Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 64 - DOCTOR MARTHA MCGILL - WITCH HUNT 1649

00:00:00.160 Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:05.240 I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases and we're bringing you this podcast

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

00:00:15.240 and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.

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

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

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

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

00:00:33.240 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

00:00:37.420 And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.

00:00:44.460 Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.

00:00:53.140 Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:56.940 How are you today, Clare?

00:00:57.880 oh you've thrown me a curveball with that early question I am grand today how's yourself Zoe

00:01:03.400 I'm fine I'm fine I was just trying to mix it up a bit you know I'm just really aware of the fact

00:01:07.320 that we are now on episode 64 of six will you still need me will you still feed me now we're

00:01:14.000 64 I feed myself quite a lot already anyway probably we live quite far away from each other

00:01:18.500 don't rely on me to feed you to starve to death I've barely managed with the humans I'm actually

00:01:23.280 responsible for in my own house so you're probably better just getting just eat i'm sure i could

00:01:29.820 probably live off my own fat supplies for quite a wee while now that's quite enough of that sort

00:01:34.420 of talk so episode 64 we've got a very interesting guest in a slightly different kind of direction

00:01:40.520 today that i think a lot of our educators will be really interested in we know we have lots of

00:01:45.020 teachers that listen so you're going to like this episode from that point of view and as ever you

00:01:49.640 know obviously which focused but I think that's going to be a good guess before we get on to our

00:01:54.460 guest for today Claire what's been happening in the news news isn't that more like a film's about

00:02:07.480 to start yeah I think that's the cinema but it was the first thing that came into my head when

00:02:11.300 you said it we need to work on that let's go with the news so throughout the country we've had so

00:02:16.080 many different groups doing witch hunt related memorializations, weekends, talks, events and

00:02:24.020 stuff like that, most recently with Forfer and Peebles. But West Calder, who are an amazing group

00:02:31.200 of people, are continuing to do more work in that area. We should first of all give a shout out to

00:02:36.320 their website, which is www.calderwichhunt.co.uk. They're doing some absolutely amazing work and it

00:02:44.000 can be seen on that website. They've got exhibitions coming up at venues across West

00:02:49.000 Lothian and also Mary Craig, friend of the podcast, is doing another talk for them. So

00:02:55.540 what they've done is they've got three places where they're taking part of their event and it

00:03:01.680 says on their website, find out about the background to the Calder witch hunt and the

00:03:06.840 stories of the local women accused of this impossible crime. A replica sackcloth and

00:03:11.140 period dress help visualise this harrowing story. Now, where you can go and see that event is from

00:03:17.840 the 1st of November to the 30th of November at the East Calder Partnership Centre, from the 4th of

00:03:24.140 November to the 28th of February next year at the Linlithgow Museum, and the 3rd of March to the 29th

00:03:32.360 of April next year at the Wee Museum of Memory at the Centre in Livingston. So, great places where

00:03:39.360 you can go and look at that. So thanks very much West Calder and keep us updated if you've got

00:03:45.320 anything else going on because it's always great to share these things. The next thing in the news

00:03:49.900 is from someone who got in contact with us via Instagram and that's artist Louise Carr. She has

00:03:57.520 got a project called The Reclaiming the Forgotten Woman of Inverclyde's Past and it's about women

00:04:04.220 from Inverclyde who were accused of witchcraft. She's painted six portraits using the names of

00:04:09.780 real women who were accused from Greenock and six landscape of locations around Inverclyde

00:04:15.380 associated with the women. So please do give that a look. The event for Louise Carr is a showcase at

00:04:23.720 the Dutch Gable House. So if you're along throughout that area in Inverclyde, do go and

00:04:29.540 see her work. In addition to the 12 artworks produced by her the showcase also features the

00:04:35.120 work of pupils from St Patrick's Primary School and a group of local women who took part in weekly

00:04:40.140 art sessions held over the last few months. What Louise has said about the work that she's done

00:04:47.200 and particularly about with working with the children is that the children showed an interest

00:04:51.980 in the subject and really wanted to know about the history behind the women and Louise says

00:04:56.060 that she thought that it's definitely something that they should teach in schools so I think

00:05:01.240 that's absolutely fantastic and if you have the opportunity please do go over to Inverclyde and

00:05:07.300 see that work. That's good it's great to see these different things happening across Scotland and the

00:05:12.540 interest from the general public is not waning at all in fact if anything it's growing. I gave two

00:05:18.680 talks in the last week or so one to the Women's Institute which in fact was UK wide and the other

00:05:25.200 talk was to a group of people that were involved with Aberdeen College and that was like educators

00:05:31.800 and librarians and people that were students and like student services and things like that

00:05:37.240 and it was really great to see the level of interest and what I'm really enjoying is being

00:05:41.180 able to recommend other people's books you know there's there are so many fantastic books now

00:05:46.440 both fiction and non-fiction like Mary Kidd you know like Anya Bergman like Mary Craig

00:05:52.200 like you know Susan Fletcher like there's just lots of really great names and that's just right

00:05:57.760 off the top of my head so it's really great we've actually got a couple of brilliant writers that

00:06:02.140 are coming on in the in the coming episodes so at the moment I'm reading tons of of witch fiction

00:06:07.860 and it's just amazing that they're working in this area that we're kind of familiar with but

00:06:13.380 they're all finding different angles and it's just really tremendous just shows the power of fiction

00:06:17.980 as well sorry to go off on a slight tangent there but it's really interesting to see that there's

00:06:22.480 such a pickup from the public about this particular you know part of our history and I'm really

00:06:28.560 gratified to see things like when you mentioned there about West Calder them describing their

00:06:33.820 event and seeing the stories of the local women accused of this impossible crime and I'm really

00:06:38.180 glad to see that words like impossible are getting in there and that almost always when we see

00:06:44.140 articles or events which is in um in quotation marks you know so I think that the message is

00:06:49.920 really getting through to people which is really really nice to see yeah and particularly to see

00:06:54.720 it getting through to a new generation of children can you imagine you've been taught this stuff

00:06:59.180 at primary school what an interest that you would have in your own history of your own country

00:07:03.860 yeah I'm going in to talk to um in the school that I work in I'm going in to talk to some

00:07:08.600 second years this week because they're doing a unit on um on some writing about about the witch

00:07:13.920 trials and then you and i hopefully are in the new year are going to be coming back to speak to all

00:07:17.760 the second years because they're doing a crime and punishment unit that they're going to focus

00:07:21.160 on the witch trials i'm slightly anxious about bringing into my school to speak to the entire

00:07:25.480 of second year i'm just anxious anxious for you i was going to say yeah who are you anxious for

00:07:30.920 because for you not for the kids cheesy peeps no way no they're yeah second years being what

00:07:36.900 second years are across the land across the world that age group 13 year olds but it'll be it'll be

00:07:42.620 interesting because I think it is something that when people hear about it they are quite taken

00:07:47.040 with it you know it's been interesting to see that occur yeah well I really look forward to that and

00:07:52.400 with you as my bodyguard I'm sure you'll be absolutely fine it'll be fine you'll just you'll

00:07:56.760 get mobbed like a love a lovely mob not a bad mob anyway so we've also been contacted because this

00:08:03.920 is part of the thing here is that it's not just within Scotland or just within the UK or even

00:08:08.080 just within Europe we've been contacted by an American listener called Sandy Shamian now we

00:08:15.000 hope we're pronouncing that correctly but she has been in touch with us to say that there's been

00:08:19.880 a recent occurrence in Michigan where there was a primary school mural went up on the wall

00:08:25.480 there was an article about it in the Huffington Post amongst other other places where an artist

00:08:31.260 did a mural for kids like a primary school wall and in fact it was a high school student called

00:08:37.240 Evelyn Gonzalez so she won it you can see images of it up there so she painted a wall at Grant

00:08:43.160 Middle School and then there was a like a kind of parents meeting where there was an accusation

00:08:48.480 made that some of what she'd painted was secret symbols for witchcraft and paganism which is

00:08:55.040 quite odd because there's like a hand of Fatima that she's painted on it well what I'd think of

00:08:59.280 as a hand of fatima but it seems to be known as different things but there's loads of other stuff

00:09:03.520 in there like hearts and frogs and cats rabbits it just looks like a nice bright lots of kids

00:09:09.700 but i think the real issue that they're having there is that it's um there are images there

00:09:15.600 that are kind of celebrating sort of lgbtq so i think that it's just a very conservative there's

00:09:21.680 a group of very conservative sort of quite right-wing religious parents that are sort of

00:09:27.840 looking at it and thinking well where's all the evil in that picture and that's one of the things

00:09:32.680 they've used it was really just a bunch of kids and animals just flying around I think to look

00:09:38.500 at that particular mural please go and google it and have a look yourself to see anything in that

00:09:43.760 that that possibly resembles witchcraft and also I think when things like that happen and people

00:09:49.580 make complaints like that it actually highlights interests and things like witchcraft people who

00:09:55.480 wouldn't have been interested in it before yes or counterproductive yeah and they go away with

00:10:00.680 the research they're like this sort of makes sense I'm just now going to fully dedicate my life to

00:10:05.380 this yeah it's quite strange it's quite odd yeah but like that's there's not it's not actually

00:10:10.680 funny because if you imagine that you lived with with those parents and that you weren't the way

00:10:15.400 that they wanted you to be the sort of the pressure of that but it does highlight again this idea

00:10:19.440 about there being a small sector now thankfully but like it obviously was much bigger during the

00:10:24.800 times the witch hunts where you know you have to follow the social rules otherwise you're punished

00:10:29.700 for it and sad to say I always say sad to say but sad to say Leo Igwe's work continues apace

00:10:36.440 where there are lots of really horrific things still happening it seems weekly so please do go

00:10:42.860 and follow what Leo Igwe so that's spelled I-G-W-E is doing with his advocacy for accused

00:10:49.240 witches in various countries within the continent of africa so go and have a look and see what he's

00:10:55.100 doing because he's very glad for support because the more that governments and leaders in the

00:11:01.400 countries in which he works sees that there is sort of international condemnation i think the

00:11:06.240 more pressure he can apply to make these things stop so pretty grim anyway moving on from that

00:11:12.320 charlotte richmond got in touch with claire to say that she spoke to you at the glasgow

00:11:17.920 Caledonian University lecture for the common good this year and she has sent us forward her

00:11:23.280 dissertation which is about the witches of Scotland about the miscarriage of justice and

00:11:29.660 where she's written about the case for legal pardon so I think that sounds like it's going

00:11:33.640 to be very fascinating to see it kind of laid out in a thought through legal argument there

00:11:38.800 so I'm looking forward to reading that. Yeah thanks Sean I am really looking forward to

00:11:44.560 sitting down cup of tea biscuits and sitting down for an afternoon and have a good read of that so

00:11:50.800 thanks very much for sending it to us and claire of course as of next thursday i could also sit

00:11:57.360 down with a cup of tea and some biscuits and read through in a legal manner because you and i will

00:12:04.120 be honorary doctorates of law honorary doctors of law from the university of dundee who are

00:12:11.040 quite amazingly and astonishingly and wonderfully giving the two of us these honoree doctorates next

00:12:17.140 thursday so we will be able to keep promoting what we're doing with the witches of scotland

00:12:22.780 campaign and keep reaching new people but it's just really really amazing and wonderful to be

00:12:27.980 recognized for the work that we're doing in that area so i cannot tell you first of all congrats

00:12:34.420 on that segue it really was you like that it was polished smooth it really was polished but also

00:12:41.420 yeah I mean I could not have been more surprised and more chuffed and part of the reason is not

00:12:49.440 only it's really lovely for someone to say we think you're doing a good thing that's that's

00:12:54.560 great but also because we'll be able to use it again to promote what we're doing and why people

00:13:01.580 think it's important and it's just great that starting off from the two of us as we did

00:13:05.880 propping up my iphone in your basement and trying to record the podcast it's grown into such a big

00:13:13.420 thing really gratifying and pleasing yes definitely and it's just it's just brilliant because a lot of

00:13:20.200 this is because we've had so much support from our listeners so just we're so thankful to everybody

00:13:25.880 that shares and is supportive and has the same sort of joint cause as us just a wee update on

00:13:31.940 what's happening with the petition just now we know that it's being discussed again at the moment

00:13:36.880 in the Scottish Parliament and we'll update you as soon as we hear any any news yeah yeah the the

00:13:44.280 public petitions committee meets again at the end of the month and we're already so far along the

00:13:52.200 path in respect of the outcomes we wanted a formal apology we've got a pardon is fingers crossed on

00:13:59.580 the cards and we're in discussion about the memorial so it might not be that much more that

00:14:04.240 the public petitions committee can do seeing the progress has already been made but it's really

00:14:09.620 great that what they've given us so far is a huge degree of cross-party support and that is very

00:14:15.760 important yeah it's really good really really good so Claire so do you think that's all all the news

00:14:22.820 that we've got I think that is all the news that I can think of just now yes it's enough to be

00:14:28.160 going on with yes definitely so Claire what area have you been looking at in the history books

00:14:34.700 today and this time Zoe I have been looking at people to remember from the Haddington area

00:14:41.920 and in Haddington according to the survey of Scottish witchcraft 60 people were accused of

00:14:49.180 witchcraft but in fact as you'll come to find out as I keep reading there's actually more people

00:14:55.080 that appear to have been accused than are on that list this has all come about because our lovely

00:15:00.440 listener Charlotte Brown got in contact now she got in contact some time ago but it shows you the

00:15:06.680 amount of emails and contact that we get that I was only getting around to to speak to her recently

00:15:12.420 but I asked her whether or not she would mind if I shared her email because I thought it was so

00:15:17.960 interesting and she said I could do that so thanks very much Charlotte for this information that I'm

00:15:23.920 about to read out about Haddington. Charlotte writes I love your podcast though I've only

00:15:28.380 recently started listening and I thought I would share with you what I know about Patrick Brown of

00:15:33.220 Coulston. Patrick Brown is listed on the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft site as a commissioner,

00:15:39.020 investigator and prosecutor in the trials in Haddington between 1649 and 1688, 33 cases in

00:15:48.660 all. So obviously he's done a huge proportion of that 60. An article written by a family member

00:15:54.640 says an earlier Brown, James Brown, presided at the trial of five witches in Haddington in 1649.

00:16:02.760 The family Brown of Coulston hold a petrified pair

00:16:06.580 enchanted in the 13th century by Hugo de Gifford, Lord of Yester.

00:16:12.460 He was said to be the wizard Walter Scott wrote about in his novel Marmion.

00:16:16.860 Have you read that novel, Zoe?

00:16:18.340 No, I have not. I'm sorry. I'm really bad.

00:16:20.480 No, that's all right. You don't have to apologise.

00:16:22.460 I've never read either, but I think I'm going to now, actually.

00:16:24.740 So what Charlotte did was she also sent a few pages of an article

00:16:28.520 by Lady Edith Brown Lindsay, the wife of a descendant of Patrick, and in that she explains

00:16:34.680 the accepted version of the story of the Coulston pair, because there are a few versions to read.

00:16:40.060 The shortened version is that the family received an enchanted pair which would protect the family

00:16:45.020 as long as it was kept safe. In about 1695, Patrick's son George married a Lady Elizabeth

00:16:52.080 Mackenzie who bit a piece out of the pair with ruinous results. George gambled heavily, almost

00:16:58.500 losing the estate. His brother Robert bought the property from him to save it but was drowned in

00:17:04.140 1703 with his only two sons. Coulston is passed down largely through the female line and still

00:17:10.860 remains in the hands of the descendants of Patrick. The pair is in a preserved silver box at Coulston

00:17:17.120 and she says that she has never seen it but she knows of family members who have. She is a

00:17:23.700 descendant of Patrick's uncle James and her branch of the family have lived in Australia since the

00:17:29.860 1830s. So there's that family connection there, that's amazing. What she says is, what I find

00:17:35.280 remarkable is that both James and Patrick were involved of accusing women of witchcraft while

00:17:40.540 owning a pair said to be enchanted by a wizard. Patrick was created Sir Patrick Brown of Colston,

00:17:47.020 a baronet of Nova Scotia in February 1686. By that stage his title was not associated with

00:17:53.640 Denny Holdings of Nova Scotia and was purchased. He married his second wife, the widow of Robert

00:17:59.320 Kerr, minister of Haddington, an investigator on many of the same witch trials as he, Robert Kerr,

00:18:06.880 was involved in. So what she also did, what Charlotte also did was send us a copy of that

00:18:14.840 book, Coulston, a story of a Scots barony. And in that, it gives us the names of some of the people

00:18:21.280 that were involved in a trial of James Brown.

00:18:23.940 Now, what's particularly interesting about that, Zoe,

00:18:26.700 is I took these names and I compared them to names

00:18:29.720 on the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft for Haddington

00:18:32.520 and not all of them appear.

00:18:34.740 Even, of course, taking into account the name changes

00:18:38.000 or the different spellings,

00:18:40.260 it appears that there are names that I'm going to read out

00:18:42.580 that don't appear in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft.

00:18:45.420 And I think that shows what the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft

00:18:48.480 in fairness says at the very start of the book

00:18:51.100 which is we can't be sure this is thorough because both time and money stops us from checking

00:18:57.400 everything but it's it's many of the things that we can find in the books that we would expect them

00:19:03.140 to see but this however shows the names of some other people so I just want to read out the names

00:19:08.580 of these people to remember as people who were accused and killed as witches so in Coulston the

00:19:14.200 story of a Scots barony it tells us that in June 1649 James Brown presided the trial of five

00:19:20.860 witches in Haddington. John Dixon, Marion Richardson, Agnes Hunter, Margaret Dixon and

00:19:27.500 Isabel Murray. All we know about these people sadly is that they were accused and executed as

00:19:32.640 witches because there's a quote presumably from earlier books which says they were condemned to

00:19:39.000 be tamed this day, their hands tied behind their backs, conveyed be the lockman of Haddington to 0.96

00:19:45.520 the sands thereof and that day in the afternoon about three hours to be strangled to the death

00:19:51.600 and thereafter their bodies to be burnt to ashes and that's all that's said about those people

00:19:58.040 so we remember those people as people who suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice

00:20:03.020 and not people who were witches

00:20:05.780 our guest today is Martha McGill who's a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of

00:20:19.860 Warwick where she works on early modern supernatural beliefs she's the author of

00:20:24.580 Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland that came out in 2018 and co-editor of The Supernatural in

00:20:30.100 Early Modern Scotland which came out in 2020 she's here to talk to us today about a game that

00:20:35.640 she produced which is called Witch Hunt 1649 it's actually a pair of card games and she did this in

00:20:42.700 collaboration with a group of students now we'll put the link for the game there because you can

00:20:47.460 either buy it or you can download it as well and it was really lovely talking to Martha so hope you

00:20:53.560 enjoy this. Hello Martha, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. I was wondering

00:21:07.560 if first of all if you could just tell us who you are, what you do and what your project is

00:21:12.680 that you're here to talk about today. Thanks so much for inviting me. So I'm Dr Martha

00:21:17.880 McGill. I work at Warwick University. I'm a historian of early modern supernatural beliefs

00:21:23.300 of all kinds of type but the project that I'm hoping to chat with you about today

00:21:30.320 was a project that I worked on with a group of students making a couple of card games exploring

00:21:37.580 the early modern witch hunts specifically with a Scottish focus. That's amazing. What was it

00:21:43.560 about that period or that era that led you to decide to make it as a as a board game or is it

00:21:51.460 cards what sort of game is it cards specifically yes first of all we had a lot of discussion about

00:21:58.580 the question of is it in really bad taste to try and approach this topic through the medium of a

00:22:04.120 game that was something we found quite difficult to work through and I accept as well that it's

00:22:10.640 something different people are going to have different opinions on. And some people will

00:22:13.320 simply feel that we should not have attempted to do this. My own sense is that in general,

00:22:21.120 humans are capable of approaching things on different levels. You know, we can play a game,

00:22:28.900 enjoy it, have fun with it, and at the same time recognize that it's dealing with serious subject

00:22:33.420 matter and go away and reflect that in a different kind of light. And I also tend to feel that we

00:22:39.560 learn more and we are more inclined to remember the things that we learn if we learn them in sort

00:22:45.740 of different ways ways that get us you know thinking as other people might things that force

00:22:51.640 us to try and step into other people's shoes so we thought the game was an interesting medium to

00:22:58.440 try and get people to think about this subject material in a different way a way that might sort

00:23:02.620 of resonate stay with people encourage a different kind of empathy perhaps for the victims of the

00:23:07.820 which hunts. But yes, in terms of the starting question about why we look to this period

00:23:12.260 specifically, I think this is something interesting that I struggle to entirely explain.

00:23:18.840 I do feel like when you go back a few hundred years, you can get perhaps a little bit more

00:23:25.660 lighthearted about these topics than you might if it was something very modern, very fresh. And

00:23:30.180 again, perhaps that's wrong with me. People might disagree and say that we can never be lighthearted

00:23:34.540 about these topics but my sense was that there's a little bit more scope for approaching this kind

00:23:41.600 of subject material in slightly different ways slightly more creative ways ways that encourage

00:23:47.440 different modes of thinking again compared to much more modern or recent forms of trauma or

00:23:54.320 persecution yeah I can understand that from the point of view of if you know like in the last

00:23:59.960 hundred or so years that feels like it's very much much closer to us because we might have

00:24:04.640 grandparents or great-grandparents that were alive within that time frame and obviously

00:24:08.320 going back to the witch trials there's no way that you know you'd have any living connection

00:24:12.300 with it so I can sort of understand that and presumably the game when you play it isn't you 0.88

00:24:18.220 know sort of piss-taking it's you know it's still done with a level of of seriousness and with

00:24:23.760 historical accuracy I'm guessing oh yes that was very much the name of the project there's a lot

00:24:28.920 of games out there about witchcraft witch hunting they're typically pretty sensationalized you know

00:24:34.500 they're using the subject material to be exciting and sexy and all the rest they often feature sort

00:24:40.420 of real witches you have to discover the genuine evil in your community or whatever it might be

00:24:45.600 they're typically not done with much regard for the actual historical facts so he wants to make

00:24:50.680 something quite different something that does really engage with actual historical records

00:24:55.480 and again something that tries to be educational, tries to be informative, tries to get people to

00:25:01.980 learn new things about the period again from a slightly different medium than reading a textbook

00:25:07.280 so yeah it was partly an attempt to get away from how the witch hunts have been portrayed in games

00:25:14.240 previously. We're going to have a whole new batch of that I'm afraid Martha because I understand 0.96

00:25:19.900 And that one of the huge big video game, I can't remember, I can't remember exactly who it is,

00:25:25.940 but it's one of the really, really big named firms that do computer games are about to do a witch hunt in Europe

00:25:34.240 as a kind of, yeah, Zoe's face for the purposes of people watching is looking quite worried about that. 0.98

00:25:41.120 And you should do, it's about hunting and killing witches.

00:25:44.860 I've got a 14 year old son who games and I mean, he's not perfect,

00:25:48.360 He does sometimes play things like Grand Theft Auto

00:25:51.340 And I'm still really trying to accommodate the fact that that's played in my house

00:25:55.600 I just really hate some aspects of it

00:25:58.040 So I can't imagine that, I mean I might be wrong 1.00

00:26:00.280 Maybe the witch hunting game will be done

00:26:01.980 I'm not really sure how you could do that sensitively though

00:26:04.600 I don't think it's going to be

00:26:06.080 Not from what the kind of sensationalised blurb that I read before

00:26:09.500 But it's not come out yet

00:26:10.980 So no doubt we'll talk about that in the future

00:26:12.760 But I think Martha, because you've actually been thinking to yourself

00:26:16.560 Should we do this?

00:26:18.360 how should we do this in a sensitive way if you're already asking yourself those questions

00:26:22.500 then I imagine your board game is going to reflect the fact that you have a sensitive

00:26:28.260 understanding that these were real things that happened to real people I mean again I think

00:26:33.440 people are going to have different opinions on this some people will never agree with the project

00:26:38.100 which I think is fair I think there's an argument to be made that said again I would tend to feel

00:26:45.300 that as i say humans are capable of thinking about things in different ways um approaching

00:26:51.480 things on different registers and we were careful the game includes lots of sort of narrative cards

00:26:57.920 that explain what's going on try to explain a bit of the historical context try to explain how many

00:27:03.760 people were typically persecuted for witchcraft in scotland how many were executed things like

00:27:09.560 that so far as we do know which is not all that far so it was also a sort of medium for trying to

00:27:15.420 communicate some of these serious messages again hopefully to an audience who are not necessarily

00:27:21.060 going to learn about this stuff from textbooks you know this is something that you can use

00:27:25.260 in family settings or in school settings where again people are just not necessarily going to

00:27:32.300 go and read all of the big history books so it's something that can be played sort of with school

00:27:36.820 kids sort of right up kind of thing i mean our recommendation is for ages 14 and over given the

00:27:42.980 nature of the subject material there are some adult themes you know there is mention of sex of

00:27:48.960 course um violence comes up um you know we as i mentioned we do have cards that explain the kind

00:27:56.300 of devastation of the witch hunts also some of the accusations that were directed at supposed

00:28:03.140 witches around meetings and copulation and so forth with Satan or potential cannibalism things

00:28:10.920 like that so yeah there are mature themes in it and again we actually did want to include those

00:28:16.580 because we didn't want to shy away from the truth of the source material you know we wanted again

00:28:21.500 to try and give a sort of honest exploration of what was going on in the period and I think it's

00:28:28.700 actually one of the interesting things to try and make sense of and to try and get your head around

00:28:33.180 well something we do in the game is ask players to begin as normal members of a community

00:28:39.380 neighbors who are for the most part kind of interacting with each other in normal ways

00:28:44.460 they are building up their homes their holdings by buying cows pigs sieves peasant shears whatever

00:28:53.000 it might be that you need for your subsistence and then these rumors are beginning the mistrust

00:29:02.100 is starting to increase tensions are developing and so forth that can turn into witch trials

00:29:10.460 but there's this kind of dissonance when it comes to witch hunting that for the most part

00:29:16.040 accusations did begin in communities you know accusations were initially typically brought

00:29:22.840 by neighbours against people with whom they'd quarrelled typically people who had a sort of

00:29:28.580 reputation for being argumentative and there were usually accusations where we can see the roots in

00:29:34.660 neighbourhood disputes so they'd be accusations about harming someone who had fallen ill or hurting

00:29:40.680 a cow stealing its milk things like that where we can make sense of the origins and then at the same

00:29:46.660 time you get all of this sort of weird fantastical stuff brought in typically by the interrogators

00:29:51.280 fantastical from a modern viewpoint about these nighttime meetings with satan and the cannibalism

00:29:57.360 and all of that and it's one of the sort of interesting aspects i think of the whole topic

00:30:03.160 how you kind of make sense of that jarring material on the one hand this is all coming

00:30:08.060 out of sort of normal human relations then on the other hand it gets so weird so we didn't want to

00:30:12.020 include weird stuff essentially although as i say that does make it slightly more mature we've not

00:30:18.340 had much discussion that i can remember about cannibalism up to this point can you shed a bit

00:30:23.540 of light on what you mean by that i mean obviously i know what cannibalism is i mean sorry well a

00:30:30.120 typical accusation and i say typical many files only included the kind of neighbors accusations

00:30:37.300 of maleficium harmful magic against other neighbors typically making people fall sick or

00:30:42.540 whatever the kind of less fantastical stuff but for those trials which did include the satanic

00:30:49.700 element one accusation that gets leveled is about eating babies I think it's just one of those very

00:30:56.300 very taboo topics which people latch on to because it's seen as one of the most tedious things you

00:31:03.140 could do you know so the stories of supposed witches going to graveyards digging up the

00:31:10.040 corpses of recently deceased children to bake into pies or stories of witches meeting at the sabbat

00:31:18.660 the kind of nighttime gathering with satan and feasting on the bodies of babies there and again

00:31:25.040 it's i think just about creating this stereotype of this figure as being completely outlandish

00:31:32.740 completely opposed to all kind of social norms by going to this sort of absolutely heinous

00:31:38.700 behaviour. Traditionally it was an accusation that got levelled against different groups you know if

00:31:43.440 you go back to the medieval period it's often Jews are accused of similar behaviours and then

00:31:49.660 it gets sort of transposed onto supposed witches in the early modern period. Yeah it's fascinating 0.81

00:31:55.320 this whole idea about you know obviously othering to use a more modern sort of term for it but the

00:32:01.100 idea of picking on somebody that's weaker in the community and in your game do people play as sort

00:32:07.040 of innocent bystanders or do they can they choose to take an active role so there's actually two

00:32:13.700 games i worked with a group of students and we ended up developing two set foot games in one of

00:32:20.100 them everybody plays as neighbors and everybody is innocent you know again we were very insistent

00:32:26.760 we didn't want any real witches in the game so you know nobody is sort of turning to evil or

00:32:34.940 anything like that that said there are elements of both cooperation and hostility in the game

00:32:41.100 you will typically have an ally who you would find to support but then you can act against

00:32:45.860 other players and as tensions builds typically someone will be accused of witchcraft every game

00:32:53.000 will feature at least one which trial it might feature multiple if they start to snowball and

00:32:58.720 during that there is no sort of direct involvement from other players we didn't turn it into a you

00:33:06.440 know you were actively pursuing and persecuting this person because again that just started to

00:33:11.580 feel like it gets slightly insensitive potentially so for the most part players do remain as

00:33:19.040 bystanders but just because of the sort of demands of also coming up with a workable game there are

00:33:26.820 ways to act against other players and in fact sometimes you are required to it's just not

00:33:31.360 specifically by you know trying to have them burned as a witch or whatever it might be

00:33:36.400 the other game is a game in which neighbors trade together you see who sort of comes out

00:33:43.560 on top of your village hierarchy through the trading and then there's an optional element

00:33:50.000 to role play a witch trial adopting roles according to who did well in the first phase

00:33:56.060 of the game so again there's no sort of actual witch but you will for that game move to a model

00:34:02.960 where certain people are taking on the role of commissioners of the trial certain people become

00:34:09.160 jurors someone will become the accused witch certain people become witnesses this was designed

00:34:14.780 mainly with a classroom setting in mind for use in university classrooms especially as a way of

00:34:21.520 exploring in more depth how files actually worked it could be done in a family setting if you wanted

00:34:28.140 to and it tries to just give a bit more guidance about what the file process actually involved

00:34:34.180 but again we tried to sort of stick quite closely here to the historical record be quite specific

00:34:41.240 about these are the kind of things you need to be saying as this character these are the kind of

00:34:46.280 things you want to bring up and explore rather than have it sort of devolve into everyone just

00:34:52.540 throwing around wild accusations you know again we try to keep it as close as possible to historical

00:34:57.480 reality so that hopefully it's a reasonably kind of sober way to again explore quite difficult and

00:35:05.780 quite sensitive subject matter but yeah that's a sort of shorter and quicker game just designed to

00:35:11.180 set up really the role play activity if that's something a teacher wanting to do. I think that's

00:35:17.040 a really clever way of getting people to engage and putting themselves in that situation. I had

00:35:22.980 thought about the witchcraft trials for years and didn't really have any direct emotional

00:35:29.140 attachment to what happened until I heard about individuals so placing people in that individual

00:35:35.000 circumstance is a really really good way of getting you to engage with history on a really

00:35:41.540 human level. It's one of the real challenges of the thing that something we found with playtesting

00:35:47.500 and so forth is that people really really want to cooperate and they really want to be nice to

00:35:52.080 each other as I say we had to sort of almost force people to act against other players because

00:35:57.220 you know even when you sort of have this setup of it's a game and you're trying to win people

00:36:02.840 tend to naturally default towards cooperation especially if they've been told you're in this

00:36:07.960 role of community members and all the rest and you might start turning against each other people

00:36:13.580 are very insistent to the point that I've had people do bad things to themselves instead of

00:36:18.240 attacking other players and so forth because they're like no no no I want to be nice I want

00:36:22.080 to be nice and I mean I suppose that's a positive thing as a reflection on humanity but at the same

00:36:28.060 time it does feel but it does feel like it makes it a little bit more challenging to try and get

00:36:33.240 to exploring this sort of overall question of how did this stuff happen you know how do we get to

00:36:38.600 this point where humans are turning against each other they're making these accusations against one

00:36:44.640 another they are torturing one another they're killing one another obviously all things that

00:36:48.920 still go on in the modern world and things that we ideally do want to try and understand and yeah

00:36:54.820 again maybe it's simply that the options for exploring this within the scope of a game are

00:37:01.380 fundamentally limited and you need to legitimately put people in quite sort of

00:37:07.600 of severe or different or strange circumstances in order to trigger those kinds of behaviours.

00:37:15.800 But yes, it was an interesting sort of question of how far do we want to try and force people

00:37:21.680 to be cruel as a point of historical understanding versus at what point does that again become

00:37:27.620 sort of just nasty or exploitative or leave people with a bad taste in their mouths afterwards.

00:37:32.740 so yeah I think we defaulted to generally not forcing much cruelty but perhaps that's as I say

00:37:40.380 a slight impediment to actually understanding and did your students enjoy and learn from them

00:37:46.260 in the ways that you hope they had by making the game and playing the game I hope so I've used it

00:37:52.160 myself in teaching as well so I've run sessions and seminars and things where all of my students

00:37:58.040 have played and it's worked well I've had good feedback from it and it does usually figure sort

00:38:03.120 of useful conversations I mean I'll tend to begin by saying to students okay what did you find sort

00:38:09.260 of historically useful here and what doesn't work we have a website where we discuss that we discuss

00:38:14.080 which elements of the game were inspired directly by historical records or whatever it might be

00:38:20.100 which elements of bits where we used a little bit more license because of the need to you know

00:38:25.860 actually have a workable game again so I mean just silly things like you buy different kinds

00:38:33.100 of asset as I mentioned to build up your home so we have lots of different things like sheep

00:38:40.340 and ducks and bibles and wooden spoons and things like that that we had to attach prices to

00:38:47.540 and that sort of thing and we did a huge amount of research trying to figure out how to do this

00:38:52.240 properly because there's very very very little in the way of Scottish inventories of household

00:38:57.080 possessions you know in terms of stuff people had a it was very very little so just coming up with

00:39:04.120 enough things that people might have owned was a real challenge and then b you don't typically get

00:39:10.460 helpful breakdowns of this cost x this cost y occasionally you do but there are not many of

00:39:15.660 them there's many many more for England but it was a bit you know it wasn't necessarily the same in

00:39:20.540 scotland so you know we did what we could in terms of researching that but then some of it we just

00:39:26.480 didn't know and some of it again we had to sort of simplify for gameplay reasons like you can get a

00:39:31.880 plow or you can get a buyer for the same value which is not especially realistic

00:39:36.400 so yeah there's various points like that which were very very very very long conversations

00:39:41.820 and obviously got boiled down into a sort of game format but we do discuss a bit on the website why

00:39:48.920 of particular decisions were made and yeah again I hope that after playing there's a potential to

00:39:55.520 have a conversation about okay what's useful here what's not what do we learn what elements

00:40:00.860 are not covered or not covered well. That's so fascinating and have the public then out with

00:40:07.220 the university setting have people responded well to and are they keen to play it? I've had a decent

00:40:12.480 number of sales so far um i haven't had any direct feedbacks so besides we did lots of rounds of

00:40:22.500 play testing and so forth family friends other historians members of the public people would

00:40:28.720 experience playing games people didn't have experience playing games and so we worked with

00:40:32.840 all of the feedback we got from that to improve it and so forth it's been on sale since the end of

00:40:39.620 June now and as I say it's done decently well but yes in terms of what people are actually taking

00:40:46.320 away from it I'm not immediately sure I'm afraid we are donating all of the proceeds though it's

00:40:51.760 available it's either available freely you can just download all of the cards and print out

00:40:57.000 yourself if you can face doing a lot of cutting out of cards or if people would like to buy one

00:41:04.220 of the professionally printed versions we're donating all of the proceeds to

00:41:07.920 Krasak for us at Warwick University that's a local charity the Coventry Rape and Sexual Abuse

00:41:13.880 Centre and it works with victims of sexual violence essentially supporting those who have

00:41:20.120 been impacted by it so you know we wanted that to be part of the project as well we wanted it to

00:41:25.860 have some kind of positive impact for people suffering from violence nowadays too oh that's

00:41:32.460 I think that's really, really excellent.

00:41:35.980 I understand that the place setting is in Haddington.

00:41:40.820 That's where the witch hunt is set in.

00:41:43.420 Now, did you follow actual accusations from Haddington

00:41:47.580 or were they more general or there were specific people

00:41:51.440 who were accused in Haddington that you followed their story?

00:41:54.920 We did look at some of them as part of the process of putting together the game.

00:41:58.960 we decided within the game not to include real people just because again I was slightly dubious

00:42:05.240 about the sensitivity of that I sort of liked having one step of remove from actual individual

00:42:11.880 stories I didn't want to ask people to play actual people who had been tortured and executed you know

00:42:19.060 again it just all gets a bit uncomfortable so we kept it again a step of remove from that by having

00:42:25.780 all the characters fictionalized but within this setting where these things were genuinely going on

00:42:32.140 so yes we looked at stories the cards include various quotations drawn from actual historical

00:42:40.100 files not necessarily only from Haddington or only from the 1649 files we drew on a range of

00:42:47.120 material from across Scotland but yes we tried to you know have it in a place and in a period

00:42:56.300 that sort of fitted what we know of from the historical records a place when there was

00:43:02.760 relatively severe watch hunting in a year when there was relatively severe watch hunting we

00:43:06.800 wanted a specific year as well it's set in 1649 so that we could sort of bring up a little bit

00:43:12.880 more of a specific kind of context.

00:43:15.940 For example, fresh outbreaks of the plague

00:43:18.660 that had been going on through the 1640s.

00:43:21.980 1649 is also a period of great political turmoil.

00:43:25.240 We wanted to have the option of exploring things like that

00:43:28.020 by having a specific year.

00:43:29.900 Having a specific place was sort of important for things like

00:43:32.720 what people would have owned would have varied

00:43:35.240 depending on where you were living across Scotland.

00:43:38.460 What kind of plough you would have used,

00:43:40.480 things like that would all sort of depend on where you were the exact sort of process your

00:43:44.860 file might have taken as well so to answer these kind of questions we needed a setting so yeah

00:43:49.900 the year is there the place is there we did look at genuine files but for the actual gameplay we

00:43:58.500 didn't want to ask people to be real people that side of things the characters are fictionalized

00:44:04.500 and I really really appreciate the level of focus you've got for things being realistic and

00:44:10.620 factually accurate one thing that we like talking about here on the podcast is sort of myths that

00:44:16.240 people carry in the general culture about the witch trials and witch hunts and so on is there

00:44:21.120 anything if there was one thing in particular or a few things in particular that you would like

00:44:25.620 people to stop getting wrong what would they be one thing we thought about was the gender balance

00:44:33.020 of the various characters in the game

00:44:36.260 who can potentially be accused of witchcraft.

00:44:38.780 It's a conversation I have a lot

00:44:40.140 when I talk about witchcraft

00:44:41.660 with members of the public,

00:44:42.720 this question of to what extent

00:44:44.380 is it all misogyny?

00:44:45.580 And, you know, the answer is to some extent.

00:44:48.420 Misogyny was an important element

00:44:49.900 of the witch hunts, absolutely.

00:44:52.100 That said, it's not the entire story.

00:44:55.740 You know, probably about 15% of those

00:44:57.420 who were accused in Scotland were male.

00:44:59.740 So we went for a similar kind of balance

00:45:01.220 in terms of characters

00:45:02.680 there's a couple of male characters and by female characters so there's a higher percentage chance

00:45:10.120 of a female becoming accused but there are also males who can potentially be accused too so yeah

00:45:18.200 we wanted to communicate that that not that misogyny is not an important part of the story

00:45:25.980 but that it's not the full story of what's going on when it comes to witch hunting equally the

00:45:32.120 question about what people thought witches did we'd try to draw this distinction between

00:45:38.940 accusations that were typically brought in by neighbours so again the kind of accusations of

00:45:43.620 maleficium or harmful magic damage to people damage to cows versus the stuff that was typically

00:45:50.120 brought in by your elite educated interrogators which is more usually the satanic stuff and I

00:45:56.600 think this can help her understanding of the witch hunts if we know that for the most part people are 0.96

00:46:04.420 not saying to each other oh susan next door has been meeting with the devil and having sex with 0.58

00:46:10.540 him in this cops at night you know something like that instead people are saying oh my chickens died 0.89

00:46:15.740 after susan went away muttering that thing the other day i think that's a bit easier to get our

00:46:19.940 heads round um so we wanted to try and communicate that idea that there are accusations coming out of

00:46:26.940 the community which made sense for that community you know it explained the bad things that were

00:46:32.300 going on immediately around them and it was then at a slightly different level that the stuff we

00:46:36.880 would think of as really weird gets introduced so he's always very interested so he's always saying

00:46:42.640 isn't it interesting how in these sort of very puritanical as they were at the time restrained

00:46:49.440 periods in time when people wouldn't talk about sex they wouldn't talk about having sex for sure

00:46:56.000 that these interrogators were so interested in getting the fine detail of sexual matters from

00:47:02.780 these poor people that were being kept awake and were terrified like i like how you've said

00:47:08.000 zoe's always talking about that that makes me sound like a total perv no you're always talking

00:47:14.040 that you're always talking about how they are like hugely interested in this it's like it just

00:47:20.660 always makes me think of the vic reeves thing and shooting stars when he rubbed his hands above his

00:47:25.220 knees on his thighs you know it's that kind of like tell tell me more about the disgusting things

00:47:30.780 that you've done madam you know it's that it feels like that's where it's kind of coming from 0.82

00:47:35.420 and i don't know how much of that is a kind of a modern day interpretation of course they wouldn't

00:47:39.600 have obviously rubbed their legs and it would be all very kind of serious and poor faced but it is

00:47:44.220 very interesting that they always just seem to have this idea that these women were meeting up 0.99

00:47:49.340 to have big crazy sex parties with satan and various animals and so on. I think it speaks 0.55

00:47:56.100 more to their mental landscape than anything else. Well it's the period 1649 again when we

00:48:02.160 set the game when the church is really concerned with these questions of morality within the

00:48:10.760 community and as i've said it's a period of turmoil you've had significant outbreaks of plague

00:48:16.100 there's been a spell of very very bad weather which means harvest failure in parts of the

00:48:21.340 country famine in parts of the country politics is going a bit mad you know the king has been

00:48:26.380 executed at the beginning of the year everything's all looking a bit chaotic there so the sort of

00:48:32.140 The actual conclusion from the perspective of the church and the Kirk party, which comes to control Scotland for a period in 1649, is that God's angry.

00:48:45.500 God's punishing people for their sins.

00:48:48.500 And so they start clamping down on all kinds of misdemeanors, includes drunkenness, blasphemy, swearing, but also fornication.

00:48:59.620 yeah the church does take this keen interest in the sort of naughty things people are doing

00:49:06.460 because that scene is something that really gets god riled up and the interest in witch hunting

00:49:11.580 kind of falls within that context you know it's an interest in the sorts of sins that people are

00:49:17.680 engaging in that's allowing the devil to have more influence over the community so yeah i mean i'm

00:49:23.620 not saying that there is not a sort of voyeuristic element to the witch trials absolutely there is

00:49:30.940 but it's also best i think to make sense of it within this sense of society and especially for

00:49:39.260 the church a body of humans who are very genuinely concerned about sin satan and how god is you know

00:49:51.640 punishing the people of Scotland and who are trying to address that in what they see as a

00:49:58.380 reasonable way even if from modern standards it's barbaric so yeah something we have in the game is

00:50:04.660 these sort of fake cards which give you scenarios to deal with which try to introduce some of the

00:50:11.880 kinds of elements that were going on at the time basically so periods of bad weather outbreaks of

00:50:17.020 plague and also deal with the church's interest in fornication and what people are getting up to

00:50:22.940 there because yeah it was an important aspect of the story we are for sure going to buy your game

00:50:29.320 if you can tell us the listeners where we can buy it and how much it costs and so delighted that the

00:50:36.320 profit from anything is going to a very worthy cause so where can we buy it so it's martha

00:50:43.160 mcgill.co.uk forward slash witch hunt 1649 yeah we'll link as well when when we release the

00:50:50.740 episode and how much does it cost if people don't want to just download it and want to buy it so

00:50:56.480 it's 15 pounds plus postage and packaging that sounds like it's entirely donated that sounds

00:51:02.660 like an absolute bargain given all the work that you've done thank you so much for coming to speak

00:51:08.200 to us and we really look forward to giving your game a go thanks so much um and yeah just a sort

00:51:14.940 of word of thanks to the university of warwick for its funding of the project which has enabled

00:51:19.480 us to sell it at a reasonably cheap price and donate all of the proceeds as well brilliant

00:51:25.640 thanks so much martha looking forward to playing it

00:51:28.200 so we've got an exciting week coming up then claire we sure have it will also depends when

00:51:42.280 you're listening to this because on the 17th of november which has either happened or not

00:51:49.020 happened yet depending on whether you're it's too complicated to to put these things as i said

00:51:54.200 to somebody this week what even is time oh dear what's that can I ask specifically was that when

00:52:00.520 you were quite late to attending something it was just a general comment about time because at the

00:52:05.060 moment it feels like everything's happening all the time all at once whilst nothing is happening

00:52:09.580 it's just I'm in a quite a strange time continuum have you watched that movie which is called

00:52:15.240 everything all at once all the time or something like that I started to watch it and then I was

00:52:20.980 watching with my son and he he wasn't feeling too clever but I am going to go back to it with him

00:52:25.120 because it does look really great and her sort of bewildered look sort of encapsulates actually how

00:52:29.660 I'm feeling so yes I will go back to that definitely there is one thing I want to say

00:52:35.320 before we go oh I don't know if I've told you this when I went to the event in Forfer with Judith

00:52:42.620 Langland Scott yes she kindly gave me a present right she gave me a bunch of flowers and she got

00:52:49.800 a bunch for you too but you weren't there so you didn't get them didn't give me both though don't

00:52:53.120 worry but i've got them there's they're still lovely because there's some of my favorite ones

00:52:57.020 are really pretty anyway so she gave me those she also gave me another present right which was

00:53:02.140 a toy animal carrier with two raccoons in it not real ones two raccoons okay and i was totally

00:53:10.100 laughing she was totally laughing it was very hilarious and very fun and then they stayed in

00:53:14.160 my car for the next sort of week or two because i'm admitting and i don't clean my car out properly

00:53:18.500 don't worry i've got the guy booked on tuesday it will be clean again and it's sat in my car

00:53:22.860 and when i was at work this week we've got some children that have come to us from ukraine and

00:53:28.360 without giving away any details we had one child who was quite distressed and at one point the

00:53:33.360 child was looking at pictures of raccoons on the internet and i was like hang on a minute ran out

00:53:39.140 to my car got the pet carrier ran back in with it i gave him one of the raccoons oh immediately

00:53:45.980 so raccoons spreading joy across the world that was an emergency raccoon it was so cute it was

00:53:54.260 lovely so now I know that we both love raccoons so I will keep on spreading the word about the

00:53:59.500 witch trials but also raccoons we're not having a raccoon podcast Zoe I mean it's bad enough this

00:54:05.240 one not no no I wouldn't have enough to talk about with them it would just be me just going 0.63

00:54:09.780 oh look at their little hands which is pathetic I'm aware this is some sort of midlife crisis

00:54:15.320 that i'm going through it's healthy that it's raccoons i think technically their paws no their 0.97

00:54:21.360 hands you see now what fingers like if you look they've got they've got hands i know monkeys have

00:54:30.400 listeners for uh those who can't see which is absolutely everyone because this is a podcast

00:54:36.400 we're both on zoom holding up our hands as if we don't know what hands are

00:54:40.140 can i say do you think monkeys have paws or do you think monkeys have hands

00:54:45.280 well i'll tell you this monkeys have got hands i'll tell you how i know that oh they have got

00:54:50.360 hands because they've got five long tapered fingers and it says they don't have thumbs

00:54:55.460 unfortunately but it says here oh maybe i could that could be the next thing i could work on

00:54:59.500 is a sort of um a thumb that would that would have like a kind of a leather sort of strap in it that

00:55:05.420 could attach their hand anyway sorry i digress i'll save that for the drawing board but um they

00:55:10.680 have they've got five long tapered fingers and long nails which is actually kind of horrifying

00:55:15.200 oh they can use both four paws together to lift and then acutely manipulate objects

00:55:20.760 i'm just saying i but but do they i mean i have heard the expression a monkey paw but never a

00:55:27.920 monkey hand right i don't care what people call them that are so-called scientists to me a monkey

00:55:34.620 has got a hand right now we're going to tell you how i know this i was watching a documentary in

00:55:38.960 work that was a documentary and one of the scenes started off with the camera focused in on a

00:55:47.320 monkey's hand right and that monkey's hand was so like a human hand I was actually really quite

00:55:53.820 disturbed and freaked out by it even down to like they've got fingernails like a human fingernail 0.95

00:56:00.660 so I've googled it and you're right all right man I nearly swore there it's so it's so bizarre

00:56:08.420 come for the witches stay for the raccoons here is the giggle answer answer and explanation

00:56:14.780 monkeys have hands and almost all primates are considered to have hands primates let me just

00:56:21.040 let me remind you of something now if they didn't have hands they wouldn't be able to do this

00:56:24.700 a chimps tea party now i know chimpanzees and monkeys are different things but they're 0.78

00:56:28.240 essentially the same thing they wouldn't be able to hold a cup and a saucer we shouldn't go back

00:56:32.660 to those days they were the 70s i know i'm not saying it was okay but also i would love to have

00:56:38.160 a pet monkey i could have a pet monkey in a way i couldn't have a pet raccoon yeah i don't think

00:56:43.760 you should have either of those until your children are out of the house i'm not going to get a pet

00:56:47.700 monkey ever so do you think anybody is still listening at this stage really sorry everybody

00:56:53.840 sorry okay we should probably go now we should probably go before anyone listens to this and

00:56:59.420 decides to stop listening yeah i know i'm sorry we'll be better next time bye bye

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00:57:38.160 You

Witches of Scotland - November 13, 2022

EPISODE 64 - DOCTOR MARTHA MCGILL - WITCH HUNT 1649

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