Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 50 DR CIARAN JONES HISTORIAN

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,

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

00:00:11.560 about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted,

00:00:15.800 and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.

00:00:18.800 I'm Zoe Vendetotsi, and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches,

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

00:00:26.480 The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.

00:00:29.600 Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.

00:00:33.220 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

00:00:37.460 And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.

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

00:00:52.700 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:55.860 this will be no surprise to you shocking to me what number we're on today we're now on a nice

00:01:02.360 sort of even sounding episode 50 of six so welcome to episode 50 of the witches of scotland podcast

00:01:09.680 we've got a great guest today we've got dr kieran jones who's going to be talking to us about some

00:01:15.420 of the history of the properties that belong in the national trust of scotland and they are linked

00:01:20.700 two different witch trials but before that Claire happy new year oh happy new year to you Zoe were

00:01:27.840 you taken by surprise by my happy new year there yes I thought we were all business this morning

00:01:33.980 Zoe no that was a stealth happy year because it is our our first of 2022 it is yeah yeah good

00:01:42.120 even though on the on the Twitter I saw that you got your years confused oh yeah I invited everyone

00:01:48.960 to think of a new podcast for 2021 which is not the best yeah but no also what was not the best

00:01:54.600 was that i retweeted it and totally didn't even notice that you put 2021 so i think you and i are

00:01:59.040 both in the bin for time organization yes shout out to sabrina our longtime supporter and listener

00:02:05.800 for pointing that out to us thanks sabrina it's helpful just if somebody could just get in touch

00:02:10.100 with us on the daily and just remind us of what the day is and what the year is just for a wee

00:02:13.920 while we'll get there i think but we're just maybe not there yet but this is episode 50 and it's very

00:02:19.640 nice to have you all with us we've just hit 75 000 downloads and claire's put together a list

00:02:26.380 of all the different countries that are um that are listening or where downloads are happening

00:02:30.500 that isn't the full list though that you're going to tell people about i just got to a point where

00:02:34.720 i'm like i can't keep writing these out but there are other ones as well right well i'm just going

00:02:38.960 to read out what you've given me because we're just going to just show off a little bit about

00:02:42.120 this so over 75 000 downloads at the time of recording it's bound to be far higher by the

00:02:47.420 time it goes out but our first our listeners our most downloadable areas are the uk and the usa

00:02:53.000 australia and canada but there's also listeners in okay germany ireland denmark new zealand france

00:02:58.960 spain netherlands south africa switzerland belgium finland italy thailand norway sweden japan israel

00:03:04.380 portugal brazil serbia austria laos romania and greece qatar mexico iceland argentina hungary

00:03:11.340 russia kazakhstan turkey taiwan singapore philippines south korea luxembourg jersey

00:03:17.200 estonia india malaysia iran nigeria poland hong kong oman jamaica czech republic bulgaria

00:03:23.900 dominican republic that's just the ones that you managed to actually type up claire so that's quite

00:03:28.520 shocking and does it mean we can go on a world tour absolutely there are more it does see audience

00:03:35.900 details geographic region because i was reading them and thinking we can't possibly have that

00:03:40.820 many people in different countries but apparently so I've checked the website and that appears to

00:03:45.860 be right the ones in those last countries you you named are one percent or less than one percent so

00:03:52.140 it possibly means that just one or two Claire Claire Claire Claire we'll take it we're taking

00:03:58.940 it international audience that's I'm sure there must be town halls in those places that we can

00:04:04.700 book two of the places I never got to enlist were the Cayman Islands and Martinique

00:04:08.880 oh claire we need to do a business trip would it be tax deductible god that'd be nice wouldn't it

00:04:17.460 if the tories can do it why can't we anyway let's not go down that route take the route

00:04:22.920 i've got some potholes that need sorted out anyway anyway so so that's one thing that's in the news

00:04:30.040 claire have you got any other news that you'd like to mention that was seamless so that was

00:04:36.500 absolutely seamless so well at the start of the year we kicked off by being in the news

00:04:42.300 over the christmas and new year period it was so busy with folk getting in contact with us i don't

00:04:47.900 know nothing says christmas like human rights campaigns perhaps perhaps we um we kicked off

00:04:55.400 the new year um on new year's day with uh an article in the wall street journal and i think

00:05:01.280 that because that's got a really wide readership it kind of went everywhere and we're contacted

00:05:05.540 by lots of different people but that was a really good article we got lots of new American people

00:05:10.780 getting in contact with it was he's a really great journalist actually because apart from

00:05:14.720 anything else he lives in an area that had had quite a high instance of witch trials so then

00:05:20.860 there was a really great connection there and it was it was really cool actually having something

00:05:24.160 in the Wall Street Journal because apart from anything else my teenage children are spectacularly

00:05:28.680 unmoved by this whole situation but my 13 year old I said to him oh it's in the Wall Street Journal

00:05:33.560 and actually he went oh the wall street journal and i'm not really sure why that was of such

00:05:39.200 importance to him i don't i mean i don't think he reads it i don't think he has a subscription

00:05:43.480 to it or anything but strange when i think about the wall street journal i think about

00:05:48.200 the 80s and stocks and shares yeah it was kind of a really big newspaper when i was growing up

00:05:56.620 it's like a real movie like newspaper exactly yeah yeah i'm not sure that a current 13 year

00:06:03.140 old would have that background earlier maybe he does have a subscription to it that's where he

00:06:08.840 gets all his financial news from i'm not really sure but anyway it was cool that was in the wall

00:06:12.720 street journal and then yesterday we um saw ourselves on screen which for me is always kind

00:06:18.400 of horrifying but that was cool so who was that with claire it was we spoke to borders itn along

00:06:27.320 with Mary Craig who has been involved in the podcast as well she has written the book on

00:06:33.100 borders witches and she gave an interview about the people that were killed there so ITN asked

00:06:41.060 us to come on and speak for a little bit about the campaign so that was good too so we were in the

00:06:46.100 news Zoe is what was quite quite exciting it's very exciting and then we've also got a couple

00:06:51.020 of events that are coming up so we're speaking at an event well i say at an event it's done

00:06:57.300 remotely isn't it so people can attend the event from anywhere it's one of these fantastic zoom

00:07:01.900 type occasions so that's lynn lithgow on january the 19th and if people want to get tickets for

00:07:07.140 that we'll put a link up we'll link to it on twitter and stuff as well it's through lynn

00:07:11.160 lithgow museum that is doing that so if people want to get in contact do that and the other thing

00:07:16.780 we're going to do Zoe hopefully Covid restrictions allowing and all those sorts of things is go and

00:07:22.000 see Heel and Harrow on the 21st of January at Celtic Connections so anyone who's wanting to

00:07:27.960 see Heel and Harrow they have done a mixed media would that would is that how you would describe

00:07:34.360 it mixed media quite possibly yes they've got the written word of Mary Kidd who was one of the first

00:07:41.140 people to speak to us and they have put music to the stories of a number of in verse commas witches

00:07:47.880 from history so sometimes they've taken stories of the women and sometimes they've taken the

00:07:53.500 stories of the confessions and turned them into both music and written word so really looking

00:08:00.040 forward to that and if you can't make the glass go on on the 21st we said before but there's a

00:08:04.940 there's a really quite a big list of places on their tour all over the place so you should be

00:08:10.540 able to catch them hopefully somewhere near you and if you have a look for Heel and Harrow on

00:08:14.720 Twitter for example you'll find them there and you'll get the tour dates so that's quite exciting

00:08:18.900 that's some stuff to look forward to which is always good for the early days of January to

00:08:22.460 have some stuff in the diary. So Claire as we are inclined to do each episode do you have a list of

00:08:28.740 women and possibly some men who were accused of witchcraft? I do as we'll come to hear

00:08:35.240 Keiran Jones, Dr Keiran Jones, is looking specifically now at the allegations of witchcraft

00:08:42.040 in Queen's Ferry and I thought what we could do is read out a list of the people that were involved

00:08:47.220 in witchcraft accusations in Queen's Ferry. So most of these accusations took place in either

00:08:54.580 1644 or 1649. There are a few other dates but most of them are those dates and I thought what

00:09:02.060 I do is just read out the list of the names of those people so that we remember them today as

00:09:07.820 folk and not as witches. Their names are Margaret Barton, Isabel Bathgate, Margaret Brown, Elspeth

00:09:16.120 Kant, Janet Kant, Christian Cuthbertson, Marian Doleen, Margaret Doleen, Elspeth Grinlaw, Helen

00:09:25.380 hill agnes lawson marion little catherine logey janet lorry janet mowbray marion steen janet

00:09:35.000 stephen christian syne catherine thompson helen thompson isabel young and margaret young we

00:09:43.180 remember all these people as men and women and not as witches so many people in that list it's

00:09:49.680 just terrible when you just keep coming back to thinking about it for such a small place

00:09:54.760 as Queensferry and Queensferry is tiny now but you imagine it when the size of the whole of

00:10:00.500 Scotland was less than a million it's quite astounding. It's something that actually came

00:10:05.100 up there was a bit of chat about this last night after the news piece on ITN was aired about what

00:10:10.360 happened in the borders and there was some footage of Mary Craig the historian standing talking about

00:10:15.560 a particular area still in the borders and just thinking about what it looks like now it's like

00:10:20.440 you know it's pretty spread out and it's quite isolated and what it must be like to live in

00:10:25.140 these small communities when this was happening. Very frightening indeed to put yourself in their

00:10:30.280 shoes. Thanks very much Claire. So guest today is Dr Kieran Jones and he's a historian of religion

00:10:37.960 and witchcraft in early modern Scotland and he recently completed his PhD in Scottish History

00:10:42.960 at the University of Edinburgh in 2020. His thesis explored the relationship between Calvinism and

00:10:49.100 witchcraft trials and it focused on the religious and spiritual aspects of some accused witches

00:10:53.780 confessions. Ciaran's research has been published in History Scotland magazine, the Scottish History

00:10:59.080 Society and a chapter of his thesis is due to appear in the next volume of the Journal of Magic,

00:11:04.400 Ritual and Witchcraft which is published by the University of Pennsylvania. So without any further

00:11:09.660 ado please welcome to the podcast Dr Ciaran Jones.

00:11:13.180 hi hi Zoe hi Claire good to see you it's great to have you here we actually met you in real life

00:11:22.700 which is very very unusual in the podcast because a lot of these interviews are just done via zoom

00:11:27.020 and we never actually meet the person we had the lovely opportunity to meet you back in 2021

00:11:32.460 the other year there and I think it would be helpful first of all Ciarán if you would tell

00:11:39.360 people what it was that brought us to meet you because I think that that's it's such a fascinating

00:11:44.220 thing can you share that yeah yeah I can share that so probably around May last year 2021 I was

00:11:52.400 contacted by the National Trust for Scotland and they commissioned me to do some research

00:11:58.500 into their properties looking at the connections between their properties and the Scottish

00:12:05.080 witchcraft trials. And the project at the time was just to basically draw up an internal report

00:12:11.440 that put forward these connections in some of their properties. And that means the names of

00:12:16.060 the locations, any sort of stories or narratives that were associated with these properties about

00:12:22.880 witchcraft. Because, you know, there was some perhaps some misinformation in one of their

00:12:28.440 membership magazines that perhaps could have been better researched. The National Trust felt that

00:12:34.520 the time was right to do some more deeper research into their property so when they put out

00:12:39.180 you know public information that it's it's quite accurate and sensitive about the witch trials and

00:12:44.560 this particular topic and then I think that coincided with your campaign your podcast which

00:12:49.800 you by that point you've been running for about over a year I think by May of last year you were

00:12:53.880 quite well known and you have quite a lot of listeners around the world so I think that's

00:12:57.820 how we crossed paths and then we met at a local conference that the National Trust had organised

00:13:04.560 in Kukuddy back in the summer when the weather was much nicer than it is now and that was where

00:13:09.500 I just presented a small presentation on the report that I had done for them and yeah that's

00:13:15.340 how we met. And was that your area of interest Kieran before the National Trust approached you

00:13:21.980 and asked you to do this piece of work as well? I got interested in this topic by chance really

00:13:27.760 I studied history at school and a lot of it had been quite modern history, you know, looking at Nazi Germany or or Soviet Russia or looking at, you know, British prime ministers, which I think still is to this day some of the standard history curriculums.

00:13:41.960 And so when I got to university and studied history as an undergraduate, I was, you know, not surprised, but I was excited by the fact that, you know, I had now the chance to study, you know, more and more broader selection of historical periods.

00:13:56.780 and there was this one course being offered I think it was called state formation and

00:14:02.020 the law in early modern Europe and I thought well I'd never done any early modern history

00:14:06.980 and early modern history is you know the period from about roughly 1500 to 1800 and lots of things

00:14:13.120 took place lots of wars lots of technological economic and societal changes took place in that

00:14:18.340 time and I thought okay I'll give it a go but then there were a couple of topics on that course to do

00:14:24.480 with witchcraft and so I really got interested in the relationship between witchcraft and the law

00:14:28.680 and the fact that you know these early modern kingdoms and early modern territories passed

00:14:33.400 laws against something called witchcraft and they took it very seriously and you know before that

00:14:38.340 I just heard about witchcraft through tv shows and and so it's some sort of superstitious thing

00:14:42.900 so yeah very much interested in witchcraft and the law but the university I went to we only had one 0.75

00:14:47.300 early modern lecturer and they they were German so I ended up looking at a lot of German witchcraft

00:14:52.020 history and some English witchcraft history my original ambitions to become a history school

00:14:57.800 teacher but I thought I loved this research side of things so much I want to take it further so

00:15:02.460 I went on to do postgraduate work to do a master's I thought well I don't speak German and I could

00:15:08.020 take some time out to learn German but I didn't know how long that was going to take me and

00:15:11.880 you know whether this would just be a fleeting interest and by the time I'd learned German I

00:15:16.020 would, you know, have lost interest in pursuing history further. So I thought, I'd done a lot

00:15:21.880 on England, but I knew about Scotland, you know, it was in some of the core academic edited books,

00:15:27.240 you know, where you can read all about witchcraft. And Scotland always featured, you know, either in

00:15:32.580 footnotes or in chapters of books. I thought, you know, I'll give it a go. And then I came up to

00:15:37.760 Edinburgh. And that's how I got on to witchcraft in Scotland and became more fascinated actually

00:15:43.040 with Scottish history and religion so yeah so that's how I got onto this topic. I didn't realise

00:15:48.940 that you had the sort of the legal background interest as well which I'm sure will be of

00:15:53.440 interest to clear it is really fascinating and I think one of the things that I want to talk to you

00:15:57.800 a little bit about today is the myth busting which you've kind of alluded to already the idea you had

00:16:02.860 going into study the background of the witch trials was was kind of an idea from tv and film

00:16:07.440 which I think we've talked about a lot on the podcast is that our sort of cultural ideas of

00:16:13.500 what witchcraft and what the witch trials were and what you know what happened in fact people

00:16:17.740 that were accused are really very much informed by tv programs and by films which is a really

00:16:23.640 bizarre kind of a loop of often complete nonsense and I'm wondering when you first started studying

00:16:29.520 it was there anything that still stays in your mind that you thought oh wow that's that didn't

00:16:34.200 happen like that yeah i think the most one that struck me quite a lot was that most of the people

00:16:42.100 that that were accused consider themselves to be christian or identified as christians whereas in

00:16:48.980 a lot of tv shows that i had watched you know their own personal faith isn't really discussed

00:16:54.560 at all or they have some sort of connection to some modern pagan sort of nature nature god if

00:17:01.940 religion is entirely absent then the sort of the theme of faith or power is filled by sort of you

00:17:07.920 know feminism or something like that so i was quite interested when i came to studying those

00:17:12.120 people that were accused you know i i wasn't expecting to see you know these very powerful 0.97

00:17:17.820 young women that you've seen like charmed or buffy the vampire say or other sort of you know

00:17:22.020 teenage pop dramas but actually sort of you know middle-aged women who i yeah identified strongly

00:17:27.960 as Christian that stuck with me and still does to this day. It's so interesting isn't it that

00:17:34.040 the idea that there were these women hundreds of years ago who were as far from empowered as you 0.84

00:17:40.020 can possibly imagine and as Christian as you can possibly imagine that through time first of all

00:17:47.680 the people became a figure of fun and then they became icons I suppose for feminism strong powerful

00:17:55.200 women it's really really strange that that turn and it's really not surprising as a result of that

00:18:00.420 a lot of people have got really the wrong idea about witchcraft I mean it's it's perfectly

00:18:05.140 understandable that people have that issue yeah and I think that's um you know you see it even in

00:18:13.780 quite well-known tabloid articles today about some of these myths being regurgitated and I think

00:18:20.600 that's because you know the way people get their information from you know is the internet people

00:18:26.020 don't readily go into their local library and pick up a history book on witchcraft or they don't you

00:18:32.480 know order one from amazon or wherever they can get it from their university library because it's

00:18:36.700 just more convenient to do a google search and see what they can find on the internet so i think

00:18:41.860 that's yeah that's that's sometimes why these things persist yeah i think we spoke to owen

00:18:46.380 jones about that and his his sort of howling into the abyss of trying to tell people things about

00:18:54.420 witchcraft is just trying to basically try to fight the internet with information and you know

00:18:59.580 he gets up every day and still does it and so do you so thanks very much thanks very much for that

00:19:05.120 you're welcome when you started to do the research for the national trust is that they've got a lot

00:19:11.800 of properties so how did you narrow in on particular areas or particular buildings it was

00:19:16.460 really useful for me to get a list of their properties I think they have just over 100 or

00:19:21.760 just under I can't remember off the top of my head now I think it's over just over 100 properties

00:19:26.180 and what was really helpful to begin with to try and narrow down which properties

00:19:30.180 had some sort of connection whether it be a direct connection with the property and that means sort

00:19:35.920 of you know either you know an accused which you know had been executed for example or accused

00:19:41.780 in the immediate vicinity of where that property is, or perhaps the landed family who used to own

00:19:47.860 that property, whether they were involved in witchcraft prosecution. So I called that a direct

00:19:52.660 connection or sort of a peripheral connection would be, well, a connection, there's no direct

00:19:58.380 connection with the property, but perhaps there was a witch trial that took place, you know, a few

00:20:01.740 few miles down the road or an accused witch lived in a nearby town or village. So in order to sort

00:20:08.900 of get a sense of those connections i used the um the university of edinburgh's recent map the

00:20:14.560 witches.is map which basically took a lot of the data from the survey of scottish witchcraft database

00:20:21.240 which was done in 2003 by julian gooder louise yeoman and joyce miller and lauren martin took

00:20:28.440 all that data and basically visual visualized it on this online interactive map which made it

00:20:32.800 incredibly easy and useful to look at the spatial connections. And that really allowed me to narrow

00:20:40.160 down the properties that potentially had connections. And how many properties did

00:20:45.920 you find that had connections out of that 100? About 39 properties. That's a lot. Actually,

00:20:52.700 I'm surprised it's that many. Yeah, quite a few. I can't remember off the top of my head,

00:20:56.920 the split between what I call direct and peripheral, but there would be some sort of

00:21:02.140 connection, usually the most common was that the historical owners of the historical families who

00:21:07.980 used to own these properties were either involved in, you know, involved in the prosecution. That

00:21:13.720 was probably the biggest connection that I found, particularly, yeah, in sort of the buildings,

00:21:20.200 the building properties. So is that the buildings that were owned by people who had wealth and

00:21:25.740 status and power and influence were the people who were the commissioners of investigation,

00:21:31.360 I think they're called commissioners in the survey of Scottish witchcraft.

00:21:35.300 So it's mostly the connection with them that's recorded rather than the people themselves that were accused to be witches.

00:21:45.700 Is that right?

00:21:47.280 Yeah, there is more. There's more evidence, I think, of the wealthy and those with status because they were the ones that left behind.

00:21:55.100 They were more like the ones to leave behind a trail of evidence.

00:21:57.440 They were the ones that were more likely to be able to write and record their own diaries or records, or their name is more likely to appear in the type of evidence that survives, which are the commissions.

00:22:11.660 That's the most common form of evidence that survives that allows us to track these witch trials that took place in Scotland.

00:22:19.600 And because of the nature of the commissions, the wealthy men who sat on these commissions, their name is on them.

00:22:25.840 Although I would say even though the report doesn't have as much detail as most people would like about those who are accused, at least their names are recorded in the report.

00:22:34.700 So I try to track as far as possible if certain accused witches were accused nearby or executed that I recorded their names and recorded as much as I could about them.

00:22:45.320 I think that's the best that we can do, really, isn't it?

00:22:47.800 I mean, there isn't that sort of depth of information that you would like to have.

00:22:51.520 you know I think that now people are so used to being able to obviously not proper academic

00:22:56.300 researchers you don't do this but that sort of your lay researchers are so used to be able to

00:23:00.860 just look stuff up on the internet it's frustrating that actually there is there is a dead end it

00:23:05.020 could just be a name and we have every week when we do the podcast we give a list of different

00:23:10.720 people that were accused and try and tell as much of their stories as they possibly can

00:23:15.240 but you know Claire when she does the research and finds the information often it is just

00:23:20.000 somebody's name and it says you know executed and there might be a date there might be a little bit

00:23:24.480 more information but often it's really scant which is why we're going to be doing an episode hopefully

00:23:30.440 quite soon where we look at how people research their background because when we we've been

00:23:36.180 interviewed by various newspapers who've said can you please put us in touch with a direct descendant

00:23:41.380 of somebody that was executed we always kind of go well no not really because the records just

00:23:47.440 don't exist and I think that it's really interesting what you've said there about it's

00:23:51.200 the people that were that had the money and the power that are recorded and they often were the

00:23:55.880 accusers or were involved in the sort of the court side of things you know so we've got one woman who

00:24:01.560 got in touch with us from America who's discovered that she is and this is proven that she's descended

00:24:06.480 from one of the accusers and we're going to have her on but that was easy to prove or easier to

00:24:12.020 prove because it had been recorded because they had money and like you say they could write and

00:24:16.720 they had property and you could follow it all down that way but for sort of ordinary people

00:24:20.800 they accused and they executed there you know and we've talked before as well about the names that

00:24:27.120 are repeated over and over again in Scotland there are lots and lots and lots of as you've said

00:24:32.500 yourself Janets in different permutations names weren't necessarily spelled consistently or

00:24:38.340 correctly because you know people couldn't write so it's a really fascinating area when people say

00:24:43.480 oh I'm descended from this person that was burnt at the stake and we have to say well that didn't

00:24:48.920 actually that wasn't a thing in Scotland then they tell us that they're related and I'm always

00:24:53.240 curious about where their rigorous research is and how they would prove that line backwards so

00:24:59.820 I'll be interested to speak to genealogists at some point and see what they can do but it's

00:25:03.900 amazing though that you've been able to have a look at these different properties and you've

00:25:07.540 listed the names where you can and you've looked at the connections because it makes history so

00:25:11.680 much more real doesn't it you know for non-historians to go to one of these properties

00:25:17.140 and say oh now I can look at this research and I know that this person was linked to here it's

00:25:22.220 fascinating it's really interesting work that you've done. Yeah yeah I think there can be ways

00:25:27.420 to develop it further so I don't know what the National Trust is planning to do with the report

00:25:32.740 but I think we discussed at the conference back in the summer of the various sort of ways you

00:25:38.360 could visualize the data online a bit like what Edinburgh University have done with the map and

00:25:43.160 perhaps you know put out this data on some sort of online map so people can actually tangibly look

00:25:48.800 at the map and make the connection which perhaps makes it a bit more easier to to look at than

00:25:54.080 just reading a report. I think it's going to be helpful for for the NTS staff at local properties

00:26:00.000 you know who interact with the public who may up till now perhaps not have had good well-researched

00:26:07.520 information and now they can refer to this report and when they speak to visitors and members of

00:26:13.080 the public who come to specific properties where I've identified connections perhaps they'll be a

00:26:18.180 bit more confident to be able to just talk about this topic with visitors which also helps the

00:26:23.900 visitors as well because then you know they get some good information while actually visiting

00:26:28.120 the property itself. It's fantastic work that you're doing I'm particularly delighted that

00:26:34.240 people, as you say, will be able to go and find out about these things. I think one of my first

00:26:39.120 questions when we came and spoke to you is, is the information going to be publicly available?

00:26:43.720 Are you going to be able to show us it? And I really, really hope that that's the way the NTS

00:26:48.360 decide to go forward. It's good that you mentioned that, because I looked just a couple of days ago

00:26:53.580 and the report actually has been made available to view publicly and it's been updated and the

00:26:59.500 NTS have you know put some nice cover pages on and and perhaps improved upon a lot of my writing

00:27:05.800 but yeah if you go to the if you type in on just google NTS witchcraft history or NTS research

00:27:12.780 you can download the project report as a pdf and it has a contents page and so it's they've

00:27:18.920 obviously made it available publicly. Oh that's brilliant because I mean we had such a good day

00:27:23.800 we were at Curis, which of course is a very, very important in terms of witchcraft history in

00:27:31.760 Scotland, being nearby to Torreyburn, the place where Lillis Aide's grave, put the word grave in

00:27:38.360 inverted commas, not great when you're in a podcast, as it was such a fascinating day. I can tell the

00:27:43.720 listeners that it was not only one of the sunniest, most beautiful days of the year, but we were in a

00:27:49.700 room with you know no windows I'm only imagining it was no windows it did have windows so interesting

00:27:54.960 was the chat that we ended up having there was yourself Professor Goodair was there members of

00:28:00.100 the NTS were there and we had such a good chat that well past finishing time when we all should

00:28:07.460 have gone we were still there an extra 45 minutes weren't we just chatting about I suppose the

00:28:14.020 discourse of witchcraft in the modern day when usually any conference I've been to on law as

00:28:19.180 soon as it's like quarter to the time that something's supposed to finish everyone's like

00:28:23.380 finish up now please so I'm so delighted that that information is going to be made available for

00:28:30.220 everybody. It was a really great response from the National Trust because I remember when this first

00:28:36.080 kind of happened somebody had brought it to that this sounds like we're in charge somebody brought

00:28:41.320 it to our attention that the National Trust had had these kind of sort of semi they were kind of

00:28:47.440 inappropriate the way that it was written in the newsletter it was a bit too jovial and we were

00:28:52.780 quite near the beginning I think of the campaign and there were a few people that got in touch and

00:28:56.780 said oh have you seen this and we got in touch with the National Trust and they were really

00:29:00.760 really responsive very quickly and sort of said oh you're right we've got the tone wrong with that

00:29:05.220 when we're going to look into that we were so heartened by the fact that they took it seriously

00:29:09.600 and then they got you on board and that you've been able to then clarify and expand what the

00:29:14.420 knowledges that's there because really that's what we're looking for at the end of the day is

00:29:17.640 for there to be clarity and for people to understand the history and not to make stuff up

00:29:23.740 or to go about with these kind of wrong-headed you know hollywoodized ideas about what's going on

00:29:30.000 there was an article that came out a few days ago in i think the guardian that was about reclaiming

00:29:36.660 the idea of witches and it was from quite what i would describe as a kind of a neo-pagan

00:29:41.740 lens of looking at it and using phrases like the burning times and the witch wound and stuff like

00:29:47.880 that. What do you think of people kind of reclaiming the history of witch trials in those

00:29:53.520 terms? Yeah, I don't necessarily have a problem with it as long as I say the history is being

00:30:01.300 talked about correctly. So, you know, if it's about claiming sort of empowerment or getting

00:30:07.000 some positivity you know healing some trauma making modern day comparisons I think that is

00:30:13.580 needed we you know I think and it's quite innovative type of thinking and obviously for

00:30:19.320 people's sense of personal identity and their own livelihoods they find some meaning in it

00:30:23.220 but as long as the as the history is being as they talked about correctly but as we see in

00:30:28.280 these types of articles far too often the history is unfortunately not being talked about correctly

00:30:34.160 or is it's not really been researched that well well i think one of the biggest areas that claire

00:30:39.080 and i i think have both been told repeatedly by different academics and researchers is that in

00:30:44.800 these times people absolutely were christian they were they were all christian they'd be horrified

00:30:50.520 to to have this accusation of being a witch or of you know being in league with the devil thrown at

00:30:55.660 them because they genuinely believed in in the devil and the idea of that kind of evil and so on

00:31:00.280 and they genuinely believed themselves to be Christians. 0.78

00:31:04.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:05.000 And I think what you find with some of these modern groups

00:31:07.580 that like to talk about reclaiming the witches

00:31:09.780 or looking to take some positives away from what happened

00:31:14.040 is that they do tend to either intentionally or unintentionally

00:31:18.360 put forward the idea that the witches who were accused

00:31:22.540 and executed in the witch trials were also pagan

00:31:25.080 or were sort of descended from these people who were executed,

00:31:28.680 which is not true.

00:31:29.220 they did consider themselves to be Christian. People in the early modern period wouldn't

00:31:33.760 view witchcraft as a positive force. It was something to be feared and reckoned with.

00:31:40.000 The idea of witchcraft was specifically about harmful magic. It wasn't about practicing good

00:31:45.960 magic, which is what a lot of modern groups, particularly modern pagans, view witchcraft

00:31:50.220 today. To them, witchcraft is about positivity, goodness, practicing spells. It's not about

00:31:56.240 half for magic. And I think that distinction between historical witchcraft and modern day

00:32:01.580 witchcraft gets lost in some of these quite emotive and quite altruistic, you know, claims of

00:32:07.640 reclaiming the witch trials or, you know, finding them quite liberating for modern people today. 0.87

00:32:13.400 Yeah, I think that's true. You don't want to rain on anyone's parade that's finding positives 0.75

00:32:17.920 to take from these things. We just keep having to come back to the historical fact. And I think

00:32:22.760 one of our earliest podcasts we had on Professor Goodyear who the poor man spoke to us I think for

00:32:29.300 about five hours altogether we have three podcasts right at the very start with him and he goes into

00:32:35.100 some length about the start of that in the 1930s and the growing pagan community and how the sort

00:32:43.640 of two stories became intertwined and I think it's part of his life's work as well to kind of

00:32:49.000 ensure that they remain unentwined as far as anyone speaking to him about it. Can you tell us

00:32:54.260 when you were looking at your researches, was there any stories in particular or any building

00:33:00.640 in particular that struck you that had a particular resonance or interest for you when you were doing

00:33:07.200 it? You know, perhaps any building that you thought, how bizarre, I wouldn't have thought

00:33:11.140 there'd been witchcraft links there. I think one of the properties that stuck with me was

00:33:17.260 Gladstone's Land which I think you know sparked off a lot of this project generating the report

00:33:22.360 and what have you is as Gladstone's Land which is in itself is you know a fairly obvious 17th

00:33:29.500 century building from you know looking at it and its history but. Can I just say for listeners

00:33:34.360 because we've got listeners worldwide Gladstone's Land's one of the oldest buildings in Edinburgh

00:33:40.220 which still exists in the form that it was in hundreds of years ago and up till recently what

00:33:47.440 they did was on each floor they went through a different century putting in the furniture of the

00:33:53.000 time so that the the first century was like it was basically pretty much like a sty it would show you

00:33:58.540 where the animals stayed and where you stayed and then the next floor it was more sophisticated and

00:34:02.880 then the floor above it but it's all changed now 21st century it's got an ice cream parlor at the

00:34:07.920 bottom of it and it's got different floors going up and one of the floors has got rooms in it

00:34:16.580 that people can stay in and one of those rooms is named after a local minister and that's Struthers

00:34:24.960 is that right? Yeah William Struthers he was an Episcopalian bishop in the 1630s and he was

00:34:34.580 involved in the case of Marion Muir, who was an accused witch from around the Leith area in early

00:34:41.700 1630s. And what struck me about, even though William Struthers himself didn't really have a

00:34:46.820 major role in her trial, it was interesting that through looking through him and his connections,

00:34:54.320 I learned a bit more about Marion Muir and what she had to go through. And her trial was pretty,

00:34:59.820 pretty rigorous she had a few interrogations which were which were quite standard but she

00:35:07.040 was also examined by a doctor a physician of the day who also came to the conclusion

00:35:12.640 perhaps that she may have not been in the right mind that perhaps something was ailing her that

00:35:19.780 wasn't to do with witchcraft but he didn't he wasn't very vocal about it to the Privy Council

00:35:24.900 who was the ultimate authority on deciding witchcraft trials.

00:35:30.340 So that was quite interesting to get that sort of medical perspective,

00:35:34.120 you know, a doctor being brought in,

00:35:35.360 because you don't usually see that in witchcraft trials.

00:35:37.580 It happens occasionally in the late 1600s. 0.55

00:35:41.560 There's a famous example of Christine Shore of Bargarin, 0.97

00:35:44.860 you know, surrounding the Paisley witch trials 0.63

00:35:47.500 and the cases of her demonic possession,

00:35:50.060 and a doctor is called in to examine her.

00:35:52.220 So there's that case, but it's very, very rarely

00:35:54.160 that you find evidence of doctors being called in.

00:35:57.240 So that stuck with me.

00:35:58.500 You know, I didn't expect, you know, as a witchcraftist story,

00:36:01.340 and I had kind of some expectations of what I was going to find.

00:36:04.920 But when I looked at Gladstone's land and William Struthers,

00:36:08.400 who's an Episcopalian bishop and who was involved in the interrogation,

00:36:12.220 I didn't think that would lead me to an interrogation

00:36:14.700 where a doctor was called in to testify.

00:36:17.480 And that's such a shame that the doctor did speak about mental abilities

00:36:21.840 and made that comment because of course we know that Marion was executed as a witch isn't that

00:36:27.440 right? Yeah she was it's quite interesting because he had prescribed her some sort of

00:36:33.600 medication but according to the to the doctor's testimony Marion was quite stubborn and just

00:36:39.480 refused to to go back and see him and so that's why he didn't really he wasn't quite vocal in

00:36:46.740 defending her because he thought that she was perhaps being a bit stubborn which is why the 0.98

00:36:50.700 the Privy Council again decided to try her as a witch. It's unbelievable if you just think there's

00:36:57.300 a woman she's in Leith she's called a witch she's not a witch and then in order to test whether or

00:37:05.140 not she's a witch I suppose part of the evidence against her is finding out whether or not she is

00:37:10.140 well enough mentally and when she says I don't need any of your medication well maybe because

00:37:15.960 she wasn't a witch that was something that didn't assist her in her case you know you just never

00:37:21.900 know what the actuality of why she refused that but it's just so so so sad to hear but at least

00:37:28.880 now we know much more about Marion and I think the National Trust whilst the name of the room

00:37:35.540 is still after Struthers have made great efforts to tell the story of Marion so the people going

00:37:42.520 there know the history of that woman as well so I think that's really important that her name

00:37:47.620 is given some recognition I think that's really important if we are going to talk about witchcraft

00:37:52.980 trials and talk about the people that were involved in the interrogations at the very least

00:37:57.620 we ought to highlight if we know them the names of the people that suffered as a result of the

00:38:02.480 miscarriage of justice. It's kind of an unpalatable thing for us now because I think there's such a

00:38:07.300 move to say well somebody did a bad thing or they were involved in a bad thing so they must be kind

00:38:11.980 of stricken from the records I think that's really interesting because Struthers it's been said and

00:38:17.640 you mentioned there Kieran he didn't actually play a very big part in it you know it's not that he 0.98

00:38:22.360 wasn't some guy that was kind of the driving force and was like I denounce all these women and quickly 0.92

00:38:26.960 strangle them it wasn't sort of that side of things and I think that that's something that

00:38:31.260 the National Trust had said to us at the time was well he wasn't really that involved but I think

00:38:35.620 it's important that we do do the research with history or that somebody you know reputable like

00:38:40.020 you karen does the does the research and then can tell us actually the complex and difficult facts

00:38:45.700 of being human at any time in history you know people often did what we would look back and say

00:38:52.120 well that was a terrible thing and so it was but it was a big and complex societal issue you know

00:38:58.320 it wasn't just a case of the simplified version that we sometimes hear now which is that men got 0.98

00:39:03.160 together and went right we hate women let's kill lots of them it wasn't as straightforward as that 0.88

00:39:08.600 it was it was a much more complex kind of legal background that obviously we've spoken about 0.99

00:39:13.140 before and it was something that wasn't something used by the state and that was everybody bought

00:39:18.400 into it it was a whole societal belief system so I think it's really fascinating to humanize that

00:39:23.720 as well and to see people's real stories about what happened there as much as we possibly can

00:39:28.800 hearing right on that point that Zoe makes I think I saw you tweeting and it was so interesting

00:39:33.300 you said it's not helpful to call these things panics because they weren't panics they were the

00:39:39.260 opposite of panics. Yeah that's right I mean quite a few historians disagree about what term should

00:39:45.520 be used panics witch hunts witch trials. Satanic rhymes with panic that's really it isn't it sorry

00:39:51.860 you know historians disagree but I think you've got some historians like you had Professor Gooder

00:39:56.600 on quite early on who was also my supervisor and he would be someone who would who would use the

00:40:02.040 word panic to describe you know these quite large witch hunts that uh you know where it's a sort of

00:40:09.240 chain reaction where multiple suspects are interrogated and name others and it sort of

00:40:13.740 snowballs out of control he would use the word panic to describe those types of of witch trials

00:40:20.900 but i would probably use the word witch hunt rather than panic because even though tragically

00:40:26.820 multiple people were accused and executed and people were naming each other there was still

00:40:32.240 some sort of legal process that was followed even in such a decentralized legal system as Scotland

00:40:37.680 as it was in the 1600s there were still some checks and balances that needed to be in place

00:40:43.520 and which is ultimately why we have these records because there needed to be some accountability

00:40:48.060 and we have that in the form of the depositions the confessions in some cases the trial records

00:40:54.380 or processes of what was going on and you know also some of the people you know involved in

00:41:00.740 doing the prosecution you know they weren't sort of running around with their hair hands up flaring

00:41:05.680 around not knowing what they were doing you know even if they weren't trained in the law

00:41:08.980 they were knowledgeable about their communities or perhaps you know on spiritual matters so I tend

00:41:15.620 to use the the term witch hunt particularly if you can tell if it's also being directed

00:41:21.260 at certain people whereas the word I think panic to sort of the general reader it gives the

00:41:26.320 impression that these things were sort of out of control there were no sort of due process they

00:41:31.840 were being run by people who didn't know what they're doing which is not the case in Scotland

00:41:36.340 or any other sort of European state that pursued witch trials. Which I think is why it's so 0.83

00:41:41.420 fascinating that some people's response to us asking for a pardon and this has come up a little

00:41:46.740 bit recently is people saying well they don't need a pardon why are why are you pardoning them

00:41:52.200 that shows that they've done something wrong and that you know that they're you know and we've had

00:41:56.240 claire's had to explain a few times what it really means legally i think it's important that we

00:42:00.860 recognize that that this was something that was done legally and correctly you know if we can use

00:42:07.000 that word it was following generally a proper organized and socially agreed structure you know

00:42:12.180 that we now find obviously distasteful but that's one of the reasons we're looking for a pardon is

00:42:16.420 because it wasn't just somebody randomly just grabbing people and accusing them.

00:42:20.120 It was a very organised and orderly time in that respect.

00:42:24.060 Yeah. And I think, you know, that's one of the reasons why your campaign is so good

00:42:29.580 is because, you know, you're seeking the pardon and I think it's the apology

00:42:32.900 and the National Memorial Monument to be set up.

00:42:36.580 And you're putting forward these cases really well.

00:42:39.320 I think you had Owen Davies on recently who said about, you know,

00:42:43.180 you know whatever people's views on pardons are or what what have you you know the education

00:42:48.500 value that these have the amount of people who think more deeply about this topic and perhaps

00:42:54.460 won't go to you know google quickly they'll think well i heard this speaker on this podcast they

00:42:59.180 recommended this book or you know that's that's maybe more interesting digging a bit deeper about

00:43:03.720 this topic i think the educational benefits really outweigh all sort of the the negatives you get

00:43:09.340 about people's personal opinions on pardons and and monuments and what have you because it's

00:43:14.360 something that i will admit i was insomniac last night and i engaged a little bit on facebook with

00:43:19.820 somebody after the i'm sorry claire after the the guardian comments about the article i know i'm

00:43:25.980 sorry it was americans it's the time zone there was some crazy ideas i was very polite though and

00:43:31.440 just and just said oh we're asking for a pardon and apology and there were a couple of people

00:43:35.640 that said they said oh what's the point you know what's the point where they've been dead for

00:43:39.380 hundreds of years and it's the same thing that we come back to all the time particularly for me as a

00:43:43.820 teacher it's about education it's about you know as you're saying there saying to people well think

00:43:48.860 a little bit more about it think about what happened and why some of these things occurred

00:43:53.740 think about who you are now and who we are now as humans and what we can learn from the past you

00:43:59.880 know I don't I don't think that there's any reason to say well it was 300 years ago and therefore

00:44:04.600 or let's just forget about it.

00:44:05.980 I don't agree with that at all.

00:44:07.340 I think the more we know about our past,

00:44:09.460 the better we can be as humans now,

00:44:13.300 which makes a bit hippie-ish.

00:44:14.860 Can I say that my favourite response so far,

00:44:18.080 of all the responses,

00:44:19.160 has been someone who set out a long diatribe

00:44:22.160 and block capital,

00:44:23.440 shouting at block capital as to why we weren't doing enough,

00:44:26.640 like we ourselves.

00:44:28.780 And I was like, well, I'm sorry,

00:44:30.380 but if you want to start a campaign

00:44:32.160 which goes far and beyond what we are doing,

00:44:34.600 we're totally there for you we'll we'll be listening to you we'll be the person the person

00:44:40.840 that i was talking to in the middle of the night last night said to me it's pointless looking at

00:44:45.320 the an apology for 300 years ago and a pardon for 300 years ago why don't you sort things out for

00:44:50.420 women now i was like dude if you know how to sort things out for women now please share with me the

00:44:55.960 golden rules and i i will keep working away at that as well but i can't fix everything but this

00:45:01.980 is one thing that we can say you know like bring it out into the light and talk about it and it

00:45:06.120 it hopefully would have a positive impact on today so it's not surprising you can't get any sleep if

00:45:13.100 you're up in the middle of the night thinking how can i solve all the problems for women i haven't

00:45:17.740 worked out a solution claire to just quickly talk about you know you people who say well can't you

00:45:25.140 do more i think you know until very recently it was something that you know was considered to be

00:45:29.780 a niche academic subject well it's not anymore and people are engaging with the history you know

00:45:36.680 not just people who have done PhDs or done degrees you know just every you know general readers

00:45:42.880 members of the public who want to know more about this topic so yeah I think you're doing quite a

00:45:47.500 lot I wasn't fishing for a compliment that's very very I'll take the compliment because we really

00:45:53.440 didn't at all intend for this to sort of go on for as long as it has I mean we knew it would take

00:45:58.220 time to get a pardon and apology we knew that but when we started the podcast when we keep saying

00:46:02.160 this we only intended to do six episodes and you're episode 50 kieran so you know there's so

00:46:08.280 much information but people are are so fascinated with it we're fascinated with it you know it's

00:46:13.000 it's it's just an amazingly interesting topic so i don't know why anybody wouldn't want to know

00:46:18.200 about something that's interesting we should make clear that we weren't we certainly weren't the

00:46:22.660 first to talk about having a national monument or indeed a pardon there have been people long

00:46:29.560 before us including Julian I think I saw articles over 10 years ago where Julian was calling for a

00:46:36.420 memorial but what was absent then I suppose was the framework around which we've talked about it

00:46:43.720 because despite the fact that he was earnestly talking about it as an academic talking about

00:46:50.560 why it would be good to have a national memorial it was still being talked about as haha witches

00:46:56.940 here's the the fun here's spooky things and it's still happening to us you know we've we sometimes

00:47:03.420 get really great articles we had really recently an article in fact January the 1st the Wall Street

00:47:09.580 Journal published an article about it and we're like great and they took it seriously but then

00:47:14.000 there was still a picture of at least it was three witches from Macbeth it was it was taken from a

00:47:18.760 historical thing but the pictures that are being put along with these still there's a disconnect

00:47:23.740 between the reality of history and what a terrible thing happened to people and how we show these

00:47:30.500 so I think really what's happened is that over time views have changed about how we view these

00:47:38.300 people and it gives more weight to the argument that we should properly memorialize what's

00:47:47.100 happened. So yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out to Julian, who at least a decade or so was

00:47:52.220 saying, could we have a national memorial? Ciarán, you told me in discussions that you are doing more

00:47:59.140 witchcraft investigations, in particular in Queensferry, is that right? Yeah, I am, slowly,

00:48:07.600 in my own time, because I don't have an academic career, so I just, I work on this project,

00:48:12.820 you know whenever i can so there yeah i i was really interested in looking there's been lots

00:48:19.240 of work on you know scottish witchcraft for decades starting with you know christina lana

00:48:24.320 in the 1980s and it's progressed um very nicely till now and we've got far newer studies and we

00:48:30.980 understand a bit more about the dynamics of witch hunting where it took place when witchcraft um

00:48:37.240 cases stopped and when they ended how much belief persisted for you know until and when after the

00:48:43.240 trial stopped you know so we have lots of studies of the dynamics of witch hunting and witch trials

00:48:48.360 at a regional level perhaps even you know across multiple counties and territories across

00:48:52.900 particularly lowland scotland but there's been some work on on the highlands too but i still

00:48:57.620 think we don't understand some of the actual dynamics of individual trials what happened

00:49:03.460 went in a witch trial in a particular parish. What was the relationship like between the

00:49:10.300 prosecuting authorities there, or perhaps the more wealthy community members and those who

00:49:15.900 were accused? We still need to understand these local dynamics more. So I really became interested

00:49:21.600 in Queensferry really out of chance, because the witch hunt at Queensferry took place in the 1640s,

00:49:27.720 which is a time when the covenanters are in power, you know, this radical religious group that sees control of a lot of political and ecclesiastical institutions across Scotland.

00:49:39.000 And they're putting forward, you know, their own vision of a godly Scotland.

00:49:43.000 And one of the aims of these covenanters and, you know, sections of higher Scottish society is to crack down on witches, which they think are on the increase.

00:49:53.660 And this makes sense because the 1640s is a time of war, of famine, of plague, and coupled with this quite zealous radical religious vision.

00:50:03.700 So the witch hunter at Queensferry happens among all these different things that are going on.

00:50:08.880 And it's really spearheaded by a deeply committed covenanter called Ephraim Melville, who's the grandson of James Melville, a famous Presbyterian from the late 16th, early 17th century.

00:50:21.560 And, you know, we still don't understand a lot about the minister's role in particular witch trials and the local dynamics.

00:50:27.500 So I'm looking at, you know, how Melville sort of control and spearheaded the prosecution and his role in it,

00:50:35.440 because the general consensus is that witch trials that took place in the local communities,

00:50:40.660 the initial accusations were either put forward to the Kirk session, which was the local church court,

00:50:46.560 or the Kirk session took the initiative to investigate rumours.

00:50:50.020 And there's been lots of work on the corporate nature of the Kirk session as a whole, which was made up of the local minister and elders, which are prominent members of the community.

00:51:01.100 But the minister as an individual hasn't really been looked at in much more detail.

00:51:06.060 And I wanted to understand what was going on at Queen's Ferry in 1643.

00:51:10.340 How did the witch hunt develop?

00:51:11.600 So that's really what I'm doing.

00:51:13.020 and I'm going to see also if there's any connections between other witch trials that

00:51:17.800 happened during that time, because it takes place to say in 1643 to 1644, and that's been

00:51:23.320 identified as sort of a small peak in witch hunting. There was a big peak in 1649 to 50.

00:51:31.540 There's been a lot of scholarly work done on that peak, but 1643 to 1644 hasn't really been

00:51:36.960 studied before. So I'm wondering if any of my research into Queensferry and what happened there

00:51:41.320 will perhaps develop further looking at other witch trials more recently as well and how do

00:51:46.880 you go about researching things like that where you know for somebody that's not a historic

00:51:51.100 researcher how do you actually find that information i mean if you're not a trained

00:51:56.700 historian and can't read the manuscript records you can get some of your information from the

00:52:02.760 survey of scottish witchcraft database it doesn't give you that much but you can look at the names

00:52:07.960 of people involved in the trials and it will give you maybe one or two sentence information about

00:52:12.980 what happened. Occasionally you can find in 19th century printed publications, you can find copies

00:52:20.540 of trial records that have been transcribed. Usually it's just the commission, again, which

00:52:26.620 will give you some more information about perhaps who was being tried. It will, of course, give you

00:52:31.700 the name of the commissioners who sat on the trials. It can be a mixed bag because there are

00:52:37.460 some commissions where the interrogation process has been transcribed and copied out. And so you

00:52:44.680 actually get quite a bit of information of the confessions and what the accused witches said

00:52:50.440 under interrogation and torture. But most often, it's just the name of the commissioners and the

00:52:57.080 short sentence saying that a trial is being held on this date, for example. Yeah, so it's usually

00:53:02.460 in these 19th century printed antiquarian publications of these you know people in the

00:53:07.720 in the 19th century who had read the manuscripts and transcribed them themselves um so other people

00:53:13.320 can look at the trial records that way do you go back and look at the manuscripts oh me yes and

00:53:19.520 then you're poring over everything and i've seen little little snippets of things that people have

00:53:24.260 sometimes shared on twitter saying look what does this actually say can anybody else give me your

00:53:28.560 best guess how on earth do you get to understand what that writing actually says I think it's just

00:53:35.100 it's just training there are far more people who historians but who also not historians who can read

00:53:40.360 you know handwriting from the 1600s much better than I can but I went into I think it was an

00:53:46.280 intensive sort of six week paleography course at the National Records of Scotland I think it was

00:53:53.300 once a week every Tuesday you know from September till January or something like that September to

00:53:57.920 December and it was a hands-on class so you would go in and they would give you you know photocopies

00:54:04.960 of the records and you would sit and every week you would go through the records so actually just

00:54:09.840 you know looking at the records a lot of it's trial and error as well you know so if we you

00:54:14.560 know to work out a certain word if you can recognize some of the letters but you're stuck

00:54:18.260 on getting some of them you can kind of just try and make a good guess and see if it fits the

00:54:22.480 context of of the sentence but yeah it's about learning the letter the letters and how they were

00:54:27.760 written and what some of the the abbreviations mean and things like that but of course with

00:54:32.620 these type of documents you know the spelling and things like that weren't standardized so

00:54:37.820 punctuation forget about it spelling of certain words you know you could be reading a paragraph

00:54:44.120 and the same word pops up a few times and it's spelled differently each time and it could be a

00:54:49.540 very you know it could be someone's name or it could be uh you know another word you can learn

00:54:54.000 it in six weeks if you if you put your mind to it need to get a crack team of um of english

00:54:59.040 secondary teachers in so that's it that sounds like marking that i would have done in the past

00:55:05.500 where you're like whoa this is a very eccentric approach to the spelling of these words it's quite

00:55:10.140 often but i don't know how you do it though it must absolutely do your head and sitting looking

00:55:14.760 at these really tiny, I imagine it to be really tiny sort of impenetrable scribbles in certain

00:55:20.680 ways. It does take a while and you could be spending hours on, you know, the same paragraph

00:55:25.680 or even sometimes the same sentences trying to work out the exact meaning of the words. I find

00:55:32.000 exhilarating when you do crack it and, you know, you know, you've read this document and you've

00:55:37.200 got some new information. I actually put, I really enjoy the archival work, the primary research,

00:55:42.060 more than actually writing the actual eventual whatever it becomes you know a publication of

00:55:47.880 some sort a lot of these are accessible online as well is our scotland that now has scotland's

00:55:54.100 people i think it's scotland's scotland's people that now has these online because i clicked on

00:55:58.900 myself my instinct is to go oh i would really really love to do that and then as zoe says

00:56:04.980 you click on it and you go nah i think i'll leave that to the professionals but uh yeah so the

00:56:11.600 church court records these are these kirk session records that i mentioned that's mainly what i'm

00:56:16.100 using at the moment to to look at queen's ferry the queen's ferry witch because that's really

00:56:22.160 only what survived um so these records are usually they're not the trial records they're

00:56:28.900 information before the trial has been granted so this is the kirk session collecting as much

00:56:35.080 evidence as it can whether that be in the form of you know confessions or just documenting the

00:56:40.960 general process of what's happening like such on such and such day this accused witch was taken

00:56:46.720 and imprisoned you know a month later this happened so you can get a general sense of what

00:56:51.340 what was going on so that's the record i'm using um and they're the ones that you can access on the

00:56:58.340 scotland people's website you don't actually have to go into the national records of scotland anymore

00:57:04.040 and sit on one of their computers and read it digitally you can sit from home and access them

00:57:09.040 for free. Well Kieran I think we definitely will want you to come back on again and speak about

00:57:14.100 your researches in Queensferry if that's at all possible but can you tell us just now give us a

00:57:19.560 small glimpse into the story of Queensferry I know that you're at an early stage but just maybe

00:57:24.020 approximately how many people were involved in it or anything that you can give us any tidbits

00:57:29.660 you can give us just now? Yeah so as I said the minister Ephraim Melville seemed important

00:57:34.680 character in this story, quite often the minister would sometimes be present at confessions. We

00:57:41.020 discussed William Struthers earlier, who was involved in the interrogation of Marion Muir.

00:57:47.920 So sometimes the minister would be present at the interrogation, but rarely do you see a single

00:57:52.760 minister taking sort of control of the operations of witch hunting and directing the Kirk session

00:57:58.960 in a certain way. Even though the minister is supposed to have lots of power, they're supposed

00:58:02.700 to act collectively you know the minister is supposed to work in cooperation with the elders

00:58:06.800 who are also on the session so Ephraim Melville seems to have quite an interesting role now in

00:58:13.900 terms of the it starts off probably in around December 1643 around 16 people were accused

00:58:22.200 and out of those about nine were executed and these were usually quite prominent women most

00:58:29.460 of them were women of sort of marinas people you know who sailed on ships there seemed to be some

00:58:35.240 sort of quarrel between a couple of the marina families um the lowry family and the counts and

00:58:42.480 this kind of sparked off some of the multiple accusations um which the kirk session and

00:58:48.800 ephra melville sees upon um to sort of steer the witch hunt further by the summer of 1644 it kind

00:58:56.040 of burns itself out. And this is what you see with quite a lot of these chain reaction style

00:59:00.680 witch hunts like Queensferry, where quite a few people are interrogated and accuse each other in

00:59:06.380 short spaces of time. And the community, you know, is obviously at this point is quite isolated and

00:59:14.640 needs to come together in order to go forward. Janet Lowry, her husband, you know, complains to

00:59:20.280 the Kirk session about what they had done to her wife. And then you find some other family members

00:59:25.620 who appear before the Kirk session, who sort of, it's really, really emotionally quite draining

00:59:31.960 and tragic to read some of these stories of family members of some of the accused who have

00:59:36.920 been executed. There's one father, his wife and one of his daughters are executed. They're one

00:59:42.840 of these nine accused witches who get executed. And his second daughter is actually in prison

00:59:48.580 on suspicion of witchcraft. And there's a long legal process involved of trying to get his only

00:59:54.900 surviving daughter Margaret, Margaret Young, free from prison in Queensferry, and they finally do

01:00:00.200 release her in about September 1644. And again, that's something you don't usually find in the

01:00:06.340 records, is what happens after the witch trials. The witch trials tend to be recorded, and then

01:00:12.400 the Kirk session stops, and they move on to other business of the day. But it's quite insightful 0.99

01:00:18.600 when you get, let's say, evidence or what's happening in the community after the witch trials

01:00:23.940 themselves you know some of the family members of those who have been accused it's quite good to get

01:00:27.780 their stories. I think that is a real missing part of history that we kind of think that the

01:00:33.860 tragedy starts and end when people are killed and we don't really reflect upon who had to live in

01:00:39.800 the community with the burden of having a family member killed as a witch and what that meant for

01:00:45.600 them in the community and and how they dealt with with their grief. Kieran that sounds absolutely

01:00:51.500 fascinating and we really really hope we can persuade you to come on and give us a really

01:00:57.560 in-depth detailed story of the witches of queen's ferry when you've finished your studies

01:01:03.140 thanks so much for listening to the witches of scotland podcast as ever please do tell people

01:01:17.340 about the campaign please do feel free to comment under some of the news articles that pop up on

01:01:22.500 social media if anything just to have some voices of sanity and amongst some completely bonkers

01:01:27.180 takes on the campaign we are on lots of social media as we always say we're on claire we're on

01:01:33.860 facebook we're on twitter twitter tiktok oh in fact on tiktok there's history 101 that's now

01:01:44.720 following us on TikTok and they did a wee video and linked us into it and we got like hundreds

01:01:51.280 more people viewing our video but just to show you the size of social media this woman that does

01:01:56.500 History 101 was telling people about Witches of Scotland and she got 23,000 views on the video

01:02:03.120 and that's just one person doing that as opposed to our rather modest 1,000. Listen I'll take that

01:02:10.200 a thousand i'm happy it's it's quality brilliant no it's it's brilliant and i tell you as well we

01:02:16.440 have people on instagram really really are interested in getting contact as well quite a

01:02:22.740 lot of people contact us through insta but for any immediate chat well not immediate zoe and i

01:02:28.280 are on twitter so if you fancy chatting to us there that's probably easiest way of getting

01:02:32.100 in contact with us definitely a second tiktok zoe one with you in it i'm not doing a tiktok

01:02:38.440 i'm not 12 my children would also kill me that's it's it's too far you stick with the tiktok 0.91

01:02:45.180 your children would never know zoe i'll do a tiktok if you can get some raccoons in on the 0.50

01:02:49.600 action if you can if you can get you can corral some raccoons a little gang of raccoons i'm there

01:02:57.120 ladies and gents what you've just been given an insight into is the fact that zoe introduced me

01:03:01.960 to a site which says raccoons hourly on twitter we send you a photograph of a raccoon every hour

01:03:08.840 on twitter they're so cute though they're so cute the little burglars i love them they are well i'm

01:03:16.240 sure i wouldn't if i lived in a country that actually had raccoons they were on my roof and

01:03:19.940 stuff like that but from the distance of scotland to raccoon county it's i love them they're just

01:03:26.760 too cute they can't be that bad where they come from either because people affectionately know 0.64

01:03:31.100 them as trash pandas trash pandas it probably isn't though if they get in your bins and they 0.90

01:03:36.180 knock your bins over and everything yeah unless they like look up at you winningly from all your 0.99

01:03:41.220 rubbish and then you just go oh you're so cute rocky raccoon i love you and then you just pick 0.62

01:03:46.660 all the rubbish up and you're happy for the day just to be insane probably not like that 0.96

01:03:49.980 she wants to train raccoons i'm gonna train raccoons just to sort of be cute and to burglarize 0.97

01:03:57.220 and I'm going to train ravens and crows

01:03:59.380 just to hang out with me

01:04:00.800 Can I say that I don't think we're helping our cause

01:04:03.560 really by making us sound like sane adults

01:04:05.800 Well, okay

01:04:08.040 Yes, there's an argument for that

01:04:10.320 Maybe at this point we should move on

01:04:12.060 and I should mention that if you like what we do

01:04:15.440 you can help David

01:04:17.740 who is the sound engineer

01:04:19.320 who, as you all know

01:04:20.860 was signed up for six episodes

01:04:23.100 and is still plugging away

01:04:25.340 trying to make the stuff that we put together into an acceptable adult form so david has got

01:04:31.200 his coffee that you know buy him a coffee sort of vibe um which is a vibe it's not a vibe it's a

01:04:36.520 thing and we've got links for that i think on our various social media but also we've got merch

01:04:41.580 our merchandise our lovely mugs and so on we don't make any money from that the money that comes from

01:04:47.280 that just goes to david just to offset his costs which in no way reflects the amount of work he has

01:04:52.200 to do to turn this pig's ear into a silk purse i can actually see him in my mind's eye getting

01:05:01.360 to the bit about raccoons and just raising god's sake when is my big sister gonna grow up 0.94

01:05:07.520 with their silly friend anyway happy raccoons to you all and we'll see you next episode

01:05:16.440 cool raccoons 0.95

01:05:17.700 that's not taking

01:05:19.140 that's not happening

01:05:20.100 that's it

01:05:20.560 it is I love that

01:05:21.560 I've made a face

01:05:22.640 of cool raccoons

01:05:23.360 okay

01:05:24.040 goodbye

01:05:24.740 goodbye

01:05:25.280 if you'd like to learn more

01:05:33.820 about the Witches of Scotland 0.86

01:05:34.880 please subscribe

01:05:36.100 wherever you get your podcasts

01:05:37.580 sign up for our mailing list

01:05:39.680 at www.witchesofscotland.com

01:05:43.720 to keep updated

01:05:44.700 with the campaign

01:05:45.540 on that site you'll be able to find how to link with us

01:05:48.980 on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Witches of Scotland - January 08, 2022

EPISODE 50 DR CIARAN JONES HISTORIAN

Episode Stats

Transcript