Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 26 - INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY LIVE EVENT WITH SARA SHERIDAN

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.

00:00:52.940 Hi everybody, Clare here from Witches of Scotland bringing a bonus episode for International Women's Day.

00:00:59.580 We held a sell-out event with Sarah Sheridan, author of the brilliant book, Queer of the Women.

00:01:04.960 This book was in part inspiration for the Witches of Scotland campaign.

00:01:09.060 For everyone who unfortunately couldn't get a ticket, here is now the audio of the event.

00:01:15.580 We're also going to post links to YouTube so that you can watch it as well.

00:01:19.800 We want to thank everyone who came along and listened to us.

00:01:22.380 And we also want to thank Sarah Sheridan for coming along and speaking to us.

00:01:27.260 Happy International Women's Day.

00:01:29.580 can i just start off then by saying hello and welcome to everybody that's come along to today's

00:01:39.900 event um we are absolutely shocked that we managed to get a sold out event um of 500 people it's

00:01:47.240 really quite flabbergasting i think that's mostly down to the fact that claire just tweeted for her

00:01:52.780 life for about 14 hours it's quite remarkable i was looking at good god it's a marathoner but um

00:02:00.940 it's really great to have everybody here and we are we're delighted that we're hoping that this

00:02:06.440 signals that that you're that you would be in support of what we're doing with the campaign

00:02:09.620 so thanks for coming so i'm zoe vendetotsi um claire would you like to introduce yourself

00:02:15.280 Hi, I'm Claire Mitchell QC. I am an advocate. I work in criminal law and I started off the campaign on International Women's Day last year.

00:02:30.080 And along with Zoe Venditotsi, since that time, we are the Witches of Scotland.

00:02:36.040 Yes, although not actually witches. I said that to somebody today, we're not actually witches.

00:02:40.220 well that's fine if you are but we're not witches but um we are joined today by our I think pretty

00:02:45.120 much our first guest which is Sarah Sheridan and it's an absolute joy to have you here today

00:02:49.400 Sarah hello hello hello so Sarah is a writer of many many books um fiction and non-fiction but it 0.98

00:02:56.380 was particularly your non-fiction book obviously Sarah where are all the women that kind of kick

00:03:00.960 things off wasn't it Claire yes um if I can if I can just let you know where um the campaign idea 0.53

00:03:09.820 started from i suppose that's that's the best place to start and one of the reasons um that we

00:03:16.700 um have asked sarah here today is that it was the reading of her book where are the women um that uh

00:03:24.300 we uh that i read and i was entranced by because it reimagines a scotland where the people are

00:03:32.980 remembered are women and not men so the streets are named after women the statues are named after

00:03:38.560 woman and it was it was a really transformative book and I'm delighted to see that two lucky

00:03:45.900 people today will be getting a signed hard copy of that. Sarah has donated two signed hard copies

00:03:53.040 so she's chosen various numbers. We are going to pick those people and we're going to give away the

00:03:58.780 book and the finest editions at the end and we'll nominate who those people are and give them to

00:04:04.360 them but what happened was so I work in an area of law dealing with miscarriages of justice so I

00:04:11.400 kind of filter the world through that way and I had been always interested in Scottish history

00:04:17.980 and very much interested in the history of witch trials in Scotland but I was kind of thinking

00:04:23.380 about it from a jurisprudential theory as opposed to thinking about really the people themselves

00:04:30.060 the women themselves involved in these events. And I had this sort of idea in the background

00:04:36.860 and I had been researching one of our former Lord Advocates who was called the Bloody Mackenzie

00:04:43.260 and that Lord Advocate didn't actually believe that all of the witch trials were real witches

00:04:49.060 and what he did was he went around trying to shut down quite a lot of these witch trials

00:04:54.780 um and I was reading about him and I came across a woman who he recorded um when she was being

00:05:02.800 tortured by the people trying to get confession out of her and they said can you be a witch and

00:05:08.240 not know it and um I was sitting in the faculty library and I was almost in tears when I heard

00:05:14.360 that the idea that this woman was so bewildered so beleaguered so trust so lost in her own faith

00:05:26.020 in herself that she actually thought well maybe I am a witch maybe these people know better than me

00:05:31.800 and I was very distressed about it so a short time later I was in Princess Street Gardens walking my

00:05:37.360 dogs and I was was looking around and I must have had Sarah's book in my mind sorry

00:05:46.120 I must have Sarah's book in my mind because I was looking at all the statues in Princess Street

00:05:52.980 Gardens and I saw men on horseback and I saw lots of names of men on statues and I thought where

00:06:02.020 are the women. There is not one woman, one named woman in this place at all. If an alien was to

00:06:09.280 come down right now and look around, they wouldn't see any woman. There's no visibility of women in 0.99

00:06:16.420 public spaces. And to top it all, I got to the top of Princess Street Gardens and saw there was a 1.00

00:06:22.720 full-size statue of a named bear. I was like, there's a bear. There's an actual named bear

00:06:27.100 who did very good things during the war. Granted, he did good things. I'm not taking it away from

00:06:31.420 the bear but there was a bear and there was also a dog called the unfortunate name of bum the dog

00:06:37.980 and I thought I looked over from where I was standing standing next to Vojcek the bear

00:06:44.080 and I looked over at the castle esplanade and just below it at Norloch and at the castle esplanade

00:06:51.760 at least 300 women that's a conservative estimate were killed as witches and I thought not only is

00:06:57.400 history not recording these women, recording women who do great things. We're not putting

00:07:04.040 women up in statues. We're not putting women in plinths. Not only are they not doing that,

00:07:09.380 but they're not even recording when terrible things happen to women. There is nothing to say

00:07:14.180 that we're sorry for the fact 300 women were killed at this spot. There is a thing called

00:07:20.160 The Witch's Well, but if you read it, The Witch's Well says 300 people were killed here, 300 women

00:07:25.480 were killed here um some used their uh gifts for good and some for bad so it's not an acknowledgement

00:07:32.200 nothing at all so at that I stomped home and I wrote down the witches of Scotland and said we

00:07:38.720 want I want a pardon for these women um I want uh an apology because many of them died before they

00:07:46.660 ever got to um court and i and i want a national memorial i want something which shows that 4 000

00:07:55.620 people's lives were ruined by an accusation of witchcraft that 2 500 paid with their lives

00:08:01.140 and 84 of these higher than the rest of europe 84 of these were women and that is when the campaign

00:08:09.900 started so um how long ago was that Claire that you had that so that that happened in that happened

00:08:17.780 in 2019 but it took me quite a while to set things up um and it wasn't until International Women's

00:08:24.880 Day last year that we kicked off the event um Zoe you were you were there too I was there yeah so

00:08:32.020 so Claire and I met at um a social engagement if you remember those things from the past

00:08:37.740 um and that must have been that must have been the summer proceeding like latin the in 2019 it

00:08:43.620 must have been and claire said to me that she had this idea then and that um we'd sort of bonded

00:08:47.840 over an enjoyment of true crime podcasts and she asked me if if i was interested in working on this

00:08:53.260 with her so then fast forward a wee bit and claire did all the all the work we put it all together

00:08:57.200 first of all and then we launched a year ago today in a brewery in dundee we'll talk about

00:09:03.600 that maybe a wee bit more later why we chose a brewery but it was at that point that it was

00:09:07.500 launched and um as Sarah has um sorry as as Claire has made the joke a few times if we actually had

00:09:13.240 any sort of psychic ability or magic ability we'd be able to foretell that we'd launch it and then

00:09:18.140 a few weeks later we'd have to unlaunch it or at least put it on hold for a good wee while because

00:09:22.620 of lockdown but then we started to record the podcast in about was it September Claire yeah of

00:09:28.580 2020 so that's for those of you that have been following sort of from the early days that's when

00:09:33.220 we first launched them and then that brings us on to our first guest which of course was Sarah

00:09:38.260 so Sarah can you do you want to tell us a wee bit about where are the women a bit more than

00:09:44.880 what Claire's already said um not really I think you've summed it up pretty well actually I mean I 0.83

00:09:50.320 I got the opportunity to do this and where the women is based on a project by a feminist called

00:09:55.720 Rebecca Solnit who um in the New Yorker magazine remapped the New York subway according to women's

00:10:02.480 history and that's really where i got the idea and um had been knocking about some historic

00:10:07.820 environment scotland properties and because i'd done i'd been part of a short storybook that had

00:10:13.740 been commissioned by uh historic environment scotland uh and so was talking to the publisher

00:10:18.840 giving him a hard time saying you don't have enough women because i've always been writing

00:10:22.520 about women and you haven't got enough women in women's history in these properties and um and

00:10:28.760 he said what do you want to do and we discussed this project that he had seen as well and and

00:10:32.880 basically got super ambitious and decided to do the whole country and um i i think this must have

00:10:39.480 you know this was beginning of 2018 uh finished it at the end of 2018 came out in 2019 um and then

00:10:50.520 met claire about six months later maybe seven months later something like that um and you'd

00:10:55.740 already read it which is always amazing um and so we could have this chat about you know the

00:10:59.880 the witches monuments that do exist because there are a few witches monuments around scotland

00:11:03.800 and but they're pretty haphazard uh in different places and and it's not all the witches it's only

00:11:10.360 a witch from a particular place or one particular story um yeah so and and i mean the witches for me

00:11:18.760 i was also running at that time a perfume company called reek and we had a perfume that memorialized

00:11:24.680 the witches so I'd kind of be memorializing witches myself which the idea was you would

00:11:29.320 be able to spray on this perfume and you would become a memorial and I love that idea yeah it's

00:11:34.980 a great idea so we did that for about four years I did that we had a Jacobite perfume

00:11:39.460 uh and we had a witch's perfume and we were about to do a pirate's perfume pirate queen's perfume

00:11:45.160 because we have some amazing female pirates as well um and um yeah Brexit kind of happened and

00:11:51.860 various other things happen and we decided we weren't going to do that anymore so. Sarah can 0.99

00:11:56.780 you tell us about why you wrote the book is I think it's a great story of your realisation

00:12:02.740 of where are the women can you tell us about how that came about? I mean it'd been a very long time

00:12:08.780 because I had been working in women's history and spending a lot of time in the archive I'm 0.90

00:12:13.500 basically a great big swat and I'm not an academic historian I'm a novelist I make stuff up

00:12:18.200 So for me, I kept finding these little tantalising glimpses into women's lives from mostly from the late Georgia and early Victorian era.

00:12:26.360 That's the era that I had mostly up until that point written about.

00:12:29.980 And I would just get pulled into their stories and think, why is so much missing?

00:12:34.020 And then in 2016, there were various studies done, including one by a TV historian called Bethany Hughes, who you might have seen, who specialises in the classical era.

00:12:43.560 But she was asked by Historic England to do a study of resources, historical resources.

00:12:49.300 And she came up with this figure that only 0.5% of our historical resources are female.

00:12:56.800 And when I saw that, I thought, yeah, that really chimes with not only artefact stores that I've been in, but also archives.

00:13:04.480 And it's just not good enough. And so what would it be like if we if we did memorialise women?

00:13:11.020 and and this sort of very um confrontational idea really of of imagining it before it happens

00:13:17.620 because if you can't imagine it you can't do it and so the idea was that um we would hold a glass

00:13:23.380 actually the book was my hope was that it would hold a glass up to and the way that our our built

00:13:30.260 environment and our rural landscape is memorialized which is all the men and very very few of the

00:13:35.120 women um and as you say we do have some female statues in Edinburgh we have three I think or

00:13:40.300 four in central edinburgh they're all royal we've three marys and one victoria i think in central

00:13:44.840 edinburgh and you know we get this this feel that you know you you just don't you just you

00:13:51.840 you don't see women achieving stuff exactly what you said and i thought about i suppose the

00:13:57.860 difference that that would have made to me as a kid as a young woman and the difference that i

00:14:03.040 want to make for my daughter my god daughters my nieces and actually the boys as well because

00:14:08.340 the view of history that we have is really skewed what we see in sort of traditional history

00:14:12.720 isn't what really happened if you go back into the archive and you look at all different kinds

00:14:18.840 of eras women were achieving things and they were doing so in an integrated way with the men

00:14:22.960 it's just that we don't record it in the same way and we don't hold that record so every time

00:14:29.560 somebody does something it has to be the first and so there was this record of women's achievement

00:14:35.240 but then also a record to some degree of victimhood and we have a lot of monuments uh all over Europe

00:14:41.880 all over everywhere to male victimhood to war uh heroes we call them and we don't memorialize women

00:14:50.120 in that way and so groups of women like the witches or the women who were raped after the 45

00:14:55.800 you know 45 uprising in Scotland and you know we have a we have quite a few of those groups of

00:15:01.720 female victims if you like uh which as you say there's just nothing to them and and it seemed

00:15:06.880 wrong to me it just seemed wrong so i once you started to imagine it you become very radicalized

00:15:11.760 i was always an equality activist i was always a feminist by the time i finished writing this book

00:15:16.240 i was absolutely raging um because you you realize as you walk down the street actually

00:15:21.240 that is another man and that's another man and that bench is a man as well uh and you you end

00:15:26.220 up sort of muttering to yourself as you walk down george street in edinburgh this is totally

00:15:30.380 ridiculous what is going on and not another statue of David Livingston and John Knox you know I've

00:15:35.940 just I just kind of had enough of it so yeah that's kind of where the where the book came from

00:15:40.280 for me. That was a point that I wanted to bring up that Claire and I talked about which is

00:15:44.740 obviously we're in the month of International Women's History Month and tomorrow's International

00:15:49.700 Women's Day which is why we've organized this today to tie in with that why to to answer some

00:15:55.280 of the questions that we've had occasionally particularly through Twitter why is there any

00:15:59.320 relevant to looking at these women of the past why can we not just move on it's in the past

00:16:05.180 who cares you know it's happened what's the point of this what would you say to that my answer would

00:16:10.880 be it's very difficult to go where you want to go without understanding where you came from

00:16:15.700 and our general understanding of history and the way that it's taught right throughout our

00:16:21.640 education system and even handed down within families is not really an accurate representation

00:16:27.100 of what was going on so we're not really getting to the grips with where we come from

00:16:31.580 and if we don't know where we come from how can we understand where we go and I

00:16:35.800 spent quite a bit of time in the last 10 years on and off in Germany and it's really interesting

00:16:40.940 because they process history in Germany in a completely different way particularly their

00:16:45.120 20th century history so you have the Cold War but you also have the sort of the fascist era

00:16:49.360 and they're very good at looking their history in the eye and we don't do that in in Scotland

00:16:56.780 nor in the UK and actually in lots of other places in Europe and the witches is sort of certainly

00:17:01.720 part of that for us here in Scotland and I think it chimes the witches particularly chime with

00:17:07.040 people because I think that idea of not being able to escape not being able to get away is very

00:17:15.680 traumatic and it's something that many women seem to identify with and that may be because in some

00:17:23.460 sense is some of that witchy behavior some of that um women being run down and not being able

00:17:29.160 to escape and being accused of things it still goes on online it still goes on we live in a very

00:17:34.100 patriarchal culture you only have to look at the newspapers really any day of the week and you will

00:17:39.640 see stories um that that sort of chime with the witches so i think the reason the witches chime

00:17:44.880 with so many people is that it is really something that is that that happened in our history it is

00:17:50.760 over it is past but some of that culture still exists for us and were you yourself taught anything

00:17:59.180 at school about the Scottish witches because this is something that Claire and I have talked about

00:18:03.060 with various people on the podcast I don't think so I mean we I remember doing old grade history

00:18:08.920 and higher history because I'm that old that those were the exams and we did um William Pitt

00:18:14.500 and we did a little bit about I mean we really didn't do anything much about women at all and

00:18:20.340 if we did anything about women it was royal women so a little bit about queen anne or whatever but

00:18:24.840 that you know that was kind of it so no not i i didn't at all and and actually going into the it

00:18:31.320 wasn't the archive where i first realized that i was missing a whole bit of history it was in the

00:18:35.900 artifact stores so um i have a strong sort of background in artifacts my father was an antiques

00:18:42.840 dealer and when you're writing a novel you write you know to to bring that past alive you need to

00:18:47.300 be quite experiential so I would go in and try on a bodice I would try and ride side saddle I would

00:18:52.860 and discover all this stuff and think these women everyone was living like this everyone was feeling

00:18:56.800 this everyone was smelling this or tasting this or whatever so yeah that bringing women's lives

00:19:01.540 alive like that made me realize that I hadn't been taught the history that goes with that 0.99

00:19:06.700 yeah I was taught sheep farming

00:19:11.320 and how to leave a how to leave a piece of land fallow which was great use to me in

00:19:19.500 Govan Hill where I grew up obviously that's I mean that's what they sort of we sort of said

00:19:27.860 well there were the highland clearances um and some people were moved off their land but anyway

00:19:32.120 sheep were moved on and let's talk about the sheep and I just I just I'm so angry that I've

00:19:38.020 been disconnected with my history and after a while of course when you become an adult it's

00:19:41.360 your own fault for not going back and looking at these sorts of things but it does it we we do laugh 0.95

00:19:47.800 but but the question is why don't why don't we know about it and it's international um women's

00:19:53.000 history month sorry I'm mixing up my days it's international women's day tomorrow but it's

00:19:58.220 women's history month and all throughout Scotland people are confounded and amazed when they find

00:20:05.440 out that so many women were killed as witches i mean i'd certainly i had no notion at all of

00:20:12.260 of really what happened until we started in the podcast and we started to get on different experts

00:20:17.440 in different fields who were saying well this is how that worked you know for example we had julian

00:20:21.440 good air on who's who's seen i think as one of like the absolute foremost historians about about

00:20:26.880 the witch trials amongst other things but he really knows about the witch trials that was

00:20:30.660 fascinating to me because I knew nothing at all now I'm from Fife and there was a lot of a lot

00:20:36.220 of issues with witch trials in Fife a lot of witches or accused witches and I knew nothing

00:20:41.260 about it at all really nothing so that to me has been really fascinating but also because there are

00:20:47.240 some things that we have as myth in our culture about the witches that it's been good to know

00:20:52.020 actually well that's not really true but that part is true so like things about in Scotland I'm

00:20:56.520 talking about things about you know witches being ducked and in water and that sort of thing and how

00:21:02.020 the witches were killed and we've got this idea that they were burned at the stake so to discover

00:21:06.160 that they were actually strangled which we've had slightly different versions on that so i've had

00:21:10.680 one historian being in touch saying that that meant grotted and another historian being in touch

00:21:15.580 this week saying that that just meant hanged so learning you know as gruesome as that is to learn

00:21:20.440 the sort of the nuts and bolts how those things happened and then the bodies were burned so that

00:21:24.620 not only had they been executed but they were just absolutely removed that these women and men

00:21:31.260 were just absolutely done away with um it was has been absolutely shocking and fascinating

00:21:37.060 you've got to be honest you know this is it's really interesting the stories are really

00:21:40.880 interesting but to not have known that at all is is quite shocking to me i think there's something

00:21:47.600 about how we are taught history around you know you are taught an era so you might get taught about

00:21:53.480 20 years or 30 years or 50 years of history and I think certainly when I started to write Where

00:21:58.540 Are the Women it was the first time I'd looked at things overall because the book runs from women

00:22:03.580 who are folk myths you know the Kaliak the the hag of spring right up to they had to be dead

00:22:09.220 historic environments rule was anyone you write about has to be dead but there were there were

00:22:12.740 women who died you know shortly before I was writing the book so 20th century women really

00:22:17.240 and seeing the connections and I think with the witches something that um certainly has struck

00:22:23.260 me and I've learned actually from the podcast listening from the podcast it's not a fact it's

00:22:28.680 an extrapolation that this didn't just affect the women who were killed or the or their families

00:22:36.160 who were alive then that this is something that has stayed with us and and you know you know about

00:22:42.280 your grandmother even if your grandmother died before you were born and you're told that story

00:22:46.720 and so for women to be told that story about their grandmothers or their great-aunt or somebody in

00:22:52.000 village or somebody in the town um must have a kind of an effect a sort of post-traumatic effect

00:22:57.800 of you know if you are a woman and you are accused you don't necessarily get away with it because

00:23:03.200 most of them didn't um that you that you you know you can be victimized in that way and i i think

00:23:11.580 you know very much in the way the irish famine is still alive in irish culture i think that the

00:23:15.980 witches are very much still alive to some degree in scottish culture and and given that it's really

00:23:21.140 quite extraordinary that within the broad sweep of our history there are so many women who tried

00:23:25.880 to stand up for their rights and so we have amazing women campaigning for education women's

00:23:32.040 tertiary education for suffragettes for the suffrage and and these are a couple of hundred

00:23:36.660 years after the witches but they come from that tradition they know those stories so i i think

00:23:42.500 that's really interesting i think that's a really interesting point about about the trauma um as a

00:23:49.260 as a teacher you know like I can see sort of the impact sometimes sadly of generational trauma and

00:23:54.520 I just don't think that there can possibly be you know that we've escaped scot-free as it were

00:23:59.500 from that terrible thing that happened going down from each generation you know and Claire and I

00:24:04.040 have discovered through talking to different people and through research that you know that

00:24:07.600 people were often if they weren't executed if they got away with it that they might have been

00:24:11.660 banished you know so they actually had to move completely somewhere else there's one woman we

00:24:15.780 read about who was branded so she she's branded on the face so that she would just always be known

00:24:21.760 as this person that had been accused of witchcraft not found guilty of it or it was a lesser version

00:24:27.320 of it but that would mean that that would then carry on the shame of their children or or extra

00:24:32.040 family and would just keep carrying down so i think it's it's fascinating from that point of

00:24:36.480 view as well that's that's sort of part of our reasoning here is that we need to make peace with

00:24:41.060 the past to an extent and of course we alive people didn't cause it obviously that's not the

00:24:46.600 point of it but the point is that we see this was a bad thing that happened and we want to make sure

00:24:51.400 that we recognize that so that we can move forward. I also think there's so much um there's so much

00:24:58.540 that we really have to think about and sorry people keep coming up people who is Claire I am

00:25:03.380 Claire it says Madison on my name that's my name as well I'm Madison Claire Mitchell so hi everyone

00:25:08.580 Some people call me Mad, Madge, Maggie, but my name is Claire too.

00:25:16.480 But I think that's really, really important to think about Scotland as a whole

00:25:20.960 because some things that I thought about or we were taught about by Julian Goodyear

00:25:26.020 when he spoke to us was Scotland at the time this happened

00:25:29.320 only had about one million people in it.

00:25:32.500 So for 4,000 people to be accused of witchcraft,

00:25:36.340 And that is a conservative estimate as the people that we know. There were many, many people who were accused of witchcraft that will never have been recorded, unfortunately, and extrajudicial killings of usually women that were killed because of witchcraft.

00:25:51.700 So if there was only one million people in Scotland, and Professor Goodyear said that in order to have one case of a woman being found guilty as a witch, there needed to be an infrastructure of about 100 people, from the judges to the inspectors to the church elders, to the people that built the pyres, to the people that held them in custody.

00:26:10.580 there is no one that wouldn't have known about a witchcraft trial in Scotland at that time or not

00:26:16.900 known someone or had someone in their family and although it affected 4,000 people

00:26:24.560 it affected practically 4,000 people the practical effect of that fear in women for 200 years

00:26:34.960 that they could at any point be accused of a witch and be burnt alive

00:26:39.000 is something which I think must have had a broader effect

00:26:44.300 than just the people we think about.

00:26:47.480 So it's really everyone in Scotland, and I include that as men as well.

00:26:51.260 So even when I think about the 4,000 people,

00:26:54.300 and just bringing it down to numbers,

00:26:56.260 those 4,000 people, the very worst happened for them,

00:26:59.220 but for everyone else there was that constant fear,

00:27:01.780 and that must have some effect on on your psyche i see people reading in the chat that um you know

00:27:08.480 dna uh trauma is kept from the dna and that's inherited and i know people are doing investigations

00:27:13.820 in that regard um but yeah i think that's that's and you know that's important i think one of the

00:27:21.220 other things that's important and particularly with an emphasis emphasis on international women's

00:27:25.900 day what we've got to remember is that the reason that women were targeted and again is the experts

00:27:31.560 that have told us this was that women were seen as weaker morally um intellectually they were the

00:27:39.100 weaker sex and therefore they were more susceptible to the devil we go right the way back to the story

00:27:44.520 of eve she was the one um uh who was in the garden of eden i can't go much further than that because

00:27:50.920 my old testament my old testament's not too good so i'm not going to take that analogy much further

00:27:55.540 But we go right back to the idea of women being the weaker sex. And that is the underlying reason. John Knox said, and I'm not sure which way around this is, but John Knox says women are the port and the gate of the devil. That was the view. It was women because women were weaker. And that's the underlying misogynistic idea. 0.99

00:28:18.720 And very recently, in fact, on a podcast coming out, a podcast that's just out, in fact, we spoke to Hazel, the daughter of Jeanette Archibald, who wrote a great play called The Devil's Mark, which there are links to on the socials that you can find.

00:28:37.120 and she speaks to women through the generations.

00:28:41.140 She has generations of 17th, 18th century women,

00:28:44.900 modern women, suffragettes,

00:28:47.020 talking to one another about their experience of women.

00:28:50.100 And it really got me thinking that, you know,

00:28:53.780 we really still do live in a patriarchy

00:28:55.540 and we are not yet equal until those things are sorted out.

00:29:00.100 Then we should go back, look at the past,

00:29:02.160 find out what was wrong with that

00:29:03.280 and make a determination to go on in a better way.

00:29:06.200 I've discovered I've been reading because I'm not medievalist I've never been a medievalist

00:29:14.740 but I had to write about some medieval room for the book and I got kind of interested in it and

00:29:18.240 there's this period sort of in the late 13th century around 1260 1270 where things just

00:29:25.440 change globally for women and the church decides that women who have prior to that point been

00:29:31.440 considered possible for women to have ordination not in the modern sense of ordination but for

00:29:38.600 women to be deaconesses in the church and for there to be women bishops for there to be female

00:29:45.480 popes all of that just disappears at that point and that's when this sort of slightly

00:29:50.640 misogynistic thing comes in and it seems to be global because then I read a book about women's

00:29:57.000 status in Japan and it's exactly the same era that they start to take legal rights from women 0.60

00:30:02.200 and shift the way that women can hold property for example shift the way that marriage law or

00:30:08.200 divorce law and things are dealt with so it does seem to be in a really big shift during that sort

00:30:13.780 of late part of the 13th century which is you know prior to our witches campaign in Scotland 0.69

00:30:19.660 but it it demoted women in the public eye culturally women just suddenly weren't considered

00:30:25.820 um it was just like a rise in misogyny really and I think that's really interesting I'm digging

00:30:32.540 out more about it now um and looking particularly actually at that stuff within the church because

00:30:39.620 it seems to have happened very much in in western Europe as a kind of church initiative

00:30:43.620 I know that we have not one but two statues of John Knox is that correct Sarah told me about

00:30:50.460 should we talk about him a little bit john knox's part part in this whole situation yeah it is it

00:30:59.200 is thought that john knox was the author of the witchcraft act this is this is the um this is the

00:31:05.960 thinking behind it and julian goodere has written a paper on it which is freely available that people

00:31:10.720 can read if you put in john knox julian goodere and the witchcraft act that paper should come up

00:31:16.520 it's one of these ones that's been made available publicly and he does a very good forensic test

00:31:21.560 picking apart the other possible people who wrote it and basically it's like a whodunit

00:31:26.900 leaving only John Knox left and so that's why he is in part of course relevant to

00:31:36.300 the Witches of Scotland campaign but no doubt you can tell us much more Sarah.

00:31:40.940 It was a pretty extreme sort of reformation rebel, actually, radical at the beginning of his career, preached at St Giles in Edinburgh.

00:31:53.020 I think the interesting thing though with regard to the witches was that when Mary Queen of Scots

00:31:58.520 left Scotland and the church or Scottish state which kind of was the same thing or very closely

00:32:04.980 connected anyway at that point got hold of James VI who was the architect of the very first set

00:32:10.920 of witchcraft trials and he became James VI who at this point is a very young child Mary's son

00:32:16.040 John Knox is key to setting up James's education and he dies when James is I think six or seven

00:32:24.980 eight something like that you know less certainly under 10 John Knox is around for that very

00:32:30.140 original formation John Knox's famous book which is a diatribe really against women particularly

00:32:37.440 against Catholic women particularly against queens is very telling and if you think this is the guy

00:32:42.860 who was in charge of James's education, ratting out James's mother, his primary caregiver,

00:32:48.560 the woman who gave him everything, who gave him his entitlement to the crown, in fact.

00:32:53.680 It kind of casts, I think, a little bit of light.

00:32:56.380 We can use a little bit of modern psychology, maybe, to understand that Knox's influence

00:33:00.740 continued very long after he had, in fact, died.

00:33:05.140 So, yeah, he was pretty rabid.

00:33:07.520 And if you start to read some of his speeches, which are available, you can buy books of

00:33:11.240 them and stuff it it feels you know quite often when you read stuff from history it feels shocking

00:33:16.860 but it feels particularly shocking I think now and when you realize what it you know what it

00:33:21.840 ultimately kind of led to. I very much hope he spoke Sarah didn't he about the monstrous regiment

00:33:28.680 of women. Yes the first blast of his book is called the first blast of the trumpet against 1.00

00:33:33.140 this monstrous regiment of women but by whom he means Catholic queens he's really got it in for

00:33:38.920 Mary but nonetheless you know it's pretty I would like to repurpose I would absolutely like to 0.99

00:33:44.880 repurpose that and call us a monstrous regiment of women who will try and get a pardon for these 0.93

00:33:50.720 women because his statue still stands in Edinburgh today at the old part of the university is it I'm

00:34:00.920 not quite sure how you would describe it but I'm really keen to ensure that there's a much much

00:34:06.800 bigger monument to all the women that suffered as a result of what happened and as a result of

00:34:11.580 that underlying view that women just aren't as good as men I mean people say people say well

00:34:18.820 that was that was the prevailing view then it wasn't that right then it's not right now yeah

00:34:23.800 yeah and also I mean he you know he was a radical he had been banned and Mary had tried to kill him

00:34:29.480 you know you've got to understand there's a lot of big personalities there when you're

00:34:36.700 but he really took it into a kind of whole ethos um and and um you know if you're looking at

00:34:43.360 misogyny in in the church of scotland john knox is a great place to start and the legacy of john

00:34:49.180 knox tumbles down um to some of the vocabulary i think even today i mean the the reasons for

00:34:57.520 women and the men as well because we have to always remember that there were 15% of the people

00:35:02.760 that were accused and executed were men too and I always feel I'm really very much a feminist but

00:35:10.580 I just feel for the sake of accuracy I just need to mention that just now but they weren't it was

00:35:16.060 it wasn't always just straightforward why women were accused was it we've had various reasons for

00:35:21.980 it and we've got we've got this sort of modern myth just now and that Claire and I have talked

00:35:26.500 about and i've asked people about and i'll start maybe with that question which is if you if you

00:35:31.940 were around then do you think that you would have been accused as a witch right we asked that

00:35:36.540 question i think on twitter and had thousands of women getting literally thousands of women

00:35:42.460 getting in touch saying oh definitely definitely i would have been and the reasons were very broad

00:35:47.120 they were from being a redhead to having um a disability to being mouthy to being educated to

00:35:55.400 you know to being a lesbian to having um sort of health issues they're really really broad

00:36:01.360 but there's a lot of women that take it in a in an interesting way I think psychologically as a

00:36:06.360 sort of a badge of honor that you that you think that you would have been you know held as being 1.00

00:36:11.260 somebody that needed to be you know literally executed what do you think of that ladies women

00:36:16.840 well well for my part in researching it um what we actually find really really sadly is that it

00:36:26.140 didn't actually take anything at all for a woman to be accused of being a witch so it's it's nice

00:36:32.920 that we look back and think feisty strong women and sometimes of course if you were a woman who 0.52

00:36:38.180 would call out the local uh church for not doing right things then you would make yourself a more 1.00

00:36:43.100 likely target that is true but in fact for the most part you really didn't need to do anything

00:36:48.920 at all to be called a witch and that is again the terror of it and as I say the 200 years of fear

00:36:54.620 that people would have been in so it's it's it's nice to look back and imbue all the people with

00:37:00.260 that strength but sometimes a lot of the time these were as the Orkney memorial says they were

00:37:07.200 just folk yeah and I think that's something that's really important to us during the campaign is that

00:37:12.880 we'd each week if you've not listened to the podcast um we we name three witches or groups

00:37:19.360 of witches and have their names and have as much as we've got of their story from the different

00:37:24.720 research tools that we've got and we think it's really important because we need to think of them

00:37:28.840 as people as just ordinary people that were just going about their lives whatever those lives

00:37:33.720 might have been and that sort of sometimes out of nowhere they were accused and then went through

00:37:39.440 this horrible experience so to us it's really really important that we humanize as far as we

00:37:44.580 can because the records inevitably are kind of scant in some places like one one week we did

00:37:50.320 um some witches and they were referred to i think claire as sundry witches and that's all the

00:37:55.820 information about them sundry witches or was it sundry witches or women claire no it was um sundry

00:38:02.460 witches that's right yeah which is i mean i mean it's not even a not even a number you know it's

00:38:07.980 just just absolutely crazy that so it's very important to us that we humanize them and some

00:38:12.620 of the the different reasons that we've we've read we've come across so the experts have told

00:38:16.720 us about for them being accused could range from them from people wanting to get their land so it

00:38:22.660 was to get to get what they had so we had a story recently where it was a son-in-law accused his

00:38:27.600 mother-in-law of being a witch so that he could get her land which is a neat trick i think if you

00:38:32.400 can pull that one off but there was there was lots of other things you know there's famous stories

00:38:36.180 about people that had limb differences,

00:38:39.960 what we'd call now limb differences,

00:38:42.000 or people like, for example, Lilius Adie in Fife,

00:38:44.940 who we've talked about quite extensively

00:38:46.440 because there's good records for that.

00:38:48.380 So we know quite a lot about the story.

00:38:50.200 She seemed to be accused

00:38:51.360 because she was just a bit different

00:38:52.960 and maybe a bit odd.

00:38:54.560 She was very tall.

00:38:55.920 You know, there's speculation 0.97

00:38:56.760 that she was sort of six foot tall 0.92

00:38:58.580 because they had some of her bones 0.76

00:39:00.800 that they could measure.

00:39:02.300 And she was just a little bit of an outsider.

00:39:04.480 you know so it could be just really quite mild and of course Claire if we talk from a legal

00:39:09.220 point of view what sort of evidence was needed for a conviction? Evidence that was needed was

00:39:15.600 statements taken from people that just meant that someone would go around and take statements I've

00:39:20.700 seen statements of people saying that they were out late at night that was one of the reasons

00:39:26.860 that they were near a place where a fire had later taken place one which particularly upset me they

00:39:33.040 were seen talking to their cat, someone who talks to their pets all the time. Very, very

00:39:40.500 minor things. Importantly, of course, during this period of time, women were not allowed 1.00

00:39:45.740 to be witnesses in their own right. So I actually have a record of, which is found in a book

00:39:54.720 by Larner, who publishes this, which is the then most senior lawyer in Scotland going

00:40:01.500 into court and saying except in exceptional cases women of course can't be witnesses in their own

00:40:07.680 right so um they were they were arguing they couldn't be witnesses so you'd be a woman watching

00:40:12.980 this happening to you yet have no voice in yourself in the criminal justice system so that was really

00:40:18.960 what the trial process was like and you were of course judged as you would have been simply by a

00:40:23.680 number of men the largest number of people we've seen for being commissioners of investigate

00:40:28.980 commissioners sorry commissioners or investigators was 23 people investigating the one woman

00:40:35.880 for witchcraft and repeatedly interviewing her I think as well it's not always like there is

00:40:41.800 this sense where we tend to think that they're people who are a bit different or a bit of an

00:40:45.940 outsider and that's certainly true that would draw attention to you and maybe help people to point 1.00

00:40:51.800 the finger at you but actually there's a number of kind of upper class women who get um accused of

00:40:57.840 witchcraft and which it kind of surprises me because particularly during the medieval

00:41:03.600 you know if if you were upper class if you were of the reading class you were kind of a bit

00:41:08.820 untouchable but that wasn't the case with the witchcraft trials and there are a number of

00:41:13.040 sort of upper class women who who did get accused and got convicted they tended to have a slightly 1.00

00:41:19.680 better rate of getting off because they could take their case to the high court and they could 0.53

00:41:23.680 get a lawyer and so instead of almost certainly if you were just tried in the kirk you know by your

00:41:29.240 by your local community people you you are probably going to get found guilty but if if

00:41:34.660 you were in the high court you might have more like a 50 50 chance of getting off but it isn't

00:41:39.940 the case that you had to be an outsider you might have been an outsider or or you might not you just

00:41:45.000 have to kind of the spotlight just falls on you and that's what's terrifying about it in a way

00:41:49.800 isn't it yeah i think i think that's sort of atmosphere of of fear you know that anybody

00:41:55.700 could get accused you know and um you mentioned you serve upper class people i live near dundee

00:42:00.680 and that's one of the things that claire and i when we were before we went into lockdown or

00:42:04.840 between lockdowns or at some point we were actually laid out the house i forget when

00:42:08.140 we went and had to look at the the place that marks gristle jaffrey in dundee so she was a

00:42:14.300 witch of dundee and apparently she was i think was she a merchant's wife she was quite you know

00:42:19.280 quite well to do and it was people in the kirk that were involved with that as well but it's

00:42:25.080 it's quite shocking to think that just basically as Claire says anybody could just say you're a

00:42:29.800 witch and you would just need to tell a story and some of the stories we've read are interesting

00:42:35.480 to say the least about about what was witnessed about people's conduct with the devil and how

00:42:41.320 that looked and you can see that these kind of stories obviously just passed around and then

00:42:46.120 that became well this is the way that the that the devil sort of de-baptizes you or un-baptizes you

00:42:51.660 and the the stories are really they're colorful i would say some of the things we've read aren't

00:42:57.460 they claire yeah i think i think colorful is a wild understatement yeah they are they are amazing

00:43:04.920 and you touched on it earlier um zoe which is that i think it's fair enough that we're interested in

00:43:11.780 these that they actually interest us and fascinate us in the same way because although we have to

00:43:17.540 separate the truth of what happened to these women the stories are still very interesting and they

00:43:22.540 tell us different things about our society so I don't think there's any problem in acknowledging

00:43:28.560 the two and acknowledging that it's really really interesting but we should just make sure that we

00:43:33.400 we remember that at the bottom of these there were really horrific stories of real people

00:43:39.820 torture and death yeah now just we've only got about 10 minutes left so i'm just wondering if

00:43:45.280 we should talk a little bit about why it is specifically we're asking for a pardon and an

00:43:49.660 apology if there's a track record with that in scotland and what's possible to happen with those

00:43:55.280 okay well i can say we can extend it just a wee bit longer because of the length of time that we

00:44:00.260 had letting people in but um yeah sure i mean i suppose let's start with what relevance it has

00:44:08.020 people say well why do you want to do this at three or four hundred years old

00:44:13.380 you know four hundred years old who cares about what happens then and hopefully

00:44:17.580 we've been able to go some way to address those reasons as to why we think it's important

00:44:22.640 it's just still absolutely relevant to to the modern day and if I need any proof of that only

00:44:31.220 this morning and The Observer have started a campaign against femicide, a campaign against

00:44:38.240 women killing men and I'm obliged to somebody who tweeted me that this morning but in advance of

00:44:44.340 knowing that I was going to be speaking to you guys today I went on the Scottish news website

00:44:50.640 and they have a wee banner down the side that says 10 different stories that you can click on

00:44:58.580 and of those 10 different stories four of them were about violence coming to women

00:45:04.220 and that is just daily if you look at those things you just see those sorts of things daily

00:45:09.500 so we still live in a society which is dominated by stories of women coming to violence

00:45:17.740 and we still fear um there was a very very interesting thing on twitter where someone said

00:45:24.040 my boyfriend didn't realise that I was scared when I walked down the street at night or I put

00:45:29.260 my keys in my pocket to hold on to them um just in case there's someone coming up behind me and

00:45:35.040 it's that it's that fear that fear that that still doesn't go away and I think we really need to

00:45:39.860 speak about that so that that's a further part of it um I suppose and the last thing is that

00:45:47.080 the last reason I think of the relevance is if we do not know our history and uh and all the

00:45:53.220 good work that Sarah has done bringing these women back to us again if we don't know our history

00:45:57.820 we are bound to repeat it and not to be too bleak on the subject but there is a great

00:46:03.460 there's a great article in Vanity Fair with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Margaret Atwood and Margaret

00:46:10.740 Atwood wrote the handmaid's tale inspired by the story of the witches of Massachusetts in particular

00:46:19.720 a woman called half hung mary um and if you find her poem on that that's amazing sorry my dogs are

00:46:25.540 kicking off in the background as usual you've got strong opinions claire both my dogs are feminists

00:46:34.360 and um but she wrote the book about she wrote the book of um the handmaid's tale based on the

00:46:42.740 stories of the women who are witches in massachusetts and she said she was always amazed

00:46:46.500 when people thought when people described it as a dystopian future the Handmaid's Tale was talking

00:46:52.960 about because she said this is not a future it's a past I've just taken the experience of women

00:46:57.900 during the witchcraft trials and there's a conversation between her at an event that she

00:47:02.660 went to when she and Ruth Bader Ginsburg met and spoke to one another and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said 0.79

00:47:09.660 you know I don't see the I don't see women having these same problems again because women have got

00:47:17.040 into positions of power and when women get into positions of power they won't let bad things

00:47:21.220 happen to women again and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said I'm not so sure about that and Zoe I think 1.00

00:47:27.640 she gave a very good example of um in the modern day uh what type of women are called witches

00:47:34.900 yeah i mean this the the use of the word which is still very current you know i'd give you a really

00:47:41.760 good example claire tweeted lots of people on friday and one of those people was was our first

00:47:46.680 minister nicholas sturgeon and she tweeted that she wasn't able to come but encouraged people to

00:47:50.420 come along to it and it was about 200 or so the last time i looked responses and a great deal of

00:47:55.980 them were were very negative and that's going to happen with politicians obviously but the use of

00:48:01.360 the word which was quite frequent there was there was talking about about another politician a female

00:48:06.220 politician um if she was going to be in attendance that this person would come along to watch her

00:48:11.100 getting tarred and feathered there was lots of use of you know oh you'll be you'll fit in with

00:48:16.200 that coven you know all the rest of it so that the word and the imagery around witches is still used

00:48:22.000 frequently to shut women down and i i occasionally do a search on twitter to see about what's

00:48:27.540 happening with the word witch in different instances and it's definitely used frequently

00:48:31.920 to shut women down you know I think that's really interesting and it's really worth having a look at 0.97

00:48:36.240 I think we're going through a kind of a strange time just now with the way that women some women 0.79

00:48:41.600 have relationships to each other on social media I think there's a lot of an issue about

00:48:45.380 why women have to often be anonymous on social media you know there's there are lots of things

00:48:50.620 that we need to be really up front and talk about in a grown-up and sensible way so I think that 0.73

00:48:55.680 this this issue about about you know people falling on other people we need to talk about

00:49:00.980 that and be quite kind of upfront about it so i think that's partly why it's relevant as well

00:49:05.120 just now another thing that that's interesting is we people send us articles a lot and one of the

00:49:10.220 articles somebody sent me recently was i think from scientific american and it was about um a

00:49:15.860 community i believe in india and what i'll do is i'll find this we'll put it up so people can read

00:49:20.580 article for themselves and put it on our socials and it was about how the um the use of the of

00:49:26.940 accusing somebody of being a witch is still used effectively in some countries to get people's land

00:49:32.420 or to take away their agency and then there's there's women that are then again dispossessed

00:49:36.560 and disempowered and and that's because this word is being used because it's still got this

00:49:41.480 you know frightening connotation so I think it's really important in Scotland that we recognize

00:49:46.260 that and say you know this is not the way for us to treat each other as civilized modern people you

00:49:52.560 know. So tell us Zoe what is it the Witches of Scotland want? We want an apology, we want a 0.99

00:50:01.500 pardon and we want a national monument, a memorial to the people that were accused and executed as

00:50:09.580 witches and a few people have said um a few people have asked us about a pardon and said

00:50:16.260 that doesn't a pardon mean that you're accepting that they were guilty um yeah can you explain

00:50:22.940 the legal position on that please yeah well insofar as i can um when i looked into what i could

00:50:33.460 try to do um for women the we cannot appeal their convictions anymore there are no people

00:50:41.400 that have a what's described as legitimate interest in this although i of course believe

00:50:47.020 we do all have a legitimate interest but not as the the law would see it and in any event

00:50:51.260 we can't just try and appeal one conviction at a time it would just never work it would never ever

00:50:56.800 happen we could never ever get it to court um but what we can do is we ask for a pardon and

00:51:02.120 one of the things again in the background that I was thinking about when I saw the pardon for men

00:51:07.980 that were convicted of homosexual offences and much more recently minors was the wording of what

00:51:13.320 the Scottish Parliament said and the wording was in fact put in our petition but it was taken out

00:51:18.040 because the tyranny of the word count meant that we couldn't have it all in to show you but the

00:51:22.600 wording of both the wording of the pardon in respect of homosexual men made it clear that what

00:51:29.040 these people had done was something that should not have been a crime and they were not pardoning

00:51:35.860 them they were not pardoning them because they'd committed a crime but what they were saying was

00:51:40.800 it should never have been a crime and that's why they were granting the pardon and the wording and

00:51:45.600 phraseology that was applicable to homosexual offences can simply be transferred and lifted

00:51:51.020 onto the people that were accused of witchcraft.

00:51:55.520 Also, more recently, minors are being granted a pardon

00:52:01.000 for the involvement in protests in the 1980s.

00:52:06.020 And the pardon is being made collectively and posthumously

00:52:09.920 for those that are no longer with us.

00:52:12.780 And that's what we want at Witches of Scotland.

00:52:14.980 We want a pardon for those that were convicted.

00:52:18.080 we want an apology for those who weren't convicted but for whatever reason were accused and their

00:52:24.900 life were ruined by it you can only get a pardon for those that were convicted so we want a pardon

00:52:29.480 we want an apology and last of all we want a national memorial and I think we've already

00:52:38.740 had lots of chats people are really really interested about national memorials and what

00:52:43.160 would a national memorial look like and one of the most inspired I think ideas so far was the

00:52:49.760 one that I read about in your book Sarah. So I created I think in Perthshire a witch's trail

00:52:57.280 which you can follow down to a real burnt out church a wrecked church which is owned by 0.59

00:53:03.560 Historic Environment Scotland it's part of their property portfolio so it's doable and this church

00:53:10.600 inside has um it's a smell monument because i'm a smelly feminist that's what it is

00:53:16.440 so you walk into this burnt out church and it smells of charring which of course is really

00:53:22.200 evocative of the witches um but also uh you line the walls with different herbs and i list i have

00:53:29.440 a whole list of herbs actually in in the book that i used i consulted a brilliant perfumer

00:53:34.280 called alex musgrave um to help me create something that would really uh would really 0.98

00:53:40.060 just be i suppose i suppose the smelly ghost of those women

00:53:45.080 and so the idea is you can follow that trail right down go to the burnt out church and walk

00:53:52.860 through and it will have an amazing atmosphere because it it is a burnt out church most of the

00:53:57.620 women were tried in the Kirk sessions um and um yeah not as many women as people think uh were

00:54:06.740 actually herbalists or or or some kind of healers um but I think the idea of that strikes very much

00:54:13.680 with the with the modern consciousness of of what it is to be a witch of course some people do

00:54:18.680 self-identify as witches now in a totally different kind of way so that seemed to me

00:54:23.700 something that was really fitting um but i think there are lots of different ways to to do that

00:54:28.640 monument i like the idea of something um in edinburgh because it's our capital city um

00:54:34.920 uh i'm not quite sure exactly what the monument should be but i mean that's a great conversation

00:54:40.800 for later isn't it yeah i mean we've got if you haven't already the petition is up on the scottish

00:54:47.960 parliament website and i know i bang on about this but it would be really great

00:54:51.820 to get as many people as possible to sign it because it does show there's an appetite then

00:54:56.980 for people to to look at the issue and we know that it's not just ourselves in Scotland there's

00:55:02.500 lots of different community groups that that are involved in it and they're working hard to to get

00:55:07.060 the the image of the witches kind of rehabilitated and to shine a light on what's happening with it

00:55:11.400 but also we've recently been contacted by a group in Catalan and Catalonia. Claire do you want to

00:55:17.660 talk about that a wee bit with the sapiens people yeah sapiens of catalonia and the leading cultural

00:55:24.460 and history magazine in catalonia um contacted us about a month ago and said that we had been

00:55:30.060 inspired by our campaign and we're starting the campaign called um sorry campaign called we were

00:55:36.460 not witches we were women and we have a hashtag which we use which if you're going to be tweeting

00:55:42.860 about this and we would encourage you to use your social to let everyone know um to sign the petition

00:55:48.300 we um tweet hashtag women not witches um but they get in contact with us and we said that um

00:55:55.060 in part we had inspired them to their own campaign and a couple of days ago or yesterday we were um

00:56:03.580 we appeared live at a screen an outdoor screening in um um over there talking about the witches of

00:56:12.400 scotland campaign and they have got a petition started themselves um the witches of catalonia

00:56:19.040 and um they at the start got 150 professors of history they're a history magazine so obviously

00:56:26.040 got a lot of interest and 150 professors kicked this off to sign it and they have already had

00:56:33.300 an overwhelming amount of people sign it they've already had about seven and a half thousand

00:56:37.180 where we are 1,700, but they have a bit more ability

00:56:42.900 and a bit more reach than us financially as well.

00:56:45.220 They had a glossy magazine that's out this month

00:56:48.060 with a good subscription in which Zoe and I are interviewed for it

00:56:52.580 and they have a snazzy video and stuff like that.

00:56:55.740 But I would ask that without the funding, obviously, 1.00

00:57:00.940 that we've got, as Zoe says, let's this monstrous regiment of women 1.00

00:57:04.140 all get together. 0.98

00:57:05.500 let's women talk to other women as we're good at doing and saying have you signed this yet have

00:57:09.860 you signed this yet because it would be really fantastic to show the Scottish Parliament that

00:57:14.700 we believe that women's history in Scotland should be properly recorded and those people 1.00

00:57:19.480 should be given their place and restored to our history as the women that they were and not

00:57:25.120 witches and of course in seeing women I'm also recognising that 15% men were were convicted as

00:57:31.680 well yeah so um on that i wonder if we might um because we're just about to finish up i wonder if

00:57:42.160 we might um do two things first of all hopefully with the appliance of science or secondly what

00:57:48.160 we will play out with a poem that we commissioned for the launch of the petition some weeks ago

00:57:54.320 and i should mention that we've only got until 10 days left of the petition it's up until the 17th

00:58:00.500 of March so if it's St Patrick's Day and you're celebrating and that's the last day it might

00:58:06.240 already it might be the 16th actually that it's down on so please do try and sign before then

00:58:11.260 but we're going to play out shortly with a poem by Lenny Soros online a young poet who herself

00:58:19.940 has come in for a lot of social media pylon and criticism for no other reason than than teaching

00:58:26.040 people a Scottish word of the day and she has had so much abuse um for no reason at all but

00:58:31.500 if you don't know her already follow her she's got some great poems but just before we do that

00:58:36.560 um two things first of all I will explain who has won Sarah Sheridan's uh book the winners of that

00:58:43.700 um and secondly um we will hear briefly from Julia Campanelli who will tell us a wee bit about um

00:58:51.480 what's happening with her and the event that's on tomorrow which is not sold out so it's another

00:58:57.720 opportunity to hear from groups this time in particular the Paisley group about what they

00:59:02.480 are doing but I just want to say to Evelyn Hardy and Catherine Barrington you are the winners of

00:59:09.960 this fantastic hardback copy where are the women signed and please do get in contact with us in

00:59:16.960 the chat just now or by emailing us afterwards and letting us know your address and we will send

00:59:22.200 those out to you and Catherine's saying wow thank you Catherine I'm wondering if you live

00:59:27.660 and Evelyn too fantastic I'm glad we've got we've contacted both people and so that's great

00:59:34.540 and just get in contact with us either by direct message or by emailing us or some such on the

00:59:40.580 socials and we will get your address and have those sent out to you I wonder Julia would you 0.97

00:59:45.620 be available to have a word with us. Julia is an actor, a writer, a producer, a director

00:59:54.800 and she has written a script which she will tell you about briefly and she's actually

01:00:01.100 going to be performing some of that script tomorrow. I cannot keep up with the number

01:00:05.480 of awards it has won and we are really, really keen to see her. Julia, are you here? Can

01:00:11.740 you speak to us i am claire um thank you for having me on and congratulations on your one

01:00:17.580 year anniversary of the launch of your campaign i think it's wonderful what you're doing um

01:00:22.840 claire and i met and zoe we met online uh we have um a common cause in the exoneration of

01:00:33.660 people accused of witchcraft i um as she said i'm in the film industry and i live in new york

01:00:41.340 and I became acquainted with the Paisley Witches.

01:00:45.260 The name of my screenplay is The Paisley Witch Trial.

01:00:49.200 And if any of you are from Paisley, you know them very well.

01:00:52.300 I became acquainted with them when I was doing a performance

01:00:54.960 off-Broadway called Sleep No More,

01:00:58.500 and Sleep No More incorporates some of the Paisley Witches in the show.

01:01:03.760 So when I was reading about them, I was very fascinated,

01:01:07.280 not only by their story, but that I had never heard of them before

01:01:10.200 because it's a truly remarkable story and I attributed that to the fact that they were women

01:01:16.660 and women's stories rarely get told especially in history and so I decided to write a screenplay

01:01:24.740 about it I thought it would make a very compelling film and as Claire said it has won quite a lot of

01:01:31.420 awards, and I reached out to an organization in Paisley called the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt

01:01:38.540 Trust online, and I became friends with them, and they helped me with a lot of research

01:01:44.420 and pointed me in directions who I should talk to in terms of libraries and institutions.

01:01:51.820 And in my research, I discovered there was a connection between the persecution of these

01:01:59.720 women and men but also the um persecution of blacks in in the way of the transatlantic slave

01:02:09.080 trade that there is an actual connection there with the paisley witches so what i thought was

01:02:15.380 going to be a story about the historical persecution of women through witch trials

01:02:20.500 actually became a much bigger story about the intersectionality of gender racial and

01:02:27.060 socioeconomic inequalities. And that is the message that I'm hoping to accomplish by telling

01:02:33.700 the story. So I just would like to say the names of the Paisley witches. There were eight people

01:02:40.860 who were accused and tried of witchcraft. They were Margaret Lang, Catherine Campbell,

01:02:48.540 Agnes Naismith, Margaret Fulton, John Lindsay at Barlock, John Reed, John Lindsay and James

01:02:56.700 Lindsay who were brothers and seven of them were garroted and burned at the stake John Reed hung

01:03:04.260 himself in his cell before he could be executed and um let's see so yeah so I made a trip to

01:03:13.580 Scotland to further my research and I met the ladies who are who run the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt

01:03:21.900 trust. And we've become great friends. And I was planning another trip to Scotland in 2020. But of

01:03:28.320 course, the pandemic happened and everybody, everything shut down. So I'm hoping to make it

01:03:32.400 back there in this year, once everything opens up again, and do some more research on this.

01:03:40.300 So yes, I think one thing, it's important to tell the story of the witches and all of the people

01:03:47.360 that were accused and executed for witchcraft, if you think about it, over 2,700 people were

01:03:53.320 executed for witchcraft in Scotland. That's almost the same number of people who died in the Twin

01:03:59.960 Towers on 9-11. And not only is there a memorial, but there's a museum dedicated to those people

01:04:07.500 that were lost that day. But that was just in one day. So when you have that many people killed

01:04:13.620 over 200 years, you know, it's important to remember them because unless we're willing to

01:04:20.660 tell all of our shared histories, then we as a society cannot advance. I mean, it's always going

01:04:28.920 to be holding us back. So it is important to say the names, to say what happened to these people

01:04:34.500 was wrong and what they did was not criminal. And for that, they should be exonerated. And that is

01:04:40.700 one goal um that i have i hope that that this film when it's made will start a conversation

01:04:47.900 about that about all of our shared histories so that we can look back and say yes this was wrong

01:04:54.860 and we owe them an apology and a memorial and i think a museum would be wonderful yeah we'd like

01:05:02.200 all of these witches the stories of all of these people over 4 000 people to put it all in one

01:05:09.200 place that people can go and see the the volume of of of the the miscarriage of justice would be

01:05:20.580 very powerful yeah thanks so much julia we really appreciate you joining us today

01:05:25.520 i am tomorrow we i'm not reading any um it was too short notice to to put a reading together

01:05:33.840 but i'm possibly going to be having that on the anniversary of the paisley witch execution which

01:05:39.980 is in june june 10th great well thanks everybody for joining us today sarah sheridan thank you so

01:05:46.140 much for coming and and for giving us the books to give out as our prizes it's very exciting

01:05:50.280 um claire thanks as ever for your presence i thank you as ever for your presence zoe

01:05:57.620 and are we now going to go to um we've got a video yeah what um what i would just like to say

01:06:03.160 first of all uh sarah i would just like to say thank you so much for giving up your time you're

01:06:07.880 so generous with us it's always lovely to chat to you guys oh you're so generous so generous with

01:06:14.040 your time and also the books those will be winging their way off um everybody i would say get this

01:06:20.440 book do you know it's a fantastic book for you don't need to start at the beginning and go through

01:06:25.120 to the end you can just pick it up and open any page one of my favorite bits are um sarah's museums

01:06:32.700 of misogyny which she puts at different points it's it's a brilliant book and i said i was saying

01:06:39.820 this to people long before i'd actually met sarah for the first time and then i met sarah and she's

01:06:43.900 even more brilliant than the book but i would also like to say a huge thank you to julia for coming

01:06:48.880 along and speaking to us today there are tickets still available for the event in paisley tomorrow

01:06:53.980 of you look for Renfrewshire Trust and Julia will be speaking at that again in some more detail

01:06:59.660 and now we have an absolute treat for you just to end this which is the beautiful poem by

01:07:05.480 Lenisaurus which is called In Memoriam. In Memoriam

01:07:10.340 They tried to attack your spirit hen, destroy that which they couldnae control 0.67

01:07:17.580 so you spoke and the world didnae listen hen, smoothest madam that burned in your soul 0.79

01:07:23.520 You're deed, but never gone hen 0.98

01:07:26.240 There's them that still carry your name

01:07:28.460 There's them that mind criminals, biding in courts

01:07:32.220 Heeds that should hang heavy wi shame

01:07:34.480 Old Nick didnae ken you fi Eve hen 0.89

01:07:37.640 You had but your ain eyes to see

01:07:40.060 The rang was nae yours, the guilt was misplaced

01:07:43.720 Your innocence plain as can be 0.91

01:07:46.020 But they took muckle mare the life hen 0.99

01:07:49.440 A conal snuffed out in its prime

01:07:51.780 A state sanctioned murder

01:07:53.820 A innocent folks

01:07:55.100 Punishment lacking a crime

01:07:57.060 Your soul's now at peace 0.61

01:07:59.540 With the earth, hen

01:08:00.540 Sleep and be one with the sky

01:08:03.380 We'll screve your name

01:08:05.760 And books they cannae burn

01:08:07.200 Write a legacy never to die 1.00

01:08:09.420 But we willnae just beg your pardon, hen

01:08:12.660 Those days have long ceased to exist

01:08:15.220 We new demanded justice

01:08:17.660 For all those like you 1.00

01:08:19.300 Lying gone

01:08:20.760 but eternally missed.

01:08:41.320 If you'd like to learn more about the Witches of Scotland

01:08:43.740 please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

01:08:46.440 sign up for our mailing list

01:08:48.540 at www.witchesofscotland.com

01:08:52.560 to keep updated with the campaign

01:08:54.380 on that site you'll be able to find

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Witches of Scotland - March 07, 2021

EPISODE 26 - INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY LIVE EVENT WITH SARA SHERIDAN

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