Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 49 PROFESSOR OWEN DAVIES - HISTORIAN & PRESIDENT OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY

00:00:00.160 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 and we're bringing you this podcast

00:00:10.120 because we want to tell you about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted

00:00:15.240 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

00:00:22.780 and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.

00:00:26.500 The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.

00:00:29.600 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.

00:00:44.460 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.

00:00:54.680 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland Christmas special podcast.

00:00:58.940 This is actually our episode 49, which I know I say this every week, but every time it just strikes me anew how many episodes you've actually done and how many more we have to record still.

00:01:11.540 So thanks very much for staying with us on this journey.

00:01:14.720 So today on episode 49, we have a fantastic guest.

00:01:18.140 But Claire, how are you, first of all?

00:01:20.140 Oh, well, I'm ready for this, Zoe.

00:01:22.320 Are you? Are you?

00:01:23.700 Yeah.

00:01:23.980 I may throw you a curveball. I may not.

00:01:26.600 But what I wanted to ask you, Claire, was, has there been anything happening in the news?

00:01:34.680 No.

00:01:35.520 Good day to you, madam.

00:01:38.820 Claire, now come on, I know there's news. Please share. What's the news?

00:01:43.600 Yes, of course we have news and probably everybody listening to the podcast knows we have news as well.

00:01:48.460 We're delighted to say that after discussions with Natalie Dawn, who is an SNP MSP for Renfrewshire North and West,

00:01:56.600 She has agreed to put forward a private member's bill in respect of a pardon for those convicted under the Witchcraft Act.

00:02:04.220 So that has been something that Natalie has been working on now for some months.

00:02:09.200 And we're really, really delighted that we've been able to share it with everyone.

00:02:12.060 It's been quite difficult keeping that a secret, Zoe.

00:02:14.700 Yes, it has been quite tricky.

00:02:16.520 I mean, I think it's worth saying because we've got a lot of new listeners, I think, this week because of a lot of the fantastic press coverage we've had internationally,

00:02:23.560 not just in Scotland or indeed in Britain, but lots of international coverage.

00:02:28.200 We've been contacted by people from all over the world,

00:02:30.200 not just in Scotland or indeed in the UK, but literally from all over the world.

00:02:34.100 In the last week, we've been contacted by media sources in Russia.

00:02:38.120 We've talked to the Wall Street Journal.

00:02:40.720 The New York Post has had an article.

00:02:43.160 Claire spoke on Irish radio.

00:02:45.080 I spoke on New Zealand radio.

00:02:47.260 We've been interviewed for different TV programmes as part of news slots.

00:02:51.580 It's been tremendously exciting.

00:02:52.860 But what that means is we've got lots of new listeners who are just kind of getting up to speed just now.

00:02:57.320 So I think it's just if we just very quickly, Claire, outline what we've been doing over the last nearly two years.

00:03:04.260 Sure. Recap time. Recap. Recap.

00:03:08.060 Oh, I want to make a little tune for that. Well, recap.

00:03:14.520 If only we had actual monies away. 0.97

00:03:16.580 but anyway so recap in International Women's Day 2020 Zoe and I set up this campaign and the

00:03:26.700 campaign had three aims the first was to get a pardon for those who were convicted of witchcraft

00:03:31.880 the second was an apology for all those accused because you can only pardon those that have been

00:03:37.280 convicted not one those that have been accused and some people were accused and lost their lives or

00:03:42.000 lost their livelihood or lost their friends and family. And the last thing we're looking for is

00:03:47.340 a national memorial. Now, that's a memorial which is state-run and sponsored. It's not privately

00:03:54.120 done. And the reason we think that's important is it's a state issue. It shouldn't be for

00:03:59.540 individuals to have to try and raise money for these things. The state should be providing

00:04:04.180 a memorial in that regard. So those are the three things that we've been working on. And over the

00:04:09.340 past two years, we've been growing popularity and support for the idea of the cause. We have been

00:04:15.360 working with politicians from all parties in respect of asking them whether or not they would

00:04:21.580 agree to such a petition. And we have been working in the background with academics, with artists,

00:04:28.340 with lawyers, with teachers. Who else? I'm running out of musicians. Musicians, that's right. Heelan

00:04:34.980 Harrow as well. We've got people coming up in a podcast soon that we're going to be talking

00:04:39.180 about museums, what it takes to make a museum, whether or not there could be a witchcraft

00:04:43.700 museum in Scotland. So that's another exciting thing. We've basically been working with anybody

00:04:49.940 and everybody we can think of to try and raise the profile of the idea of getting a pardon and

00:04:55.660 apology and a national memorial for Witched Scotland. And we've got to this very exciting

00:05:00.700 point now where a private members bill might be put forward. We're hoping for cross-party support

00:05:07.360 for that private members bill and so far behind the scenes politicians of different parties have

00:05:14.560 said that they want to support it so we're really really delighted for that now i'm just going to

00:05:21.040 ask you claire in legal beagle corner which i've just invented oh no can you can you just clarify

00:05:28.240 for anybody that's not entirely sure like maybe me still even though you've explained this to me

00:05:33.640 500 times now. What is the difference really between doing a private members bill and the

00:05:39.880 committee that discussed the petition? Well there isn't really anything between them because what

00:05:46.000 happened is we put in our petition to the petitions committee saying what we wanted and we also said

00:05:51.740 that the way to go about that was by legislative change and we referenced the same sex sexual

00:05:58.540 offences historic pardon which was given I think about two years ago now and we said that's the

00:06:04.680 same kind of thing we want. Since then there's consideration of a pardon for minors who were

00:06:09.840 convicted of various offences during the minor strike and again it's the same sort of idea.

00:06:15.340 A collective pardon, a posthumous pardon, that would be done by legislature. So when the committee

00:06:21.920 met and the committee looked at our petition and said this is right, it's a terrible thing that

00:06:28.020 has happened here and we want to look at what can be done. They then asked us to focus in on how we

00:06:33.740 thought that could be done. So we wrote back a letter to them explaining that it was by legislative

00:06:39.280 change and the Scottish Government also wrote to them and in agreement with us indicated that the

00:06:45.900 way that it would happen is by legislative change. So it's just a different way of getting

00:06:52.800 legislature into parliament be it by being sent by the committee or being proposed by a private

00:07:00.740 member. Now we are hoping that what the petitions committee do is refer the matter for the Scottish

00:07:07.060 government for consideration and then they consider the private member's bill along with

00:07:13.260 the issue of the apology and the national memorial at the same time and importantly what we want for

00:07:19.740 2022 is we're pushing and asking the Scottish government on International Women's Day this

00:07:25.780 year to issue the apology and to talk about the issue of a pardon and a national memorial at that

00:07:33.200 time. Okay my second legal beagle question is now this is something that's come up when there has

00:07:39.400 been comments underneath different articles so particularly there was an article in the Guardian

00:07:44.440 and when that was shared say on Facebook there were actually a remarkable amount of comments

00:07:49.960 like sort of like in the hundreds and like 4.4 thousand shares of the article which is amazing

00:07:56.320 but there was the odd question from people and I think often they were maybe in America or Canada

00:08:02.040 so it could be that there's just this difference in law but they used the language of saying

00:08:06.300 instead of looking for a pardon that they should be exonerated a pardon is not good enough because

00:08:11.960 it's saying they did something wrong and that, you know, even though you did something wrong,

00:08:16.220 we're letting you off with it. So can you just clarify actually what it means when it's a pardon?

00:08:20.780 Okay, well, what I'm taking as an example is, as I just mentioned, the same sex historic sexual

00:08:27.520 offences bill. In that, it was made absolutely clear that the people were receiving a pardon

00:08:34.260 and it was made clear in Hamza Youssef's language and speech when the bill was passed

00:08:41.120 that what he was doing was passing this bill because people were criminalised for something

00:08:46.760 which ought never to have been a crime. That's exactly the same thing as we're asking for,

00:08:53.200 in exactly the same language. The recognition by the Scottish government, and I suppose on behalf

00:08:59.700 of the Scottish people, that what these people were convicted of was never a crime, and so they

00:09:06.960 should be pardoned for that. Now, I am a person that specialises in miscarriage of justice cases

00:09:12.820 in my day job. If it were possible for me to take every single conviction and appeal that to the

00:09:20.820 appeal court, I would have done it. But it's simply not legally possible. The committee,

00:09:27.440 the petitions committee, when we considered what to do, they said perhaps we could send a test case

00:09:33.700 to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission who could refer it back to court and the court

00:09:39.940 could pardon that one person and then that would be a symbolic pardon for all people convicted of

00:09:47.860 witchcraft. Sadly that's not what the SCCRC is there for. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review

00:09:54.220 Commission wouldn't look at something this old, it wouldn't look at it without someone having an

00:10:00.440 inverted commas legitimate interest. I've already been to court in respect of another big case to

00:10:06.480 clarify what's meant by the words legitimate interest and effectively it only means immediate

00:10:11.220 family members. So the best way that we can address what happened in the past and put it

00:10:20.420 beyond any doubt whatsoever that what happened to these people was wrong and that they ought never

00:10:27.040 to have been convicted is by way of a pardon that is the best way that we can do it to to make the

00:10:33.380 Scottish government say we accept that this ought never to have been a crime and people ought never

00:10:40.100 to have been convicted and punished for it. That makes complete sense that's really great so the

00:10:46.060 next step that we've got is that we are writing to the First Minister's National Advisory Council

00:10:51.340 on Women and Girls to ask for an apology on International Women's Day 2022,

00:10:57.120 which actually isn't very far away now, is it?

00:10:59.180 It's not at all. A matter of weeks.

00:11:01.780 And we've already had contact with people on the National Advisory Council,

00:11:06.960 which is great. We're already interacting with them.

00:11:10.460 But just to give you an idea of why we did that,

00:11:13.520 the First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls have a manifesto.

00:11:18.680 and I'll just like to read out their manifesto because I think it puts into a few words what

00:11:23.700 we've been saying in many words Zoe. The manifesto is for generations our history has been written

00:11:29.700 by one gender, one perspective, one vision, one half of the population. Half of our history is

00:11:37.760 missing. For years we've been striving for change but now is the time to change for good, to design

00:11:45.280 a future where gender inequality is a historical curiosity. With the voice of everyone, we want 0.90

00:11:51.680 to create a Scotland where we're all equal with an equal future. Together, we are generation equal.

00:11:59.500 Now, I think that puts really, really well what we have been perhaps trying to see in various

00:12:05.620 different ways through the course of this podcast. This came about, obviously, because of the lack

00:12:12.380 of female visibility, the lack of historical information generally known about women's history

00:12:18.900 in Scotland and this terrible piece of history. And I think that while we are saying now is the 0.65

00:12:24.940 time to change for good and we want to go forward with an equal future, then International Women's 0.60

00:12:30.140 Day 2022 is an absolutely perfect time to highlight what happened to Scotland's women and men in the

00:12:37.540 past and to go on to pledge to do better because we both feel very strongly they've said it very

00:12:44.000 very very many times in the past that you can't really move cleanly into the future unless you've

00:12:49.680 dealt with the past to a great extent and i think in the same way that we really really need to keep

00:12:54.500 talking about how scotland was involved and how scotland profited from the transatlantic slave

00:13:00.520 trade we need to talk about other things too and the witches are just one aspect of what we need

00:13:05.980 to look at in our past because we're not some sort of idyllic society where we've got everything

00:13:11.640 right and we've got a really long way to go for gender parity and there's some really big

00:13:16.120 conversations that are happening and that need to happen but this is our one section that we feel

00:13:21.520 really strongly about that needs to be looked at and i have to say clear i'm serious now when the

00:13:27.740 story broke as well on twitter some of the comments on there were absolutely shocking because we've

00:13:32.760 had the odd little bit of negative kickback you know and it tends to be the same sort of thing

00:13:37.040 but it's maybe particularly the volume of sort of negativity and mostly it does seem to be from men

00:13:43.560 i have to say and maybe a particular type of man that's not very interested in the past and feels

00:13:49.620 that you know the past is done don't move on but there are some of the comments have been really

00:13:55.120 like useful to underline the misogyny that still exists and the misogyny that happened

00:14:01.040 in the days of the witch trials.

00:14:03.240 Absolutely. 0.96

00:14:03.920 I mean, if you want to know why it's so important

00:14:05.860 that we are doing something like this

00:14:07.500 to highlight the problems of Scotland's past

00:14:10.900 and to say that we must change and do better,

00:14:12.900 you just have to look at the comments section.

00:14:15.460 I mean, the misogynistic attitudes.

00:14:17.680 Strangely, you say, Zoe,

00:14:19.000 it's people that don't care about history,

00:14:21.040 but I imagine they would care about history

00:14:23.160 if we were asking about pulling down statues or such.

00:14:26.560 It's a certain history they don't want.

00:14:29.060 And the other thing,

00:14:29.840 which I found really, really unsurprising was, of course, the personal attacks on Nicola Sturgeon, our First Minister.

00:14:37.600 And Zoe, did you not point out that they were painting different roles? 1.00

00:14:41.920 This is interesting to me and highlights, I think, the rank stupidity of some of the commenters. 1.00

00:14:47.180 And Claire, I'm not going to hold back on that because I think these people are showing themselves as being really stupid 1.00

00:14:51.340 by saying that Nicola Sturgeon should be burned at the stake. 0.99

00:14:55.340 Like, first of all, listen to the podcast, dude. We've explained actually how that worked. 0.59

00:14:59.200 and secondly then also calling her the witch finder general like which side is she on guys 0.90

00:15:04.900 you know like is she is she pulling the strings or is she the one that is being dispatched

00:15:09.820 it's ridiculous that really irritates me and you know i just think you should maybe just read a

00:15:15.040 little bit before you comment on it you know just just even the bare bones in these articles often

00:15:19.980 lays out what the story actually is yeah you know people might look at it and think oh this is woke

00:15:25.920 nonsense but within two minutes of reading what we're talking about most people have come down

00:15:32.220 to the view that it's absolutely fair enough one comment is this is a waste of time and money

00:15:37.980 and I'm thinking well if it's been a waste of time and money it's only mine and yours Zoe

00:15:42.280 it's not a waste of time and money and there is no money I just want to make that point

00:15:46.960 absolutely crystal clear for anybody that is that's having a go at this Claire and I have

00:15:53.100 very happily and very willingly given up a lot of time to do this right to the to the extent where

00:16:00.440 we've not focused on other things that we could have focused on that's fine i'm not complaining

00:16:03.760 at all but there's been no money we've got no advertisers nothing the thing is the people that

00:16:09.400 when they always sit and listen to this the people that are actually listening to this and actually

00:16:13.400 interested already know that no doubt it's the focus you see that don't even just look at the

00:16:19.860 headline and decide to well i'm going to go around their door and knock on their door and just go

00:16:23.940 just so you know i'm paid nothing you didn't get a red cent so should we do some witches of scotland

00:16:31.820 caroling we just go around their doors and sing you know well i'm not no i'm not sure that that

00:16:41.200 our cat's chorus is going to earn us very much money i think it might earn us a breach of the

00:16:47.640 peace is what i think and a bucket of water i think but it's in it's interesting though that

00:16:53.320 we are talking about these articles laying out the story of it and it's and it's a very

00:16:57.540 straightforward way now this it is it's really serious you know and i made the point on twitter

00:17:01.780 that if you wouldn't get people making jokes about like for example the holocaust or i would

00:17:08.420 hope anyway or for example people that died during the times of slavery you know there it's just as

00:17:14.580 serious it's a different thing but it's an example of humans using their power to subjugate and often

00:17:21.020 kill other humans right then it's not funny okay and the articles are often quite good but then

00:17:26.640 sometimes then use an image that you're just like guys come on like the pointy hatted witch or like 0.97

00:17:33.860 a sexy witch or like the whole point of it is that they weren't witches like read your own article

00:17:40.000 There was an article in the Herald, actually, which said we shouldn't pardon witches. Now, the force of the article was, in fairness to the person that wrote it, he accepted that this was a terrible thing that happened to these people. He spoke about Lily Sadie and how bad it was that it happened to her. He was one of the people who said, isn't a pardon meaning that we accept that there was witchcraft?

00:18:02.460 Well, the answer to that is absolutely not.

00:18:05.400 And we'll be perhaps writing to him and explaining that.

00:18:08.780 But he wasn't against the idea, for example, of the National Monument.

00:18:11.820 He was in favour of it.

00:18:13.200 But even having said all those things, and I absolutely appreciate it,

00:18:16.520 it's not the writer of these columns that gets to choose the photo.

00:18:19.660 Yeah, of course, yeah. 0.83

00:18:20.840 The photograph that the Herald chose to put up was a woman in a pointy hat with a broom.

00:18:28.400 And I can't remember, was her face green?

00:18:31.200 I can't remember.

00:18:32.460 Okay, I've seen quite a few of these. And actually, to be honest, they've kind of blurred a bit. I saw another one today from somebody that was ostensibly saying that they were understanding that it was women, not witches. And it was an image of four women in the woods with a full moon and they were in silhouette and they've got hats on and one woman's drinking from a goblet. It's just, it's just reinforcing the stereotypes that these women were doing something shady or strange. And, you know, it kind of implies that they got their just desserts.

00:19:00.140 The worst one I've seen was Chinese media. We made it to China as well, China State Media, who was women to be pardoned as witches.

00:19:09.820 And there was a picture of, it looked like sort of three witches from Macbeth and the worst stereotypes of crones you can possibly imagine.

00:19:19.780 Oh, yes. I remember that one. Yeah.

00:19:21.600 I mean, so it's an odd disconnect and it's a disconnect that still pervades the whole argument and why people still think it's OK.

00:19:29.920 I mean, I have really little or no sympathy with people that don't read things but decide to make comments beforehand.

00:19:36.040 But I will say this much.

00:19:39.760 They are only repeating what has been done for centuries in respect of women as witches.

00:19:47.020 We remember right back that the iconography and the ideas of why women are seen as witches with the pointy hats and the brooms and the cauldrons and stuff

00:19:55.040 was because in the 19th century cartoonists wanted to portray political rivals and if they 0.97

00:20:02.300 wanted to portray someone as stupid inverted commas they would portray them as consorting with 0.99

00:20:08.300 witches because of course by then everyone knew witches didn't exist so ha ha ha so it was a 0.99

00:20:13.740 figure it was a figure of fun and the idea of witches have become things to scare small children

00:20:19.800 with and you know those sorts of things and and so because they appear a figure of fun it gives

00:20:27.300 people carte blanche to talk about oh I would put her in a ducking stool or something like that and

00:20:34.620 it's think about what you're talking about the real just take a moment just pause before you

00:20:40.680 type not you Claire but I mean the person like on Twitter for example just pause before you say 0.95

00:20:45.400 I think that women that is alive now should be killed for having this opinion.

00:20:51.900 Like, just take a moment and think about that with the climate that we live in just now, 1.00

00:20:56.320 with the recent hideous murders of women in our own country and of the enormous and ridiculous

00:21:02.980 amount of women that are killed every year. And just think about what it is you're actually saying.

00:21:08.260 It isn't actually funny. I've got a very dark sense of humour. I've very much got a gallows

00:21:12.940 humour and Claire will tell you that and I think you can probably get that from the podcasts but

00:21:17.520 I think there's some things that you're just like that's just really distasteful and I think that

00:21:22.220 this is one of them and it's often married up to this question of well what's the point of you 0.72

00:21:26.960 doing this it was a long time ago are we going to ask the Romans for you know an apology from them

00:21:31.120 for what happened Claire why is there a point in doing this? The point of doing it is first of all

00:21:37.740 justice has no time limit the people were killed as witches they weren't witches we need to restore

00:21:45.620 their proper name to history and people in the 21st century ought to stand up and say what was

00:21:52.320 done to those people that was wrong what I think is really interesting about that Zoe is that

00:21:57.340 sometimes people think history just starts and ends with them like everything that went on in

00:22:01.740 the past is history but they don't realize that they themselves will be the history for someone

00:22:06.340 in another thousand years because in two thousand years time people might be looking back thinking

00:22:13.200 why why didn't they do something about that why why didn't they and in two thousand years time

00:22:19.080 three or four hundred years after it's not going to seem like a long time yeah those are thousands

00:22:25.460 of years ago so it's important that that not only should we bring justice to these people but we

00:22:31.320 should properly record in the 21st century that what happened was wrong not only for ourselves to

00:22:37.480 go forward and do better as I've said but because history is important it teaches us things we will

00:22:44.480 learn things by it that's why we take such an interest in our history you've said times before

00:22:50.360 Zoe if you don't learn what's going on in history you go on to repeat it and people think oh well

00:22:55.800 that would never happen here it wouldn't it wouldn't repeat here well elsewhere in the world

00:23:00.840 people are accused of witchcraft and here people are overt they are picked on they are sought out

00:23:08.580 because they're vulnerable these sorts of recurring themes are exactly that recurring they continue to

00:23:15.500 happen in history and what we should do and it's not asking much is just to say this was wrong and

00:23:23.920 and we're talking about some of the comments Zoe that have been made one of them is all about what's

00:23:29.720 the point the other's about the time and money what we are asking for is on international women's

00:23:36.160 day somebody to stand up and say we're really sorry for something that happened to people

00:23:42.580 mostly women hundreds of years ago is that really too much time and money for people to bear

00:23:51.460 if i can just make the point as well just because we are campaigning for this particular issue

00:23:57.600 it doesn't prevent anybody else for campaigning about anything else that they think is important

00:24:02.740 so if you think well i don't think we should be spending time on this i think we should be 0.93

00:24:06.960 spending time on you know looking at how crap the tory government is you know why can't we look at

00:24:11.960 that hey i'm not stopping you and i would very much join in with that as well so i think if 0.95

00:24:17.200 people have got other campaigns they feel strongly about we live in it really in many ways a good

00:24:22.340 democracy you know it's not perfect absolutely it needs needs lots of revision we need to keep

00:24:27.920 putting the power on and that's why it's important so Claire and I as citizens are saying this is

00:24:32.820 something we think is important and because we live in a democracy it's been listened to thousands

00:24:37.780 of people have signed the petition which shows that actually it does have a groundswell of

00:24:42.340 agreement and engagement and if you yourself are sitting you know in front of your computer in

00:24:47.880 your pants while your mum's calling up to you that your tea's ready and you feel the need to

00:24:52.600 make some sort of hideous misogynistic comment but there's some other issue that actually really

00:24:57.720 if you brought it into the light and you campaigned for it and you left the house occasionally

00:25:01.340 and you thought about other people then go for it share the campaign because it will be will be

00:25:06.660 listened to if it's got meaning and if other people care about it that can be progressed

00:25:10.280 so us having this campaign does not stop anybody else from having their campaign and we would love

00:25:16.520 to hear about stuff that people have then thought well i can have some citizen power here so share

00:25:21.360 it with us and we'll share it with our our followers and our friends and the people that

00:25:25.280 we've met along the way you know like all power to all of us you don't need to stand on me to have

00:25:30.520 your voice heard and i think that that's what's really important here is that it's a lesson to

00:25:35.000 all of us if you feel strongly about something in scotland you can try and push it forward

00:25:39.900 you know and i think that that's that's very important one thing that's some guy i'm not 0.97

00:25:45.240 going to say is twitter handle because a it's stupid and b he's stupid asked me was do i really 0.97

00:25:51.300 think that my campaign and what claire and i are doing is going to have any impact on those women 0.99

00:25:58.260 and elderly people and children and occasional men that are being accused of witchcraft in other

00:26:04.060 countries just now yeah i do actually i do think it'll have an impact i'm not saying that us doing

00:26:10.060 it means that where it happens in other countries people are going to go oh my goodness they've got

00:26:13.920 this thing in scotland immediately stop doing it but i am saying that it's it's through things like

00:26:19.060 people talking about history that we change the present and we change the future and i think if

00:26:24.400 we make it clear in scotland that this was a thing that we got wrong yes hundreds of years ago but

00:26:29.500 that it's something that isn't isn't all right it's not acceptable it's not civilized then i would

00:26:34.280 hope that that would have some repercussions around the world people have already in fact

00:26:38.860 got in contact with us Zoe and said you know you've started a movement here of people you've

00:26:44.700 really started a lot of different ideas of conversations of discussions the fact that

00:26:50.280 people are talking worldwide about the history of Scotland's women and finding out about it

00:26:55.580 albeit it's not a good history that we're trying to put it right to me is good and important the

00:27:01.080 fact we're recognizing what went on so we started off thinking let's do a festive uh

00:27:06.560 No, I'm here raging again.

00:27:08.960 Well, we keep it late.

00:27:10.400 Welcome to Zoe and I's TED Talk.

00:27:13.100 Thank you for listening to us ranting at you.

00:27:17.360 No, but we hope.

00:27:20.080 We're going to cure climate change issues 1.00

00:27:22.920 by harnessing the power of furious middle-aged women. 1.00

00:27:27.260 That's what we're going to do. 1.00

00:27:28.480 We're going to take that rage

00:27:29.780 and we're going to turn the lights on

00:27:31.280 or keep the lights burning.

00:27:32.760 You could certainly take the temperature, certainly.

00:27:35.600 that's for sure yeah it's hot baby it's hot yeah well happy christmas

00:27:42.500 well let's put it this way we have zoe we've been almost two years doing this campaign we've

00:27:52.000 now got thousands of people worldwide listening to us supporting it and every single person who

00:27:58.140 listens downloads likes shares all of those sorts of things they're all contributing to the campaign

00:28:05.580 And that was one thing that I wanted to make an important point on, is that this isn't just us.

00:28:11.400 Although we are the ones pushing it and bringing it forward, hundreds, thousands of people have got involved in the campaign.

00:28:18.780 And in 2022, it's time to call upon all those thousands of people to say this one final push.

00:28:26.520 Let 2022 be the year that this happens.

00:28:29.340 And then I won't have to say at the beginning of podcast, this is episode 132 of six.

00:28:34.680 and we'll we'll move on to a different podcast about something else

00:28:38.580 or we'll have a wee rest that's either a threat or a promise I'm not quite sure which Zoe

00:28:44.780 it's both it's both

00:28:47.020 so before I introduce our fantastic guest for today is there anything else that we would just

00:28:54.360 like to say in summation there Claire no in summation thank you very much just for all

00:28:59.760 your time for listening to us for keeping part in the campaign just please continue to do what

00:29:05.360 you're doing and in the next couple of months hopefully we'll see some interesting times and

00:29:10.920 let's see whether or not we can't all push but if you know anyone out there who is in some way

00:29:16.740 influential in politics or involved in politics please do reach out to them and say do you know

00:29:22.160 about this do you know what's happening are you going to be supportive of it find out from your

00:29:26.780 local MSP whether or not they're going to be supporting it it's those sorts of things that

00:29:31.320 you can do to highlight what the campaign is about and people contact us all the time saying

00:29:37.380 is there something I can do yes you yourself decide to highlight the campaign to people and

00:29:42.740 tell them that you care about it. Okay so our guest for today I am well we're both really excited

00:29:48.320 about this is such a brilliant chat and this is somebody who we have engaged with tons on Twitter

00:29:53.300 He's so fascinating and absolutely brilliant.

00:29:56.080 So I'd just like to introduce Owen Davies, who is a British historian who specialises

00:30:01.480 in popular medicine, magic, ghosts and witchcrafts.

00:30:05.960 He is currently a professor in history at the University of Hertfordshire, has been

00:30:09.780 described as Britain's foremost academic expert on the history of magic.

00:30:14.100 Owen's written loads of different books, tons of research articles.

00:30:18.140 And if you don't follow him already on Twitter, absolutely follow him because he shares all

00:30:22.040 these really interesting historical facts, stuff about witch bottles, which we talk about a little

00:30:27.900 bit in the show coming forward. And he's just a really fascinating guy. So without any further

00:30:33.640 ado, I'd like to introduce Owen Davies. Hello, and I'd like to welcome to today's podcast,

00:30:44.900 Professor Owen Davies, who is a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, who has got the most

00:30:50.760 fascinating range of work interests. I've just been blabbing to Owen before we pressed record

00:30:57.460 about how delighted I am and that Claire is too that he's on the podcast today because

00:31:02.160 his stuff's so interesting and if you're on Twitter you absolutely if you don't already

00:31:06.880 you need to follow Owen because the stuff you share is so great on there Owen so hello and

00:31:11.080 welcome to our podcast. Thanks Zoe and good to be here always good to talk about witches and stuff.

00:31:15.840 yeah well definitely and one of the things that claire and i saw you right back at the beginning

00:31:21.360 when we were doing started recording the podcast so like well over a year ago you're active on

00:31:25.580 twitter and some of the stuff i think that initially that i saw that you posted was kind

00:31:30.220 of like myth busting about different ideas that people hold and i think that's incredibly

00:31:35.020 fascinating because you'll find this much more because this is actually your professional job

00:31:39.600 But there seems to be a lot of sort of nonsense believed about what witches did and the idea of witches and who are witches and so on.

00:31:48.040 So I'm hoping we can touch on that a wee bit.

00:31:50.320 But I'm happy to be led by you, by whatever you would like to talk about, because your publications are huge.

00:31:56.840 You've got an enormous array of things that you publish. So what would you like to start talking about?

00:32:01.800 We can pick up on the myth busting, I guess, which is I think has become challenging again.

00:32:06.720 If I go back 30 years, when I was first sort of researching, doing a PhD, we kind of got to a place, I think, certainly in British witchcraft history studies, where I kind of thought we'd been able to put out there what the actual history was.

00:32:21.020 And the authors like, obviously, Ronald Hartman, Malcolm Gaskell, James Sharp, myself, and Marion Gibson as well.

00:32:26.860 But kind of hopefully I thought we were getting somewhere in terms of all the usual things about, you know, in a British context, which is being burned or, you know, it's gender side, those sorts of issues.

00:32:37.920 And having taught the subject as well, I haven't taught it for a number of years now. 0.53

00:32:42.460 It's interesting to see how with the rise of the Internet, all of this stuff has just come back again like a flood.

00:32:48.540 And you kind of feel rather helpless as a historian to do anything other than poop out a few tweets or some stuff on social media.

00:32:56.140 But it really is. It's swimming in a sea of misinformation and misunderstanding.

00:33:01.560 And when you try and correct, you know, I've been called pompous just for trying to correct this stuff.

00:33:06.840 So in the end, you kind of just sit back and go, OK, if people want to have the false information, I can't.

00:33:12.380 You know, we can't. It's very difficult to counteract it.

00:33:14.880 As we say in Dundee, you just have to say horse on.

00:33:17.740 OK, I'll remember that one.

00:33:19.800 Horse on. That's interesting.

00:33:22.560 So there used to be a lot of misinformation and then it felt like it had been kind of corrected.

00:33:26.860 But with the rise of the Internet, people have picked up on, I suppose, what are essentially almost conspiracy theories and have propagated them amongst all their different social media networks.

00:33:36.320 It's interesting where people want to pick up their information from.

00:33:39.040 It's surprising. You know, one of the best books in the 1990s about British witchcraft is still a template is James Sharp's Instruments of Darkness.

00:33:46.560 Now, hardly anyone reads it now, you know, and I keep directing people.

00:33:51.020 If you want to know what the actual facts are and the actual histories, go and look at the likes of James Charles Instruments of Darkness.

00:33:56.540 It has facts, it has quantitative data, it has graphs in it that tells you the rise and fall.

00:34:01.260 It tells you, you know, percentages and stuff, hard facts as well as good narrative as well.

00:34:05.940 But people will then go to sources which appeal to what they want to think.

00:34:09.760 I feel so strongly that the facts are the facts.

00:34:12.660 Don't mess with them.

00:34:13.980 Like, you know, work with the facts that are there.

00:34:15.620 I know that in history, there will sometimes be room to interpret the facts.

00:34:20.200 There might be bits of history that we don't know exactly what happened.

00:34:23.560 But when facts exist, I think it's so rude to ignore those facts and make up your own, in inverted commas, facts.

00:34:31.680 What are the top things that people keep getting wrong?

00:34:35.600 Well, one of the ones which I think has become resurgent, and I can understand why, because, again, it feeds into people's own sense of self-identity.

00:34:43.220 And one of those is, you know, it's midwives and cunning folk who are prosecuted and executed.

00:34:48.380 This one just does not go away. 1.00

00:34:50.100 And even when I was teaching, you know, students at the age of 18 pick up on this through social media or whatever.

00:34:55.920 I think perhaps, you know, the A-level syllabus probably might not help on this matter as well.

00:35:00.560 That's one of the key ones.

00:35:01.800 And, you know, how many I spent most of my career explaining, no, there are some cunning folk who are prosecuted.

00:35:07.160 And that's the same in every country where there were witchcraft or conjuration laws.

00:35:12.140 So that's one. 0.95

00:35:13.220 One of my things I always try and get across is that the Witchcraft Acts are actually Witchcraft

00:35:18.240 and Conjuration Acts. The legal impulse behind, whether it's the 1563, 1542, or James's Acts,

00:35:25.360 the impulse behind them was to target and prosecute cunning folk as much as it was these people called

00:35:30.580 witches. It's just the fact that cunning folk were rather useful people. And in a country which has

00:35:35.840 common law and not inquisitorial Roman law, if people didn't want to bring a case against them,

00:35:41.660 There would be no trial, that there are no inquisitorial judges going around picking people off based on rumour and hearsay and torture or whatever.

00:35:48.780 That's kind of a key one. The smaller ones are about burning, you know, in an English context, of course.

00:35:53.920 I'll be honest, it's only since Claire and I first met, which is a couple of years ago, and she said to me,

00:35:58.980 do you want to get involved in this thing about witches?

00:36:01.260 And I did think that witches are burned at the stake because it's such a prevalent image, you know.

00:36:07.440 So I spend a lot of time now saying to people,

00:36:10.460 oh no, they actually weren't burned in the state.

00:36:12.360 And I keep correcting people

00:36:14.060 and I can see people looking at me sometimes going,

00:36:16.220 yeah, they were.

00:36:16.840 I remember, one of my favourite horror films

00:36:18.800 is Witchfinder General with Instant Price,

00:36:21.060 which is meant to be about Matthew Hopkins.

00:36:22.620 It's a great film in its own right.

00:36:23.860 But it has a scene in there where someone's on a ladder

00:36:25.740 and the ladder goes down into the fire,

00:36:27.340 which is taken from a well-known painting

00:36:28.880 or series of paintings in the European context.

00:36:30.760 But people see that and they see that

00:36:32.380 in a setting in a Suffolk Cressix village.

00:36:35.620 Why wouldn't they not imprint that?

00:36:37.760 So whenever I kind of correct this one,

00:36:39.620 see if I put out a tweet about it and say,

00:36:41.300 actually, in England, witches weren't burned.

00:36:43.280 Everyone would go, ah, but what about Mother Lakeland? 0.98

00:36:46.120 She was burned. 0.93

00:36:47.080 And then I have to explain and say she's burned because of petty treason,

00:36:49.960 not because she was accused of witchcraft.

00:36:52.480 It's a different thing.

00:36:53.480 I sound like a grumpy old man complaining about this.

00:36:56.100 But in one sense, I'm fascinated by how this is happening.

00:36:59.520 And it ties in with something,

00:37:01.660 because I'm also president of the Folklore Society at the moment as well.

00:37:04.480 And, you know, one of the things I tweeted the other day was about the resurgence of survival theory in folklore, which has become flourished for the same reasons that misinformation about the witch trials flourishes.

00:37:18.720 So what is survival theory?

00:37:20.180 So yeah, the early folklorists and anthropologists, 1870s onwards, were absolutely, well, pretty obsessed with the idea that the sort of relic customs and traditions and beliefs of the European peasantry were, in a sense, the survivals of pre-Christian religion and ritual.

00:37:41.200 So what they would do is going around looking for any signs, whether it's in the material culture, in healing charms, in rituals and traditions, and they'll go, ah, that comes back to sacrifice or the worship of a sun god, or it might be horse cults is the other one.

00:37:55.880 There's kind of three sort of that all merged together.

00:37:58.480 So, you know, as they're going around collecting information, either from literary sources or actually going out into the field, so to speak, and talking to nearly always rural people because they weren't interested in going into the towns in that period.

00:38:09.380 They didn't think there was any folk left in the towns.

00:38:11.060 Everyone was wise and urban and blah, blah, blah.

00:38:13.020 And, you know, there we go.

00:38:14.340 This looks like there's a fire involved here.

00:38:16.320 This must be a need fire.

00:38:17.760 It must be a fire.

00:38:18.480 It must be a pre-Christian relic from when they worshipped the sun and used bonfires. 0.92

00:38:23.460 So everything, you know, to the extent that something like, you know, we just had Guy Fawkes night.

00:38:27.500 They were even arguing that that really an origin was pre-Christian ritual at that time of year.

00:38:32.920 So this has been debunked by folklorists, you know, a century on.

00:38:35.800 There's lots of debunking.

00:38:37.400 I've done plenty of debunking myself on this.

00:38:39.560 But at the same time, it's absolutely fascinating because this is just surging back.

00:38:42.900 You can look at the internet is full of people who believe survival stuff in terms of the local rituals and traditions in their place.

00:38:48.980 All this stuff floats around in social media.

00:38:51.240 You know, the millions of options you have to look at stuff.

00:38:53.760 And of course, you know, myself like others, you just flick through, flick through.

00:38:56.700 That's quite interesting.

00:38:57.500 you know who's going to go and buy a 45 pound academic book which is going to counteract

00:39:02.700 something which is actually quite nice and exciting the very thought that all these

00:39:05.760 traditions that we're still creating in our in the you know idyllic rural english landscape or

00:39:10.260 scottish or welsh you know have these great ancient origins and in the vast majority of

00:39:14.820 cases they don't at all it's wishful thinking but it's become resurgent in itself that's

00:39:18.960 fascinating as a folklorist so there's two sides to this one side is a frustration that you can't

00:39:26.020 get the messages across very well let's take advice it's like okay this is really interesting

00:39:30.020 why why is it people want to believe in these things it's like people trying to find their

00:39:35.220 own origin story isn't it that they're trying to base themselves in something which is beyond them

00:39:41.180 and past and past through generations i think that's just such a fascinating idea that people

00:39:46.620 will hold on to that and it doesn't really matter no it's seductive and you know it's about

00:39:53.300 personal identity as well, or it might be about place identity, you know, and the idea that you

00:39:58.580 have these long roots and roots that extend beyond Christianity, even if you're not a practicing

00:40:03.440 neo-pagan today, you know, there are plenty of people who are not practicing neo-pagans, but still

00:40:07.500 are attracted to the idea and kind of valued the notion that these things have been able to exist

00:40:14.200 through two millennia of Christian church. People want to, I mean, Kerry Holbrook and I wrote a book

00:40:20.060 called Building Magic, where we look at survivals and how it still circulates in terms of the

00:40:25.080 things that people find in their homes, that they want to be ritual.

00:40:27.880 They want to believe.

00:40:28.640 And when they're told that their concealed shoe or whatever may be about protected spirits

00:40:34.380 or as a relic of human sacrifice, the shoe is this kind of residual element.

00:40:39.180 It's wonderful story stuff.

00:40:40.680 And people put a lot of emotional value to it.

00:40:42.520 It's come along and go, actually, it's probably a builder's tradition.

00:40:45.500 It's probably just for luck, or it may be just a memento.

00:40:48.520 We put it in the wall.

00:40:48.880 that's still interesting

00:40:50.760 but it's not as exciting

00:40:51.520 as the argument

00:40:52.840 that this has agency

00:40:54.240 this shoe has agency

00:40:55.180 it has potency

00:40:55.940 that's really

00:40:56.640 and it gives people a bond

00:40:57.860 and I can understand that

00:40:59.000 and that's fascinating

00:40:59.900 you know

00:41:00.320 People do love to explain things

00:41:02.340 and I think they do like

00:41:03.780 to sort of

00:41:04.420 bind themselves up

00:41:05.720 with stories like that

00:41:06.860 that they're only

00:41:07.740 like a few degrees away

00:41:09.020 from the thing that happened

00:41:10.240 and I think

00:41:10.980 we find that a lot

00:41:12.200 with our campaign

00:41:13.260 is that

00:41:13.640 you know

00:41:14.340 there's a huge amount of support

00:41:15.540 from lots of different types of people

00:41:17.000 but there is

00:41:18.000 definitely a group of support and I think I can see a change in this over the time that we've

00:41:22.000 been making the podcast where initially there was a there was a great deal of people that were saying

00:41:26.420 oh I would have been burnt I'd have been accused of being a witch and would have been burnt at the

00:41:30.280 state obviously that's erroneous but that was the sort of thing that people would say at the beginning

00:41:33.060 and over time we've really looked so hard with different historians and saying you know it

00:41:38.960 wasn't cunning folk and midwives it wasn't necessarily you were a redhead or you had a

00:41:43.920 third nipple or that you were you were feisty or that you stood up to men or anything like that

00:41:48.960 it was just people it was just people that was for different sometimes really sort of banal reasons

00:41:54.000 were accused of being witches and i think that is it has changed a little bit but you still see a

00:41:59.440 lot particularly on instagram and other social media outlets of people kind of being like i'm

00:42:05.780 part of this and that that phrase we are the granddaughters of the women i can't even remember

00:42:11.380 exactly what the phrase is you couldn't burn or whatever it is yeah we're the granddaughters of

00:42:14.900 the witches you couldn't burn which i think is very alluring because that gives you a you know

00:42:19.940 quite a strong sense maybe of of your own power if you think you know i'm descended from that

00:42:24.200 but it's it is i think bonkers i think it's technical yeah yeah it's a difficult one to

00:42:33.340 counter i mean and again i'm you know i put information out but i'm not crusading debunking

00:42:37.820 or anything like that.

00:42:38.720 And I'm just trying to understand these things.

00:42:41.120 And the topic of empathy in history

00:42:42.880 is something obviously the historians

00:42:44.160 consider quite a lot.

00:42:46.440 Should the way in which we write about history

00:42:49.020 or teach history or research it,

00:42:51.500 be empathetic to the past?

00:42:53.180 Should be, what distance should we have?

00:42:55.020 To what degrees do we emote about our feelings,

00:42:57.920 about subjects, particularly when it comes to

00:43:00.200 40,000, 50,000 women who haven't committed a crime,

00:43:03.140 mostly women have committed a crime,

00:43:04.680 being executed with pain and suffering 1.00

00:43:06.460 and all those things.

00:43:07.080 And it's important that people do, that your campaign and others, I think, are valuable.

00:43:11.340 And we need to have more of those.

00:43:12.240 When you just saw in the newspapers today that 50% of British people don't know that 6 million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust.

00:43:20.080 It's amazing how these things slip, slip, slip, slip.

00:43:23.180 At the same time, as you say, there's a kind of a balance between saying we must empathize, we must put these stories across, we must, in a sense, commemorate, but more importantly, understand.

00:43:32.320 At the same time as trying not to go down the path of, oh, that could have been me, because it doesn't really – I can see why people say that, because they say, well, I'm marginal, I'm a post-menopausal woman, these are the sorts of people, and I talk about it, and the age of suspected, which in general, people go, gosh, that's me, that makes me think, and that's the point.

00:43:54.800 I think, okay, that's good.

00:43:55.980 That's good.

00:43:56.980 That's important.

00:43:58.200 And there's a stage beyond that where it's like, yeah,

00:44:00.640 but exactly as you're saying, Zoe, you know,

00:44:02.880 the multitude of factors which led to witchcraft accusations

00:44:07.120 are not just because you're a woman of a certain age.

00:44:12.200 So in the research that you've done,

00:44:14.940 what were the main sort of drivers for people being accused?

00:44:18.520 For me, there's kind of three.

00:44:19.640 I think we mentioned this before when we were setting up the interview.

00:44:21.660 There's the kind of three categories that I think about in terms of identification of witches.

00:44:27.100 And one is your kind of stereotypical witch.

00:44:30.520 One is your conflict witch, and the other one is the accidental witch.

00:44:34.300 And whether it's the early modern period or in the 19th century, you see the same kind of pattern of how witchcraft accusations come about under those three headings.

00:44:44.960 So the stereotypical witch is your marginal woman of a certain age who is often a widow,

00:44:49.820 who's often begging, the old begging leading to guilt and accusations. 1.00

00:44:53.700 It works.

00:44:54.140 It does work.

00:44:54.880 I mean, that is part of the explanation.

00:44:56.800 You know, you can take Jane Wenham of Walken, the last person who was found guilty and sent

00:45:00.960 us to be executed in 1712.

00:45:03.100 She was exactly that sort of figure.

00:45:04.620 In her 50s, 60s, her husband had left her. 0.96

00:45:08.500 She had to go begging.

00:45:09.260 She probably used her outsider stereotypical reputation by muttering things as she left 0.99

00:45:15.220 and all those sorts of things and played upon it.

00:45:16.960 So there's classic stereotypical outsider, marginal, and explicitly gendered. 0.99

00:45:21.560 These are women. 1.00

00:45:22.260 You know, that's the stereotype. 1.00

00:45:23.800 And so accusations do sometimes spring from that relationship.

00:45:28.080 Then a lot of accusations are what are called conflict witch.

00:45:31.080 In other words, it can be any age.

00:45:32.640 It can be male or female, mostly female still because of the stereotypes, but still men

00:45:36.080 as well. 0.66

00:45:36.600 And conflict witches can be between neighbors. 0.99

00:45:38.420 it can be in the workplace, it can be within families. 0.92

00:45:41.680 So in other words, you don't necessarily have to look like a witch,

00:45:43.780 act like a witch, have the social status of a witch.

00:45:47.120 It's actually the conflicts that lead to people taking out their shotguns 0.51

00:45:50.480 over barbecue smells or whatever.

00:45:52.760 The simple and petty frictions and tensions within families, within society.

00:45:58.680 And as we know, if anyone's brought up in close-knit neighbourhoods or villages,

00:46:03.000 the rumour and those things and tales about people live on for years,

00:46:06.980 which is why you get the classic sort of, you know,

00:46:09.600 when you look at deposition records or indictments, you know,

00:46:12.760 it'll say, oh, yeah, well, that happened to me 10 years ago.

00:46:15.720 That happened to me 15.

00:46:16.720 I remember 15 years ago when, you know, I went, you know,

00:46:19.360 I took my cart past her house and the wheel fell off.

00:46:21.720 Funny, I haven't really thought about that for 15 years,

00:46:23.320 but now it all comes out, you know,

00:46:25.020 and it doesn't necessarily mean that they were thought to be a witch

00:46:26.920 at the time those curious incidents happened,

00:46:28.740 but when the conflict begins and people start asking to take sides

00:46:33.560 in whatever community, then people go, ah,

00:46:36.560 oh, well, you know, that kind of explains it.

00:46:38.640 But it all arises from a conflict in the first place.

00:46:41.300 That's the whole confirmation bias, isn't it?

00:46:44.400 When we look back, confirmation bias absolutely is so problematic

00:46:50.160 when looking at memory in court cases.

00:46:53.320 People just, they have a narrative of what they think happened

00:46:57.740 and then they remember things or they fit things

00:47:01.740 into what they think's happened by just pulling out the bits

00:47:04.860 that are interesting to them.

00:47:06.020 And it seems to be how we make stories, but that's a powerful example of somebody's reputation being the death of them, really.

00:47:16.720 Yeah. Yeah. And as you say, you see it in different contexts today in criminal court cases and the ways in which evidence gathering takes place.

00:47:24.700 Witness statements, as you say, confirmation bias, powerful, whether it's to do terrorism or whatever.

00:47:29.940 You see that active very clearly. Obviously, the role of torture is a whole other issue.

00:47:35.560 It's a place there, which obviously is not relevant to the English context.

00:47:39.080 It's a bit relevant to the Scottish, obviously, and fully relevant to parts of the continent.

00:47:43.460 But the final category of accidental, which is the one that people don't really get very often or don't even think about,

00:47:49.340 and that is a certain number of people were accused of witchcraft purely because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

00:47:55.960 And that can often be because a cunning folk is doing a ritual to identify witches, which is one of their main services they offered.

00:48:02.000 And Hugh happened to come to the door looking for a bit of sugar, a bit of bread from your neighbour.

00:48:05.100 You may have had perfect relations with them for 30 years, but if you come knocking on

00:48:09.780 the door when the ritual is taking place, that's it.

00:48:12.380 Your life is finished because you have just been identified because of the ritual.

00:48:16.440 So these divination identifying rituals, which were common because people were going, something's

00:48:21.180 wrong with me, something's wrong with me.

00:48:22.320 Then the next stage is I don't know who it is.

00:48:24.040 Go to a cunning person.

00:48:25.160 First thing you need to do is identify who it is before you can do something about it.

00:48:28.280 So the whole identification process in terms of divination, as I say, can lead to what

00:48:32.720 we call accidental witches like this. 0.51

00:48:34.560 You can find them in the witch trial records.

00:48:35.980 You can find them in 19th century reverse trial court cases as well. 0.96

00:48:39.800 Just to check that I've got this right, you would go to a cunning person,

00:48:43.300 cunning folk, and you would say, I need to know who this is.

00:48:46.980 And they'd say, right, okay, go home, sit and wait, do some ritual. 0.99

00:48:52.140 And the first person who comes to your house after that is the person who's a witch.

00:48:57.240 Yeah, or the way in which the cunning person, sometimes it would go away.

00:49:00.320 sometimes they would do a divination in their house, the consulting rooms that some of them

00:49:05.380 had. It's very crafty and cunning because cunning folk rarely, rarely actually name anyone explicit.

00:49:11.640 This is, again, the psychology of this. They give enough detail or enough abstraction that the

00:49:17.760 person has to make sense of it themselves. So if it isn't directly from a ritual, like a witch

00:49:24.100 bottle ritual, sometimes witch bottles were used to identify as well as to be countermagic. But

00:49:29.700 But in terms of divination, I had a good example.

00:49:32.020 This was a case I've just been looking at from late 19th century in Devon.

00:49:36.040 And it's actually a probate case, which involves witchcraft.

00:49:38.780 And essentially, a man, farmer, prosperous, things weren't going well.

00:49:42.300 So he goes to the cunning person.

00:49:43.380 The cunning person goes, who's doing this to me?

00:49:45.360 Who's doing this to me?

00:49:46.100 And the cunning person mentions something that she is crab-like.

00:49:49.920 Okay, that's it.

00:49:51.480 The person that's doing this to you is crab-like.

00:49:54.120 Like scuttling or?

00:49:55.500 Yeah, like a crab.

00:49:56.200 I don't know.

00:49:57.180 That's how it works, you see.

00:49:58.520 They give you enough information for you to try and make sense of it.

00:50:02.220 Now, it so happens that this man's, one of his daughters had a disability.

00:50:06.540 Obviously, it meant that her hands, you know, her feet were scrunched up, you know.

00:50:10.800 And that to him was proof. 0.70

00:50:12.460 Ah, it's my own daughter who's been the witching age.

00:50:15.600 And that all stems from this divinitary practice. 0.95

00:50:17.580 She is a classic accidental witch, you know. 0.74

00:50:19.920 And what terrible, you know, it's terrible to be accused of witchcraft if you're a conflict witch or whatever. 0.54

00:50:24.200 but to have perfectly good relations

00:50:26.460 with your family or friends or neighbours

00:50:28.520 and suddenly to be accused, it's like, what the?

00:50:30.520 Yeah, yeah. That's so

00:50:32.360 scary.

00:50:34.320 It's just, there's nothing you can do about that either

00:50:36.620 because once they were accused, that was it,

00:50:38.560 wasn't it? The ball was rolling and

00:50:40.340 there was no... You know, cunning folk would believe

00:50:42.660 powerful stuff, you know,

00:50:44.920 and say, well, if a cunning person

00:50:46.380 has clearly led to this conclusion,

00:50:48.880 you know, but cunning folk really,

00:50:50.700 this is why, you know, people go, oh, cunning folk, cunning folk.

00:50:52.420 I say, well, they're pretty cynical people, you know. 0.52

00:50:55.600 They run the gamut from the out-and-out crooks and rascals, 0.98

00:50:58.480 out-and-out nasty people, really nasty people, 0.89

00:51:00.980 to people who are actually quite well-meaning

00:51:02.680 and are trying to be conscious and do good.

00:51:05.000 And then there's a whole ocean of them in the middle

00:51:06.960 who are making money and profit.

00:51:09.780 This is cynical stuff.

00:51:11.360 The modern-day equivalent might, you could argue,

00:51:13.980 might be like mediums or spiritualists,

00:51:16.460 that you would go along to see somebody to find out your future

00:51:19.440 and they'd see you as a man with brown hair.

00:51:21.600 yeah oh it's jim from accounts exactly i had that in glasgow where i went along to one of

00:51:28.880 these things with a friend and there was a room in the south side of glasgow and they were all

00:51:33.980 women i think probably in their like 20s and 30s and someone said i'm seeing a farm in ireland and

00:51:40.980 i was like there's nobody in this room that doesn't have a connection family in ireland

00:51:45.780 Yeah, exactly.

00:51:47.000 Yeah, same techniques, cold reading.

00:51:48.520 You can see they're cold reading people in the 16th century, 17th century, when you analyze these interviews that take place between.

00:51:56.560 And sometimes I've come across cunning folk who have, for example, a consulting room and they have a papered over hole between them and the office.

00:52:03.860 So they would then employ a stooge or their wife who would sit in the consulting room and then draw a bit of information out.

00:52:09.740 So why are you here?

00:52:10.960 And that person would tell their tale of woe or whether it's theft or witchcraft.

00:52:14.900 and all the time the cunning man can hear it

00:52:16.780 because it's just a papered overhaul.

00:52:18.540 And so when the person goes into the room,

00:52:19.840 they're going, well, I, you know, I can tell you,

00:52:22.140 I think I know, you know, another one on his deathbed,

00:52:25.140 this is a 19th century one,

00:52:26.620 confessed that basically he would then run around.

00:52:29.820 They'd say, oh, the cunning man's out,

00:52:31.580 sit in the room, tell me all about it.

00:52:33.280 Then the cunning man would listen.

00:52:34.260 Then he would run around the back of the house,

00:52:35.600 come in through the front door,

00:52:36.960 go, oh, I've just arrived, I've just arrived,

00:52:38.200 come into my consulting room.

00:52:39.240 And below and behold, he knows this whole story.

00:52:42.000 He's managed to define it, you know.

00:52:43.380 Lots of trickery he goes on.

00:52:44.520 those cunning folk they were yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you mentioned before owen witch bottles which

00:52:51.300 i've seen pictures of could you explain what they were what their function was yeah i'm you know i

00:52:56.720 should know we're working on a big project at the moment which is just its final year with museum of

00:53:00.480 london archaeology in a probably a couple of years time everyone will be able to access

00:53:04.060 basically it's going to be a 200 000 word book which will be open access free as a pdf

00:53:09.540 on this subject so look out for that in a while but essentially which which bottles we're studying

00:53:16.820 them in a early modern context so roughly from 1650s through to the early 18th century a certain

00:53:22.300 type of bottle called a bellamine or bartman called bartmans the ones with the bearded face

00:53:26.680 you must have seen them the stone stone earthenware bottles with this rather striking face on it and

00:53:31.440 normally a little medallion which looks rather symbolic of something you can read into that what

00:53:35.580 you want they don't just use these bottles it's clearly these bottles are the ones most of the

00:53:39.940 ones we find because they're really quite solid and essentially a witch bottle draws elements from

00:53:45.240 other aspects of anti-witch rituals that go back use of urine use of pins so essentially what you

00:53:51.700 do is get the urine of the victim could be an animal get the urine put it in a bottle you take

00:53:56.680 something else often of their nail clippings or hair a bit of them you know it's an embodiment

00:54:01.640 of them in this bottle and then you add sharp objects to it pins thorns or whatever then there's

00:54:09.000 different purposes for it then some rituals as you you cork it up and you put it in a fire and

00:54:14.140 it burns and burns and then it the cork comes out or the bottle explodes more drastically and that

00:54:19.860 is all about causing harm to the suspected witch in other words the bottle is representative in

00:54:25.820 part of the victim but also whatever you do to the victim will affect the synthetic magic what

00:54:30.420 will happen to the witch sympathetic magic there's a sympathetic connection between witch and victim

00:54:34.000 um so if you heat the bottle then she will have extreme pains in her heart or a bladder or whatever

00:54:38.340 and that will force her to take the spell off or force her to come to the door you know so that's

00:54:42.820 that's when if you turn up at the door when this is going on at midnight you know and we they were

00:54:48.060 using them in urban areas as well as rural areas then you're in trouble because you'll be suspected

00:54:52.740 the second part um again which is obviously the ones we find because the ones are in the fire

00:54:58.440 We're meant to explode, or if they don't, we find hardly any blackened ones. 0.85

00:55:02.500 So the ones that archaeologists find or people find buried under their hearths or under their 0.98

00:55:06.520 floors in their homes, they're not always in buildings.

00:55:08.820 They can be in riverbanks as well and ditches.

00:55:11.360 Those ones are obviously, in a sense, a form of deterrent.

00:55:16.080 In other words, same ingredients, but you bury it.

00:55:18.720 It's there permanently.

00:55:19.980 And that in itself is warding off the witch that bewitched you.

00:55:23.800 And those are the bottles we find because they haven't been, say, damaged through the

00:55:26.960 fire rituals.

00:55:27.900 Right.

00:55:28.440 so the the urine and the nail clippings and things is that from the victim or from right

00:55:33.280 so that's right okay that's that's kind of the symbolic physical embodiment of the victim

00:55:38.360 right you don't want to put the victim on the fire uh so you know a bit of their person

00:55:45.440 so when you've found bottles or an archaeologist you found bottles what's left of them is there

00:55:51.580 still stuff inside i mean does that just disappear over that no there's there's a very

00:55:57.080 few with their contents still intact um pit rivers museum has a couple which we investigated

00:56:02.760 and if you look on google a college in kent found one recently which is actually in their stores it

00:56:12.360 was dug up about 20 years ago but they didn't look inside it and now they've looked inside it

00:56:16.740 and you can see there's hair matted hair and stuff in there a few of them have a felt heart

00:56:21.680 cloth heart in it which again and clearly i suspect that is one cunning person so we've

00:56:27.120 found five five six bottles but that's clearly one i suspect one or two cunning folk who that's

00:56:31.800 their signature touch they all like to do they all like to add their little mark to these things

00:56:36.440 so it's never completely uniform the standards are always the same you're in something sharp

00:56:41.480 sharp objects and was that something that was quite widespread across england and other parts

00:56:47.280 of what's now the UK

00:56:48.220 or was it just particular parts of England

00:56:51.120 where that happened?

00:56:52.120 It is regional and you can map them out.

00:56:54.620 They're mostly from south, southeast of England. 0.98

00:56:58.260 That's the Bartman.

00:56:59.020 That's the Bartman jugs.

00:57:00.920 The tradition carries on

00:57:02.280 and through until the early 20th century.

00:57:04.380 So you'll find examples

00:57:06.240 and I found them in both the archives

00:57:08.180 and people have found them.

00:57:09.200 Less so because often they're using glass

00:57:10.860 in the 19th century mostly.

00:57:12.240 So the survival rate is poor

00:57:14.620 or people wouldn't necessarily realise what it was.

00:57:16.440 I've got numerous court cases of cunning folk being prosecuted and part of the evidence that comes out is that they advise these rituals, put it in the churchyard, put it in your house, put it in your vegetable patch or whatever.

00:57:26.780 But there's very few examples from Scotland.

00:57:28.280 I can't think whether I've come across one example of that off the top of my head, certainly not early modern.

00:57:33.640 Scotland had a different sort of thing than they did, or if they just didn't, it just wasn't a thing in Scotland.

00:57:39.440 I don't know.

00:57:39.940 No, there are regionalities to this.

00:57:41.900 But you'll still get boiling urine, you know, as a ritual,

00:57:46.280 and you'll find that sort of thing fairly pervasive.

00:57:49.620 Are there any main differences between people that were accused

00:57:54.160 of witchcraft in Scotland and people who were accused

00:57:57.200 of witchcraft in England?

00:57:59.180 In the basics, no. 0.75

00:58:00.620 And again, conflict, witch, accidental witch, stereotypical witch.

00:58:04.420 On that basis, no.

00:58:05.360 But obviously when you look through the database archives

00:58:08.040 or the rich archives, you'll find lots of,

00:58:11.900 rituals and things, particularly in some of those rich cases where there clearly are cunning

00:58:16.780 folk who are being prosecuted for witchcraft. They're not being prosecuted necessarily for the

00:58:21.680 popular magic, they're being prosecuted because of the accusation of witchcraft that attracts to

00:58:25.560 them for whatever reason. And there, obviously, you do find different relationships, fairy

00:58:30.600 relationships, well-known fairy beliefs and connections there are stronger in the Scottish

00:58:36.020 material than they are in the English material for the same period. We still get the same ideas

00:58:40.880 of cunning folk getting their powers from fairies 1.00

00:58:43.660 across England and Wales, but it's stronger,

00:58:46.480 or at least more evident, obviously, in Scottish material.

00:58:49.320 That goes right through to the 19th century.

00:58:51.500 That's really interesting.

00:58:52.620 When we've looked across Ireland as well,

00:58:55.820 where the accusations of witchcraft really didn't take off at all,

00:59:00.360 it was because, or at least one theory was,

00:59:03.580 because the idea of calling someone a witch

00:59:05.920 didn't hold the same fear and horror that it might do

00:59:09.780 because there was so much involvement in other world theories, et cetera.

00:59:15.060 But the odd thing about Scotland is what you're saying is

00:59:18.200 there was more at least examples of that,

00:59:20.740 but Scotland had so many more witchcraft accusations than in England.

00:59:26.480 Do you have any explanation that you might give for why in Scotland

00:59:31.420 witchcraft accusations really took hold?

00:59:36.060 Well, it's a really interesting comparison.

00:59:37.920 As you mentioned, it's a matter of debate. Andrew Sneddon's written some interesting work on looking at this issue. And there's the argument that it's because of the strength of the fairy belief in both Wales and Ireland that people blame that on the fairies rather than on witches, and you can't prosecute fairies. So that's one argument. And there's an element of that, but it's more complex, I think, than that, as Andrew Sneddon has shown.

00:59:57.800 There's a multiple of other factors and legal factors, and Ireland is a colonial country under English rule, and there's other things going on as well as that.

01:00:06.020 And as you say, the interesting thing is you look at the Scottish material, Scottish fairy tradition is pretty strong, and yet you have, you know, intense, intense witchcraft accusations.

01:00:15.700 So I think there's more work to be done around those comparisons.

01:00:18.880 I've been recently looking at asylum records from the 19th century and looking at the nature of beliefs, and we've been looking at Crichton Royal Hospital records.

01:00:27.560 I've been looking at, for example, and we've been looking at ones from the Northwest England.

01:00:31.600 And it's really interesting that the people who are talking about who are in asylums and 0.72

01:00:35.200 their supernatural beliefs are expressed in terms of a fear of the fairies, or they're

01:00:38.440 in contact with fairies, are nearly all either Irish migrants who have been working in Manchester

01:00:44.300 in the Northwest in England, or they're Scottish. 0.91

01:00:46.900 So, you know, it's still strong there and active and people are concerned.

01:00:50.980 So at the same time, if you take that back to the early modern period of fairy belief

01:00:54.240 and Scottish belief, why doesn't it have the same impact if that's kind of the key thing?

01:00:57.560 So it's a really interesting area.

01:00:59.820 We do see in Scotland, I don't know if the phrase is used down in England,

01:01:02.660 he's away with the fairies or she's away with the fairies.

01:01:05.600 That was a comment that was made.

01:01:07.480 Is that used down south as well?

01:01:10.080 Well, it'd be interesting to study how it's used historically,

01:01:12.460 but certainly it's used.

01:01:13.720 You know, people are away with the fairies.

01:01:14.820 And that was a whole part of fairy tradition,

01:01:17.280 whether it's in England, Wales or Scotland or Ireland.

01:01:19.820 There's the same set of traditions about fairies,

01:01:22.220 including the fact that you can enter the fairy kingdom

01:01:25.160 and come back and, you know, decades have passed

01:01:27.640 or you've spent decades in the fairy world,

01:01:29.880 come back, there's only been one day.

01:01:31.000 So yeah, away with the fairs meets general fairy tradition.

01:01:34.520 I see, okay.

01:01:35.740 So in Scotland, we had this terrible period of time

01:01:39.420 and it took hold.

01:01:41.280 The reasons that we've heard about so far

01:01:43.580 are the fact that obviously the Reformation was happening

01:01:46.640 so that everyone was trying to be godlier

01:01:48.880 than everyone else and getting the devil out of society.

01:01:51.960 James obviously writing the book

01:01:54.800 Demonology, him providing

01:01:56.640 legitimacy from the highest sources

01:01:58.680 and also access to courts

01:02:01.080 that there was a good

01:02:01.980 effectively there was a relatively good

01:02:04.300 court system where people could

01:02:06.680 air their grievances

01:02:08.240 are those the sort of factors

01:02:10.300 would you agree that those are the factors

01:02:12.340 are they wrong or is there any other

01:02:14.300 I think the main factors

01:02:15.980 in Scotland, the fundamentals are the same

01:02:18.700 as they are south of the border

01:02:20.500 also the same dynamics as you get if you strip away torture and you just look at two parts to

01:02:26.760 this really what one is the actual dynamics of witchcraft accusations and they're fairly similar

01:02:31.440 no matter where you are they then the prosecution and trial of witches is a whole different matter

01:02:36.280 because that's all to do with the legal systems so i mean the main point there i think scotland

01:02:41.140 is why was it so much more intense than english prosecutions and clearly you know one of the

01:02:46.140 main reasons is actually the church of scotland and the structure of the church in scotland

01:02:50.400 If you look for those Scottish records, and I've piled through many of them, the closeness of the local minister in pursuing, essentially, Kirk ministers, Calvinists, ardent anti-witch campaigners, they were really proactive in Scotland, and they were allowed to be.

01:03:07.340 And so when you look at it, you see, well, the minister reported this, the minister said that, the minister discussed this with it, and that all goes back to central authorities.

01:03:14.320 And so it's really clear that in Scotland, more than in England, that the clergy were motivated and proactive, almost like little mini witch hunters, you know, without the power of trial themselves or anything.

01:03:25.020 But they're kind of like little mini Matthew Hopkins, almost, in terms of a parochial level of ensuring that they're exterminating these witches and being proactive about making sure these people get prosecuted.

01:03:34.780 You get far less of that in England with the Church of England ministers.

01:03:38.380 That's interesting.

01:03:39.620 I've joked before, probably maybe slightly in bad taste,

01:03:43.240 that the reason that Scotland was so into it

01:03:45.140 is it's something to do with the Scottish nature,

01:03:47.400 that we're just a hard-bitten kind of like to accuse other people

01:03:51.520 and like to think people aren't any better

01:03:53.180 than they think they are sort of thing.

01:03:54.900 But actually, that was quite tied into Calvinism.

01:03:57.080 So I think I'm right.

01:03:59.520 I think it's okay.

01:04:01.240 You have your confirmation bias right there.

01:04:04.380 Exactly.

01:04:04.860 Exactly. But you mentioned before as well about torture.

01:04:08.400 So what was the story with torture in England?

01:04:10.560 Was there not as much as there was in Scotland?

01:04:12.660 I hadn't realised that.

01:04:14.020 Torture was illegal in cases of witchcraft.

01:04:16.260 You could use torturing in terms of treason.

01:04:18.880 Right. 0.59

01:04:19.320 But torture was illegal in cases of witchcraft.

01:04:22.300 So for the crime of witchcraft, you could not be tortured at all.

01:04:25.540 Claire, was torture legal in Scotland then?

01:04:28.080 Well, interestingly, Scotland prided itself in, you know,

01:04:31.880 not doing too much torture.

01:04:33.660 What they would do is they mostly would keep people awake.

01:04:36.920 They were quite proud of the fact that they didn't indulge in that sort of thing.

01:04:41.180 But the difficulty is, as we've spoken about many times,

01:04:44.040 they basically kept people awake talking about witches for days on end

01:04:47.540 and drove people mad.

01:04:49.020 And that's sometimes where we get these wild confessions from.

01:04:52.120 But the Privy Council actually sent edicts out saying people could not be tortured.

01:04:59.080 And people would make complaints to the Privy Council in Scotland saying

01:05:02.800 someone is being kept and asked about witchcraft and they are being tortured and the Privy Council

01:05:09.240 would say well don't do that but sadly what I would also do is say well you've got a confession

01:05:15.760 there and now you're going to be able to prosecute that person so properly what they should have done

01:05:20.560 is say that person was clearly kept awake for days and in a state of derangement confessed

01:05:26.360 and we're not going to take that confession we're not going to use that as evidence against them

01:05:30.960 and have the case collapse but it didn't it allowed those confessions to be used against

01:05:36.720 people and for the majority of the evidence in scotland that was what was most important because

01:05:42.880 a confession i think we've discussed before a confession is the most powerful type of evidence

01:05:49.820 you can have against your own self-interest and people would say well why why would they say that

01:05:54.800 why would they say these things and the answer is because they're they haven't slept for three days

01:06:00.500 and that's all people have been talking to them about.

01:06:03.500 Yeah, I mean, the only examples of that is Matthew Hopkins

01:06:06.680 used sleep deprivation, you know, but again, he was quasi-legal.

01:06:11.680 What he was doing was quasi-legal and was not endorsed as evidence.

01:06:15.700 But, I mean, that does raise the other issue for the distinctive nature

01:06:18.960 of the longevity of Scottish trials, but also the nature of intensity

01:06:22.720 is this issue of centres and peripheries, which is well known

01:06:26.080 in witchcraft studies, which is the idea that the more

01:06:28.820 there are independent powers in the provinces or locality.

01:06:33.020 In other words, the reach of the centralised state is weaker

01:06:35.700 across Scotland in this period than it is particularly

01:06:39.340 in 17th century England.

01:06:40.900 And so you do get local state officials,

01:06:44.620 along with the Kirk Minister, in a sense,

01:06:46.280 making decisions themselves, and they're too far

01:06:48.420 from the reach of the centralised authorities.

01:06:51.380 And you see this pattern of centres and peripheries

01:06:53.600 in other countries in Europe as well.

01:06:56.140 Ah, interesting. So the size and shape of Scotland, as it worked, and the way the power was structured. And we saw that, didn't we, Zoe, when we were speaking, we've recorded with some of the people who were studying witchcraft in Orkney, and they basically were having a law unto themselves up there with cases completely separately from the government.

01:07:18.300 and, for example, the torture of family members

01:07:21.580 in front of the accused witch, that sort of thing,

01:07:24.300 which the Privy Council wouldn't have allowed

01:07:26.100 had it been about it, but it was just too far away.

01:07:30.780 It couldn't do anything about it.

01:07:32.340 Yeah, a slight classic example is the very late

01:07:34.500 doorknock execution in 1727, I think, 1720 anyway, 1722.

01:07:39.480 The date gets mixed up.

01:07:40.820 Because of the stone says 1727.

01:07:43.660 That's it, that's right.

01:07:44.580 It's 1722, isn't it, I think, if I remember correctly.

01:07:46.800 Yeah. Anyway, but that's a classic example where a local sheriff, you know, just pursued it with vigour.

01:07:52.460 When the central authorities got to hear about, I think we're probably rather horrified that this had happened when it happened.

01:07:56.400 But it was down to that parochial power. And you see that taking place in Swiss cantons, for example, right through in the 18th century as well.

01:08:03.820 Local officials feel that they're empowered and rather laws unto themselves.

01:08:08.920 What do you think? And Owen, don't feel any pressure to give the right answer here.

01:08:13.360 What do you think?

01:08:14.340 I'm kidding.

01:08:15.320 What do you think about the idea of looking for a pardon

01:08:19.020 and an apology for the accused in Scotland?

01:08:21.180 Do you think as a historian that it's, you know, it's happened, move on?

01:08:25.040 Or do you think there's worth in it?

01:08:26.900 It's a really interesting one because there's obviously,

01:08:29.280 there's quite a lot of monuments, you know,

01:08:31.340 and there's been a movement over the last 20 years to create monuments

01:08:34.320 to individual trials or individual people who were executed for witchcraft.

01:08:39.680 And obviously there's a kind of pardon movement.

01:08:41.600 And obviously, you know, a lot of debate around slavery and pardons, for example, across whether it's, you know, the Japanese government giving pardons to Korea or for the service women, as they were called.

01:08:51.920 There's a debate in history about, hold on, how much do you have to, you know, what's inspiring these pardons and what's the purpose, what's the value?

01:09:00.780 It kind of takes the historian away from, you know, into making value judgments on these things.

01:09:04.800 I think the interesting thing about what you're doing and others are doing elsewhere in other countries, it's 400 years on.

01:09:11.600 etc but actually you know we started by talking about the widespread misunderstanding of the

01:09:18.720 witch trials and that's misunderstanding the individuals who were executed for crimes they

01:09:25.020 didn't commit as well so there's a kind of a strong educational benefit in the sorts of

01:09:31.040 campaign that you're doing because it's not just about it's not as if saying yeah we we all

01:09:34.560 understand that and let's just pardon them it's actually saying well actually you probably don't

01:09:37.900 understand really what happened, what's going on. And I think when a pardon campaign is focused on

01:09:44.660 the educational aspects of it, then I think that that's a valuable one. You don't need to start

01:09:50.680 thinking about, well, why are we doing this 300 years or 500 years or X? It's because as we see,

01:09:57.280 again, to call it a benchmark is how quickly memories fade from the Holocaust. And I'm not 0.74

01:10:04.360 comparing the witch trials with the Holocaust, as some people do.

01:10:06.820 That's a whole problem, another problem in itself.

01:10:09.480 But when you see the nature of collective memory so easily dispersed,

01:10:14.960 then pardon campaigns, I think, serve a value.

01:10:18.060 I think also as well, one thing that Claire and I always go back to too,

01:10:20.840 is that this issue isn't just in the past, obviously.

01:10:24.300 There are places where there are still accusations of witchcraft

01:10:28.120 against other people.

01:10:29.380 And we've mentioned a few times, we interviewed a humanist

01:10:32.680 called leo igway who's who has an organization called advocacy for accused witches and he's he's

01:10:38.260 working very hard across mostly across the continent of africa quite a few countries

01:10:42.820 where there was a case a few weeks ago in kenya where it was a grandmother was accused of being

01:10:49.020 a witch i think by her grandson and there was really graphic photographs unfortunately um of

01:10:54.120 him killing her with machete and then there was photographs of her you know her charged remains

01:10:58.660 sort of thing so it is still a case it's funny when you were taught well not funny but when you 0.54

01:11:02.940 were talking about the three different types of which i was thinking about what that women would

01:11:07.860 have fallen under and i think maybe that was the stereotype of her just being an old lady you know 0.84

01:11:13.720 in some ways maybe displeased her grandson in some way but i think also there's quite a financial

01:11:19.340 angle i think sometimes to those cases where there's you know people are basically robbers

01:11:25.060 And that's a way of getting, taking money is by a person being a witch.

01:11:29.160 So it's still a really relevant, sadly, a really relevant story today.

01:11:33.400 And I think it's interesting for us to be, you know,

01:11:36.440 educating people through the podcast by getting on guests such as yourselves

01:11:39.600 that can say, well, here's what actually happened.

01:11:42.020 And I think that's so endlessly fascinating.

01:11:44.040 You know, there's so many people that are listeners to the podcast

01:11:47.100 that didn't know anything about it.

01:11:48.760 I didn't know anything about it, really, even though I've grown up in Fife.

01:11:51.640 And as you'll know, Fife had many issues with witch accusations.

01:11:56.180 So I think anything, I'm a teacher, so I think anything that makes people go, oh, I want to read about that or I want to know a little bit more about it or, you know, and questioning their assumptions is for the good.

01:12:05.720 So I'm obviously for my own campaign.

01:12:10.080 Yeah, but it's good to hear, good to hear.

01:12:13.460 I was involved with a children's charity working in Togo a couple of years ago on child witches.

01:12:18.660 and they got me in because they'd got people on the ground to interview in about 20 different

01:12:23.400 villages with a mix of animist muslim catholic evangelical populations some all villages all

01:12:31.420 just one but sometimes they were mixed villages uh and it was all in french and so i read french

01:12:35.780 so i was looking at this massive really really fascinating material and and they would just go

01:12:40.640 into villages get 20 people around men and women go why why why are these child witches why do you

01:12:45.480 think they're doing this you know what are witches and it was absolutely fascinating material at the

01:12:49.780 same time talking to charity was really interesting because you know part of the the growth of child

01:12:54.780 witchcraft is clearly down to the evangelical church that's what leo said yeah uh at the same

01:13:00.360 time charity has to work through the evangelical church to be able to reach and access the people

01:13:06.240 who are making the accusations against these people the child witches so it's a really complex

01:13:10.880 situation, which was further complicated by what degree do I, as an historian of witchcraft in the

01:13:15.760 West, actually bring to understanding contemporary witch trials, child witch trials? And yes, I can,

01:13:20.940 because I can sit there and say patterns, but that doesn't help. That doesn't help. I can say,

01:13:24.560 oh, yes, that happened in the 17th century. We went through this as though there's some sort of

01:13:29.420 stage of progress involved, which there isn't. So, even as a historian of witchcraft, exploring

01:13:34.260 what's going on in the contemporary world of witchcraft is a minefield of potential condescension

01:13:38.500 and interpretive challenges, and the sensitivities are really interesting.

01:13:44.320 One example would be amongst the evangelicals who are, let's say,

01:13:47.700 it's not just them making the accusations, it becomes a cultural thing,

01:13:50.400 is the role of the King James Bible, and thou shalt not suffer a witch to live

01:13:53.840 which you hear through all the early modern witchcraft.

01:13:55.500 It's there.

01:13:56.380 They're saying the same things.

01:13:57.360 It says in the King James Bible, you know, we're being told in our sermons,

01:14:01.360 it's in the Bible.

01:14:02.080 We read it.

01:14:02.620 If we can read it, it's in the Bible.

01:14:03.740 Now, I can go, well, that's exactly the same as we see there,

01:14:06.460 but where does that take us?

01:14:07.660 it tells us the role of religious literature it tells us about the role of literal reading of

01:14:12.800 the bible so we can make some of these things but it's very you know you have to be so careful not

01:14:17.800 to start making as i say condescending across cultural cross time comparisons so it's really

01:14:24.260 it's really challenging and obviously you know yeah terrible situation india as well

01:14:28.520 and that was something that leo had said wasn't it clear that he said that you know a lot of

01:14:32.700 people from say the uk and america go and work in different countries in africa for a different

01:14:37.640 charities and say oh we're not having anything to do with that because that's local that's local

01:14:42.260 culture and i don't want to come in and patronizingly say you shouldn't do that and leo said

01:14:46.520 no we need you to come and say that to put pressure on the governments to stop people from

01:14:50.880 killing innocent people or ostracizing innocent people because of these superstitious ideas or

01:14:57.240 these ideas that are superstitious that are being used as a front for getting something else in that

01:15:03.320 situation is it's an interesting but super complex sort of situation yeah it is and that charity i

01:15:09.760 work with as part of a bigger umbrella of campaigning to have united nations recognize

01:15:14.460 child witchcraft on the same level as female genital mutilation but it brings with it money

01:15:20.020 for training and educational purposes but you can't just go into communities and they're aware

01:15:24.080 of this you can't go into just communities say you what you don't exist witches don't exist

01:15:27.860 i guess you know where stop it now no yeah exactly stop it now witches don't exist because i i often

01:15:33.020 talks about witchcraft and say there's absolutely no reason why witchcraft accusations couldn't

01:15:37.400 happen in England and Scotland again. Absolutely no reason. We haven't progressed. We haven't

01:15:43.280 become mentally more sophisticated because witchcraft is born out of culture and put 0.76

01:15:47.100 social relationships and networks. It's also based around a world which is chaotic and

01:15:51.640 most people living on the margins. That may happen again.

01:15:55.460 Yeah. Well, and that's the point that we've made as well. And we've said as well that

01:15:59.120 some people the small amount of criticism we've had sometimes is well you can't judge people from 1.00

01:16:04.860 that many years ago because they were ignorant then and they were stupid and they were they 1.00

01:16:08.980 weren't as sophisticated to see and it's ridiculous looking through that lens and 1.00

01:16:12.440 you know they really weren't that's something that we've discovered time and time again they 0.99

01:16:16.740 weren't kind of like monosyllabic kind of stupid people they had very complex and rich lives just 0.98

01:16:23.460 like we do so yeah it's witchcraft witchcraft made sense in the time it was perfectly logical 0.99

01:16:28.700 and reasonable to believe it.

01:16:29.900 Greatest minds of the early modern world

01:16:32.080 believed in witchcraft, you know, 0.96

01:16:33.620 and they still did into the 18th century.

01:16:35.640 It's not about education.

01:16:36.840 It's not about being ignorant.

01:16:38.720 You could be highly sophisticated, literate, 0.97

01:16:40.500 still be an ardent witch hunter. 0.89

01:16:42.060 We were at an event some time ago

01:16:43.480 and a woman at the event said to us,

01:16:45.780 it's just amazing to think people used to believe that,

01:16:47.940 you know, that people believe such crazy things.

01:16:49.800 And I said, well, you know,

01:16:51.100 like without standing on anybody's toes,

01:16:52.780 there are people that believe

01:16:53.900 that they go to particular church services

01:16:55.840 and that things are turned literally

01:16:57.440 into the body and blood of christ and that's lots of people accept that as being the truth

01:17:01.080 you know and that's to me that's not i'm probably going to get struck by lightning now but those

01:17:05.440 things aren't really that different that's culture and it's that people really have these strong

01:17:09.540 beliefs that have been maybe maybe passed down or maybe it shores up who they are and identity or

01:17:14.400 like you're saying they're marginalized in some way and that's that's something to hold on to or

01:17:18.280 they're frightened in some way or you know the world doesn't make sense to them that these things

01:17:23.140 they make sense to those people it is frightening the thought that it could happen again you know

01:17:28.080 and there was the case in i think was it belarus maybe was it belarus there's a few a couple of

01:17:35.560 weeks ago somebody tweeted about it about how there'd been three women accused of being witches

01:17:40.460 there and the women that you know they weren't sure really exactly why the media outlet wasn't

01:17:45.760 really sure exactly why they'd been accused but they had been imprisoned you know and i was just

01:17:50.260 sort of thinking like and they're not too different probably lots of ways to our culture 1.00

01:17:54.740 would be it's just yeah it's mind-boggling yeah you only have to look at 5g conspiracy you know 0.96

01:17:59.940 these towers are causing harm or they're a secret conspiracy by x or whatever chinese government or

01:18:05.040 bill gates or whatever and you think okay okay there's lots of people who believe that and you

01:18:10.160 know and they're all they're all educated often educated people it's got nothing to do with got

01:18:15.140 nothing to do with being ignorant for whatever reason chosen to believe been inculcated with

01:18:19.520 up notion very quickly. But I think all we can do is just keep shining a light on facts and

01:18:27.660 education and making things open and interesting to people so they engage with reality and think

01:18:33.500 about these things. So, Owen, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on tonight. It's

01:18:37.680 been really, really great. And you've got so many publications. There's tons of things that

01:18:41.760 people can find out about that you've written about, about magic, about witchcraft accusations

01:18:46.060 and tons of other stuff as well.

01:18:47.740 I noticed you've got publications

01:18:48.920 about First World War

01:18:50.460 and about emotions

01:18:51.400 and the supernatural

01:18:52.140 and totally fascinating.

01:18:54.720 So Owen is on Twitter.

01:18:56.540 Is that the best place

01:18:57.460 where people can kind of

01:18:58.260 engage with you?

01:18:59.680 Follow what you're doing?

01:19:00.120 Yeah, I'm very,

01:19:01.020 I don't have websites

01:19:01.880 or Facebooks

01:19:02.660 or Instagram accounts

01:19:03.760 or anything like that.

01:19:04.360 That's my one portal.

01:19:06.040 It's Twitter or nothing.

01:19:07.780 Otherwise,

01:19:08.200 otherwise it's reading

01:19:08.960 the stuff I write.

01:19:10.220 Well, that's me.

01:19:11.060 It's always the best thing.

01:19:11.900 It's always the best thing.

01:19:16.060 thanks so much for joining us again today it's been an absolute pleasure

01:19:23.180 and as this is our christmas special claire and i my wife and i would would like to take this

01:19:28.540 opportunity to wish you a happy christmas and that hopefully 2022 is going to be an exciting

01:19:35.560 year where lots of great things happen including what we're looking for with the campaign it's

01:19:41.820 now the time to watch elf yeah yeah you should have already watched it before now what yeah

01:19:47.900 well i mean you're leaving it a bit late watch it right now when this is finished i want you to go

01:19:53.080 and find it put on your stripy hat your stockings stripy stockings not like rude ones and get

01:19:58.560 yourself some eggnog and some like mince pie and then settle down for elf i'll put on whatever

01:20:04.720 stockings i feel like it's by this by this point in the christmas viewing have you done die hard

01:20:11.180 No

01:20:11.780 Well, I did that

01:20:13.440 I did that the other night

01:20:14.500 That's my first Christmas film

01:20:15.860 And then you need to get on to your actual

01:20:17.760 Kind of Christmassy, Christmassy ones

01:20:19.520 No, you see, I like watching horror at Christmas

01:20:22.240 Are there Christmas horror films?

01:20:24.600 No, not really

01:20:25.300 But I just like watching horror movies at Christmas

01:20:28.560 It's because it's dark during the day 1.00

01:20:30.500 You're such a goth, Claire

01:20:32.140 Top tips for anyone 0.75

01:20:35.800 We've just moved on to a movie podcast

01:20:37.880 Top tips for anyone

01:20:38.940 I always watch at Christmas, though

01:20:41.060 two movies two movies from 1950s that both were up for the Oscars all about Eve and Sunset Boulevard 0.98

01:20:48.960 for women of a certain age there are no better movies okay well if you could send your delivery 0.99

01:20:55.260 Raven round with the DVDs I will watch them I shall they're very slippery for his wee beak but 1.00

01:21:00.620 I hope they get there you need to work on his mandible muscles do birds have mandibles as this

01:21:07.240 comes to the end of you i think that's the best question that we can pose for people

01:21:10.280 do birds have mandibles merry christmas merry christmas see you in 2022 bye

01:21:17.960 if you'd like to learn more about the witches of scotland please subscribe wherever you get

01:21:27.940 your podcasts sign up for our mailing list at www.witchesofscotland.com to keep updated with

01:21:36.040 the campaign. On that site, you'll be able to find how to link with us on Twitter, Facebook

01:21:41.780 and Instagram.

Witches of Scotland - December 24, 2021

EPISODE 49 PROFESSOR OWEN DAVIES - HISTORIAN & PRESIDENT OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY

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