Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 36 EMMA COWAN AND NORAH CARLIN - THE WITCHES OF CORSTORPHINE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

00:00:26.700 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.

00:00:52.800 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:56.640 How are we all? Are we fine?

00:00:58.080 i'm i'm fine i'm good you're good that's good i am quite good i'm definitely looking forward

00:01:04.480 to the fact that it's our holidays our school holidays start tomorrow that's quite exciting

00:01:08.980 yes yeah obviously i'm off to barbados yeah and around the world trip like more likely my holiday

00:01:18.100 is going to be to maybe tayport this year you know yeah not a problem i just i do miss the

00:01:27.660 thought of the i think it's more like looking forward to a holiday even yeah yeah having

00:01:32.220 to do yeah yeah doing up the garden or something like that just doesn't hold any sort of thrill

00:01:39.420 for me to be honest no absolutely not you want to be away from your garden and away from everything

00:01:45.180 just unless my garden is really beautiful but it is not so that's ideal anyway anyway thanks for

00:01:54.140 joining us. We've got, as ever, a fascinating episode today, which we will get on to in a

00:01:59.400 minute. I think, first of all, and this idea is coming to me in a very natural and spontaneous

00:02:03.600 way. Claire, has there anything been happening in the news this week?

00:02:09.740 Well, completely spontaneously and off the top of my head, things in the news. Well,

00:02:15.080 what's been happening with us lately? We're continuing to talk to politicians about the

00:02:20.300 pardon, continuing to try and spread the word with those in power to find out what they think

00:02:26.860 about our petition. And now we are just about finding out who the politicians are that are

00:02:32.660 going to be on the various groups that might look at the petition. So that's something that we're

00:02:37.400 working on at the moment. And secondly, well, it's a few weeks back now, we were delighted that

00:02:43.420 Lucy Worsley's production team got in contact with us and invited us to have a meeting with them and

00:02:49.700 a chat about all things witches of scotland yeah that was quite exciting wasn't it and it was very

00:02:57.340 gratifying because we were able to point them in the direction of one of the friends of the show

00:03:00.840 she's been a guest and she's also become a friend too so that's judith gorman who is so fascinating

00:03:07.520 she knows so much stuff she's such an amazing ace and dedicated researcher so she was on episode

00:03:14.060 30 yeah episode 30 yeah where I think she's talking primarily about the witch as a forfer

00:03:20.180 that she's researched so because she's such an ace researcher they're going to be talking to her

00:03:25.300 for Lucy's show so we're very very much looking forward to her moment on the telly which will be

00:03:30.560 absolutely brilliant because as we say every episode we love the fact that this is a really

00:03:35.520 supportive community where there's people beavering away on their different projects

00:03:38.820 and their different passions but they were all under the umbrella of really wanting to

00:03:43.660 address what happened in Scotland and redress the miscarriage of justice so it's nice to see

00:03:48.800 another aspect of it that will reach a much wider audience through the BBC programme so

00:03:53.360 we're very much looking forward to seeing that. Yes can't wait and our guest today that we'll

00:03:58.940 come on to talk about later there are more people that have been working well one of our guests was

00:04:03.720 an academic who worked on history and the issue of witch hunts but someone else who has just come

00:04:09.240 to really quite recently and decided to get involved and research her local area and become

00:04:14.880 quite active so it's really really nice to see that and people getting in contact with us and

00:04:19.440 telling us what they're doing in their local area so if you are somebody who is doing witch-based

00:04:25.360 research or you have anything going on in relation to witch-based events please do get in contact

00:04:33.320 with us usually on twitter is the best way to get in contact with us because then we can retweet it

00:04:38.860 and we've got a good number of people following us on Twitter so it means that if you want any

00:04:44.000 publicity for your Scottish history based projects we're able to tweet that out to everyone

00:04:48.880 and they can get to see it so please do get in contact with us if there's anyone else out there

00:04:53.460 doing that sort of thing but again completely naturally Zoe just apropos of nothing are there

00:04:59.740 any women not witches that you want to tell us about this week yes I'd be delighted to so we have

00:05:06.240 three women this week which seems to be what we're doing generally. The first one is Jean Brown of 0.91

00:05:11.740 Wigton. We don't have any info about her age or any other details about her or her family. Jean

00:05:18.000 Brown was accused of witchcraft in 1706. It's quite a late case. On the 29th of January 1706

00:05:24.740 she was remanded into the toll booth at Wigton. She provided a detailed confession. Of course that is

00:05:30.980 in speech marks as ever and there's a record of the presbytery asking for a commission to

00:05:36.220 prosecute her as a witch sent the queen's advocate in edinburgh but there does not seem to have been

00:05:41.380 a reply received the presbytery paid for her remand which was about 40 pounds of scots money

00:05:46.880 which i'm imagining was was a fair amount of money then not you know not insignificant the

00:05:52.420 survey of scottish witchcraft sets out her confession in some details which i'll just

00:05:56.640 read from that now brown confessed that the spirits came to her at any time and conversed with her

00:06:01.800 they were not visible but she could feel them and they lay with her carnally as men and women do

00:06:06.660 she told the presbytery the spirits were gods because they could cure sickness

00:06:10.580 that they were her maker and were the father son and holy ghost she also said she was married to

00:06:15.840 them and that the spirits would take her to heaven later described how when she was younger three

00:06:20.080 young pretty men came to her mother's house and offered the family a piece of paper some form of

00:06:25.180 contract perhaps which she took and thereafter always knew more than other people she confessed

00:06:30.080 that they were good spirits but did not refer to them as fairies and they told her the world would

00:06:34.440 be destroyed. Witnesses claimed that she used charms including a belt which had a turner,

00:06:39.520 a copper coin not legal tender after 1707, and three pickles of wheat in it but she denied this.

00:06:46.080 The spirit showed her a vision of the day of judgment when the heavens were as thunder and fire.

00:06:51.300 The best part of this story is that after this confession she was charged with

00:06:55.080 devilry blasphemy and other particulars of witchcraft but somehow she escaped so when she

00:07:02.060 was found guilty she was excommunicated rather than executed so she i'm gonna say got away with

00:07:08.280 it but she probably didn't because if she was banished and excommunicated then she would be

00:07:12.480 in real fear i suppose of her her soul in eternity but she didn't at least she wasn't executed yeah 0.96

00:07:20.000 She wasn't executed, but no doubt she would have had to, you know, flee leaving whatever family and friends that she knew in that particular area.

00:07:28.040 If she knew anyone, I was just delighted to read at the end of that she had escaped.

00:07:32.900 What was interesting about that particular story was that in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft,

00:07:37.920 there actually is a marker which says that some people believed that she wasn't well. 0.93

00:07:42.660 That was why she was doing it.

00:07:44.380 and very rarely you come across that, that there's any reference to her maybe not being

00:07:49.340 mentally well. But I'm absolutely delighted that whether by her own hand or with someone helping

00:07:54.880 her, she managed to evade the hangman's noose and the pyre for being convicted. So I'm really,

00:08:01.240 really glad that Jean Brown of Wigton managed to get away. Next, we have Ellen Gray. Ellen Gray

00:08:09.120 was a woman accused of witchcraft in 1597. She was remanded to the toll booth at Aberdeen and 0.99

00:08:16.480 unfortunately we don't have anything that we can tell you about her age or her family. She confessed

00:08:21.940 to meetings with the devil. She said he was an old bearded man in white and she said that she met

00:08:27.600 with him near her house by the law. She was accused of a number of things including reducing a man to

00:08:34.500 poverty after they had argued and having caused a man's wand never to lie down he later died

00:08:44.740 now we're recording this on zoom and i have the benefit of looking at zoe's face when i said that

00:08:50.880 out loud which was i can tell you quite a strange picture she was also accused of boiling milk now

00:08:59.420 think think about that so she had been accused of reducing a man to poverty so somehow a man

00:09:06.460 had become poor and that was her fault causing a man's wand to never lie down I don't even want

00:09:13.260 to think about how that could have been attributed to her that man later died and also of spoiling 0.98

00:09:19.040 milk unfortunately for poor Ellen she wasn't as lucky as Jean Brown and she was executed after

00:09:26.080 trial so Zoe there's a little bit of a theme going on here because Zoe you might want to have a look

00:09:33.180 at the next case this is another son-in-law case you've spoken about son-in-law cases before

00:09:38.260 but yeah Zoe tell us something about our next woman. So this next story is from Orkney and it'd

00:09:45.400 be great to speak to someone if they're Orkney based if they want to get in touch because we

00:09:49.920 would be you know would be happy to cover more places and we realised that Shetland's story was

00:09:54.600 quite different in some ways to mainland Scotland so I wonder whether again Orkney would be quite

00:09:58.700 different to mainland Scotland as well. Anyway this is about a lady a woman called Marion Leyland

00:10:04.380 who went to trial on the 17th of March 1633. Allegations included that she quote used water

00:10:11.740 to undo for speaking i.e bewitchment, took away cow's milk, revenge after someone stole Marion's 0.99

00:10:18.560 kale. She struck a man in the back and he lost the power to do his duty towards his wife.

00:10:23.140 hmm she was also a poor person who was refused alms and the records don't show the outcome of

00:10:28.980 her trial so she's accused of used water to undo for speaking I'm not really sure I don't fully

00:10:35.440 understand what that means so that means that someone has come to her because they believe

00:10:39.500 that they are bewitched by someone else ah so she's used water in a kind of a spell to

00:10:45.240 undo that almost like when water's used when they christen someone you know right there's that sort

00:10:52.520 image of water she has used water to get rid of someone else's bewitchment she was also accused

00:10:59.140 of taking away a cow's milk I presume what they mean by that is that she was being accused of

00:11:03.900 drying the cow up essentially yeah then taking a cup of milk from a cow yes and also that that was

00:11:10.740 done as revenge presumably the drying up of the cow was revenge because someone else stole Marion's

00:11:15.640 kale and then the next thing is that she's also accused of striking a man in the back which caused

00:11:21.000 him to lose the power to do his duty towards his wife I mean I'm not sure that would cause that to

00:11:27.840 happen I'm not a doctor no I don't think hitting somebody in the back could stop them doing their 0.85

00:11:33.360 marital conjugal duties but remember it's witchcraft so yes she can make anything happen

00:11:38.640 yeah but it's interesting that both those stories those sort of like the slight levity of the charges

00:11:44.500 being so ridiculous aside that marian leyland and ellen gray both have this sort of sexual dynamic

00:11:52.080 to what they're being accused of which i think is interesting and totally unsurprising that really 0.98

00:11:57.020 this is all boiling down to the idea that women are you know they're in league with the devil and 0.65

00:12:01.840 they're temptresses and they're interfering with men's natural sexuality and that means that they 0.96

00:12:06.880 are unnatural in some way yeah they're affecting men's potency one way or the other and yeah it

00:12:13.640 seems to me that it's just a catalogue of other people's ails that are being attributed to people

00:12:18.900 you know stopping cows having milk reducing a man to poverty causing a man's want to never lie down

00:12:27.940 accused of spoiling milk I mean these are no doubt poor people themselves with afflictions

00:12:33.600 but all that's happening is she is being accused of having caused things that she could not possibly

00:12:39.000 at all so i think in this case we don't have any record showing the outcome of her trial either

00:12:45.520 so we just know the stories of jean brown ellen gray and marian leyland we remember these women

00:12:52.340 as women and not as witches

00:12:54.340 so this week we're absolutely delighted to introduce our two guests our first guest is

00:13:13.480 Emma Cowan who is from Christorphin Edinburgh she grew up in the area but knew nothing of the

00:13:18.760 witch trials of Christorphin when she found out about the witch trials she was saddened and

00:13:23.220 angered by the lack of awareness that she held about this time and she felt compelled to find

00:13:27.440 a way to have these ordinary Christorphan folk remembered and honoured, believing that a feeling

00:13:32.180 of disempowerment should be responded to with an empowering act. As a counselling therapist she is

00:13:37.680 naturally drawn to hearing people's stories and working towards facilitating healing. She feels

00:13:42.720 that her interest in remembering the Christorphan folk wrongly accused of witchcraft has become a

00:13:47.200 type of adaptation and extension of her therapeutic work. A strong theme in the things Emma and others

00:13:52.240 have been doing in Christorphin focuses on an effort to redistribute the power imbalance that

00:13:57.080 is evident today in the way Christorphin has memorised the accusers and not the accused.

00:14:02.660 And then appearing with Emma is another guest. And these two women I think have only recently

00:14:07.640 met. They talk about it in the podcast, but it's quite interesting what brought them together.

00:14:11.940 So our other speaker today is Nora Carlin, who was brought up in Christorphin High Street opposite

00:14:17.480 at the Dower House and who attended Holy Cross Academy in Leith from 1947 to 1960. She taught

00:14:23.880 history for many years at Middlesex Polytechnic and University in North London, including the

00:14:28.860 theme of witch hunting in Western Europe during the period 1450 to 1750. Having heard about the

00:14:35.000 1649 witch hunt in the place where she grew up through a cutting from a local paper, she came

00:14:39.940 looking for the Kostorf and Kirk Session minute book in the early 1990s. Nora was able to put her

00:14:45.400 research skills to use transcribing the supposed confessions of the five women and one man accused

00:14:50.940 of witchcraft despite the difficulties of handwriting and spelling. These documents are

00:14:55.840 extraordinarily rich in detail about village life in Kostorfin and the kind of circumstances in

00:15:00.640 which innocent people could find themselves the focus of deadly witchcraft accusations. Nora has

00:15:06.100 also written books and articles on the British civil wars of the 17th century and a history of

00:15:10.960 Holy Cross Academy in which she found out things about its early years that even her teachers didn't

00:15:15.060 know an article on farmers and farming in castorfin in 1589 will appear soon in a book of essays on

00:15:20.320 scottish agricultural history so nora is you know an expert academic as well so it's fascinating

00:15:26.040 so welcome to the show nora and emma

00:15:29.540 i'm delighted today to introduce two speakers we've got emma cowan and we've got nora carlin

00:15:46.800 who are going to be talking to us about the independent projects they're doing that have

00:15:50.680 come together but they'll explain more about that as we get into the show so welcome emma and nora

00:15:56.240 it's nice to meet you on here thank you hello thank you so Claire do you want to start off how

00:16:02.060 this how we were contacted first of all please yes I think Emma you got in contact with us

00:16:07.640 through Facebook Messenger I think I've seen some of the work that we've done and I'll leave it I'll

00:16:13.540 open it up to you you tell me why you got in contact well a friend of mine quite a while ago

00:16:19.440 now had said to me oh there's a podcast that I think you would like and you need to listen to

00:16:23.680 and of course it was your podcast so started listening to it and like quite a lot of your

00:16:28.560 listeners I think became kind of hooked on this history and the story that I had absolutely no

00:16:35.640 knowledge about you know just kind of in the background but nothing really concrete and clear

00:16:41.660 and you know became fascinated angry all different things about how do I not know this

00:16:48.700 so as I was listening to the podcast I started to kind of wonder about my local area so I live

00:16:56.220 in Kostorfin which is just on the outskirts of Edinburgh kind of close to Edinburgh airport

00:17:00.920 actually so a village that's been around for a long time and thought I bet there must have been

00:17:07.880 something that happened in Kostorfin and I want to know about this so went on actually I think

00:17:14.420 You've mentioned it quite a few times, the Edinburgh University's interactive map, went onto the map, had a look,

00:17:20.880 and I think it had nine people that had been accused of witchcraft in Kostorfin on there.

00:17:26.820 But not really that much more detail, not much information.

00:17:31.440 But in Kostorfin, there's a local called the Kostorfin Trust, Heritage Trust.

00:17:37.500 And it's in this old building called Dower House in St Margaret's Park in Kostorfin.

00:17:44.440 The building, Nora may be able to know this,

00:17:46.180 but I think the building would have definitely

00:17:47.800 have been around at the time of the witch trials.

00:17:51.000 It's a wee bit later.

00:17:52.620 Oh, it's a little bit later.

00:17:55.120 So I got in touch with them

00:17:57.420 and spoke to a woman called Frances McRae,

00:17:59.640 who's the archivist,

00:18:01.080 who I think probably eventually thought,

00:18:03.340 oh my goodness, Emma's name's come back up in my inbox

00:18:06.580 and what's she going to be asking now?

00:18:10.100 But when I got in touch with her,

00:18:12.160 she said oh there has been some research on the witch trials and Kostorfin and I can send

00:18:19.240 some information to you so a couple of days later a word document came through and there was

00:18:26.460 I now know was Nora's work but at the time I didn't really know that it came through with

00:18:33.400 seven people on the list of who had been accused of witchcraft in Kostorfin and as I started to

00:18:43.320 read this I had quite a powerful and quite moving response to the stories that I was reading in

00:18:52.580 particular because I know the places that these things happened and I'm not going to say too much

00:19:00.080 about the woman and the one man

00:19:02.140 because Nora will tell you the story.

00:19:04.100 But I think it's helpful for me to say why I had the response.

00:19:06.780 So one of them was a woman who was accused

00:19:10.460 and held in the parish church in Kostorfin,

00:19:13.500 which is still there.

00:19:15.020 And she actually hung herself

00:19:17.520 before she could go to trial in the tower.

00:19:21.140 And instantly I was so upset when I read that

00:19:26.120 because I thought, well, I've been to weddings there

00:19:28.980 and Christmas events and christenings and, you know,

00:19:33.840 I had no, there's no memory of this poor woman.

00:19:38.060 I've since found out there's small notes of kind of memory of her,

00:19:42.880 but nothing, you know, not like some of the memories of the ministers

00:19:46.160 who have been there.

00:19:48.540 And it felt quite, it felt just out of balance, I think.

00:19:52.920 And then there was another woman who was accused of meeting

00:19:55.540 with the devil on Kostorfin Hill.

00:19:57.540 and I live on Castorfin Hill actually

00:19:59.740 so I wander up those woods all the time

00:20:02.900 and just take my children there, love that place

00:20:06.000 and the thought of this woman being accused of meeting with the devil

00:20:09.840 in such a lovely place

00:20:12.300 it just, and her story is very sad

00:20:15.300 she was in her 80s

00:20:17.020 and Nora will tell you a bit more about what they've done to her

00:20:19.620 but I felt really, really sad about it

00:20:22.720 so I was quite tearful

00:20:24.580 And then when I got to the end of Nora's research, there was a list and it had the witch hunters, but the list.

00:20:32.580 And this is where I got angry because the first name that was on it was Lord Forrester.

00:20:38.620 And so he was the laird of Kostorfin at the time.

00:20:42.040 And straight away, I thought, oh, my goodness, his family is so remembered in Kostorfin.

00:20:47.700 You know, there's a high school named after that family, Forrester High School.

00:20:52.180 my mum went to that school because we always lived in Kostorfin and you know my friends live

00:20:58.240 in streets named after that family and I just thought how is his name remembered in this way

00:21:05.880 or his family name remembered in this way anyway and yet you know Beatrix and Margaret and so on

00:21:12.340 are not so I felt angry and then I noticed also John Kincaid I know his name from listening to

00:21:20.660 your podcast and I felt even more angry at that point because he was such a horror you know and 0.94

00:21:27.280 he was part of the witch trials and can store for him so I really believe when you have a response

00:21:34.260 that's powerful like that and you feel a bit powerless or angry you have to do something

00:21:38.460 about it that you need to respond to it in order to not feel powerless about it so I contacted

00:21:44.940 Frances and said oh Frances this is awful what I've just read and it's I've really had a big

00:21:50.620 reaction to it do you think there's any way we could start remembering these people these 1.00

00:21:55.600 Kostorfin folk and she said oh well actually when you got in touch with me it made me think a bit

00:22:01.880 about it and I'm going to find a place for them in the museum in the Dower House so their story is

00:22:08.180 going to be remembered in there oh that's good then I went away and I thought about it and I

00:22:12.900 thought that's not enough so I went back and I said Frances I've been thinking okay and this is

00:22:18.600 why I think eventually she probably thought gosh here's Emma's name coming up in my inbox again

00:22:23.180 I said do you think there's something else that we could do maybe a plaque or a memorial or

00:22:28.040 something so Frances says well let me have a think about it and I'll come back to you so she went to

00:22:33.100 the committee and they talked about it and she said that the committee is now pretty much all

00:22:37.500 women I think on the committee as well so she was saying I think that might have helped

00:22:41.940 quite possibly um they had agreed and that there was going to be a plaque with the people's names

00:22:51.100 remembered and it would be outside the dower house in castorfin so i was pretty pleased about that

00:22:58.240 but again i couldn't kind of stop it still didn't feel like that was quite so i got back and said i

00:23:03.360 wonder if there's any other way that we could do this remember them and she said well we could add

00:23:07.980 them to the leaflet of the history of custorphin and i think she said maybe no one knows a bit

00:23:12.920 more about this it sounds to me as if it's a walking history and it has particular places

00:23:17.700 of interest so she's going to put the story of the custorphin folk into this leaflet so if anyone

00:23:23.700 comes and is doing the walking tour of custorphin they're in they are how brilliant emma you're an

00:23:29.080 absolute inspiration for others i mean this is exactly why we want people to listen to the

00:23:36.460 podcast and to engage with it and you've gone above and far beyond that these you know you're

00:23:42.320 going to get a plaque you're bringing these women's names back to life in the local area

00:23:46.260 of course inspired by the work done by Nora it's just absolutely brilliant and that was partly why

00:23:53.000 then I got in touch with you because I know at the start of each of the podcast you have the kind of

00:23:57.540 remembering three women and I thought oh you might be interested in this and then of course with the

00:24:02.180 permission of Nora then got in touch and of course you kind of went no just come on which

00:24:08.880 was going oh no I'm just you know I'm just this local person that's got a little interest and

00:24:13.580 we're all just local people with a bit of interest yeah I know and I think that like when I thought

00:24:21.000 about it I thought well they were just kind of ordinary local people and and that's what made me

00:24:27.040 go actually yeah you know i will come on and do this because they do need to be remembered and

00:24:32.820 respected and kind of honored and there needs to be sort of restorative conversations i think or

00:24:39.620 i mean that's what it feels like yeah i think we're unfortunately far past any restoration

00:24:46.400 in the sense that finding the families but sometimes social restoration of these

00:24:52.020 acknowledgement of their names so tell me what happened how was the interaction between yourself

00:24:58.580 Emma and Nora did you contact Nora out of the blue or how did that go well we were put in touch

00:25:04.840 through Francis who kind of shared our emails and then I contacted Nora there's another little bit

00:25:11.940 that I want to add before I say because what had happened was because I'm a chatterbox I started to

00:25:17.300 tell people lots of people all around my area do you know the story of the castorfin which do you

00:25:24.580 know that and of course started telling the story and instantly how do we not know this this is 1.00

00:25:30.000 ridiculous and what's ended up happening from doing that is there's a group of all women that 0.95

00:25:34.780 live on castorfin hill pretty much who have decided that we're going to do a craftism project 0.99

00:25:40.840 to remember the castorfin folk a friend of mine carolyn she runs a craft club basically

00:25:47.000 And she said, I think we should do a craftism project. And I said, oh, what's that? It sounds interesting. She knows I like a protester too. So she was kind of thinking that I would probably quite like this.

00:26:00.000 So basically, we're going to create something that is, it could be through embroidery or sewing, it could be through kind of tiles or something, but a piece, I'm loosely using the word art, but a piece that captures the story and remembers the Kisdorfin folk.

00:26:20.500 in doing that when i spoke to francis about it she said we'll display it in the dower house as well

00:26:27.580 and she wants to put it on the first level of the dower house as well because that's where most

00:26:32.760 people come in there's like you know you can get teas and coffees there and things so it's going to

00:26:36.520 be displayed there so we've still not decided what that's going to be we're kind of keen to do it

00:26:41.800 fairly soon because nora will confirm this but i think it seems the the witch trials happened

00:26:48.380 between may and september and we would quite like to do it in that time you know so maybe kind of

00:26:55.060 august september time but carolyn i mean she's got lots lots of big ambition she would quite like to

00:27:00.740 get the local msps involved and she would quite like to kind of take it a bit bigger you know

00:27:05.980 together we're just letting it evolve and we're going to see where it where it goes but it just

00:27:10.440 feels a bit more balanced already i think there's definitely political interest i mean we know that

00:27:16.380 ourselves because we've been approached by various politicians and i've had various meetings with

00:27:21.400 different politicians different parties different areas in scotland so there's definitely a political

00:27:26.100 interest i think it's quite i think it's quite sort of zeitgeisty just now yeah but it's quite

00:27:32.520 a few years ago actually that after he had me speak about it john barrett who was then a liberal

00:27:36.980 mp um expressed interest in it so he could be involved as well we're so look forward emma to

00:27:45.400 hearing how things evolve yeah seeing how things go but nora how delighted must you be that your

00:27:52.680 work is the work that has inspired all this busyness by emma yes yes this is this is very

00:27:59.980 very good i started on the research many many years ago i was brought up in christopher opposite

00:28:06.000 the dower house actually in christopher high street um but i i was teaching in england at

00:28:11.900 became Middlesex University. And in my early modern social history course, I dealt with the

00:28:17.740 witch hunt, which happened all over Europe, of course, and nearly all over Europe. Some countries

00:28:23.740 didn't have it, which is interesting. But my sister, who died many years ago, at some point

00:28:29.120 had sent me a cutting from the local, it was a local advertising paper. You remember when they

00:28:33.840 had, we had those. The Herald and Post or something. And there was a wee article about

00:28:38.960 the Christopher and Witch Hunter 1649 and that was right bang in the middle of everything I was

00:28:43.880 interested in really and so I started reading the Kirk Session book in the it's in Register House

00:28:50.980 but they have photocopies the handwriting is obviously difficult for other people to read

00:28:55.840 I have read a lot of that kind of hand and so I read it all and transcribed a lot of it

00:29:01.260 there is a transcript in the Dower House so you know that's in the public domain anybody can read

00:29:08.020 it get Francis to photocopy it if you like but it's an extraordinary document because it gives

00:29:14.040 detailed confessions now I say confessions but they're all in the third person when asked who

00:29:20.700 her consorts were she said a list of names now obviously there's a dialogue going on between the

00:29:27.320 interrogator and the victim and how she was pressured into saying that we just don't know

00:29:33.720 because it's all written down by Mr. Chalmers,

00:29:36.280 the session clerk and schoolmaster in Christophe at the time,

00:29:40.240 as if people had confessed it freely, which I very, very much doubt.

00:29:45.260 There are common themes which occur in confession after confession,

00:29:52.020 which come in in a sequence, which is very, very common in witch hunts.

00:29:57.180 It's very, very interesting in Christophe because by this time,

00:30:00.420 some of it was a little bit outdated.

00:30:01.720 It starts off with two women and their husbands, their husbands supporting them, complaining about slander.

00:30:09.640 They say that they've been called a witch and it's not true.

00:30:12.700 Then you get a whole load of accusations about causing harm, about making people sick, causing horses to go wild, oxen to run away from the plough and so on.

00:30:25.180 I think it was horses actually to run away from the plough.

00:30:27.700 and rumours repeated that one or other of these first two

00:30:34.460 were responsible for the death of various villagers

00:30:37.220 who said on their deathbeds,

00:30:39.300 it's all because of Beattie Watson or Maggie Bell

00:30:42.340 that I've come to my deathbed.

00:30:44.840 So you get a whole string of accusations like that,

00:30:47.380 which are very, very colourful

00:30:49.500 and give you insights into village life.

00:30:53.120 For example, Maggie Bell had hired somebody's teenage son to mind her cows, and he didn't turn up.

00:31:01.900 And the reason he gave for not turning up was because he's scared of her because she's a witch, you see.

00:31:06.840 And there's another case where a man claims that one or other of these, Maggie or Beatty, had made his cow sick.

00:31:14.640 And when he got up to see to the cow in the middle of the night, because the cow was roaring all night, he saw a black sow across the doorstep.

00:31:24.500 And there were no pigs in Kerstorfen.

00:31:27.040 If you grew up in Kerstorfen years ago, when the piggeries were down at the bottom of the hill, that's very, very surprising.

00:31:33.580 But in fact, pork meat was thought of as dirty in Scotland at the time.

00:31:37.840 Nothing to do with religion.

00:31:39.220 Remember, you weren't turning on the porch light when you came out of your house in 1649.

00:31:43.680 there's a black shape there oh my god it's so then the investigation grows and you begin to

00:31:51.320 get these meetings with the devil and that's a very common sequence because there were popular

00:31:56.000 ideas about witches as people who could harm or heal by charming they were called charmers

00:32:04.620 and it was quite common by now for a charmer who could heal to get the the reputation of harming

00:32:12.880 as well if she can heal she can hurt or he because there were warlocks too so once the devil gets

00:32:22.380 involved you find the people examined actually it happens with the second one Maggie Bell

00:32:27.860 confessing to having met with the devil she had met with the devil in the brooms and you know that

00:32:33.180 before you get to the forester streets all the streets are named after the brooms then there's

00:32:37.700 a very curious element in this, which is quite unusual and quite controversial, because each of

00:32:43.520 these people, after the first, say that the devil re-baptised them to be his servant instead of

00:32:50.040 God's servant. People have said, but that's nonsense, because baptism can only be the one way.

00:32:55.460 Did they ask whether or not the devil put the hand on the head and the hand on the foot?

00:32:59.680 Oh yes, one of them. Yes, William, William Scott said the devil put his hand on his head and on

00:33:05.840 his foot. And everything between that belonged to the devil from then on. And the devil promised

00:33:12.220 William golden gear enough, but he never got anything from him from that day to this.

00:33:18.360 And here's the language coming through as well. Although Mr Chambers is mostly writing in standard

00:33:23.400 English, people say things like, she wasn't a canny. She was no canny. And or she was not

00:33:29.840 Sonsie, it finally ends with.

00:33:32.700 So you can hear some of the Scots language coming through,

00:33:35.820 although it's being written formally by someone who could speak formal English.

00:33:40.500 What is Sonsie? I know that from Birmingham.

00:33:43.360 Ah, now, I know it too.

00:33:45.720 I was puzzled by it because I couldn't find a good definition of it.

00:33:49.620 People used to say when I was a teenager, 0.96

00:33:52.700 oh, she's not fat, she's a big Sonsie lassie. 0.98

00:33:55.500 And I thought it meant healthy,

00:33:56.980 but I think there's a wider meaning, which is wholesome.

00:33:59.840 One of the vocabularies I looked at came across the expression sansé conversation, as well as you could be a sansé body or you could have a sansé conversation.

00:34:12.200 The word that covers that is wholesome.

00:34:14.420 OK.

00:34:15.300 I did puzzle over some of the things, but let me tell you about the folk.

00:34:19.400 The first one was Beatrix or Beatty Watson. 0.98

00:34:23.720 She complained of slander and she was a waver's wife.

00:34:28.500 Her husband was Alexander Scott. And in the end, three members of that family were executed.

00:34:35.380 No, Beatty hanged herself and two other members. Her daughter, Bessie, and her brother-in-law,

00:34:41.900 William Scott, were executed, were burned, it says in the book. And we know that they were

00:34:48.220 strangled before they were burned. Very few Scottish accused were burned alive. I never

00:34:56.080 call them witches. I always call them the accused or the victims, because I know that these were

00:35:02.280 false charges. To go back to Beatty, who hanged herself in the tower, she was accused of causing

00:35:08.780 harm, having an evil eye, by the way. And I didn't know that that term had ever been used in the

00:35:14.160 British Isles. But yes, she was accused of having an evil eye that made horses particularly and cows 1.00

00:35:20.160 go mad when she looked at them. She was forced to make this confession. And she was imprisoned,

00:35:27.100 as Emma said, in the steeple in the tower of the parish church, which is still there. And she

00:35:33.380 hanged herself. She was supposed to be being watched, but the watchman fell asleep and she

00:35:38.160 hanged herself. At that point, the case had been handed over to Lord Forrester, George Lord Forrester,

00:35:44.640 who had previous experience.

00:35:48.020 The foresters also owned Clarkington near Temple

00:35:50.680 on the other side of Midlothian,

00:35:52.280 and that's in the Dalkeith Presbytery.

00:35:54.440 And there were many, many witch hunts

00:35:55.980 in the Dalkeith Presbytery,

00:35:57.320 far more than Midlothian, actually.

00:35:59.760 And in 1630, two victims had been burned at Clarkington.

00:36:06.120 And it's very clear that the accusation

00:36:09.940 of the pact with the devil was common

00:36:12.120 in that particular witch hunt.

00:36:13.560 the Dalkeith one, 1630.

00:36:16.100 So when Lord Forrester gets involved,

00:36:18.720 the scope widens and people are pressured

00:36:21.640 into saying that they met with the devil,

00:36:23.820 they made a pact with the devil,

00:36:25.400 the re-baptism, the head and foot stuff.

00:36:27.980 The second victim is Maggie Bell.

00:36:30.400 And her husband's name was Niblo, by the way,

00:36:33.200 which I didn't believe,

00:36:34.320 but I looked it up in the Edinburgh telephone book.

00:36:36.560 There are Niblos, but it's spelt in the book K-N-I-B-L-O.

00:36:41.200 But in the telephone book, there's no cake.

00:36:44.040 Maggie's husband made the complaint, thinking, well,

00:36:47.680 Beatty made the complaint and look what happened to her.

00:36:51.200 Maggie's husband made the complaint, but you get the same sequence of events.

00:36:55.520 People start coming in with stories about her causing harm,

00:36:58.820 bewitching people, having an evil eye and so on. 1.00

00:37:01.180 Then the third person to be dragged in was a very old woman.

00:37:06.800 The confession begins, being 20 years and now near fourscore.

00:37:11.600 She was nearly 80. She was my age, 79. And when she was 20 years old, she had been keeping sheep

00:37:19.460 and cattle at Kinneil, which was also a forester estate. Another member of the forester family was

00:37:25.500 married to the owner of that. And she met with a grim man who asked her to be his servant and she

00:37:32.340 agreed. And he said, if you want to meet me again, come to Avonbridge and call me, call on my name,

00:37:40.180 John. That was all she knew about him. And she went, she did go to Avonbridge and she took a

00:37:45.180 friend with her and they both lay with the devil. And so you get another classic element of the

00:37:50.760 witch hunt, the sex with the devil thing coming into it. But it's the only case of that in

00:37:55.240 Christopher. However, what Kate was persuaded to confess to was a coven meeting on the hill of

00:38:03.240 Claremerson. And the devil was there with a plough drawn by swine. And he said, if the plough reached

00:38:08.660 the top of the hill and I can't walk on that grassy bit at the top without remembering this

00:38:13.520 that you know if you go up is it Drumberry Drive up to the top and there's a big grassy bit at the

00:38:19.080 top and this is where I can see it happening because you know this is land that could be

00:38:23.420 ploughed but with difficulty and the swine didn't reach the top of the hill so the devil's servants

00:38:28.760 weren't going to get any benefit from this at all no good harvest this year and she was persuaded

00:38:35.300 to name a lot of people and they weren't all Kerstorfen folk. There was Clattering Meg in 0.99

00:38:40.160 Ratho, who I've never managed to track down. And there were a couple of people named who lived in

00:38:45.820 Crammond, where I live now. But of course, this gave the interrogators, the elders of the Kirk,

00:38:51.780 the opportunity to drag in a whole load of other people, including the two other members of the

00:38:57.860 Scott family and Margaret Bailey, whose husband was a big farmer in Kerstorfen and who had enough

00:39:03.700 influence to get her released, saying that he brought witnesses to say, well, Ket Gibb had not

00:39:09.740 said she was at the coven. She said she thought that Maggie was at the coven, but maybe not.

00:39:15.660 And someone that looked like Alexander Scott, BT's husband, but might not have been because

00:39:20.780 he had a grey cloak around him. So they got off. An ambiguous identification that they managed to

00:39:26.760 get off because of that ambiguity about whether or not it was them or not. Yes. Even like the

00:39:32.560 modern day when we're talking about identification identification is one of the most common things

00:39:37.960 where there are problems in cases of identification it's so interesting that they've managed to

00:39:43.600 elide what would be a horrific death by the identification not being up to scratch

00:39:49.540 very interesting that's right yeah yeah i see what you mean uh-huh then there was i think i've got

00:39:55.700 round to marion ingalls now john kinkade was dragged in to prick the um the two scots william

00:40:03.960 scott and his niece bessie who was only 15 her baptism is recorded in the first um register of

00:40:10.640 christopher parish and it's interesting that you you have in the first place two married women with

00:40:16.960 families with and they're they're no more than middle-aged they've got teenage children uh and

00:40:22.520 then you have Kate Gibb, who is nearly 80. And then you have Marian Ingalls. It's a milkmaid

00:40:31.240 from Pilton, who gives this evidence. Marian had, well, there was other evidence as well,

00:40:37.360 like there was a boy from Gorgie Mill, who was on the hill. Marian lived at Clermeson.

00:40:48.740 And he came to her house and she asked him what he was doing there.

00:40:53.340 And he said he was hunting cunning, which is rabbits.

00:40:56.480 He was hunting rabbits.

00:40:57.580 She said, I'll get one for you.

00:40:58.760 And she sent her cat out and the cat came back with a rabbit.

00:41:01.360 Now, I didn't know that cats can catch rabbit, but they do.

00:41:04.700 They do.

00:41:05.060 I've heard of a family cat, a cat within my extended family who has caught rabbits.

00:41:10.300 Clearly, the boy thought this was probably the devil's familiar.

00:41:16.160 It's not said explicitly, but it's only a familiar in the Kurschdorfen witch hunt.

00:41:21.320 As I say, lots of the common themes from the whole of Western Europe are in the Kurschdorfen witch hunt.

00:41:26.300 And in such detail, it's very, very interesting.

00:41:28.840 The bit of Marion's story that concerns John Kincaid is that he was called in to prick her.

00:41:35.760 And he claimed to have found a witch's mark on Marion at the time that he pricked the two Scots.

00:41:43.920 But at this point, for the first time, the Kirk Session asked the presbytery for advice.

00:41:51.680 Now, there are no minutes of the Edinburgh Presbytery from this period, because politically, they would have been full of dodgy stuff in 1649.

00:41:58.440 Because, you know, Charles I had just been executed.

00:42:02.080 The English regime was about to take over Scotland and so on.

00:42:05.900 So there are no minutes of the presbytery.

00:42:07.960 But the presbytery said that they wanted to see it done again.

00:42:12.140 So the Presbytery Centre representative and Kincaid couldn't find the mark on Marion because she cried every time the pin went in.

00:42:21.660 I think there were no flies on Marion. But she was she was supposed to have been at the coven at that point.

00:42:29.120 Yes, she had hired her daughter out to a farmer's wife at Pilton as a dairymaid.

00:42:34.420 And the girl was promised the spare, the leftover milk to sell on the streets of Edinburgh.

00:42:40.180 but she didn't get it. It was given to somebody else instead. And this other girl turns up in 1649

00:42:47.460 saying, eight years ago, this happened. Marian Ingalls came to the farm and had a row with the

00:42:54.880 farmer's wife about the milk. Indeed, the very first accusation involves a row about an unpaid 0.64

00:43:00.500 bill for cloth that had been woven because the Scots were weavers. The Scots were a weaving 0.69

00:43:05.620 family and uh the the report just suddenly comes to an end the girl says well she doesn't know but

00:43:13.760 she always thought that marian was not sonsy and uh nothing seems to have happened to marian there's

00:43:19.760 no record of a trial or an execution or anything like that so that in brief is about the christoph

00:43:27.120 folk and the uh the way in which there are so many details and so many things that are typical of the

00:43:34.640 witch hunt in general, but it's like it's coming home to Christopher. And there was never another.

00:43:40.480 In 1656, two women who lived at the Guile fell out, and the one accused the other of bewitching 0.88

00:43:48.300 her and her children. And the Kirk session was very, very reluctant to consider it an accusation.

00:43:55.880 They insisted that this was because the two women had always hated each other, and they would please

00:44:00.860 reconcile with each other as good Christian friends

00:44:04.200 and it would be recorded in the books

00:44:06.240 so that no one was ever accused of having a reputation as a witch.

00:44:11.800 And by then, George Lord Forrester was dead.

00:44:15.400 It was a different minister, different elders,

00:44:18.240 but they didn't, I mean, clearly they did not want to repeat

00:44:21.780 the experience of seven years before,

00:44:23.860 which is more than you can say for many Kirk sessions in the Lothians

00:44:28.680 because there were tragically a huge number of witch hunts,

00:44:32.980 well, a substantial number of witch hunts around here.

00:44:36.140 But this is how I became involved because I grew up in Kostorfen

00:44:40.240 and I knew a lot about the witch hunt in general and in England.

00:44:44.940 And the database that was done by Edinburgh University

00:44:50.360 is not very reliable specifically about Kostorfen.

00:44:54.460 I think certain things were misread.

00:44:57.300 and I've got the transcript.

00:45:00.280 The transcript is in the Dower House

00:45:02.380 and the photocopies are in the Dower House as well.

00:45:05.380 So if anybody who can read the handwriting

00:45:07.220 wants to go and correct me,

00:45:09.180 then they're welcome to do so.

00:45:12.020 But I used my research skills

00:45:15.080 that I had built up over the years

00:45:16.840 to divide this as part of Christophon's history

00:45:20.300 in the Dower House.

00:45:21.540 And I'm really, really enthusiastic

00:45:22.980 about this project now

00:45:24.620 because it means that it's going to become better known.

00:45:29.240 Nora, it's amazing.

00:45:30.640 I mean, because of your work and what you have put into this,

00:45:34.700 not thinking, no doubt, anything of it in that way at the time,

00:45:39.020 we are going to know through the work that Emma has done

00:45:41.760 and through the work that you have done,

00:45:43.600 we are going to know about these people, know about these stories,

00:45:46.420 not only us, but people visiting the area,

00:45:48.820 visiting Chris Wharf and going to Dower House.

00:45:51.640 I mean, we're going to be there, surely, Zoe,

00:45:53.620 as soon as there are so many places on our list of places to visit post lockdown we now only have

00:46:01.280 to find the time to visit all these places it will be amazing to do so so thank you so much

00:46:07.700 for preserving the lives of these people and I think what it shows is that there were lots

00:46:16.560 of restrictions on the source book of Scottish witchcraft as a research project a lot of financial

00:46:22.860 time etc and they say that

00:46:25.000 in the book itself

00:46:26.920 and also with other

00:46:28.780 places nobody has done

00:46:30.640 and presumably the funding

00:46:32.960 would be extortionate a comprehensive

00:46:35.180 review of all

00:46:36.800 of these areas of all of the

00:46:38.660 Oh there is a book on five

00:46:40.900 there's Stuart MacDonald

00:46:42.660 I think

00:46:43.320 there is a book on the

00:46:46.740 witch hunt I think it's just

00:46:48.440 1649 one because it was a year

00:46:50.720 when there were lots there's a book on five and it's very different because you don't get the

00:46:55.380 pact with the devil there ah that's interesting we'll have a look um for stuart mcdonald we'll

00:47:02.020 have a look um for that book and see if we can provide links to it so people can have a look

00:47:07.020 the work and the input that you have put in right at the start at going to these kirk sessions and

00:47:13.480 fleshing out sometimes we might know the names but we don't know the detail of the story

00:47:18.020 and it's those details I think that that make people connect with these women as

00:47:25.460 inverted commas just women as we are just women now yes Nora you didn't mention what happened to

00:47:33.140 Ket I think it is Ket Gibb oh yes she was as Nora mentioned she was nearly 80s almost

00:47:39.840 the same age as you Nora as you said and I found her story really sad it almost feels like

00:47:46.800 I really would like you to say a little bit about it because, yeah,

00:47:50.700 I just think if you don't mind, Nora.

00:47:52.980 She died being watched in a barn at Gogur.

00:47:56.320 She lived at Gogur.

00:47:57.460 She had lived at Kinneau when she was young.

00:47:59.340 I think she must have been a servant of the Forrester family.

00:48:02.820 But she lived at Gogur and she was being watched in a barn

00:48:06.740 and she died while she was being watched.

00:48:08.780 And that means being kept awake.

00:48:11.300 This was, torture was actually forbidden.

00:48:13.940 An act was passed by the Parliament in 1649 saying torture is not to be used, but keeping people awake.

00:48:21.000 I mean, you know yourself. I'm sure we've all had the experience of getting brain fog through staying up too late, working on what we're doing and so on.

00:48:31.600 So imagine being prevented from sleeping and she died while she was being, I think, pestered.

00:48:39.140 it's it's the horror the sadness the fact that for so long these women haven't been and the man

00:48:46.380 and the man oh the one man yeah sorry I suppose I'm using a woman as a generic just because so

00:48:52.900 many of them were women but you're absolutely right there were 15 percent I think across the

00:48:57.700 board in Scotland approximately were men interestingly enough the amount of people

00:49:03.460 across Europe again as a generality it was 80-20 split but in Scotland we seem to have a higher

00:49:09.940 and I think in Iceland it was the other way around that's absolutely right we we actually had

00:49:15.760 in one of our earlier podcasts we meet with the Museum of Witchcraft in Iceland and they told us

00:49:24.300 yeah we had a great interview with her and she told us about the people who were accused and

00:49:29.260 convicted of witchcraft in Iceland and they were as you referenced earlier a place where

00:49:34.420 thankfully the witchcraft accusations didn't take off as much and she believes like Ireland

00:49:43.000 it was because people were much more believing or attuned or in touch with the idea of some other

00:49:51.720 world like it didn't seem like it needed to be the devil because they have the strong connection

00:49:56.680 with trolls and other worlds and ireland has the connection and the fairies in the highlands yeah

00:50:03.080 yeah yeah so it's very very interesting why in some places it didn't take off and why because

00:50:09.640 of the various tensions in scotland it was embraced wholeheartedly it would seem sadly to to the

00:50:16.520 detriment of so many women in scotland over 200 years nora can i ask how long ago was it they

00:50:22.680 actually did this work i can't remember because it was kind of after the year 2002 when i retired

00:50:30.300 but i was doing it before that i think in the late 90s um because i as i say i've been i was

00:50:38.280 teaching the the witch hunt as part of a european social history course and i i know that by 2003

00:50:47.000 when I was doing a summer school

00:50:49.420 after I retired

00:50:50.840 I went and wrote up

00:50:53.500 The Christophon Witch Hunt because

00:50:55.080 summer school students don't want to go

00:50:57.600 and read library books, they want to have

00:50:59.460 documents put in front of them

00:51:01.100 and I did because the place where I

00:51:03.580 lived in London was Edmonton

00:51:05.280 and there's a famous play, The Witch of

00:51:07.520 Edmonton, so I gave them

00:51:09.540 The Witch of Edmonton, The Christophon Witch Hunt

00:51:11.800 and The Salem Witch Trials

00:51:13.240 because quite a lot of them were American

00:51:15.500 so that that was I certainly done the bulk of it before 2003. We're so glad that that work was

00:51:22.800 properly preserved for that two decades or so so that Emma was able to get on them and work on them

00:51:29.500 I mean hopefully at some point we will presumably all try and meet up at the museum if that would

00:51:37.520 be possible yes yes well emma nora thank you so much for coming and speaking to us and giving us

00:51:46.680 your time so generously and telling us that the work that nora has done and that emma you and

00:51:53.300 others now in kristorfin are building on it's so lovely to think of a modern movement of kristorfin

00:51:59.840 women

00:52:00.220 for those 0.81

00:52:04.260 women of

00:52:04.640 Kerstorf

00:52:05.060 and they

00:52:05.840 would have

00:52:06.240 no sense

00:52:06.900 of a

00:52:07.180 possibility

00:52:07.660 that hundreds

00:52:08.240 of years

00:52:08.740 later we'd

00:52:10.020 be living

00:52:11.060 in this

00:52:11.380 world that

00:52:11.780 they would

00:52:12.040 no doubt

00:52:12.360 consider

00:52:12.840 magic even

00:52:13.500 the way

00:52:13.760 that we're

00:52:13.960 speaking to

00:52:14.540 one another

00:52:14.920 on the

00:52:15.220 internet

00:52:15.740 it's so

00:52:18.060 amazing and

00:52:18.760 it just

00:52:19.300 it makes me

00:52:19.920 feel so

00:52:20.400 positive about

00:52:21.260 the whole

00:52:22.320 process of

00:52:23.420 remembering

00:52:23.760 these women

00:52:24.280 and I'm

00:52:24.940 grateful to

00:52:25.680 you both

00:52:26.540 for what

00:52:27.420 you've done

00:52:29.840 Yeah, well, I want to say a huge thank you to Nora for doing all that work, really, because that made, it really brought it all to life for me.

00:52:39.200 And a really big thank you to you and Zoe for having us on today, because it feels like this is part of that remembering and part of honouring the people of Christophon.

00:52:59.840 thanks for joining us for this week's episode it's been fascinating as per usual i would say

00:53:12.600 and please do get in touch with us on all our socials so we can have a chat with you the best

00:53:18.200 place to get us is on twitter because we can reply quite quickly and have a have a nice

00:53:22.620 conversation there we've got a page on facebook that you can follow us on there where we'll keep

00:53:27.560 you up to date with what's happening but we're also on instagram and claire you've still not

00:53:33.020 made any tiktoks but we are on tiktok i've not made tiktoks but you know what else we're on

00:53:37.400 we're on youtube we keep we keep forgetting and despite the fact we keep forgetting it we've had

00:53:43.400 8 000 hits on the poem for miss money penny who did the poem about the witches of scotland and

00:53:52.020 remembrance of them so yeah i looked the other day and without anyone having tended it or reminded

00:53:57.460 anything about it it's flourished into quite a busy site so I was thinking Zoe when we are going

00:54:04.140 to go out and about soon and meet a few people that we've been talking to that we said oh when

00:54:10.040 things get a bit better we'll come for tea and cakes I was thinking maybe we could record

00:54:15.360 ourselves and put that up on YouTube good plan very good plan yeah excellent okay well let's

00:54:22.080 let's do that so yeah insta twitter facebook tick tock and youtube so modern and professional

00:54:30.740 we're busy busy woman it's impressive i like how i like how we've got a fantastic show and we're

00:54:38.160 very impressive i think what's impressive about it is that we just get really great guests on

00:54:43.540 that's what it is who know all their stuff and you and i just kind of go hi and then they do

00:54:48.320 their thing and then we go bye and then that's it I have listened actually to a few of our earlier

00:54:53.120 episodes just to go back and reminisce Zoe and we were woefully poorly informed it has to be said

00:54:59.560 that's good and I think that's actually the unique selling point of our podcast is that we are

00:55:05.320 definitely not pretending that we know anything about it so we're learning at the same time as

00:55:09.520 the listeners I think that's much more interesting having two bossy boots come on and just go here's

00:55:14.460 all the stuff you need to know I think it's good to sort of grow and you know challenge some

00:55:18.880 preconceptions and and learn things I love the way that you put a positive spin in our ignorance

00:55:23.980 Zoe I love that positive spinner of stuff well I look forward to growing further with our audience

00:55:33.700 next week oh no not next week a fortnight's time as ever yes that'll be good okay thanks

00:55:39.720 very much listeners thank you listeners bye

00:55:44.460 If you'd like to learn more about the Witches of Scotland

00:55:48.420 please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

00:55:51.140 sign up for our mailing list

00:55:53.220 at www.witchesofscotland.com

00:55:57.260 to keep updated with the campaign

00:55:59.060 on that site you'll be able to find how to link with us

00:56:02.520 on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

00:56:14.460 Thank you.

Witches of Scotland - June 29, 2021

EPISODE 36 EMMA COWAN AND NORAH CARLIN - THE WITCHES OF CORSTORPHINE

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