Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 22 DOUG SPEIRS, ARCHAEOLOGIST ON LILAS ADIE

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.

00:00:33.120 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

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

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

00:00:53.420 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:56.560 This is episode 22, where we'll be speaking to Douglas Spears, the archaeologist, about more fascinating info to do with the witch trials, and specifically Lillias Aidey's case in Fife.

00:01:09.000 Yes, Zoe, I'm really looking forward to hearing more from Doug Spears about Lillias' trial.

00:01:14.440 We've got a lot coming up in relation to the actual detail of our trial, and he goes into fantastic detail about the allegations against Lillias.

00:01:22.380 But before that, I just want to say that I'm absolutely delighted that there are so many people that have already signed the petition and in fact that we've got worldwide support for it.

00:01:33.180 As we've said before, the majority of people signing the petition are Scottish, but there is also interest from Canada, America, Australia, Belgium, Germany.

00:01:43.740 it's just great to see so many people from across the world being interested in the idea of the

00:01:50.260 people of Scotland getting an apology for what happened in the past so I'm delighted about that

00:01:56.400 there's also did you I don't know if you saw Zoe there's a bit at the bottom of the petition where

00:02:00.660 people are able to add their comments yeah they're fascinating actually the comments yeah quite a

00:02:07.840 range of different reasons people are giving for why they think it's a good idea sort of ranging

00:02:12.060 from you know this is this is a historical wrong that needs to be reckoned with you know like like

00:02:17.940 we would often say to people who are respectful of people practitioners in nature you know who

00:02:25.080 may or may not call themselves witches who definitely think that that's a that's an issue

00:02:30.160 that needs to be looked at to people saying that you know we just we need to sort things out before

00:02:35.460 we can move forward positively in our country yeah yeah and I'm so pleased to see that people

00:02:42.640 for the very most part have the same idea as us that this is a terrible injustice and something

00:02:47.060 has to be done we had some someone suggesting and I think we've put links to it on Twitter

00:02:52.580 that the idea was a joke and a waste of time but thankfully I was very very pleased to see

00:02:58.480 the response to that and I think the emphatic response was that people do not think it's a

00:03:04.180 joke or a waste of time at all for the justice committee to be thinking of this yeah i mean it's

00:03:09.680 it is a serious thing and i think it really is worth saying i think that most of our listeners

00:03:15.040 are definitely on board with this but if you're new to listen to the podcast and you're not entirely

00:03:19.540 sure what the relevance of this is when it happened hundreds of years ago the relevance

00:03:23.460 is that it was a terrible thing that happened and even if it was hundreds of years ago we feel it's

00:03:28.780 really important to say right this is part of scotland's history we're not trying to rewrite

00:03:32.900 history we're not trying to say it didn't happen we're not doing it just to look cool to people on

00:03:38.340 twitter but we're doing it because we think it's really important that we recognize that's part of

00:03:42.540 our past so we don't make similar mistakes again and we know with very very recent history that

00:03:48.780 bad things can happen even in the contemporary day and i think it's really important that we

00:03:53.780 just recognize the fact that we don't ever want to get into position again where there's a kind of a

00:03:58.320 you know a rolling ball of horror where people get sucked into getting you know involved in a

00:04:04.660 situation that really goes against people's rights and and their dignity and I just think

00:04:09.220 it's really important that we recognize that so we can say right this happened we're not like that

00:04:14.440 anymore and move forward in the same way that there have been apologies and pardons for members

00:04:21.620 of our community who were hassled and ostracized and charged because they were gay you know like

00:04:27.960 we recognize now that that was a terrible thing that happened and nobody would say well you know

00:04:32.500 it was 30 or 40 or 50 years ago you wouldn't say that you know you would just say it was a it was

00:04:37.120 something that was wrong and we need to just recognize that and move on or with the more

00:04:41.980 recent issue of the minors that Claire's talked about in the past you know that that we've looked

00:04:47.660 at in Scotland as well so we just think it's important that we recognize it and I think

00:04:52.120 sometimes people the very few people that be negative about it are showing a bit of ignorance

00:04:57.880 really in some ways as well that they don't really understand what happened in the past

00:05:02.440 I think as soon as you start to understand that people were were accused by anybody that there

00:05:08.860 wasn't actually proper evidence that people were tortured with sleep deprivation or other things

00:05:14.640 as we're going to be talking about in a little bit it was a bad thing you know and it's okay to say

00:05:19.280 right there was a bad thing in our past and you know I think it's important that it's marked with

00:05:24.500 a memorial so that that we we see that and we know the importance of memorials in public life

00:05:29.660 100% agree Zoe there was also very timeless article about Mary Beard saying that the term

00:05:38.180 witch was used against her and against older people in order to devalue discredit disregard

00:05:49.180 what they were saying and again we tweeted out that article to lots and lots of responses as

00:05:55.040 well lots of people that it resonated with the older women found themselves being called a witch

00:06:00.880 and being disregarded in this way and again it's like it's like the thing that i've made to say to

00:06:07.060 myself not to say the phrase old wife's tales as something which dismisses women but in fact

00:06:13.340 if I ever use the term old wife's tale I will mean it as in you better take some good cognizance 0.68

00:06:19.220 of that because there were some women that knew what they were talking about those old yes I think 0.95

00:06:24.180 as well one other one other criticism that we had from somebody which we've we've talked about on 0.99

00:06:29.620 Twitter so you can go back and have a look at that and see how that kind of played out but

00:06:33.080 one one comment we had was that they'd like to you know for if we're going back as far as the

00:06:38.520 witches let's go further back and let's take take the romans to court well let's take the italians 0.78

00:06:43.780 to court so they can apologize for the roman invasion or um talk to our scandinavian cousins 0.92

00:06:49.780 about the vikings and and look for an apology from them i mean said half as a joke but also

00:06:56.340 half seriously you know like this idea about well you know if you're going to go that far back let's

00:07:01.540 go further you know you're always you're you know there's a sort of an accusation of of you know

00:07:05.600 you're always looking these days for somebody to say sorry for you kind of grow up a wee bit

00:07:09.420 I don't think you can really compare sort of war type situations whereas other nations that

00:07:15.540 attacked us or indeed where Scotland attacked other nations as we were terribly good at as well 0.54

00:07:20.400 I think this is a different thing because it was something done in Scotland by the Scots

00:07:25.320 it was state sanctioned and that's why we think it's important that the state apologizes and

00:07:31.240 issues a pardon and makes a memorial we think it's very important that we own this terrible

00:07:36.820 thing that happened history does not have a time limit and exactly is justice and we just want to

00:07:45.880 get justice in so far as we can for those that were killed as witches and speaking of those

00:07:54.500 that were killed as witches yes claire that was that was almost my first professional segue here

00:08:00.160 it was and then you commented on it and you spoiled it sorry carry on sorry everyone

00:08:04.860 speaking of witches Claire yes speaking of witches we will before we start speaking to Doug today

00:08:12.960 tell you about three different people who were accused as witches I'm going to speak about the

00:08:19.060 first person just want to remind everyone that we're using the online resource the survey of

00:08:23.480 Scottish witchcraft which we would really commend you to go look at is a fantastic resource and

00:08:28.680 allows you to look up different aspects of cases, allows you to look up different types of

00:08:33.400 accusations, different areas that people were killed. So it's one of the really, really good

00:08:38.920 tools online for doing this sort of research. So we thought we would look this week about women 0.70

00:08:44.700 who were accused of witchcraft with one thing in common, and that was that part of the accusation

00:08:50.360 related to issues of property and finance. So there was some underlying issue about money or

00:09:00.040 land that really was the basis for these witchcraft allegations. We've spoken in the past about

00:09:07.260 various other ulterior motives, but these today are based in property. The first person is Gormel

00:09:14.320 Grant. The name Gormel spelt G-O-R-M-Y-L, Gormel Grant. I was minded that we've spoken about a

00:09:21.820 story about a person accused of witchcraft before called Gormel and I wondered if that was the same

00:09:27.080 name. This case of Gormel Grant is recorded as being complicated. Essentially a number of people

00:09:33.240 from the McLean family were accused by a family called the Chisholms. It's recorded that there

00:09:41.280 might have been some family rivalry between the McLean and the Chisholms and in particular that

00:09:47.520 the Chisholms wanted to acquire the lands belonging to the McLeans. It is recorded that the McLeans

00:09:54.020 had been, inverted commas, kindly tenants, close inverted commas, for several hundred years. So what

00:10:00.820 better way, Zoe, to get someone off their land than to make allegations of witchcraft and that's 1.00

00:10:07.200 what happened. The Chisholms made allegations of witchcraft against Gormel Grant, who was a member

00:10:13.600 of the McLean family. The trial of Gormel took place in 1662 and Gormel was subject to torture.

00:10:22.320 Records show that Gormel was sleep deprived, bound with ropes, whipped, had their feet burnt

00:10:30.440 and were subject to hanging by thumbs.

00:10:36.120 A complaint was made about the torture of Gorhamal by one of the Maclean family

00:10:42.000 and the local investigators were ordered to bring the accused to Edinburgh

00:10:47.100 after Maclean complained about the illegal imprisonment and torture.

00:10:52.200 The person who brought the claim of torture and flagged it up with the Privy Council in Edinburgh

00:10:59.160 was Sir Rory Maclean of Dewart and in the survey he is described as a rescuer of Gorham Al Grant

00:11:07.240 because he'd flagged up the fact that this person was being tortured. After a petition was lodged

00:11:13.020 flagging up this and asking that the torture be stopped a counter petition was lodged by those

00:11:19.920 on behalf of the Maclean's and it was about the cost of having to transport the accused and said

00:11:26.420 that the trial should take place locally and all we know about this further is that the charges

00:11:32.420 against the Chisholms about torture were dropped but that may have been Zoe because because they'd

00:11:39.100 flagged up with the Privy Council that was against torture it may be that clean was dropped because

00:11:44.580 the torture had by then stopped. Unfortunately we do not know the outcome of the case against

00:11:50.620 Goromel Grant. So we do not know what happened after the terrible accusation of witchcraft and

00:11:57.740 the torture which she endured. And unfortunately, we simply do not know the outcome of the case.

00:12:05.560 The next person we're going to look at is Catherine Ross. Now her trial date was the 22nd

00:12:10.820 of July 1590 in Edinburgh. And it says here that she had defence. Now this is interesting,

00:12:17.400 her stepson Hector wanted her terse her third presumably of her estate or land it was said

00:12:25.240 that and this sounds comical but obviously isn't but it was said that she made a picture of her

00:12:29.400 victim out of butter suppose you have to work with whatever materials you've got to hand and

00:12:33.520 then she fled to Caithness when all her accomplices were tried and convicted but she was then tried

00:12:39.340 and acquitted but unfortunately we don't have any further information about that to shed any light

00:12:44.060 on what on earth happened then we've got a lady called Helen Moorheed the case against Helen

00:12:50.420 Moorheed was started on the 4th of April 1659 and ended the next day on the 5th there was a dispute 0.99

00:12:57.980 again over her terse and which we think this might be an old word for inheritance she wanted the life 0.99

00:13:04.460 rent of her dead husband's land and the half mark of her brother-in-law and in fact it was her

00:13:09.920 brother who accused her of witchcraft which is just absolutely bananas she was accused of causing

00:13:15.880 harm to a man who had gotten her sister pregnant and then married another so it's quite a complex

00:13:20.900 family story there the brother accuses her and part of the accusation is that she was sort of

00:13:26.120 defending the honor of her pregnant and then sort of duped sister which is interesting so it says

00:13:31.520 here the trial date was on the 4th of of april it was at the toll booth the place of trial was in

00:13:37.180 Dumfries. She was found guilty. She was sentenced to execution. She pled not guilty. She may have

00:13:44.280 been tried earlier under a commission from the Committee of Estates, but we know that she was

00:13:48.880 definitely tried at the circuit court, that she was executed by strangulation and then her body

00:13:54.580 was burned. It's just really horrible. So it says here also that there's post-trial notes that says

00:14:01.300 between two to four in the ordinary place sentenced on the 5th of april 1649 to be executed

00:14:08.260 the next wednesday so i don't know claire does the ordinary place does that refer to the place

00:14:12.660 of execution or the place of trial the ordinary place is the place of execution so there would

00:14:17.280 be an ordained place that people would be and that that is where they're talking about just

00:14:23.620 historically interestingly in scotland when people died in inheritance things were divided

00:14:30.580 up into a third a third to the children a third to the spouse or elsewhere a division of thirds

00:14:37.200 was common and when I looked at the word terse someone wanted her terse I looked up the word

00:14:43.320 terse and terse means a third of something so wanted her third was wanting her inheritance

00:14:50.580 wanting her part of what she was due to to inherit so I think that's what's meant by by wanting her

00:14:57.660 tares. And the other thing about these sad stories is that whilst these people were convicted of

00:15:04.460 witchcraft, the underlying rationale about all of them were really about something completely

00:15:10.380 different, about interpersonal relationships and about finances. And these poor women that we 1.00

00:15:16.440 remember, Gormel Grant, Catherine Ross and Helen Moorheed, we remember them as people who were

00:15:23.320 accused as witches, but who were not witches.

00:15:40.420 We're delighted to be joined again today by Douglas Spears, archaeologist for Fife and

00:15:45.700 Dundee, where we're going to be talking more about the awful case of Lilius Aedi in Curus

00:15:51.980 in Fife.

00:15:52.720 Doug, welcome back to the show again. Good morning, Zoe. Good morning. Hello, hello. So last time,

00:16:00.640 Claire, where had we gotten up to with the story of Lilius? So when we last spoke to Doug, we had

00:16:06.320 heard about the town that Lilius lived in, her neighbours, the accusations made against her,

00:16:12.580 and we had just got to the point where Lilius had been arrested for a second time. Unlike the first

00:16:19.280 allegation the second allegation stuck and Doug perhaps if you can tell us from the second

00:16:25.620 allegation that was made against her what happened to Lillis? Well this is where we start to get some

00:16:31.360 detail because the Kirk session minutes for Toryburn are very detailed about what happened

00:16:36.520 next and what happened over the next four weeks sadly the last four weeks of poor Lillis's life

00:16:41.760 So we know that on the night of the 29th of July, she was taken into custody at 10 o'clock at night.

00:16:50.060 That's all we know, taken into jail, stored in, when I say jail, taken into custody and locked in a strong room in Toryburn Parish Church.

00:16:58.760 And the very next day, so this is the 30th of July, she spent one night in custody and she's interrogated for the first time.

00:17:06.820 And the minute records that Lily is being exhorted to declare the truth and nothing but the truth.

00:17:13.740 She replied, what I am to say shall be as true as the sun is in the firmament.

00:17:18.920 So the minutes say this is a really good, clear kind of listen to this, everybody, because I'm going to spill the beans and it's completely and utterly true, which immediately makes you think these minutes have been faked.

00:17:30.880 Who says that when you're panicking and frightening and in custody?

00:17:33.760 But they continue to record events.

00:17:36.820 And I'll actually just read a tiny bit just to give you some flavour of it.

00:17:39.860 It says, being interrogate if she was in compact with the devil, she replied, I am in compact with the devil, and I have been so since before the second burning of the witches in this place.

00:17:51.300 And that's a reference to a previous burning of witches in 1666.

00:17:55.020 she further declared that the first time she met with the devil was at the gollet which is a small

00:18:00.960 local river between tory burn and new mills in the harvest time before the sunset where she

00:18:06.380 trysted to meet the day after which tryst she kept and the devil took her to a stook side

00:18:12.600 and caused her renounced her baptism the ceremony he used was this he put one hand on the crown of

00:18:19.040 her head and the other on the soles of her feet and caused her say all was the devil's betwixt

00:18:24.280 the crown of her head and the soles of her feet and there the devil lay with her carnally and that

00:18:29.700 his skin was cold and his colour was black and pale and he had a hat on his head and his feet

00:18:35.840 were cloven like the feet of a sterk and a sterk's a young bullock kept for meat. So basically on the

00:18:42.980 very first day nine o'clock the night after being taken into custody Lilius is interrogated and

00:18:48.680 And apparently, those are the first words out of her mouth.

00:18:53.360 Now, I'm not terribly convinced by the fact that these are her words,

00:18:57.000 but certainly that's what the minister in the Kirk session recorded

00:19:00.420 as a minute of her very first trial and response.

00:19:04.680 And Doug, was it said that prior to her saying this,

00:19:07.800 there had been any form of, was it noted that there was any form of discussion

00:19:12.680 or sleep deprivation or anything?

00:19:15.360 Do we know anything about that?

00:19:18.680 Well, this is the bizarre thing about this incredible confession. She was taken into custody at 10 o'clock the night before. She was interrogated the next day. And I'm quite sure she was panicked, worried, frightened, all sorts of things. These were terrible things to happen to an elderly, lonely, vulnerable woman. So she must have been in an extremely distressed state.

00:19:40.080 but she can't have been exposed to too much because she was only incarcerated for one night

00:19:47.200 and these are apparently the very first words she came out with and of course what we see there's a

00:19:52.160 very clear black and white confession of evil and evil doings with the devil she it would appear

00:19:59.520 with almost no prompting confessed that she was a witch she had been since before 1666 she'd 0.97

00:20:05.740 renounced her christian baptism and she had laid carnaly and had sex with the devil and she had 0.94

00:20:12.320 willingly entered into an evil satanic baptism renouncing her own baptism and of course the key 0.96

00:20:18.880 thing about christian baptism is essentially an inoculation against evil so you couldn't get more 0.75

00:20:24.300 bad than this she had willingly renounced her baptism and had become an agent of satan and

00:20:29.960 they were the very first words out of her mouth now of course at least knew or would anybody would

00:20:35.500 have known fine well at this period what happens when you confess to witchcraft a certain death at

00:20:42.280 this period so it seems very suspicious that somebody would make such a self-condemning

00:20:49.220 confession on the first morning absolutely I mean obviously when people I think I've mentioned this

00:20:56.100 before in the podcast people are fascinated and as I am with the fact that people will confess

00:21:02.860 to things that they haven't done even in the modern day where there isn't there aren't such

00:21:08.840 threats about them or there's also there's supposed to be all sorts of procedural safeguards in place

00:21:13.840 to make people not feel under pressure either the fear of physical injury or even the psychological

00:21:21.380 pressure of being in a police station or something like that we try to protect against that and time

00:21:26.460 and time again we see people confessing to things that they they haven't done through psychological

00:21:32.840 pressure and I suppose there's two possibilities with Lilith which is she either did make some form 0.89

00:21:39.120 of confession because she was so terrified that she didn't want the torture to happen that was

00:21:44.160 going to happen to her so she very quickly confessed to avoid torture a sort of avoiding the

00:21:51.100 the short-term terror but but building into that the long-term terror of an eventual day

00:21:57.740 or it is just made up which is again unfortunately something that can happen with confession evidence

00:22:04.380 these are really good points but my own feeling is and i completely get the point that and

00:22:12.060 psychologists and others have proven it so many times that people can under intense interrogation

00:22:17.460 be convinced that they've done something that they haven't done.

00:22:21.160 And then they will willingly confess to something

00:22:22.820 because they genuinely believe they've done it,

00:22:24.640 even though they haven't done.

00:22:25.860 But I think in this case, she's only been incarcerated for one night.

00:22:31.960 This is the next morning she is being interrogated.

00:22:35.660 And for me, what makes this complete nonsense

00:22:39.640 in terms of a realistic account of events

00:22:41.860 is if we actually unpack what she said there,

00:22:44.440 she gives a very clear declaration that her evidence is true and factual you know she says

00:22:50.440 as true as the sun is in the firmament and so on so first of all that makes you think right that's

00:22:56.340 an open everything i say hereafter is the absolute god's honest truth and then she gives an absolute

00:23:01.080 cast iron clear admission of guilt she goes into detail about laying with the devil and renouncing

00:23:07.080 her baptism she then talks or mentions about um the confession of a long history of guilt she

00:23:13.180 doesn't say i just started this last week and big boys made me do it you know she confesses to have

00:23:18.240 been having been a witch before 1666 and this is 1704 so what somebody else can do the sums but

00:23:24.940 you know this is 30 years or so and she renounces her christian baptism now today we are not terribly

00:23:32.420 worried about that but in this period when baptism was so fundamentally important as a

00:23:37.640 you know a right of admission into the church and it was a prerequisite of entry into heavy

00:23:42.400 in heaven and so on this was really really really important you couldn't get a bigger deal than

00:23:48.320 confessing to having renounced your baptism uh in favor of a satanic baptism and of course then

00:23:55.340 to add um to rubbish her character and as a woman and as a person she gives details of sealing that 0.99

00:24:04.400 compact by having sex fornication at a stook side in a field with the devil and describes his black 0.99

00:24:10.820 swarthy skin, his cloven, you know, beast-like hoofs and so on and everything else. 0.99

00:24:16.640 I mean, goodness, in a tiny little statement, she managed to absolutely condemn herself

00:24:23.820 beyond any question. 0.74

00:24:26.420 Now, are these really the words of a peasant or elderly woman in a small, tiny little backwater

00:24:34.260 little parish in Fife in 1704?

00:24:36.320 I would say what we're seeing here is complete fabrication of the minutes and what makes me even

00:24:43.800 more utterly convinced of this as if we needed more evidence is that that those details she gives

00:24:49.820 of her renunciation of her baptism and her admission into the satanic cult when she has

00:24:55.680 sex with the devil and then he puts his hand on her head and hand below her feet and says everything 0.97

00:25:00.560 in between is mine. Well, crazily enough, when we study as historians the records of witchcraft 0.99

00:25:09.540 in Fife, we find that in 1649 that Margaret Martin in Inverkeething confessed exactly the same thing.

00:25:19.420 Now, is it likely that, again, 55 years before, somebody would have used almost exactly the same

00:25:26.700 words that the devil put his hand on my head the feet underneath he caused me to renounce it so

00:25:31.700 this is a word-for-word copy now we can conclude either two things the devil is real and he was

00:25:36.940 operating in Westfife in the 17th century having sex with women and forcing them to renounce their

00:25:42.640 baptism or that we have an institution in this case the church which is basically got a preconceived

00:25:50.860 idea of what guilt is and is forcing it on those that it considers guilty. I think for Zoe and I

00:25:58.140 we're giving the former proposition a strong role. I think we're definitely thinking the devil was

00:26:03.660 not amongst the women of Scotland at that time. That's fascinating that you say it's almost a 0.98

00:26:08.300 word-for-word confession similarity. One of the famous Scottish cases in recent history that's a

00:26:15.080 miscarriage of justice was about people giving confessions and saying the exact same thing and

00:26:21.720 having noted the exact same thing and part of that was the the case of the ice cream wars

00:26:26.320 which happened in Scotland so Zoe and I are both very interested in true crime as well and no doubt

00:26:32.980 we can talk about that maybe in another forum Zoe about how people if people confess to things they

00:26:39.560 all don't say the exact same words because it's very unlikely that people express themselves in

00:26:44.860 the exact same way so that that's fascinating so we've got this first confession from her do we

00:26:50.320 know who took the confession from her um yes we've got a good record of what who was actually

00:26:55.940 there in terms of reverend alan logan the minister was sitting in judgment as the the kind of judge

00:27:01.080 and the kirk session are there and they're all named and the bailey bailey williamson is this

00:27:06.500 sort of um court officer whatever that individual office is called you know you give me the words

00:27:13.800 here the bouncer the guy to keep everybody in order me sir there we go there we go thank you

00:27:19.100 for that but as if i needed to make the case any more clearly that this was a fixed record when we

00:27:27.560 really drill down into the minutes we actually find that there are many entries in the minutes

00:27:32.060 that describe events that don't happen until a week or a few days after the events so clearly

00:27:39.680 these minutes were written up after the event all minutes are but the fact that they include things

00:27:45.800 for certain dates references to events which didn't happen for another two weeks gives us some

00:27:51.180 kind of um idea that these minutes weren't written up at the time as things were being said or even

00:27:57.480 the next day or that night they can have been written up until two three weeks afterwards in

00:28:02.080 some cases. So this is clearly a record of what the court wanted recorded, and probably not nearly

00:28:12.300 an accurate account of what actually happened. It's also very interesting that the dates don't

00:28:19.460 match. So for example, in the minutes, they say that Tuesday the 28th of June is given as a Tuesday.

00:28:26.500 But when you actually consult the historical calendars on Google, you find out that that

00:28:31.520 was a Friday now is it likely that they wouldn't have known what day of the week it was in 1704

00:28:36.440 so really I think if Billie has had you clear on her case it wouldn't be too hard to prove

00:28:44.440 that this was a trumped up charge the accusations against her were false and the record of her

00:28:50.140 interrogation and trial was just complete nonsense. That is such an interesting aspect of it do you

00:28:57.000 think it is possible Doug that this was being done as a back covering exercise because an old

00:29:02.540 woman had died in their custody? That's my view of things because what we actually find is there

00:29:09.100 are pages and pages and pages in the Toryburn Kirk session minutes from mid-June 1704 to the 3rd of

00:29:17.320 September 1704 about this case and then suddenly overnight nothing more is mentioned. Now during

00:29:24.440 that four week period a suspected witch Lilius is incarcerated interrogated spills the beans on

00:29:30.720 about another eight women or three women at least they then in turn start pointing the finger at

00:29:35.380 other women and witches are being discovered everywhere there's accusations and so on and

00:29:40.600 people are being glued so from nowhere a single accusation snowballs into this localized parish

00:29:47.220 witch hunt within a month witches are absolutely everywhere and then suddenly overnight there's the

00:29:54.140 case closes and there's no further record or mention of anything against anyone ever again

00:29:59.020 now how do we account for this well my view and it's only a personal view it's not substantiated

00:30:06.100 i think two things have happened i think one they've got carried away they've treated lily

00:30:12.380 so badly she's died in custody and when the clerk session and the minister have approached the civil

00:30:19.160 authorities and asked for a mandate a legal commission to try the witches the civil authorities 0.98

00:30:24.480 have denied that and said stop being so silly and and torturing your poor old residents like this 0.98

00:30:30.780 with trumped up ridiculous charges and knowing that they couldn't get a proper legal based trial 0.97

00:30:37.820 through the informed kind of channels they've just been told to pretty much drop the case and i think

00:30:45.440 that's probably what's happened I also think we have to appreciate that Lilius's death was

00:30:50.280 essentially an illegal killing in the sense that there wasn't a legal mandate there was a mandate

00:30:56.520 and there were powers for the church to investigate this case and to take confessions and so on but

00:31:03.840 not actually to bring about the death without due and proper authority and of course poor Lilius

00:31:10.400 died without due proper authority putting her to death. Doug I had thought in fact that Lilith

00:31:17.140 didn't name anyone else and it's very interesting for you to explain to us that in fact she did

00:31:22.680 but nothing happened. Presumably the story that she didn't incriminate anyone was because

00:31:28.520 nothing else happened so people formed the view that had she named other people we would know

00:31:34.260 about those people as well and they would be part of Lilius's story but as you say if the story is

00:31:40.780 one of a better phrase if the story is killed because they don't want to take it any further

00:31:45.640 then those people that were accused we simply no longer hear tell about but she did incriminate

00:31:51.820 others then how many others? Well it was quite a number because of course we saw that she was

00:31:57.500 first interrogated the day after she got taken into custody and then two days later in fact no

00:32:03.040 the next day later on the 31st of July she is interrogated again so this is about her third day

00:32:09.620 in custody now she adhered to her original confession and she offered more evidence of

00:32:15.900 her guilt and she talked about her attendance at local witch gatherings and she stated that her

00:32:21.140 last attendance attendance at a witch gathering locally had been in August of 1701 at the

00:32:26.380 minister's glebe and how much insult of that is that telling everybody that we actually had this

00:32:31.980 satanic carol meeting around the back of the minister's house. But at that interrogation

00:32:37.440 event, as well as interestingly, she called the devil a villain who promised her many

00:32:42.060 good things, but when she engaged with him, he never gave her anything but misery and

00:32:46.220 poverty. But the key things is, at that second interrogation, she accused local women, Agnes 0.68

00:32:53.060 Currie and Elspeth Williamson, of being witches. So, of course, immediately they were hauled

00:32:58.080 up in front of the Kirk session and then the spotlight was on them the focus was still always

00:33:02.880 on Lilius as the ringleader but of course when she Lilius started to name other women they got

00:33:07.400 hauled up and the case mushrooms more people are called more evidence than given and everything

00:33:13.360 gets an awful lot more complicated. Can I just ask Doug because you'd mentioned in the last time

00:33:19.180 that we spoke to you I think that the minister Logan was not an uneducated man he was he was

00:33:25.660 possibly a bit of an intellectual, I think, from what you'd said.

00:33:28.660 So how does that sit with the falsification of reports?

00:33:32.480 Reverend Alan Logan was an incredible individual.

00:33:35.740 He was a very erudite and learned man.

00:33:38.380 He was very well public.

00:33:40.360 He was a quite talented theologian.

00:33:43.420 He was quite a strong influence in the church in this period. 0.96

00:33:47.480 He was from minor landed aristocracy, more gentry.

00:33:51.480 His father was a Logan of Logan in Ayrshire, the estate.

00:33:55.660 you know, of baronial status.

00:33:57.820 So this guy, you know, he was a really important player.

00:34:01.120 He married very well into the local landed minor aristocratic families

00:34:06.500 in the area, the Colvolds and so on, of Klish and of Kuros.

00:34:09.860 So this guy was no country bumpkin, but clearly what we're seeing,

00:34:14.980 these didn't stand in the way of doing God's work in his eyes.

00:34:21.420 And if that involved the falsification of evidence,

00:34:24.400 which I would argue it manifestly and clearly did then clearly he didn't have a problem with that

00:34:30.960 because of course when you're doing God's work sometimes you have to you know break a few eggs

00:34:36.980 to make an omelette or whatever the saying is you know quite simply is he'd found evil in his parish

00:34:41.660 and he wanted to root it out and and so falsifying a few records clearly wasn't something he had a

00:34:48.940 problem with. I wonder whether as well that if you were you were seen sort of like maybe national

00:34:54.360 or seen in Edinburgh as being somebody who had found evil

00:34:57.660 and dealt with it, that would raise your status as well,

00:35:01.180 possibly, that you were seen as somebody that dealt with the evil.

00:35:05.760 Certainly amongst his peers within the church,

00:35:08.340 they would have been great supporters of his.

00:35:10.440 They would have been great admirers of this man

00:35:13.900 going to these extreme lengths to root out evil and so on

00:35:18.280 in Scotland and in his parish.

00:35:20.720 So he would have had a huge support amongst the church.

00:35:25.200 But I don't think at this period the secular authorities were not, they were moving fast away from the idea of local courts trying women as accused of witches on the most ridiculous of evidence.

00:35:38.540 Now, just to completely contradict what I said a minute ago, it is interesting, actually, that after Reverend Alan Logan left Toryburn Parish as the minister there in 1715, he got moved up the road to Kouros, where he continued up until the late 1720s, early 1730s.

00:35:58.020 Now, interestingly, there is a record of him writing back to his former parish of Toryburn and asking for the minutes of that case.

00:36:06.960 Now, why did he want these minutes 10, 15, 20 years later? My feeling is he wanted to rewrite history and to get rid of that record for some reason. But again, we don't have enough evidence to be absolutely sure of this.

00:36:24.040 But why else would a guy, a minister who'd left his charge in Toryburn, write back 15, 20 years later and say, give me the minutes of the witch trial case and tear them out of the Crook session book and send them to me?

00:36:36.940 That actually gives me goosebumps. The idea that he realised he knew, and if he was a man of learning, he would easily have been able to look at the minutes that someone else had written them up and thought, dear Lord, if anyone casts their eye over that, they're immediately going to be able to see they weren't written at the time.

00:36:53.560 They might even be able to tell that they were somebody else's confession. And I want them to remain in my custody rather than being available for someone just to pick up. So you give them to me and the truth of my crime is not disclosed.

00:37:11.560 I think that's exactly well that's exactly the way I read it and it just shows you that Reverend

00:37:18.220 Logan was quite right because some however long it is 300 years later we've rumbled his game

00:37:23.500 and exposed him for the kind of man he was so yes and clearly the minutes were never taken out of

00:37:29.880 the Kirk Session book and sent to him because of course we have a copy of them now and we can read

00:37:35.080 them so yeah I think basically towards the end of his life he was trying to cover up things that

00:37:42.260 might perhaps have stained his career or memory or in fact that he he realized that these things

00:37:48.240 might be looked at at a later stage in history by someone such as yourself Doug and the truth

00:37:54.080 it's entirely possible and he may have been conscious of his place in history and posterity

00:38:03.760 and so on I think he probably had more immediate concerns about people looking at them perhaps

00:38:09.760 there were some events going on at that period of which we don't know or something like that

00:38:13.880 but something certainly jolted him to to look into his past activities and try and cover that up

00:38:20.160 and certainly that sounds like a man with a very guilty conscience to me. My mind has gone off to

00:38:27.140 the made for tv show that that somebody has got to write about this Zoe somebody has got to write

00:38:33.520 a brilliant tv show because it's it took place a long time ago but its themes are as current as

00:38:40.000 any in the present day so while lilias was in custody do we have any more documentation about

00:38:47.400 her experience or is it just down to these probably not very reliable court minutes these

00:38:53.280 Kirk session minutes they don't supply any detail but we can infer an awful lot and we can reconstruct

00:38:59.400 So, for example, the minutes don't actually tell us where Lilius was held, but we can be absolutely sure that it was in Torreyburn Church and not in Kouros or Dunfermline Tollbooth.

00:39:11.780 I saw something on Twitter this week about where supposedly Lilius was held and it was in, now Claire, was it the town hall of Kouros that this person seemed to indicate that that's where they thought that Lilius was held with an idea that she was held in the highest part of the building, it was the furthest away from the devil.

00:39:33.360 But you're saying based on absolutely on documentation that there's no way that she was in Kouros, she was in Toryburn.

00:39:38.580 I would say that's the case. Now, an awful lot of accused witches were held in the tall booth, the townhouse of Kouros. That's the building, the seat of town government there. We know an awful lot of women were held there over the years in the 17th century.

00:39:53.380 But why I don't think this was the case with Lillias is that she's quite often interrogated day after day, twice a day and so on.

00:40:02.220 And that would involve the Kirk session and the minister traipsing females along the road every other five minutes to interrogate her.

00:40:09.820 And they're not going to do that over a period of month.

00:40:12.480 And secondly, there is a cost to keeping somebody in prison, incarcerating them.

00:40:18.140 And Kouros wouldn't want to absorb that cost for a local matter, which is a Toryburn issue.

00:40:23.600 So I'm confident that Lilius was held in the parish church in Toryburn.

00:40:29.520 And you asked about those conditions.

00:40:31.320 We don't know what those conditions are, but we can be pretty sure from the vast wealth of documentation that we have relating to similar cases that it would have been a pretty miserable experience.

00:40:41.480 She would have been locked in a small, secure room.

00:40:44.980 We can imagine that her food ration and so on would have been really, really terrible.

00:40:48.560 She would have been subject to incredible intimidation and so on.

00:40:52.300 She probably wasn't actively tortured in the traditional sense of torture, but she would have been watched and warned.

00:41:00.180 She would have been subjected to sleep deprivation, which was a very, very common form of mild treatment.

00:41:06.480 Now, what was that phrase you said? Watched and...

00:41:09.620 Ward, watch and ward. So she's watched to make sure she doesn't fall asleep and she's warded. 0.98

00:41:15.400 So she's actually incarcerated. So basically, they went out of the way to intimidate her, 0.95

00:41:22.380 to be nasty to her, to give her poor food rations, to expose her to sleep deprivation.

00:41:28.140 So every time she fell asleep, they would poke her with a stick or be nasty to her in some way to keep her awake and so on.

00:41:34.540 So she would have been half out of her mind with sleep deprivation and torture.

00:41:39.440 She would have been frightened. She was an elderly woman and so on.

00:41:42.980 She talks in certain places about her eyesight is failing.

00:41:48.020 And in some of her later confessions, as we'll see in a minute, she says that, you know, she would have gone to more local witch meetings.

00:41:55.880 But her age and infirmity, you know, prevented her from going every time there was a local meeting and so on.

00:42:02.200 So we get a picture of a frail, elderly, weak, vulnerable woman treated absolutely terribly, kept in confinement and subject to sleep deprivation and so on.

00:42:13.380 So this is a terrible, terrible picture that builds up, even though nowhere do they actually say how she was treated or kept or where.

00:42:21.640 But we get glimpses when she talks about the faint light on the floor coming through the window.

00:42:27.480 So clearly there was a window in the room in which she was kept.

00:42:30.820 So we get snippets which allow us to build up a picture.

00:42:35.900 This gives the lie to this whole idea about them being witches, because surely if they were witches,

00:42:41.340 and we've said words along the lines of this before, if they were witches, they wouldn't get caught.

00:42:46.500 If they were in league with the devil and the devil was as mighty and as strong as they say,

00:42:49.880 then surely the devil would get them out of these jams you know and if they had magical powers

00:42:54.620 why would their physical body being old and frail prevent them from getting to witches meetings

00:43:00.540 surely they would you know fly there or you know do you know i mean it just it just seems to go

00:43:05.620 against all the idea of the power that the witch is supposedly held that actually ultimately they

00:43:11.000 don't clearly don't have any power whatsoever it's just it's bizarre it's so odd that's so true

00:43:17.340 but one of the sad things about the whole history of the treatment of witches is the ridiculous

00:43:23.440 inconsistency of it all and of course it's nonsensical if this woman was in compact with

00:43:28.520 the devil and had all these powers and could affect all sorts of changes and influence of

00:43:33.320 weather and seasons and the sickness of animals and people where you think well why not cast a

00:43:38.060 spell on your jailers or you know turn into something and fly out through the window but

00:43:42.920 of course that doesn't happen because we're constrained by reality and I suppose what we're

00:43:49.840 actually seeing is an entrenched mindset being applied to individuals who of course weren't

00:43:55.780 witches so they didn't have any of these powers to protect themselves in any way. Doug you said

00:44:01.220 that there was further confessions after our first confessions there were more over the weeks what

00:44:06.520 else did she confess to? Well, she confessed to a great deal. So if we move forward onto her,

00:44:13.700 this will be her third or fourth interrogation on the 2nd of August, she then confesses in detail

00:44:19.580 to being an accomplice of Grissel Anderson and others who were burnt. Now, we know from separate

00:44:25.820 records that Grissel Anderson was burnt in 1666, and she was probably one of eight Tory burn witches

00:44:32.540 She's burnt in 1666.

00:44:35.480 So this is 38 years before.

00:44:37.940 So this gives us another clue about things in the area.

00:44:42.720 So here we see Lily is confessing to have been a witch for at least 38 years.

00:44:48.500 So, I mean, that's not a good sign.

00:44:50.840 For example, we don't know if she was, when she was born, how old she was,

00:44:54.000 or if she was ever married, because we have nothing, no records about her,

00:44:57.680 other than what we know from these trials.

00:45:01.040 But that fact that in 1666 she mentions Crystal Anderson and calls it the second burning of witches in this place.

00:45:09.120 Now, that's really important because if that's the second burning, she must have been aware of a burning before that.

00:45:15.200 And the only other burning before that we know of in that area, Antori Burn, was in 1644.

00:45:21.000 So Lilius is actually saying that she remembers the witches of 1644.

00:45:25.760 So this gives us another snippet of her age.

00:45:29.340 And that's why I'm reasonably confident that she was in her, at least her 60s, possibly into her 70s.

00:45:37.760 And at that interrogation again, this one on the 2nd of August, she talks there about or gives us some clue of her condition,

00:45:46.640 because she says that the devil bade her attend many meetings, but she couldn't attend for age and sickness.

00:45:53.020 and she also mentions her eyesight fading although that could have been maltreatment

00:45:59.340 I'm 51 and my eyesight's appalling these days that's why I keep screwing my face up on zoom

00:46:05.420 and things like that so my feeling is we're getting a picture here of an elderly woman who

00:46:11.140 from her own words if they are her own words was suffering from age and sickness she had

00:46:17.120 fading eyesight and of course she'd been treated terribly um so so we're building a picture of

00:46:23.720 the miserable last days of this poor woman's life i still can't get my head around what's in it for

00:46:30.560 these women to have been witches i just don't understand how it made their lives any better

00:46:35.980 to go against the grain if they were and i know they weren't witches but this is the part that

00:46:41.560 just seems so illogical to me why these women became witches because really what did it give 0.76

00:46:47.220 them in their lives it just shows how ridiculous the whole thing is i just keep sort of stalling

00:46:51.200 at that point of what was in it for them supposedly it's a very good point clearly very very little

00:46:57.980 but we do get an answer in these minutes because of course if you remember uh but one of her on

00:47:03.800 the occasion of her first interrogation she actually said that the devil promised her many

00:47:09.900 things she specifically says that he the devil she calls him a villain that promised her many

00:47:16.200 good things when she engaged with him but never gave her anything but misery and poverty so if

00:47:22.740 we believe the minutes the the deal was you do my evil bidding and become one of my followers

00:47:30.860 and this is satan and in return he will give you rewards now life was hard and brutal for

00:47:39.280 people of this order and this state and society at this period starvation was common work was hard

00:47:46.280 disease was rife life was unpredictable there was none of the nhs and other social support systems

00:47:52.780 that we know of today and so on so you know when you put your grandmother in a home and things when

00:47:58.420 she gets older there was none of that kind of thing around then so the idea we're getting from

00:48:04.360 these cases is that the devil promised benefits but unfortunately as lily is saying in this case

00:48:10.140 he promised everything and gave her nothing but poverty and misery been there

00:48:14.700 these interrogations continue as said there are six detailed um confessions and they're all quite

00:48:28.620 lengthy so i'm only summarizing the main points at which she confesses but now we're into say

00:48:34.260 oh goodness the fourth

00:48:36.580 interrogation on the 19th of August

00:48:39.240 so we're how far away

00:48:40.700 we're 20 days into incarceration now

00:48:43.060 that's almost three weeks

00:48:44.480 so that's going to have been

00:48:45.380 pretty tough time so far

00:48:47.100 and again when interrogated

00:48:49.880 she confesses in detail

00:48:51.580 to lots of local satanic gatherings

00:48:54.280 she confesses that she met with the devil

00:48:56.140 over 100 times in her career

00:48:58.000 as a witch stretching back 1.00

00:48:59.640 to before the 1660s 0.80

00:49:01.420 so she's been at it for a long time

00:49:04.020 And that's when she says that she would have gone more often, but she couldn't always attend when summoned because of age and sickness.

00:49:12.980 And again, she repeated her previous accusations against local women, Agnes Currie and Elspeth Williamson, for being witches.

00:49:21.360 And so she stuck to that part of the story. So the minutes would have us believe.

00:49:25.660 And then on the 20th of August, she's paraded in church.

00:49:30.420 So she's taken church and she's walked in and she's made to stand up in front of everybody to publicly renounce her actions and so on.

00:49:41.460 Indeed, there's quite a detailed account of it.

00:49:43.820 And if I can read just a tiny bit from the manuscript Minutes, it says,

00:49:48.000 Lillias Ady appeared before the congregation on the Lord's Day and being called up by the minister

00:49:53.160 and asked if she was guilty of witchcraft she confessed freely that she was and had entered

00:49:59.280 expressly into covenant with Satan and renounced her baptism the devil putting one hand on her 0.90

00:50:04.980 crown of her head and the other under the soles of her feet and she gave over all to the devil

00:50:09.560 that was betwixt his two hands and she was come hither to confess her sins and to get renounced

00:50:15.740 her renounced baptism back again and she also desired that all that had the power to pray for

00:50:20.980 her and it goes on and blah blah blah so again she's basically now being paraded as a as a dead

00:50:27.380 man dead woman walking type thing and the idea is essentially that they want her to use her as an

00:50:34.000 example to beg for forgiveness and so on pretty much before she's put to death so i mean you can

00:50:39.440 just imagine that it's just you can't imagine the terrible state and injustice this poor woman was

00:50:47.080 put to and that doesn't be thinking about at that stage it would be clearly no point to her being

00:50:53.260 healed before the congregation and then to say actually this is all lies they're torturing me

00:50:58.280 that's why I said it it would be beyond hope at that point the best thing that she could hope for

00:51:03.820 is to say I've done wrong, please forgive me

00:51:07.620 and that's maybe why she would say something like that

00:51:10.080 if she did, I mean we still only have these records

00:51:12.780 which are somewhat dubious that she ever did do such a thing

00:51:16.200 but if she did do, I'm wondering what her motivation would be for that

00:51:19.820 and presumably it would be to try and not be killed

00:51:23.940 to try and ask for forgiveness

00:51:25.500 You would think so, but of course the standard of justice then

00:51:31.280 confession to Winchcraft wasn't ever going to you know produce an awful lot of sympathy basically

00:51:39.080 the boast you could probably hope for would be a more speedy death unless suffering before the end

00:51:46.400 came so you know nobody just suddenly said oh she's sorry well let's let her off in this case

00:51:51.860 and you know and we'll put her on community service or something like that you know these

00:51:56.920 things weren't an option but you hint at the bizarre nature of thinking and so on that and

00:52:02.180 it's quite incredible because at that same day when she was paraded in church she was also of

00:52:07.480 course interrogated afterwards as well and crazy things happen I mean there's accusations and

00:52:13.620 counter accusations so we've seen that Lilius has already accused Agnes Currie and Elspeth

00:52:18.180 Williams in three weeks before but now these two women in turn they accuse Bessie Callender

00:52:23.360 and she accuses Mary Wilson 1.00

00:52:25.280 and then she accuses Mary Carmichael

00:52:27.520 in Linlithgow and you can see

00:52:29.320 how these witch hunts 0.86

00:52:30.560 mushroom and so on

00:52:33.640 and snowball, as soon as you're

00:52:35.360 pointed out and fingered out as one of the

00:52:37.440 guilty party, you kind of say, yeah it wasn't

00:52:39.320 just me, it was him and you're trying to spread the

00:52:41.360 blame and from nowhere these things

00:52:43.260 grow hugely and absolutely

00:52:45.160 bizarrely, a local

00:52:47.580 lad, William Wilson, pipes up

00:52:49.640 and he accuses Janet

00:52:51.440 glass of killing his mare his horse using witchcraft 24 years previously back in 1680

00:52:57.740 so everybody's coming up with the woodwork and anybody who ever lent somebody the lawnmower

00:53:02.160 never got it back suddenly is accusing the neighbour of witchcraft from years gone back

00:53:06.160 but clearly if they had a lawnmower in those days it would definitely be witchcraft I'm assuming that

00:53:11.600 would be the only real witchcraft accusation at the time I do believe that the lawnmower is an

00:53:16.080 invention of the 19th century so yes it would have been a scythe or a sickle back then but

00:53:20.980 The point being, everybody is bringing up all the vendettas and suspicions and all sorts of things and using this as a great opportunity to point the finger at people they don't like and accuse them of witchcraft.

00:53:33.380 So it just gets out of control.

00:53:36.700 And the most crazy case happens later on when one individual,

00:53:41.800 and this is bizarre because this is into the 3rd of September,

00:53:44.620 probably after Lillius, well, not after Lillius has died,

00:53:48.060 a local lad, William Coss, states that on the Sabbath morning in 1704,

00:53:53.440 it being moonlit, he had seen Bessie Meiklejohn or the devil in her stead

00:53:58.340 in James Chalmers Bark, a bark's a boat, then lying at Leith.

00:54:02.620 The session, considering that the devil had appeared in her likeness, it was no proof against her.

00:54:08.440 They judged it not necessary to regard the matter and thought that William Coast should not be troubled,

00:54:13.120 appearing that he had not spoken from malice.

00:54:15.540 So just to explain that, as these things, everybody's been pointing fingers and accusations are flying everywhere,

00:54:23.220 this local lad suddenly pipes up that he had seen this woman on his boat at leave,

00:54:29.100 but it couldn't have been her because she was back in the village so she must be a witch

00:54:33.100 and then the minister considered this and said that's a good point um we don't think you're

00:54:37.760 saying this out of malice but no we'll just ignore that allegation completely you think well why are

00:54:44.140 you prepared to murder somebody on no evidence and then when somebody is standing before you

00:54:49.600 with cast iron you know witness evidence you ignore that and this is the bizarre thing about

00:54:57.400 these cases which tells us that there's an awful lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know

00:55:02.640 and understand. There is a reason to get Lilius that we don't know about and pretty much this is

00:55:08.880 a stage trumped up show trial just to remove her basically. I mean I suppose the people in a small

00:55:15.500 village some people have been more protected than others and would have people interceded and say

00:55:20.480 now come on this young lad's clearly talking nonsense that's a good pal of you know somebody

00:55:26.600 who's an elder in the church or something like that you know all these interrelationships may

00:55:30.580 have had different views on it it's quite interesting about the the idea of seeing

00:55:35.380 somebody being in two places at the one time and therefore she must be a witch because that was

00:55:39.320 something that was part of the Salem witch trials where people confessed to being in a witch's

00:55:46.060 coven and having met with the devil on a certain night but witnesses said that she was asleep in

00:55:51.440 her bed and they saw her asleep in her bed and the way that that was got round was of course you can

00:55:57.440 look as if you're lying asleep in your bed but actually you're out with the devil and that's

00:56:01.940 part of your your magic is to pretend to be asleep in your bed when actually you're you're out with

00:56:07.680 the devil. This is the problem when you go up before a judge who's decided you're guilty no

00:56:12.160 matter what you know you can't defend yourself in such a case no matter what evidence you provide

00:56:17.380 for your innocence anything that's you know going to get you off the hook will be thrown out and

00:56:23.640 denied and then the most ridiculous things will be supported so basically she was condemned from

00:56:29.000 the day she got taken into custody in fact she was condemned even before that you could see that

00:56:34.160 they were looking for ways to pin witchcraft on poor lilies and and they were successful and the

00:56:41.460 question really is not the surprise that they were successful but what was it about this poor

00:56:47.260 a lonely older woman in a small village community which they decided a long time before that she

00:56:53.180 was going down for witchcraft no matter what and basically that's what happened and all of these

00:56:59.000 minutes are just you know to try and legitimize what was a completely unlegit legitimate process.

00:57:05.480 So you said that in the minutes her death as it were isn't recorded is that right?

00:57:11.600 That's right and so we've got this case of course she's been taken into custody in the very beginning

00:57:17.120 of July she's been interrogated throughout the whole of July and she's confessed to all sorts

00:57:24.060 this localized witch hunt has just snowballed and so on and then the very last we ever hear of

00:57:30.400 Lilius is on the 29th of August and there's a very sad but telling entry in the minutes

00:57:37.200 for the 29th of August and it says some hours before her death Lilius was interrogated again

00:57:43.420 and declared that her accusations against Agnes Currie and Elspeth Williamson

00:57:47.520 were as true as the gospel, and she added, and these are her warm words,

00:57:52.100 it is as true as the sun shines on the floor, and dim as my eyes are, I see that.

00:57:57.820 And they're the very last words we have of Lilius alive,

00:58:03.020 and then we never hear anything about her again.

00:58:06.320 But from other sources, we know what happened to her after that date.

00:58:11.600 Do we know what she died of or how she died?

00:58:15.540 We don't. We have no knowledge whatsoever.

00:58:18.780 There are two options or possibilities, or only two likely options.

00:58:23.080 One, suicide, that unable to take the suffering and knowing what was coming her way, she took her own life.

00:58:29.620 Or secondly, being an elderly woman exposed to horrendous treatment for a prolonged period of time in custody,

00:58:37.680 she just passed away of maltreatment through natural causes my own view is personally I think

00:58:44.900 given her weakness her age her failing health that I think she died of maltreatment but suicide

00:58:51.800 is a possibility and what was the sort of prevailing view on suicide then though was that

00:58:58.040 not that it was a mortal sin or is that just a catholic thought no it was very much the case

00:59:03.780 that it was considered a sin by the church of scotland in this period too and those who took

00:59:09.840 their own life would be treated quite abominably they wouldn't be buried in consecrated ground in

00:59:14.960 the parish church and so on they would be very often considered to have died out with god's grace

00:59:20.320 and they would very often actually be buried in the most bizarre of places in inland communities

00:59:26.880 they would be under cairns and sort of areas set aside for suicide because suicide was frighteningly

00:59:32.620 common in early modern Scotland so many women who fell pregnant out of wedlock and so many other

00:59:41.000 individuals who were destitute and so on would frequently take their lives and so we have

00:59:46.680 countless records of suicides and suicide burial but in coastal communities it wasn't uncommon for

00:59:53.940 these individuals to be buried in the intertidal zone a sort of liminal place not quite land not

01:00:00.700 quite see but reserved for the burial of those who died out with god's grace we've actually had over

01:00:08.120 the last few years a number of human remains come to light on the bay in the bay sorry of

01:00:13.500 kuros and it seems likely that these are probably the ideals of those who were buried there for

01:00:21.840 some reason we don't know whether they were suicides of what other reason that they were

01:00:27.080 denied burial in the local parish church and what's happening is the sea is eroding them away

01:00:31.820 and then the bones are washing out and every now and then I get a call to say we've got

01:00:35.080 various human remains rolling about in the tide, a tidal area of Kouros and so on. So that's not

01:00:40.620 uncommon. If Lilius was moved, and this is maybe something we can discuss at more length, I wonder

01:00:46.980 if there would be a way to find out or if it's just there's no way of finding out what her death

01:00:51.620 was actually caused by probably not i suppose but it would be interesting to know um how she

01:00:58.700 how she actually died because i think that is one of the that was certainly that's what i i'd heard

01:01:03.800 when we started initially talking about this is that a lot of people seem to view that she'd

01:01:07.240 committed suicide i think it'd be interesting to know you know as another another thing as what

01:01:12.480 you're saying about her um the times that she was in about how poorly people that committed suicide

01:01:17.340 or that killed themselves were viewed,

01:01:20.080 it would be good to sort of reckon that for her as well,

01:01:22.900 you know, that if she was to be moved to a Christian burial site

01:01:25.620 and for that stain to be taken against her name as well.

01:01:29.300 If you see what I mean, you know, to sort of completely exonerate her.

01:01:33.120 It just seems like such a terrible group of injustices was done to her.

01:01:36.760 It does indeed.

01:01:37.900 I think coming back to the question of suicide or death by maltreatment,

01:01:41.360 we can never know.

01:01:42.940 The evidence before us is not exclusive.

01:01:45.480 but so it's for the individual to come to their own conclusion but in my own mind I'm confident

01:01:51.180 that she died of maltreatment this is a woman in her 60s possibly her 70s she's made it clear in

01:01:57.900 her own words that she was old and infirm and had been for a number of years her eyes were dim and

01:02:04.020 fading and this is a woman whose the light and life is fading out of her she's been interrogated

01:02:11.080 she knows death awaits her she's all alone in the world she's been treated in the most appalling

01:02:17.340 and unimaginable way and i just think she gave up on life and that was the end of lilias now it's

01:02:25.000 possible that she could have committed suicide but i said there's no evidence and there's no way

01:02:29.680 of knowing even though we have something of her remains and so on they're not going to tell us

01:02:34.680 because if she did commit suicide the only viable option she could have had would be in some form

01:02:40.180 of strangulation and there's no way from what little we have left of her of ever being clear

01:02:45.940 about that but of course her burial whilst suicides would have not been buried in the parish church

01:02:52.260 and could have been buried in the intertidal zone they wouldn't have had the absolute unique bizarre

01:02:59.860 revenant style of burial that we know lily has had and we'll be discussing soon and so that tells 0.85

01:03:05.060 her pre-eminence

01:03:07.100 was of course witchcraft 0.99

01:03:09.140 and in the eyes of her 0.71

01:03:11.220 contemporaries and the minister and the Kirk Session

01:03:13.240 the fact that she

01:03:15.180 was a suicide or might have been

01:03:17.100 a suicide as well was a minor consideration 0.94

01:03:19.300 given the fact that she was a witch 0.99

01:03:20.980 Well I think we're going to move 0.97

01:03:23.260 on in fact next week

01:03:24.760 because we want to hear about the story of

01:03:27.040 Lilith from when she was

01:03:29.080 put in her grave and we've spoken about

01:03:31.060 the revenant aspect of that

01:03:32.920 before but when she was put in her grave

01:03:34.900 to the the story which has continued on right up to the the modern day with with your involvement

01:03:40.920 in finding her grave dug so we look forward to speaking about that next week but what it's worth

01:03:46.120 as we're talking about whether or not she died of maltreatment or she killed herself I would say

01:03:52.000 that they're both the same thing because she was placed in such a situation that even if she did

01:03:57.340 kill herself it was as a result of her maltreatment that she would have placed herself in that

01:04:02.580 situation so I don't let anybody off by saying that she would have taken her own life if she'd

01:04:09.560 only taken her own life in circumstances where she had been driven to it that doesn't seem to me

01:04:14.520 much of an act committed against herself I think it was still committed against her by those who

01:04:20.140 were accusing her of witchcraft.

01:04:32.580 thanks for listening today please do share the petition please do join up with us on twitter

01:04:40.540 or facebook or instagram or even tiktok i can't even believe i'm saying that last part

01:04:45.580 so please do get involved share share share tell people that don't use social media because of

01:04:51.980 course not everybody does sensibly the more people we have signing the petition the greater chance

01:04:57.020 we have success because obviously it would show that there's a public appetite for this to happen

01:05:01.060 can I also just add Zoe people have said to me that they've signed up and then they've checked

01:05:07.380 and they haven't actually signed for whatever reason I don't know whether or not they've not

01:05:11.860 saved it or something or not waited for the page to refresh so it might be worthwhile just to check

01:05:16.920 if you think you've signed it to go on and check which you can do check the list of names to make

01:05:22.600 sure your name's on it just to make sure it's got there it's just I've had one or two instances

01:05:27.260 where people haven't been able the other thing is someone wasn't able to to sign it but wanted to

01:05:33.100 sign it and sent me an email about it and I forwarded it on to the petitions department

01:05:37.360 and the petitions department got some basic details from that person and they themselves

01:05:41.820 were able to help them to sign on so if there's anyone listening to this that thinks oh I don't

01:05:46.360 know how to find the petition how to sign on etc the petitions department at parliament which you

01:05:52.940 get by googling the name if you email them they will just ask for the details that they need to

01:05:58.480 put your name on it so that's also another way particularly if you are as some of us are a bit

01:06:03.980 confounded by the internet as a generality we look forward to bringing you more content from

01:06:11.000 doug next week in his final third installment perfect okay thanks very much until then

01:06:18.080 toodle pip toodle tip and goodbye

01:06:22.940 if you'd like to learn more about the witches of scotland please subscribe wherever you get

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01:06:45.780 instagram hello and welcome to episode 22 of the witches of scotland podcast it's not a podcast

01:06:55.380 that's a different thing sorry a podcast podcast podcast podcast right

Witches of Scotland - February 13, 2021

EPISODE 22 DOUG SPEIRS, ARCHAEOLOGIST ON LILAS ADIE

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