00:00:00.160Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell, QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases,
00:00:08.740and we're bringing you this podcast because we want to tell you0.61
00:00:11.560about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted,
00:00:15.800and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.800I'm Zoe Vendetotsi, and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches,
00:00:23.040and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.720The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.580Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.240Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.440And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:53.800Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:57.140Claire you have made a funny little joke
00:11:19.800They're on Twitter at Calder Witch Hunt
00:11:22.100and no doubt you can keep up with what they're doing and calder spelt c-a-l-d-e-r for those
00:11:29.220people out with scotland that might not not know that one so calder witch hunt all one word
00:11:33.720that's cool good it's so interesting to see all the different community projects that are being
00:11:39.540done it's really fascinating i saw another one that i'm not going to go into detail about just
00:11:43.780now because i want to talk to them and maybe speak to them get them on the the podcast but
00:11:47.800one of our um our friends shared something in her local community where there's a memorial stone
00:11:53.040that's been put up in the last wee while and there's a launch in the next couple of weeks for
00:11:56.680that one with the names of of those locally that had been accused and convicted so that's really
00:12:02.400interesting to see as well and it's great because it just means that you know as you move around
00:12:06.760Scotland and people live in Scotland you know that you know they can they can engage with what
00:12:11.000their history was and these names hopefully will be remembered yeah it's so exciting we've also
00:12:16.100asked the Calder Witch Hunt to come on the podcast too at some point in the future and they've agreed
00:12:21.600to do that so we'll be able to get the stories from them direct yeah I saw the one that you're
00:12:27.460talking about Zoe and I'm really really keen to find out about them as well is that a stone that
00:12:32.820was made? It's not exactly a gravestone but it's a stone like it looks like a big bit of stone
00:12:37.880that's got all the names carved into it so that looks really interesting but I'm going to find
00:12:41.740out more about that and then we'll talk about that and maybe the next episode I've got some
00:12:45.220more details about it it's good to see it happening though that's great anything else
00:12:49.380finally zoe well this is really nice actually there's we want to give a big shout out to our
00:12:55.060lovely listener helen morrison who we met on twitter and she's been in touch and her name
00:12:59.560on their handle is helen m walking and helen's bio says if it's all about green space communities
00:13:06.300health and women i'm in which sounds good to us well her friends and family surprised her with
00:13:11.520a witches of scotland cake so we just wanted to join and say a very happy birthday too
00:13:16.280and now it really i want a cake like that it was cool looks really good you can see it on um on
00:13:21.680twitter really nice yeah happy birthday helen it's an absolutely fantastic cake and um yeah i think
00:13:28.820maybe fairy cakes for us lots and lots of fairy cakes with like witches of scotland w's on the top
00:13:35.040oh that's good it's morning just now and i've only had a cup of tea and a banana because i don't have
00:13:39.540any bread I'm totally starving now I just want a massive big slab of cake I think we deserve a
00:13:45.340cake are there any bakers out there that could help us make a much Scotland cake I can actually
00:13:52.020bake myself but my oven doesn't work properly I know I know blame the poor the tools tools used
00:13:57.340to actually have believe it or not a pop-up cake business like a pop-up tea room a vintage tea room
00:14:02.820but I haven't baked a cake since then I think it just took me off so thoroughly it hasn't stopped
00:14:07.060me from meeting them obviously but i just don't make them anymore listen i think never mind shout
00:14:10.660out to anyone else you should be making as a cake so honestly i need to get my oven replaced it's a
00:14:15.700gas oven and i just cannot get any cakes to rise in it it's just rubbish anyway that's a very
00:14:21.060domestic complaint right so moving on to our final segment here who are we going to be remembering
00:14:28.520this week claire well because earlier this week we spoke to the people from the calderwich hunt
00:14:34.280I thought I'd touch on a few people that were accused of witchcraft in that area. Now when
00:14:40.280hopefully we would have them on we'll get them to speak in much more detail about this but I thought
00:14:45.280it'd be a good idea to flag up some names just now. So the information that we've obtained so far
00:14:51.340was obtained from a website called Kirk of Calder, all one word Kirk of Calder, which you can look
00:14:56.920at for a lot more details. We're just flagging up the names and some information but that will give
00:15:03.040a lot more on what was happening in Calder at the time and who the relevant people were.
00:15:09.860What we do find out from looking up that website is in 1644, a new minister arrives in Calder
00:15:18.840and he is described as a zealot. He's got a zealous crusade against witches. So it's a great
00:15:26.000surprise Zoe, but see if people turn up looking for witches, guess what they keep finding?
00:15:31.320is it witches? It is it's not cakes sadly they find witches so Mr Hugh Kennedy who was the
00:15:39.100minister from 1643 to 1660 he began his career in Calder. I mean the name for himself. Exactly
00:15:48.980exactly looking out and he found almost immediately Agnes Bishop a poor woman who was detained in the
00:15:55.880toll booth at Linlithgow and was brought back to Calder after trial and she confessed to being
00:16:02.540inverted commas a common charmer and heinous and notorious witch and the records tell us that she
00:16:11.260was executed as a witch very sad interestingly there that she was described as a common charmer
00:16:18.820and a witch those being separate things doing spells that weren't associated with the devil
00:16:27.040was charming but doing bad associated with the devil meant that you were a witch so there were
00:16:33.020lots of people around that were doing spells that weren't accused of witchcraft and that's more akin
00:16:39.720to what we have as our modern day ideas of witches anyway the next person we have some record of
00:16:47.820isn't actually a person that was convicted himself, but it was his wife. And this is a man
00:16:54.120called David Aikman. And there's a record in the Kirk Session records, which says that he paid
00:17:00.500100 merks to defray expenses incurred in the trial, imprisonment and execution of his wife.
00:17:09.800Think about that. That poor man had his wife taken from him, accused of witchcraft. So Mrs
00:17:17.380Aikman we sadly don't know her first name was accused of witchcraft killed as a witch and then
00:17:23.200the money was laid at his door and it's just his name that's that's actually written down so it's
00:17:30.620not even the the woman that was accused so we don't know what happened to her she may have does
00:17:34.760it say here no it is it's money for the execution so we know that the wife died and well died just
00:17:41.280sounds so passive was was executed but we don't know her name or anything at all about her it's
00:17:47.260just about the money and it's like judith gorman said many episodes ago and we're going to be
00:17:51.680having her back on hopefully soon follow the money that gives you so much more of an insight than the
00:17:57.180records do and claire you've said quite rightly that you know we say that there's four thousands
00:18:01.280that have been accused but there's likely to be many more who suffered who aren't written down
00:18:05.680like this woman yeah uh not only this woman who isn't written down that you've got our partner
00:18:11.040who suffered as well and that's the thing when we say 4,000 accused you think 4,000 but always
00:18:17.260reminds me of what Professor Goodair said which was although there were however many accused and
00:18:23.480executed the ramifications of that and how many people would have been involved in it and how
00:18:27.900many people would know about it and how many people would be affected by it in a country of
00:18:32.380only 900,000 would be much much more it's crazy and those people are never included in the numbers
00:18:39.220The last person that we want to remember today is a woman called Jean Anderson, and she was a woman who wasn't accused of being a witch, strangely, but was warned that if she kept doing what she was doing, she was going to be accused of witchcraft.
00:18:57.660and in 1644 the Kirk sessions of September say that Jean Anderson made public satisfaction in
00:19:06.760sackcloth for charming so the public satisfaction I think is like public interest or like she's doing
00:19:14.020her she's been humiliated publicly dressed in sackcloth to make a to make a fool of her because0.57
00:19:20.180I've read things before about not necessarily about accusations of witchcraft but in that sort1.00
00:19:24.360of time of people being made to sit on a stool in the church yeah like for public humiliation
00:19:29.500purposes exactly you get the public satisfaction of her being humiliated god's sake exactly that's
00:19:35.600the public satisfaction very happily we've moved away from the idea that public satisfaction in
00:19:40.860relation to a crime is humiliation we have kept the idea that people commit crimes might do work
00:19:46.720for the community and community service but that public satisfaction of humiliation has gone
00:19:54.600so I mean I don't approve of public satisfaction obviously in that way however I can think of one
00:20:00.800or two people in London at the moment who I would quite like to have in sackcloth could you although
00:20:07.100I think because they've got they've got no shame that it wouldn't make any difference to them
00:20:11.360anyway because that whole thing is on the axis of shame of the community admonishing you by
00:20:16.700thinking that you're lesser than them sort of morally and that then changing your behavior but
00:20:21.360i think if you don't actually experience any shame about all the absolutely appalling things you've
00:20:24.960done the lies you've told that you don't actually get you know doesn't make any difference anyway
00:20:29.140sorry that was a small side sideways rant there just want to see that we are in favor of parties
00:20:35.180and cakes but not all parties and cakes yeah that's a that's good claire that was like have
00:20:39.960i got news for you not really so we remember today people that were accused genie anderson
00:20:52.800made public satisfaction sackcloth for charming and the minister made certification to her
00:20:58.380that if she ever should be tried to use charming hereafter she should be held to be a witch
00:21:04.380So he wasn't having even charming in his jurisdiction, this new man in town, this Hugh Kennedy.
00:21:11.740So he was warning people, even that were involved in charming, which was generally thought to be a benign thing that wasn't involved with witchcraft or the devil.
00:21:21.660Moving on from Jean Anderson, also in 1644, this minister, Hugh, was working hard for his money.
00:21:28.320This was one that, in fact, is a happy ending.
00:21:31.800And this is a register of the Privy Council, we understand, in December of 1644, which notes a complaint by a woman called Margaret Thompson in Calder against the Minister of the Parish.0.61
00:21:43.840So Margaret is complaining about Hugh Kennedy and saying that he had her walking her the space of 20 days naked and having nothing on her but sackcloth under a charge of witchcraft.
00:21:58.520Also, that she had laid in the stocks and kept separate from all the company and worldly comfort, nor could she see any end to her misery by lawful trial.
00:22:09.320So basically she was thrown up into some kind of place of confinement, kept in sackcloth for 20 days, and she'd still not received her charge, i.e. they'd not said what witchcraft she had been doing.
00:22:27.260and a complaint was made thankfully no doubt on behalf of Margaret Thompson who couldn't have done
00:22:32.100anything by herself while she was in custody saying that she was being kept remanded in these
00:22:37.220ways and the Lord brought the minister before them and they bringing no charges at that time
00:22:44.660forthcoming ordained her to be liberated so what's happened there is Margaret Thompson has been
00:22:50.040taken in she's been remanded somewhere she's been stripped naked and only given sackcloth
00:28:55.480where we can remember past injustices,
00:28:58.860but also as spaces where we can reflect about, you know, the unkind things that we might think ourselves, you know, about, you know, foreigners or people of, you know, minorities or sexual minorities, etc.
00:29:12.120And I like the idea of a pardon, like the ones that you're advocating for, because again, it creates an opportunity for us to reflect about injustices, and not just injustices in the past, but also hopefully injustices in the present as well.
00:29:31.340so my my concern that i expressed in my article was with the idea of an apology
00:29:38.020and that might seem strange but i was concerned that an apology by say the scottish state to its
00:29:47.560you know the witches that it unfairly unjustly you know executed might actually do the opposite
00:29:54.420of what you know these memorials and these pardons might achieve namely essentially by
00:30:00.680saying well that's justice done we have the Scottish state is responsible for the witch
00:30:06.440hunt it has now said sorry we won't do it again and and I don't think that is what the early
00:30:11.340modern witch hunt is about I think the witch hunt tells us something much deeper and much darker
00:30:18.040about all of us and that therefore just you know demanding apologies from a number of institutions
00:30:24.520as a form of, you know, pinning blame just on them
00:30:28.600actually sort of like harms the long-term cause
00:34:43.700One of my mentors when I was a PhD student at Oxford was Lilo Welper, whose work has been really instrumental in pointing out the role that young mothers played in accusing older women,0.62
00:34:56.300women, particularly women beyond sort of childbearing age, lying inmates, for instance,
00:35:02.040who could no longer have children, but then could be seen to be envious of the young mother's good
00:35:07.500fortune. So that when then a child would fall ill, like their envy would be a very obvious
00:35:14.340explanation for witchcraft accusation. So it is those types of behaviors of individuals that for
00:35:21.400me are really important in explaining how the witch comes happened. The other thing that I
00:35:28.820think is really interesting about what you both said, and which someone also pointed out to me
00:35:34.480on Twitter is sort of that, you know, when Nicola Sturgeon apologizes, she apologizes for the whole
00:35:38.600of Scotland, for the Scottish people, as well as for the Scottish state. I can see that. I don't
00:35:43.700think she actually sort of said that. And that's sort of like, where the issues of narratives and
00:35:47.800do sort of to come in but you're absolutely right Claire that you know obviously a first minister
00:35:52.760is only able to speak for a few minutes and cannot condense you know 60 70 odd years of
00:36:00.920witchcraft historiography into a very very short piece and also that piece then has to have a wider
00:36:08.420significance for all the other things that she wants to say because if she were to devote her
00:36:13.500speech on the international women's day solely to the issue of apologizing to riches well you know
00:36:22.080then there would be another problem there too wouldn't there so yeah no i i can i see that
00:36:26.880this issue is difficult for me the advantage of monuments say or pardons is because and sometimes
00:36:34.300they're not accompanied by text all right it's just sort of like and therefore that allows for
00:36:39.040discussion and it allows for ambiguity we still don't really despite all the work that we've done
00:36:46.400as historians for decades we still don't really understand why one person was accused of witchcraft
00:36:53.680and none another we can explain sort of like why a particular person was accused but what is
00:37:01.100completely lost to us is you know partly because of the sources is why someone else another say
00:37:07.500older woman you know who would also act as say a lying inmate or who also had a quarrel with her
00:37:13.400neighbors while she wasn't accused there is that we still don't know and um having a official sort
00:37:20.560of like narrative as it's like well this is the official scottish version of why the witch hunts
00:37:24.680happened well i i just had um some reservations about that and i should say that i also have sort
00:37:30.620of reservations about that because of the project that i'm currently doing myself on the witch hunt
00:37:36.540in the Basque country where there are no sort of official versions of the Basque witch hunt but
00:37:42.380the versions that local historians propagate about the Basque witch hunt are very problematic in my
00:37:49.040view because they're this idea of we found a foreign culprit and we can blame them and therefore
00:37:58.380you know sort of like let all the Basque off the hook is very much part of very much part of their
00:38:04.940story in both the French and the Spanish Basque country you know you you have local historians
00:38:11.240local Basque historians sort of say as well it's Spanish inquisitors it's French judges who've come
00:38:16.680in and who've started hunting witches and this is then seen as as an injustice inflicted on all the
00:38:24.980Basques and and and there you don't don't have any reflection on the fact that actually if you look
00:38:30.940had a long history of witchcraft prosecutions in the Basque country it's quite clear that you know
00:38:35.900these witch hands are never just sort of like inflicted on the Basques from the outside but
00:38:41.620it's very easy to sort of see why people might want to sort of create a narrative like that
00:38:47.980and then so so for that reason I think it is important that whenever we create narratives
00:38:52.500that we reflect on what the purpose is that they serve and if it is a narrative in which you know
00:39:00.340you know the Scottish first minister encourages us to sort of like reflect on our own behavior in
00:39:06.840the present then that is for me you know and obviously I'm speaking here more as a human being
00:39:12.280than as a historian then for me then that is a really sort of like noble act if it achieves the
00:39:18.700opposite where it's like oh well you know the Scottish Kirk or the Scottish state has now
00:39:23.120apologize for this wrong and therefore I have to bear no responsibility then that's that's the
00:39:30.160opposite and that's really what I was trying to warn people about in my piece. And there's no
00:39:35.200doubt there is an issue with that sort of thinking you know like when it's generally when we get
00:39:39.900negative feedback from people I'm going to call it that politely that they say well what's it got
00:39:44.660to do with me it happened hundreds of years ago and they're not terribly self-reflective about it
00:39:49.280They don't say, geez, this could happen again, which is why we always link it to the cases that are happening in certain parts of the world.
00:39:57.480You know, there are ongoing modern day witchcraft accusations and that can sometimes end in death and do do end in death.
00:40:04.780There's been a few recently, I think, in Nigeria that's been brought to light by Leo Igwe, who is a campaigner right across, I think, the continent of Africa.
00:40:14.760But I think he's done a lot of work recently in Nigeria and Malawi in particular.
00:40:17.720but I think that it's something that maybe also is slightly gendered or very gendered in that it
00:40:23.860tends to be it's negative feedback generally from men and I think as a woman this woman anyway
00:40:31.720moving through the world I don't think I would ever for a second think that we are any better
00:40:38.320than our forebearers were because I see it time and time and time again you either get it directly
00:40:45.700or you can see it indirectly to other women and it was sort of laughing today when you tweeted and
00:40:50.340said oh look I've had I've had a few you know thoughtless comments and I was kind of like yeah
00:40:55.900I am familiar with the thoughtless commenter you know I've kept being tagged like a couple of weeks
00:41:02.240after the apologies happened by a couple of men on Twitter that are just not letting it go they're
00:41:08.700like dogs with bones and they keep coming back and going look but look at the bone again look at it0.99
00:41:14.100again you're still wrong two weeks later and I'm kind of like I don't give a shit what you think0.98
00:41:19.180I don't care this is this is something that I feel strongly about and I think as a woman0.99
00:41:23.440you have to either go I don't care and I'm going to keep going or you have to put your head down
00:41:28.540and I think that must have been to an extent what it's always been like for women you know but they0.57
00:41:34.180may be in in the days of the witch trials they wouldn't have had the facility to be able to say0.78
00:41:38.760well I'm standing up against you the only power probably they could have derived was by picking
00:41:43.620on somebody else I would imagine I mean certainly I don't at all Claire and I come back to this again
00:41:49.200and again and again when women and it is women generally that say this say oh they were standing
00:41:54.240up to the patriarchy and they were they were accused because they were feisty Claire and I
00:41:58.920was like no you don't understand but women colluded with that because that's the way the patriarchal0.97
00:42:05.120structure works if you want to drive power particularly in those days you're working with1.00
00:42:09.160the boys against the other women so I think that's something that we keep coming back to and it's
00:42:13.640quite unpopular in certain certain camps of society but I would say it's changing and I think
00:42:18.500more and more people are kind of getting on board because we have people like yourself on who say
00:42:22.580well here's a facet of history that I know a lot about and then people listen to it and they go oh
00:42:27.100okay that's not what I thought I'll have a think about that you know but I'm curious about your
00:42:32.280work on James the first and sixth because we we reference him a lot but I don't know how many
00:42:38.680experts Claire we've had on that have done much work on him in particular well let me just sort
00:42:43.880of say that my favorite fact about James a fact that very few people know is that he not only
00:42:49.060wrote a treatise against witches he also wrote a treatise against smoking um yes everything wrong
00:42:58.620obviously yeah he wrote a counterblast to tobacco in 1604 I think uh when he just revived in England
00:43:07.640And he seems to have used smokers in very much the same way as he used witches.
00:43:13.320He styled himself as a healer of the body, the social body of the state, as it were.
00:43:20.080So, you know, this is a very, very standard way of thinking about the relationship between a ruler and the state.
00:43:28.140You know, sort of like he also describes England as his bride and he himself as the husband and that sort of thing.0.99
00:43:34.600So here he styles himself as a healer and he warns against the heathenish, as he calls it, the heathenish practice of smoking and sort of like, well, you know, it's the Indians in the new world that smoke and we might as well sort of start worshipping the devil as they do.0.99
00:43:51.460so please don't you know don't smoke and also you know if you smoke then you end up stinking0.99
00:43:56.980very much like a witch I think so there are lots of little very interesting parallels between
00:44:02.000the way that James you know discusses witches and the way that he discusses smokers and one of my
00:44:07.120students at the moment is writing her in the undergraduate dissertation trying to sort of
00:44:10.820like do a sort of systematic comparison between the two depictions so yeah he's a very eccentric
00:44:17.320figure james and we need to sort of acknowledge that you know sort of like we need to understand
00:44:22.960him in his own terms rather than think like oh well in some sense he's ahead of the time
00:44:27.140you know one of the first anti-smoking campaigners um and and in other times he's very much sort of
00:44:34.440like uh not on the side of the angels but yeah the way that he seems to use witches and smoker
00:44:40.260is very much the same in the sense that he seems to have used both to represent his divine kingship
00:44:45.240let's put it that way, the fact that the devil could not harm him as he was crossing over the sea
00:44:51.800to return to Scotland, you know, showed to James that he was really a divinely anointed king who
00:44:58.240was protected by God against the devil and the devil's allies. So there are parallels that I
00:45:02.860think people are not aware of. I know, I'm going to call him James VI of Scotland,
00:45:08.520who wrote Demonology and also a renowned anti-smoker.
00:47:47.900They petitioned the royal courts for an outside judge to come in.
00:47:52.680I've been to the archives in Bayonne, which is the main town in the French past country.
00:47:58.120And you can see that they've been sort of like very happily sort of like, you know, hunting witches on their own for about six, seven years before Pierre de L'Ancre comes in.
00:48:08.860And that in some ways, Pierre de L'Ancre then is a very convenient scapegoat in the way that witches are scapegoats.
00:48:15.940you know sort of like we can just put all the blame on Peter Lanker and then no one else has
00:48:20.940to carry any responsibility for who's responsible for that witch hunt and I think that's perhaps
00:48:25.720also then explains sort of like my where I was coming from when I was writing my op-ed in the
00:48:30.960conversation about Nicola Sturgeon's apology. Yeah don't let us off the hook by the apology
00:48:37.420we're still not off the hook and the parents weren't off the hook. Are there other interesting
00:48:42.700narratives around witch accusations in different countries are there any other
00:48:48.320ones that you highlight for us well so as a Dutch person originally so as I said like you know
00:48:54.760computer systems in this country might think I'm Scottish but I'm Dutch originally and I've been
00:48:58.760happily living in the UK since 2006 but there there is very much the narrative of the Netherlands
00:49:04.880as this beacon of progress which you know some people might be familiar with but in early 19th
00:49:10.620century history even entitled the first and this is like the first dutch history of and the subtitle
00:49:16.740is a contribution to the glory of the fatherland in which it sort of essentially highlights the
00:49:22.700fact that whereas like people in catholic belgium were very happily continuing on burning riches
00:49:28.820we rational dutch people we stopped burning riches before everyone else did and that is
00:49:34.860true to some extent, but also false, you know, if you sort of zoom in, and it's quite clear that
00:49:40.940witchcraft suspicions and witchcraft accusations, and actually also, you know, an important factor
00:49:45.860in all of these stories across Europe, you know, actual illegal witch lynchings, all of these
00:49:52.100things continued in the Dutch Republic, as it was then, just as they continued in Scotland and
00:49:58.120Ireland and wherever. In that sense, also, even though it's very much the opposite of maybe the
00:50:03.700Basque narrative or the Scottish narrative, but it's also a very problematic narrative.
00:50:08.100The German narrative is also just really interesting, sort of like the early 19th century
00:50:13.860witchcraft historians very much used the narrative of the witch hunt in the same way as 19th century
00:50:20.260Dutch historians did, namely to sort of like point to the massive amount of progress that
00:50:25.100had been made. So Germany, as both of you will know, was very much the eye of the storm,
00:50:30.400where then it came to witches of like half the people in the witch hunt who were killed you know
00:50:35.420died in Germany but in the 19th century Germany was recently unified it had these gleaming new
00:50:42.380industries that had the first proper research universities it had with Leopold von Ganker it
00:50:49.100had sort of the founder of modern history and these stories were then told the witch hunt was
00:50:54.740was used in the 19th century to just show how far Germany had come as a country and then of course
00:50:59.980you know, two world wars later, the history of Germany and the German witch hunt looks very
00:51:04.780different. You have the idea of Germany as there's something being something incredibly irrational
00:51:10.240about Germany, something superstitious, something bad about Germany. And lots of German witchcraft0.94
00:51:16.260historians have essentially been sort of like writing their work with the idea of refuting
00:51:20.920that thesis in mind, particularly because that thesis is very much a false thesis. We know that
00:51:26.460witch hunting happened in Germany, because as I already mentioned in my conversation piece,
00:51:31.160most of Germany was not united. Most of Germany was very small states, very weak oversight,
00:51:38.940local judges could do whatever they wanted. And that's why there were so many people executed
00:51:43.820there. So it's very much the opposite of a Holocaust, the German witch hunt. But nevertheless,
00:51:49.160like that pressure is there. And in Britain, the first witchcraft historians, Utrecht,0.70
00:51:54.600Voper, Norman Cohn, they served in the British army in World War Two. So when they were writing
00:52:02.020about witch hunting, they very much had World War Two and the Holocaust in mind. So you can come up
00:52:08.320with quite a few national narratives when it comes to witch hunting. America, of course, with the
00:52:12.980Salem witch hunt, and it's very much the same story where you have McCarthyism in the 1950s,
00:52:18.540the famous Red Scare, leading to Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible, and there you have another
00:52:24.640sort of story of a country grappling with its inner demons. So lots of countries have narratives
00:52:29.680about the witch hunt, and a lot of them are, in my view, quite problematic. I don't quite know
00:52:34.640where the Scottish narrative would fit in. I do think that there should be one, given that
00:52:39.840Scotland did prosecute relatively a lot of witches compared to other countries.
00:52:46.300but yeah maybe you guys have some thoughts on that. It's so interesting what you say Jan about
00:52:51.040the way that the witchcraft trials are looked at by different people with different theories and
00:52:57.340overlaying their theories on it to fit and do you know I think actually in Scotland we have
00:53:02.980had so little chat at a broad social level I mean obviously there's an academic conversation going
00:53:10.040on but at a broad social level I don't think there is a general narrative at least I'm not
00:53:16.460aware of it I mean we could perhaps ask Professor Goody or Raphael of a chat with us again and see
00:53:21.300whether or not he thinks there's one Zoe what do you think I mean I think people are just utterly
00:53:26.020amazed when they find out how much one they don't really have a yeah narrative over it I think the
00:53:31.560narrative and I again I'm not a historian so this maybe isn't quite what Jan's meaning but I think
00:53:36.660the narrative that we have in scotland is that it's that one about the red-haired left-handed
00:53:42.160feisty women being pushed down by and people get this wrong all the time particularly the catholic
00:53:49.160church which is obviously completely erroneous but people i think have melded together to a great
00:53:54.840extent the you know sort of the issue that women might hold with the catholic church about things
00:54:00.440like i don't know like mother and baby homes and that sort of thing with and sort of mash that1.00
00:54:05.320together with the witch trials and have gone well who's the most sort of um controlling of women's
00:54:10.640rights religious wise catholics so they must be i'm not saying that they are i'm saying that that's
00:54:16.060what a perception can be then so they've sort of put that together wrongly that it's bold women
00:54:21.380that have been put down by the catholic church and if not the catholic church and just like
00:54:25.220church generally and that it's men generally and i think that's what the scottish narrative is
00:54:30.600that these are women who if they'd been allowed to live could have cured cancer but because they
00:54:36.080were struck down and before they've even got gray hair and their red hair quite often they were
00:54:40.960unable to fulfill the promise because I often see women writing that and saying just think of all
00:54:45.840the knowledge that we've lost with the murder of these women and we know that it's unlikely that
00:54:51.000there was a very big percentage of women happened to be midwives and so on because they were really
00:54:54.880useful to society so they they weren't generally accused and if they did we know from the research
00:55:02.020that's been done we've been told by other historians that if women were accused of being
00:55:06.060witches and they were midwives or whatever usually it that wasn't really the reason that they were
00:55:11.980accused like that was like a like a secondary thing it was something else they'd done except
00:55:17.140for cases sometimes where maybe some a child had died say and they were looking to blame somebody0.84
00:55:21.600for that but I think that that is the Scottish story is that it's women tramped down by the
00:55:26.120church yeah and can I ask is there other countries that have that narrative about feisty women
00:55:33.680standing up to the patriarchy as far as you're aware do other countries have that idea no it
00:55:40.100it doesn't ring a bell with me you know perhaps people hearing this podcast will sort of like
00:55:45.740call in and correct me but Zoe's description very much rings true for me because I was
00:55:52.920in preparation of writing my piece for the conversation listening to that BBC Scotland
00:55:58.240podcast series from 2019 about the Scottish witch hunt and it had lots of amazing material but it
00:56:04.900was also it was also interspersed with sort of discussions about sort of like you know you know
00:56:09.700here in Scotland we have these sort of like loud mouths you know Scottish you know women who are
00:56:14.960who don't do as they're told and that's why they are being prosecuted for witchcraft0.57
00:56:20.780it's kind of an irresistible narrative that it's sort of taking you as the victim and recasting you
00:56:26.620as as like the underdog that you will get their day you know I think it's a really irresistible
00:56:32.560like I'm a writer of fiction so I can completely see why people would grasp onto that as a plot
00:56:37.800line it's kind of like well you know it's that whole we're the granddaughters of the women you
00:56:42.360couldn't burn which makes no logical sense anyway because if you couldn't burn them are you saying
00:56:46.760that there weren't witches so these are women that escaped accusations of witchcraft in which case
00:56:51.960I don't really understand what the logic is like at all with that saying it's really really bizarre
00:56:56.920but I think I can completely see why people grasp onto it because it's like you might think
00:57:01.280I feel a bit powerless today in 2022 so I'm going to grasp that magic power from 300 years ago and
00:57:08.680impose that upon myself and say I will get my day and like a phoenix will rise from the ashes
00:57:14.220and I'm aware that's various different metaphors scrambled together but I think that's what the
00:57:20.380thinking is. Yeah as historians I think we're also I think this is another point maybe implicit in
00:57:27.220my op-ed was the idea that we need to resist sort of appropriations you know if we can use
00:57:33.980dearly mother witch hunt to foster you know reflection about what we do ourselves today
00:57:39.360then that's good if we on the other hand sort of say i own the scottish witch hunt because i am
00:57:47.220a wiccan or because i'm a woman or because i am donald trump and i'm being prosecuted
00:57:53.860unjustly i mean because like he uses that that language about being the victim of a witch hunt
00:57:59.760all the time male politicians use it all the time all the time whilst also being perfectly
00:58:06.120comfortable with accusing female politicians of being witches again the logic fails me on that
00:58:11.900yeah no it's it's really problematic so there is of course a fine line between you know sort of
00:58:17.160like us collectively using a witch hunt and individual groups within society appropriating
00:58:22.860the witch hunt and i don't quite know where that line is but like i think so your point there is
00:58:28.600an excellent one i think the other point that sort of follows on from that is sort of that
00:58:32.380and this is another reason why i'm slightly uncomfortable with apologies is sort of that it
00:58:37.700then also creates the idea that yes these women were innocent of the crime of witchcraft that
00:58:43.940doesn't necessarily turn them into martyrs for anything in particular it also doesn't turn them
00:58:49.680into saints who've done nothing wrong right and that should make sense because they were among
00:58:54.220the most marginalised people in society. You don't get by on a day-to-day basis being a saint
00:59:00.340in those circumstances. I don't disagree. I think that we shouldn't make people into saints that
00:59:07.100weren't saints. I completely agree with that. But I don't think we have to. I think that what we can
00:59:12.320do is say these were ordinary, complex folk in Scotland who lived, who loved, who hated, who
00:59:20.300laughed who cried who committed offences but the one offence the real one offence they definitely
00:59:26.820didn't commit was the offence of witchcraft and that was what they lost their lives for
00:59:31.640we're really specific about that aren't we that that's all that we're looking for we're looking
00:59:36.000at one area because sometimes the men that have got critical feedback for us say well how do we
00:59:41.040know they weren't guilty of something i'm like like if it was murder and they were done for that
00:59:45.280then that's a completely separate issue this is about people that were accused and convicted
00:59:49.400often of witchcraft that's all we're talking about we're not talking broadly that's just
00:59:54.660my favorite but they might have been guilty of something else and what so might you jim partick
01:00:00.520what's your point yeah no absolutely i i think i completely agree with uh with you both there
01:00:10.480it's is they they lived lives you know some of my students and i we had kind of we have a year-long
01:00:16.500module so we spend 20 weeks going through the early modern witch hunt and we read a lot of
01:00:21.940witchcraft files and you know some cases are absolutely tragic one of the cases we looked at
01:00:26.140is the story of a 20 year old girl she's 20 so she's an adult but you know she seems to have the
01:00:31.820mental acuity of a child who seems to just be prosecuted for witchcraft by her own father
01:00:37.340because you know he remarried someone else and you know his new family is dying and he suspects
01:00:44.720his oldest daughter of somehow being envious and somehow being responsible for it so there was
01:00:49.800some really really tragic that's not an isolation because I've read a couple of ones that were like
01:00:55.020that where it's a father that's remarried that blames an earlier iteration of family for things
01:01:00.520that have happened to his new family which is really interesting to me because you would think
01:01:04.680that you wouldn't want to bring that shame upon yourself but then maybe it's kind of a double
01:01:08.540bluff where you say I'm that godly I will accuse my own daughter to keep right with God so the
01:01:15.940the heavenly world is more important to me than the physical world that's really interesting oh
01:01:21.520how awful yeah no there are some terrible cases like that one as well that you were describing
01:01:26.620Zoe but there are also cases when we read the record where it's clear that the people who were
01:01:31.180accused of witchcraft they were not saints they engaged in village quarrels the people that
01:01:36.960accused them also had grievances they were as much human beings as the people that they ended
01:01:43.400up being the victims of the witch hunt and that doesn't justify what those accusers did in the
01:01:48.280slightest but it should sort of like you know lead us to sort of like reflect on sort of the
01:01:53.740complexities here you could also be incredibly aggressive and as a result of your aggression
01:01:58.840be accused of witchcraft and that doesn't necessarily justify the witchcraft accusation
01:02:03.160But it sort of does sort of like explain it.
01:02:06.660And so there are tens of thousands of untold tragedies
01:02:09.540lying underneath the statistics of the witch hunt.
01:02:13.320And some of them are absolutely horrifying.
01:07:37.960And actually, I should have mentioned before, Claire, that we've got some interesting potential stuff coming up with the other parts of our campaign.
01:07:44.900So I'm going to do that really annoying thing of saying to you, we've got some news, but we can't share it yet.
01:07:50.060But we will keep you posted as it goes.
01:07:52.740But suffice to say, there's some quite interesting stuff happening that hopefully is going to end up with some exciting news to reveal at a later date.
01:07:59.960So what you're saying is, is there some exciting things that are going to end up in exciting things sometime in the future at some point?