and connected because not an awful lot's changed. Human nature is quite

00:33:43.740 consistent and we see that in all the characters and the players in this case. So can you tell us

00:33:49.640 then who are the characters and players? What is the story of Lilith coming to find herself

00:33:57.120 being accused as a witch. So here's the story then essentially the minister gets wind of all

00:34:03.320 this gossip in the tiny tiny little hamlet of Torreyburn that there's this story about witchcraft

00:34:08.820 going on the story is this local woman Jean Bissett who lives about half a mile outside of the village

00:34:14.520 has become sick and ill and she blames a local woman called Lilius Adie for her condition

00:34:21.460 specifically she says Lilius Adie and Janet White have used witchcraft and have made her ill

00:34:26.920 and she's all sick and shivering and feels terrible and so on.

00:34:31.220 She's got better now, but she was in a really terrible state for several days.

00:34:35.140 And she is absolutely adamant that this was caused as an act of witchcraft,

00:34:40.060 a spell that was put on her by Lillia Zadie.

00:34:42.800 The problem is, as the minister and the Kirk Session take evidence,

00:34:47.360 a story appears that doesn't fill me, certainly, with any confidence

00:34:51.760 because it transpires that Jean Bissett and her neighbour and her young child,

00:34:57.340 who we don't know the child's age, but it was small enough to be on her back.

00:35:00.840 So perhaps primary school age child, all truddled down one Tuesday down to Torreyburn at the forenoon.

00:35:08.180 So we can imagine about 11 o'clock in the morning and they go to a friend's house and they all start drinking.

00:35:13.240 Now, I like a drink, but even for me, 11 o'clock in the morning is a bit early to start.

00:35:17.600 So they all start drinking away and they have a great time.

00:35:19.800 and all the witnesses are called from the various people in the village in different houses

00:35:24.880 and it transpires they move from house to house almost like new year um first footing they just

00:35:31.380 go from neighbor's house to neighbor's house a gang of about eight of them and they drink and

00:35:36.020 drink and drink and they're all drinking ale mainly women with a couple of men there and they just

00:35:42.460 continue to drink all day long and gossip and banter and disagree with things and this that

00:35:48.000 And by nine o'clock at night, they've been to about three or four different houses by this time.

00:35:53.780 Jean Bissett, who must be, if she's got a child of primary school age, she's probably a woman in her 20s or 30s or something.

00:36:01.560 She falls asleep, so she claims, and others say, but it's abundantly obvious.

00:36:07.620 Basically, she passes out from too much drinking.

00:36:10.860 and when she um kind of awakes again about nine o'clock at night in somebody's house

00:36:17.120 she's havering and bantering and just talking nonsense the way um drunk people often do but

00:36:24.140 she starts ranting and accusing Lillias Adie of putting a spell on her and that she feels ill and

00:36:30.520 she's all out of sorts and it's Lillias Adie she's done for me her and the devil and this

00:36:35.760 and that thing and Janet White as well she's put this spell on me I feel awful now all of her

00:36:40.560 friends including her husband who's there in this house drinking away and partying away they all

00:36:45.620 just dismiss her as just mad and havering a kind of drunk and you don't take any notice of her but

00:36:52.160 she won't shut up about this and she keeps banging on about lilyas edie and janet white and they've

00:36:56.460 made her ill eventually the night concludes with lots more revel rain drinking and about midnight

00:37:02.640 they all troddle off back home and um gene bissett runs across the the park on the way home and so

00:37:10.260 on and she jumps and skips and she has her child on her back and she's out of sorts and acting

00:37:15.280 weird but you know it sounds to me like she's had a little bit too much to drink now the next day

00:37:22.640 from the evidence we know that her friend went up to meet her and she visit her at her house at

00:37:28.080 Craigmill and she was terribly ill she had a headache she had no appetite she was a bit feverish

00:37:34.880 she felt absolutely awful and and you know really out of sorts now whether this was a hangover as I

00:37:42.700 strongly suspect it was or whether this was a mild um spell from witchcraft I'll let you decide but

00:37:49.940 it seems to me whenever I go out drinking all day the next day I feel like I've got a spell put on

00:37:55.800 me but it's probably not neither is where I would know anything about that Douglas

00:38:00.480 i'm now thinking it's witchcraft it must be what else could it be well that's the thing now and

00:38:10.620 then the next day so two days after this event she's better she's up sitting by the fire she's

00:38:15.440 got child on her knee bowl of soup and she feels much stronger so it's a mild bout of witchcraft

00:38:21.200 it lasted about a day and a half and you know she got over the headache and so on but and nobody

00:38:26.920 took this seriously. One of the most telling features of this case is the evidence that was

00:38:32.640 given to the minister by James Tannehy, who was Jean Bissett's husband. So Jean was the woman who

00:38:39.420 was, of course, ill and complaining of witchcraft. But bizarrely, when asked his opinion, her husband

00:38:45.500 said that, essentially, and I quote, he said, gear to me and I'll ding the devil out of her.

00:38:51.840 So what he was saying was that he thought his wife was basically just havering and making up.

00:38:58.020 In fact, he gives quite a lot of detailed evidence and he says that his wife is far

00:39:03.360 too given to keeping bad company, to drinking too much and so on, and that in his opinion

00:39:09.560 that she's just talking nonsense.

00:39:11.500 It was drunken speech of somebody who'd been drinking all day, spreading idle, unfounded

00:39:16.600 gossip.

00:39:17.100 and as if that wasn't convincing enough given that he didn't believe it and wasn't worried

00:39:22.680 about witchcraft given that all the evidence as described in terms of the medical case of poor

00:39:29.620 Jean sounded like she had a hangover then we get this incredible piece of evidence that it turns

00:39:34.820 out that one of the women that Jean has accused of making her ill through a witchcraft spell

00:39:39.880 the other woman called Janet White well it just so happens that Jean Bissett hadn't paid Janet

00:39:46.360 white for a barrel of ale and so janet wasn't able to pay the malt man and so she got into an

00:39:52.600 awful pickle because she'd taken this the product and the beer and the materials without paying

00:39:57.080 jean hadn't paid her and what do you know jean was now accusing the woman she owed money to

00:40:03.060 of putting a spell on her and you just think come on this is nonsense and it's not just me that

00:40:10.200 thinks this the minister says thinks this he doesn't actually publish or record or make a note

00:40:15.320 of his assessment or his verdict or so on but nothing more happens so on this case of the 30th

00:40:25.080 of June it just suddenly stops and we hear absolutely nothing more about it and it's

00:40:28.680 abundantly clear the minister heard the evidence was appalled with a lot of them and their drunken

00:40:33.600 carryings on in this little hamlet village and so on dismissed the lot no doubt very disappointed

00:40:39.940 and angry because he was a staunch man of the church and so on but clearly he didn't see any

00:40:44.980 evidence of witchcraft here there was nothing to take action over and the case uh was immediately

00:40:51.480 thrown out as soon as it was heard wow i didn't realize that so the first allegation is investigated

00:40:57.540 and nothing happens yes a huge amount of evidence a huge amount of evidence is it is taken and all

00:41:06.540 of the witnesses involved are um questioned and they give their accounts in incredible detail

00:41:12.620 about exactly what was going on that day and that night,

00:41:16.120 whose houses they went to, who said what, this, that, and the next thing,

00:41:19.140 who was drinking, who passed out.

00:41:21.040 But it's abundantly obvious what we're seeing here

00:41:24.840 is we're getting an incredibly detailed glimpse

00:41:28.340 into a tiny little coastal hamlet

00:41:30.980 and all the little underlying tensions

00:41:33.140 and the village squabbles and bickerings

00:41:35.240 and he said this and she said that and accusing and so on.

00:41:37.960 But there's absolutely no substance in this.

00:41:40.300 This is just gossip.

00:41:41.840 It's just people, you know, working people, letting off steam, getting drunk, you know, they've not got a lot going on in life and so on.

00:41:52.280 A few, one owes the other one money and so on.

00:41:54.960 It's just, you know, the kind of bickering and squabbles you would find on a street corner on any Friday night or something in Scotland, essentially, is what we're seeing here.

00:42:05.300 So where did we move from that to people starting to take these accusations of witchcraft seriously?

00:42:14.080 well as we follow these crook session minutes the next entry we suddenly see is about two weeks

00:42:21.320 later and on the 30th of july suddenly another woman in the village jean nielsen gets ill and

00:42:30.660 she also accuses lilius ade of witchcraft of effectively essentially putting a spelling on

00:42:37.500 on her and making her ill we don't get any further details about her illness or the conditions

00:42:43.500 or the way in which it happened, we just suddenly know that two weeks after this,

00:42:48.720 this trial was first heard.

00:42:50.900 And of course, it was hearing events on about the beginning, the first week of June.

00:42:54.860 So at the end of June, a month later, another woman in the village in the summer of 1704 is ill.

00:43:00.880 She blames Lillias Adie.

00:43:02.500 And without giving us any further detail in the minutes,

00:43:05.840 this is enough to have the minister, Reverend Alan Logan,

00:43:10.440 instruct his bailey bailey williamson who's the church beetle he's the kind of um the minister's

00:43:17.340 bouncer he he does the you know the the muscle for the minister and so on and he's the enforcer

00:43:23.640 so he goes round at 10 o'clock of the night and takes lilius into custody they don't say where

00:43:30.440 they incarcerate her but we can be absolutely sure that they take her in at 10 o'clock at night on

00:43:36.000 30th of June, and they lock her up in this strong room in the parish church in Toriborne.

00:43:42.760 The church in Toriborne we see today is actually an early 19th century replacement of that

00:43:48.740 original 17th century church. So the church we see today is on the site of the church

00:43:53.820 that Lilius was held in, but the actual church itself was taken down and was rebuilt about

00:43:58.560 1820. But the minister's house, Reverend Alan Logan's house, where he lived, is right next

00:44:04.080 to the church so we've got his house. So Lilius is taken into custody at 10 o'clock at night

00:44:09.760 on the 30th of June and the next day she is interrogated by the minister and the elders

00:44:18.680 and the Kirk Session elders. Now can I stop you there to say Lilius has been obviously part of

00:44:23.620 this story from the start but we haven't actually addressed who is Lilius in the village and what

00:44:28.920 before we before we talk about our interrogation can you tell us a wee bit about her and what we

00:44:34.200 know about her and again we understand we we know about her from the minutes and and other

00:44:39.640 um archaeological sources but can you tell us lilias who is she what's what's her story

00:44:46.300 well that's the thing we can't be 100 sure and there's a bit of uncertainty because all we know

00:44:54.600 of Lilius is in these Kirk Session minutes. We have no other records of her birth or death or

00:44:59.420 marriage or taxes or anything like that. The only record of her existence in terms of written form

00:45:06.200 is contained in these minutes and from reading through the minutes from start to finish we can

00:45:11.100 build up a picture of who this woman is. There's no reference to a husband or any children at all

00:45:15.760 so that's something to note. She doesn't appear to have any friends, nobody sticks up for her,

00:45:21.200 nobody defends her she doesn't in this case but from the evidence which comes out over the next

00:45:27.800 four weeks of her interrogation she makes reference to another things which tell us that

00:45:32.360 she's an older woman she talks about her failing health she talks about one of the reasons why she

00:45:38.980 wasn't as active as a witch as she would have liked to have been but her weakness and infirmity

00:45:44.840 in old age meant she couldn't always turn up to the cabals and the other devil pact meetings and 0.95

00:45:50.040 things because of infirmity and age and just before she dies on the sadly the night before

00:45:54.780 she dies she's giving evidence and she's um accusing others actually of implicating others

00:46:00.560 as witches and she talks about her evidence being um true although her eyes are dimming

00:46:07.580 it's as true as she can see this the sun in the firmament firmament and so on so she's talking

00:46:13.060 about failing eyesight and and infirmity and she also makes references to having been a witch for

00:46:19.980 almost 30 years we can reconstruct this because she says she's been a witch that she knew um

00:46:25.300 chrysal anderson uh and she was a witch we know from other sources who was burnt in 1666

00:46:31.460 in toryburn so she's saying with it wait a minute this is 1704 and you knew this witch back in 1666

00:46:39.240 and she talked about the second burning of witches in this place and the only records of witches we

00:46:45.080 have being burned during the 1640s and the 1660s. So if Lilius was aware that the 1660s ones was

00:46:51.720 the second burning, she may have known the first ones. So all the evidence points to the fact that

00:46:57.240 Lilius cannot have been younger than mid to later 50s, and it's entirely likely indeed probable

00:47:03.480 that she was in her 70s. So we're talking about an older woman who, throughout these minutes,

00:47:11.140 no references made to husband, no references made to any children, nobody comes to her defence or

00:47:16.400 friends or anything like that. So we see, build up a picture of an older, completely alone,

00:47:22.480 vulnerable woman, an easy target, a victim. And from the archaeological evidence, which we'll come

00:47:29.220 to later on, how we know a little bit about her bones, she appeared to have very long leg bones.

00:47:35.320 And the suggestion was, certainly back in the 1850s, that she might have been uncommonly tall

00:47:40.420 an excessive six feet tall which is quite tall for a woman today and very tall for a woman back then

00:47:47.540 we also have photographs of her skull because as we'll discover in a minute that her grave was

00:47:53.680 actually robbed in the 1850s and her skull was removed and we no longer have that skull but we

00:47:59.420 have photographs from 1901 of that skull and we can see a number of features she has a rather small 0.96

00:48:06.640 head for her size so she has quite a small head but she has very pronounced maxillary flaring

00:48:13.840 her upper teeth stick out and to be nasty and blunt about it she had very pronounced and quite 1.00

00:48:20.840 badly stained buck teeth so it's possible that we're we're seeing here a woman who's definitely 0.91

00:48:28.420 older seems to be alone in this tiny little community she's vulnerable she's got no husband

00:48:36.200 no friends no children she may have been um not terribly bonnie um and unusual looking and i'm

00:48:46.060 pushing the bounds possibly here but we have to account for this maxillary flaring this the reason

00:48:52.260 why she's got these teeth now there are lots of reasons why people could have sticky out teeth in

00:48:56.940 the good old days um some thumb sucking is a very common one um our orthodontists today tend to cure

00:49:05.280 but if they didn't then half of my family would be going about with buck teeth because lots of

00:49:10.120 them sucked their thumb and so on but similarly there are other medical conditions often associated

00:49:17.580 with learning issues that cause tongue thrusting so in for example downs and other things where we

00:49:24.000 see the tongue thrusting forward and putting pressure on the teeth and that can create

00:49:28.060 kind of maxillary flaring these buck teeth and so on so we have no evidence of this whatsoever

00:49:33.760 other than the teeth but and it's wild speculation and unfounded on my part but it's a possibility

00:49:40.640 that she may have had a medical condition as well which had resulted in this so the picture we get

00:49:47.000 is of a poor lonely elderly infirm woman who's no doubt had a particularly hard and unhappy life 0.95

00:49:57.420 she appears to be an outcast and a victim she's not invited to the party she's not drinking with 0.54

00:50:02.900 the others she's just the butt of their horrible behavior and essentially she's a victim and she's

00:50:10.240 an easy target and whilst your total poor soul your heart goes out for it and when you're reading

00:50:17.020 these minutes you're just thinking can the minister in the Kirk session not see that this is a woman

00:50:21.380 that needs help but yet blinded by their beliefs um they don't see that they see something out

00:50:29.860 they say an evil agent of satan and somebody that they need to take action against so so douglas

00:50:35.780 what the point we've got to now is that the allegation first allegation has been made brushed

00:50:40.760 off second allegation has been made and then she is incarcerated now i think for today's purposes

00:50:48.400 and as much as we'd like to stay on listening to hear a lot more of you um i think for today's

00:50:54.060 purposes we will leave that today and so the next time that we speak about this we can go on to talk

00:51:01.160 about the actual interrogation in some detail and the case itself would you be up for coming back to

00:51:08.520 us and speaking to us about that that sounds like a great idea and particularly so because as

00:51:15.960 we'll find out when we chat about this next it's the substance of lilyse's confession which is

00:51:22.380 absolutely breathtaking the the things that are said and recorded the evidence her fornication

00:51:29.380 with satan and his cloven hoofs and her activities as a witch and the things she confesses to i mean

00:51:36.600 are just startling and incredible and that's the real substance and detail of this whole

00:51:42.340 incredible story so i would very much look forward to chatting some more about this soon

00:51:48.220 brilliant this is so fascinating i'm really really enjoying to to getting to know sort of the the

00:51:55.980 detail of what happened with this case it's just absolutely fascinating is is absolutely this whole

00:52:00.980 thing has really reignited my interest in history but this particularly though doug is it just i i'm

00:52:06.760 a school teacher as some people will know listening to the podcast i'm an english teacher but when i

00:52:10.900 went away to university i was swithering between english and history and sometimes when i hear kids

00:52:15.680 And I'm pumped for English because it seemed easier in some respects.

00:52:18.380 But sometimes I hear kids say, if they don't enjoy history,

00:52:21.740 oh, what's the point of that?

00:52:22.720 My own son, who's 12, was saying to me that he couldn't be bothered with it.

00:52:26.540 And I cannot get my head around why you wouldn't be fascinated by history.

00:52:31.000 I just think it's so amazing.

00:52:33.300 Think of these people in the past and we've got these bits of detail

00:52:36.120 and you're a detective.

00:52:37.840 I absolutely love it.

00:52:38.820 And I'm loving listening to you, Doug.

00:52:41.340 Thank you.

00:52:41.940 Thank you, Zoe.

00:52:42.480 And it's true and it's great about this subject

00:52:44.840 because it's the tiny micro details of everyday unimportant life

00:52:51.500 that we see going on here in Toryburn,

00:52:53.920 which weave together to make this tapestry and picture,

00:52:56.460 which is our shared cultural inheritance in the history of Scotland.

00:52:59.840 So it's a great story.

00:53:01.400 And this is just one tiny piece in that massive jigsaw.

00:53:05.500 And it just really brings us back to the whole,

00:53:07.640 our mission that we've got with the Witches of Scotland campaign

00:53:10.640 about the idea that these were just people.

00:53:14.340 they were just people no different to us as people today they went out and they had drinks

00:53:19.440 and they had fallouts and they owed money and they earned money and there was people in power

00:53:24.100 and people that weren't in power and i just think it's it's so important for us just to always keep

00:53:28.400 coming back to the idea that these were just people just ordinary people absolutely it's so

00:53:34.760 true and in this case it's so heart-wrenching because i'm not pointing fingers at her accusers

00:53:42.300 or at the way in which the minister or others acted.

00:53:46.460 You know, they were all creatures and conditioned by their times,

00:53:50.180 just as we are all today, you know, shaped by society and beliefs.

00:53:54.260 And we are absolutely adamant that we know what's right and best,

00:53:57.220 just as they did back then.

00:53:58.380 But when you read these minutes and you follow this case, as we'll do,

00:54:02.000 it's absolutely horrendous.

00:54:04.960 The human suffering, that tragedy, this isolated, scared, vulnerable,

00:54:10.220 old woman a victim maltreated tortured frightened you know she knows what's coming you know she's

00:54:17.400 it's awful it's absolutely terrible and of course we know that it all ends very very badly and as

00:54:24.980 we'll find out the humiliation doesn't even end then it goes on for centuries after so this is a

00:54:31.160 really really unusual and unique case and it just it's a great example to focus on almost every

00:54:38.580 issue which is raised by witchcraft and and the treatment of women historically and even still

00:54:45.660 the way in which we see witchcraft and kind of um all too often see it as a halloween figure of fun

00:54:53.300 thing and just as society's come around to the proper way of thinking about misogyny and sexism

00:54:58.800 and racism and homophobia and other things we're still quite lagging far behind when it comes to

00:55:05.060 witchcraft and so on. These weren't witches, these were victims and that's the sad reality of this

00:55:11.500 story. Absolutely, couldn't have put it better myself and Lilius is a really good example of

00:55:17.280 someone who was accused as a witch but not convicted and that's why not only in asking

00:55:23.340 for a pardon we also ask for an apology to be given because she wouldn't be caught by a pardon

00:55:28.840 because a pardon only pardons those who have been convicted, not those who have been accused. So

00:55:34.080 our case study is interesting from that legal perspective as well so every part of the case

00:55:40.140 is covered by the story of poor lillies well douglas we look forward to speaking to you next week

00:55:46.120 thanks for joining us today for the podcast please do tell people about it and sign up for

00:56:01.240 the petition it's really easy to find and i think all you have to put in is your name and what

00:56:05.820 country you're from we've got people from all over the world signing it'd be just really great if you

00:56:10.000 could share as widely as possible more people are involved in or behind the campaign the greater a

00:56:14.860 chance we have of success now i've got one question for you claire before we go um have you at any

00:56:21.340 point while we've been doing the research for this come across the use of the word warlock for

00:56:26.920 male witches because somebody asked me that on twitter today and i think they were sort of

00:56:32.920 semi-joking but it did make me think because i'd been talking about it no i don't i don't think i

00:56:38.540 have i will certainly check i'll check the database for us to find out but because people were being

00:56:44.320 convicted under the witchcraft act they were being convicted of acts of witchcraft yeah well the

00:56:50.860 common terminology and words are used both for men and women were witches witches yeah

00:56:57.820 so that's what i thought i wasn't sure and i want i might do a bit of research into the

00:57:03.700 word warlock for next episode well i'll answer that question for our listener okay great talking

00:57:11.160 to you is ever clear yes you too zoe bye bye

00:57:15.640 if you'd like to learn more about the witches of scotland please subscribe wherever you get

00:57:22.020 your podcasts sign up for our mailing list at www.witchesofscotland.com to keep updated with

00:57:30.140 the campaign on that site you'll be able to find how to link with us on twitter facebook and instagram

Witches of Scotland - February 06, 2021

EPISODE 21 - DOUGLAS SPEIRS - ARCHAEOLOGIST

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