Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 70 - PROFESSOR GIBSON - WITCHCRAFT - A HISTORY IN 13 TRIALS

00:00:00.560 I am Clare Mitchell, Doctor of Laws and King's Council.

00:00:04.140 And I am Zoe Vendetotsi, Doctor of Laws, Teacher and Writer.

00:00:07.820 On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day,

00:00:11.200 we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign.

00:00:14.060 The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736,

00:00:19.440 saw thousands of people, mostly women,

00:00:22.200 accused and executed as witches in Scotland

00:00:24.820 in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage of justice.

00:00:28.540 Our campaign had three aims. To get a formal state apology for those accused of witchcraft,

00:00:34.740 to obtain a pardon for all those convicted, and to get a national memorial to remember those

00:00:39.740 involved in the Witchcraft Act. On International Women's Day 2022, the first of our aims was

00:00:45.880 realised when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal state apology to those accused

00:00:50.460 as witches. The first formal state apology ever. We are currently working with politicians to

00:00:55.420 ensure there's legislation passed to pardon those accused as witches, to change their status from

00:01:00.300 convicted witches to those who ought never to have been prosecuted. We continue our work to

00:01:05.420 obtain a national monument so those who suffered will never be forgotten. Join us as we speak to

00:01:10.280 the experts on the witchcraft trials, both here in Scotland and further abroad, as we explore the

00:01:15.280 history of women in Scotland and continue the cultural conversation of what it means to be a

00:01:20.920 woman hello and welcome to the witches of scotland podcast it is my great joy and and jubilation to

00:01:29.220 announce to you that this is in fact episode 70 i mean it's it's mind-boggling we're really aware

00:01:38.020 of the fact that our um output recently has been a little bit slow claire is very very busy with

00:01:44.000 the top of law i'm very busy with really boring and mundane domestic stuff it's not exciting or

00:01:50.380 glamorous but um but we've both been bonkers busy and i just need to reiterate at this point that

00:01:55.440 it's only me and claire so we don't have a committee we don't have any volunteers it's

00:01:59.840 just the two of us and poor david but um but we um we like it that way we like it just being the

00:02:05.060 two of us but it means that sometimes we will slow down a little bit so sorry about that but

00:02:09.740 we've just given ourselves a pep talk and we're going to be getting it together and putting more

00:02:14.320 episodes out very soon i think we promised the listeners that we would have a podcast out

00:02:24.120 listen in a fortnight last time listen it's not legally binding well done zoe well done i like

00:02:31.340 that doctor of laws um i was talking to somebody during the week and they said to me why don't you

00:02:36.940 just train as a lawyer and i was like because it's really hard work and i don't want to and he said

00:02:41.480 but you've already got your qualification don't you just need to set a test and then that's it

00:02:45.660 and i was like no no no the doctor of laws is amazing but i'm not actually it's not like i

00:02:50.460 don't actually have a qualification in being a lawyer there isn't i can't just do a test and

00:02:54.240 then become a lawyer sadly no but in your own mind zoe in my own mind i've been a lawyer since

00:02:59.660 i was about 11 and la law was on i mean that i'm litigating left right and center in my personal

00:03:06.000 like if only people knew yes if only people knew anyway so we will we will put more out honest

00:03:14.540 golf we'll get them out and um and we've got we've got a few really good episodes that we

00:03:18.780 recorded in the summer so we're like we planned ahead but then it's the it's actually putting

00:03:22.920 them out that slowed us down but this is a cracker today this is i mean i know i do say that

00:03:27.780 but this is a cracker today and one of one of my very favorite guests if we can we can say that

00:03:33.120 um so you're gonna like it it's worth the wait honest honest so episode 70 clear yes what's

00:03:40.260 happening in the world

00:03:42.140 yes well getting any better with the time in between is it

00:03:51.580 well zoe so much has been going on yes the last time we had a podcast

00:03:59.880 four weeks ago and this time that we've got a podcast that we've had to like split the news

00:04:06.200 up into like two bits your bit and my bit yes yes we have we've aggregated our news round

00:04:13.200 so may i extend the question to you zoe what's the news well i'll tell you i'll tell you what's

00:04:22.560 the news what's the news is one of the things that's really nice about doing the podcast

00:04:26.080 is that we get contacted by listeners

00:04:29.300 on our different social media sort of areas.

00:04:32.940 And we were contacted by a lovely listener

00:04:35.060 called Rebecca Bancroft,

00:04:36.540 who's probably, I said to her at the time,

00:04:38.220 well, do you mind if we use this on the podcast?

00:04:40.060 And she's probably thinking like,

00:04:41.140 they're never going to do it.

00:04:41.920 But here I am getting around to it now.

00:04:43.820 So lovely Rebecca Bancroft got in touch

00:04:46.020 and said the following.

00:04:47.760 I'm just going to read out what she wrote to me.

00:04:49.460 So these are Rebecca's words, right?

00:04:51.040 I thought I'd share a story of a local man

00:04:53.140 accused of witchcraft from my local area

00:04:55.020 of peterhead and aberdeenshire peterhead has the peterhead trail in which signs have been erected

00:05:00.520 in places of interest around the time with information about its history on them there's

00:05:04.380 a map you can download to do the whole trail or if the weather is rubbish like it usually is up

00:05:08.080 here you can read the info online i'm telling you now the day we're recording this is a day of

00:05:12.820 incredibly bonkers rain and claire's not in scotland but oh my goodness it's been wild anyway

00:05:17.920 so you can look this up online if this ongoing rainpocalypse occurs to keep going so the survey

00:05:23.320 of scottish witchcraft does note this particular gentleman but doesn't appear to have the detail

00:05:27.620 of his sign his name was alexander hay and she's linked she's put a link below which we'll put out

00:05:33.860 for which is to the sign in town which details why he was accused sadly she says they do have

00:05:39.900 warlock in the title of the sign and it swiftly moves on to how the site where sandy was burnt

00:05:44.920 was also a railway station but it's interesting anyway so here's the story in the late 1500s

00:05:50.180 Sandy Hay was a blacksmith in Peterhead who had a keen sense of humour.

00:05:54.240 He found fun in everything.

00:05:55.840 Sadly for Sandy, his minister was not amused when he spotted Sandy laughing in church one Sunday morning,

00:06:01.100 instead of paying solemn and reverent attention to the service.

00:06:04.280 Why were you laughing so much in church, Sandy? asked the cleric sternly.

00:06:07.780 And he said, because I saw old Nick sitting on the corner of the highest gallery

00:06:11.400 and noting down on parchment the names of all present who were sleeping during divine service,

00:06:15.920 but that the drowsy part of the audience increased so fast upon him

00:06:19.300 that he found his parchment too small to contain all their names on which he endeavoured to stretch

00:06:24.120 it with his teeth but losing his hold he knocked his head with an awful thump against the wall

00:06:28.300 behind him. Outraged at the suggestion that not only was Aldnick the devil in his church

00:06:33.400 but that his sermons were so boring the congregation couldn't stay awake the minister

00:06:37.820 took action. He had poor Sandy charged with witchcraft and then of course fear was very real

00:06:43.700 Sandy had admitted seeing the devil in church and his fate was sealed. For one misplaced joke

00:06:48.680 He was tried, convicted as a warlock and met a grisly end at the stake on the burning green at Stoney Hillock.

00:06:55.580 The burning green lies under the present day community centre, which is now the focus of more wholesome and healthy social activities.

00:07:01.900 So it's an interesting story.

00:07:03.380 You can often hear about men, obviously, because of the, you know, the skew towards women being accused.

00:07:08.980 But I thought it was an interesting story because one of the things that we'd see time and time again

00:07:13.260 is that people see themselves as being so distant and separated from from those that were living in

00:07:18.980 those days and of course we keep making the point and academics keep making the point they were just

00:07:23.000 ordinary people like us so the fact that somebody could be accused of being a witch or warlock in

00:07:29.140 this case because they make like a daft joke and it's it's pretty funny joke as jokes go I think

00:07:34.700 that's quite a good one is like mind-boggling but also makes us see how much they were just like us

00:07:39.500 so that's our story and thank you very much to listener Rebecca Bancroft for sharing

00:07:44.280 yeah thank you Rebecca that is um I mean what bad timing for a joke

00:07:50.260 I mean I know he must have been a bit of a bit of a rebel to make a joke like that to the minister

00:07:55.520 in the first place to be honest with with the strangleholds we know they held on people no pun

00:07:59.600 intended so thank you Rebecca for getting in touch we also were contacted by a listener who is a

00:08:06.480 really talented musician um who goes by the name of noom which is spelled n-o-u-m she has created

00:08:13.560 a track called anna a-n-a which is um inspired by a story that noom heard while she was traveling

00:08:20.280 in guatemala we'll be doing a deeper dive into this in a future episode but we wanted to share

00:08:25.540 the track with you just now as i know people will be intrigued and enchanted so thanks so much for

00:08:30.400 sharing noom and we look forward to talking to you in the future and we've been talking about

00:08:34.240 maybe using some of your music as part of the show so that'll be really great and the only other

00:08:38.900 thing i've got to say is to bear in mind that the burnham book fest is two weeks today but that's

00:08:44.880 not going to help you because this won't go out today so that's the 21st of october's um the sort

00:08:50.320 of the saturday and we are there as part of a lot of really fantastic programming where they've got

00:08:56.020 various writers and historians talking about different aspects of links with witches particularly

00:09:02.600 in that area but we'll put up links again so you can see more about that so it'll be really nice

00:09:07.240 to see people there and we're going to be doing a live podcast record um and so we'll be putting

00:09:11.980 lots of stuff up on the social media to encourage people to come along to that one so that's all my

00:09:16.180 news for today claire okay i have some more news we were contacted by a janna mcguire and she

00:09:23.740 contacted us on instagram and once again it's only the two of us and i do apologize if we read things

00:09:29.680 and don't get back to you.

00:09:31.420 What I do is I sit down every now and then

00:09:33.100 and try and go through all this sort of stuff

00:09:35.640 and answer them.

00:09:36.860 But Jana contacted us and said

00:09:39.140 that she'd been enjoying the podcast

00:09:42.040 and she said,

00:09:43.400 I wanted to add a little note,

00:09:46.340 a bit of food for thought

00:09:48.240 about an area I grew up in.

00:09:50.700 Bowness, not far from Edinburgh,

00:09:52.480 has a hidden witch's stone.

00:09:54.960 As a teenager, she heard a lot about it,

00:09:57.540 but it took till she returned to the area after having her own children that she managed to find

00:10:02.400 it. It's near Cariden, is that how you pronounce it? Cariden? Bowness? I'm sorry, people are probably

00:10:08.700 tutting. Cariden probably sounds more Scottish. Cariden sounds quite glamorous. Yeah. Maybe it's

00:10:14.260 a glamorous place. It could be a glamorous place. It's near Cariden at Bowness and can be found via

00:10:19.580 Google now. She said she looked online thanks to you guys, us, putting a little fire in her belly

00:10:25.960 And she saw Bowness has 51 noted witches back in 1624 to 1679, some male, some female.

00:10:35.980 So, again, it's really brilliant to see people listening to the podcast and then coming up with their own investigations and finding out about their own area.

00:10:45.720 It's so fantastic.

00:10:46.620 um in other news we spoke uh at an event to the washington dc bar which was i mean it was very

00:10:57.100 early a lot of us were you were you deep in your legal fantasy about being an american lawyer at

00:11:04.120 that point i could not i could not have been any happier it was such a privilege to speak to them

00:11:08.600 so they were over here um doing a kind of a legal and history kind of tour and one of the things was

00:11:14.500 we went and gave them a little bit of an oversight into the witches of scotland and i sat back i sat

00:11:19.400 next to the most fascinating woman that apart from you claire that i've met in ages so claire you were

00:11:25.920 on my right and on my left was this amazing judge so she is the chief judge in the district of

00:11:33.000 columbia court of appeals and her name is anna blackburn rigsby and my goodness what a woman

00:11:39.060 like i just sat down next to her i just thought oh i love you and i sometimes meet women that are

00:11:44.080 you know a little bit older than me and I just think could could I just be adopted into your

00:11:47.740 family because I just I just think she's amazing and like her mum was the first black female judge

00:11:53.960 in America and she herself has then gone into that area and is incredibly successful was was

00:12:00.260 I think initially put in place as a judge by Bill Clinton but has been endorsed with then following

00:12:05.500 that by the Bushes and she's been in place for a long time and just a fantastic strong woman who

00:12:10.880 was so interested in the campaign so yeah really enjoyed that yeah and our husband as well he's a

00:12:17.440 lawyer too wasn't he what was so lovely was incredibly supportive of her and when any chat

00:12:25.400 or when any you know interest was thrown his way because he he's a colonel in the army who's also

00:12:31.040 a lawyer he's an extremely interesting career he was just like pushing all the comments her way

00:12:38.680 and she was answering i just thought they were such some of the conversation we had was so

00:12:43.720 interesting because we were talking about um current social social sort of construct and

00:12:49.660 communication particularly from a legal point of view obviously with me being a lawyer um so we're

00:12:54.320 talking about that but we're talking about that in comparison to what it was like socially during

00:12:58.820 the witch trials um and about how in recent years people have become some people have become

00:13:04.380 emboldened which is the word that we were using to express ideas that you know 10 years ago would

00:13:10.840 have been absolutely just not supported people would have just known straight away this is

00:13:15.800 this is just completely unacceptable we were talking particularly about the issue of race

00:13:19.280 but we were talking about how in times of difficulty or vulnerability then we always

00:13:24.860 look for people to blame and about the parallels obviously with that and and the witch trials so

00:13:29.480 it was really fascinating to talk about that through a kind of a modern lens um and then we

00:13:33.980 support some other really interesting people didn't we claire we said we'd give us what is

00:13:37.060 really nice is like we're kind of overawed that we're speaking i don't know why but like washington

00:13:41.200 dc lawyers seem like incredibly high powered and we were like very excited to speak to them

00:13:46.840 and um what was funny was people were coming up to us and going oh we've heard about you or

00:13:52.200 listened to your podcast so we want to give a particular shout out to leah wentz who came to

00:13:59.040 speak to us to say I listened to your podcast because we were so tickled by that so shout out

00:14:03.980 to Leah thanks very much for listening all the way over there in Washington DC and we're glad

00:14:09.160 you enjoy the podcast and we also met two brilliant women called Pamela Robinson and Patricia Morrison

00:14:15.760 who were twin sisters identical twin sisters I don't know they looked identical to me because 0.99

00:14:22.080 I was looking between their two faces going am I imagining this are these two women exactly the

00:14:27.500 same to look at they were lovely and really really funny and i had a funny conversation with them

00:14:32.000 about um about like various things but one of the things we talked about that was quite serious

00:14:36.540 was about about the uncovering the links with the with scotland in particular in the transatlantic

00:14:43.120 slave trade and we really spoke a lot that night about understanding your history in order to

00:14:48.560 be you know to be better citizens to be a better society and um and we talked about that because

00:14:53.860 they themselves are women of colour and their families have links to the Caribbean I believe

00:14:58.700 and we're talking about that and I was asking them if um some particular stories about one

00:15:03.600 person in particular that I've been I've been writing about recently Christian Cadell the the

00:15:08.240 witch pricker who some of some of you will remember was um was a woman who disguised herself as a man

00:15:14.460 or passed herself off as a man to be a witch pricker and when she was eventually found to be

00:15:19.720 doing that and she got into trouble she was actually transported to Barbados but then there's

00:15:25.160 no further information about her beyond that point and I'm really curious about whether she

00:15:29.800 made it to Barbados and if there if she did if there was any sort of you know echo through time

00:15:35.540 with what she'd done in Barbados I'm still trying to kind of look into that I've got a couple of

00:15:39.520 academics names that I'm going to reach out to but it was interesting to talk to him about that

00:15:43.480 but this whole idea about understanding our past even if it's uncomfortable even if like Scotland

00:15:49.180 was involved in things that now we're absolutely horrified by we need to know it in order to make

00:15:54.280 sure we don't repeat the same stuff again absolutely um can i also um give a shout out

00:16:00.260 to um people south of the border um who might be interested in coming to hear us talk but we

00:16:07.380 usually do our talks in the north yes um to let them know that actually at the end of this month

00:16:13.040 we have been invited very excitingly to mansfield college oxford very exciting to do a public talk

00:16:22.460 so mansfield college i think prides itself in um looking as broadly as it possibly can at academic

00:16:31.580 topics and inviting people in to speak about things that might not be perhaps just the usual

00:16:38.520 sort of academic path and we are one of the groups of people who have been invited along to speak

00:16:44.600 so we're speaking at mansfield college oxford the date of that is the 27th friday the 27th

00:16:53.940 of october and it's in the evening and there's social media all about that so if you're in the

00:17:00.760 oxford area it's a free event and if you fancy coming and listening to us please do we're really

00:17:06.940 looking forward to it and then we've got the following saturday the 4th of november please

00:17:13.520 tell me that that's right it is and where we're in london talking at the british library aren't we

00:17:19.680 we are indeed like we've got around a bit no wonder we're not able to record podcasts all the

00:17:25.100 time oh that's we've got a very busy sort of burst of activity which i'm really excited about but it

00:17:30.220 means that october is pretty bonkers yeah it is october's pretty bonkers november's pretty

00:17:36.720 bonkers as well well that's okay if there's two ladies that can deal with bonking no that's no 1.00

00:17:42.940 no no no 0.91

00:17:44.960 let's move on claire i've actually blushed claire can see on the zoom i've gone pink

00:17:54.820 what's also funny is

00:17:56.760 today that we're recording

00:17:58.940 it fitted it in early in the morning

00:18:01.140 so we're both sitting here in our

00:18:03.120 PJs recording this

00:18:04.220 is it clear that these are my PJs

00:18:06.220 they're like my formal PJs

00:18:09.080 well I'm glad

00:18:11.220 that we've met up and zoom with your formal PJs

00:18:13.320 but yes I can confirm those still look like

00:18:15.160 a pair of PJs

00:18:15.980 they're black with white piping around the edges

00:18:19.320 I like them

00:18:20.340 I feel like a kind of a sleepy butler

00:18:22.280 and ladies and gentlemen i am i am channeling um my um 1951 oscar-winning uh movie

00:18:32.900 leper print yeah that's leper print that's why i am i was i was uh having a slight run-in with

00:18:40.320 a child in school a couple of weeks ago who had never met before and um and it was you know it's

00:18:45.720 quite quite heated because you know women the two of us and um and she went away and she said to

00:18:51.280 another colleague she went who's that teacher from your department she's always wearing leopard print

00:18:55.920 and that's how she was able to identify who i was it's like a bet lynch type of a vibe yeah but

00:19:02.540 leopard print is you know leopard print's just saying to people you know i'm furry i'm docile

00:19:10.180 but don't get on the wrong side of me because i am a very angry cat 0.85

00:19:15.300 i am an angry cat even with my hrt patch yes ridiculous ridiculous anyway anyway i'm not

00:19:25.260 really i was wondering whether or not you could double up your hrt patch to give you like 0.76

00:19:29.980 super estrogen does that work i'll tell you this no you can't and i've googled it

00:19:34.660 seriously because let us tell you ladies and gentlemen now although we are doctors of law

00:19:40.520 let us tell you that we definitely definitely are not doctors of medicine now claire i'm just

00:19:48.340 gonna pause you there okay so i'm not delusional ladies and gentlemen i'm not i'm obviously not

00:19:54.300 a medical doctor okay obviously not however oh no i did watch every single episode of vr

00:20:01.380 my granddad was a doctor i've said this before and i'm going to say this till the day i die

00:20:05.820 probably in medical malpractice situation my dad was a dentist so I come from a fairly medical

00:20:11.020 background I feel quite confident I could deliver a baby that's my top medical skill

00:20:17.240 so I've had to give them we've talked about intergenerational trauma do you think you'll

00:20:23.960 get intergenerational medical training yes yes I do I feel by osmosis I could do a certain array

00:20:31.840 of medical things i mean one of the things i think you know like you know very attractive 1.00

00:20:37.460 about you zoe is your natural confidence i can't do my can do attitude it's it's that

00:20:45.700 it's that attitude that that is sometimes attributed to white middle class men simply 0.88

00:20:52.440 yes we can do it i really enjoy it with you i feel if mediocre men can go around showing

00:20:59.880 to meditate all the time why can i not do that also i feel fairly confident i could deliver a

00:21:05.440 baby i think i could probably do that thing where you have to use a tracheotomy i know where i could

00:21:11.820 use the shell of a bick i think i could do that you know she threatened me that if i ever i'm 0.72

00:21:16.900 choking she'll perform a tracheotomy now ladies and gentlemen i only eat tiny tiny bits of food 1.00

00:21:25.340 because see it's the slightest cough she would be there with her bick stabbing my neck to be fair 1.00

00:21:31.240 i would be behind you first and break your ribs in an attempt to heimlich you into life um but

00:21:37.300 then i would move on to what i needed to do listen what happens i can hear that this thing being

00:21:42.300 read out or in a transcript or actually played and by your defense council trying to explain

00:21:50.100 why you killed me zoe i didn't choose the medical savior lifestyle the medical savior lifestyle

00:21:55.320 shows me okay you need to see ladies and gentlemen why it takes us so long to record a podcast 0.56

00:22:01.500 because there are just so many diversions that we go on i know i know right let's get back to

00:22:06.820 business sorry right so any more business yes well i have got some news and it's news that many of

00:22:14.980 our followers maybe already know because they've gone and checked but i think it's important to

00:22:19.240 highlight the survey of scottish witchcraft zoe which is you know one of our most important

00:22:25.580 documents where we get so much of our stuff um has had a facelift and it is much easier to navigate

00:22:33.040 much easier to get info from and it's got new sections so i thought i'd highlight a few of the

00:22:39.180 new sections so people go and look and it's fab one in fact one of our um our very good friends

00:22:47.140 Leonie Bell her daughter Ruby Imri was one of the people she's a computing student at Edinburgh

00:22:54.060 University and she spent her summer interning on on the like working on the revamp and then we got

00:23:01.120 the chance to be kind of like beta testers and once I'd actually worked out how to use my computer

00:23:06.020 to do what Ruby was telling me and I'm sure Ruby was going oh my god this is tedious once I'd worked

00:23:10.760 it out it is fantastic it's so much clearer now it's really really good and um it gives you lots

00:23:17.360 of different sort of areas to look at things one thing that i really liked was it puts into

00:23:23.200 modern standardized surnames some of the the expressions of names that are there now some of

00:23:31.800 them are really difficult because they're phonetically spelt so you can't really work

00:23:36.460 out and i noted that both our maiden names were there you've got a maiden name well i have

00:23:44.220 it's the same name as i've got now it's yeah you're still a maiden i'm on my maiden voyage zoe

00:23:50.000 which which maiden name of mine like my johnson johnson yeah i mean that's a maiden name

00:23:58.920 how many other names have you got well because i i think of myself as having various names like i

00:24:04.460 because i think about um my actual names in an ordinary life in the law um yes johnston oh that's

00:24:12.540 cool yeah johnson's in there so it's also got standardized modern names so it tries to

00:24:19.220 translate names where you can and what i you know um i was looking recently on tiktok and i saw a

00:24:26.860 woman whose whole job is to look and give you names for your family so the names of your children

00:24:35.100 will you know go well together or have a common theme or something like that and i do that as a 1.00

00:24:40.360 job yeah oh here we go yeah but you'd have to give up your medical practice suey i could fit it in

00:24:47.420 deliver a baby name the baby yeah legally do something about the baby yeah yeah give the

00:24:56.260 baby a tracheotomy if necessary but the baby won't need that because it'll be so successfully

00:25:00.500 delivered it'll be fine it'll only be me that needs a tracheotomy okay i see where we're going

00:25:04.920 here but it gives you standardized modern first names now some of the names i really love some

00:25:10.500 of them are you know a wee bit odd but if you're looking for some unusual scots names to um name

00:25:17.520 babies you should definitely look there i saw one which i really loved called finwell because fin

00:25:23.660 is a Scottish name, I like

00:25:25.640 Finwell. Never heard that before.

00:25:28.060 Jocka, J-O-K-K-A 1.00

00:25:30.360 Begis, B-E-G-I-S

00:25:34.920 These are Scottish names?

00:25:36.920 Yeah. Crystal, there was a

00:25:39.000 Crystal. Yeah, I think

00:25:41.120 I've taught a Crystal in the past.

00:25:42.880 Crystal Cannon also. 0.96

00:25:44.480 And also, Henwife,

00:25:47.400 which I quite liked.

00:25:48.280 What, that was a first name?

00:25:50.080 Yeah. Henwife? 0.99

00:25:52.200 Henwife Johnston. 0.63

00:25:53.660 shut up and crystal mitchell no i've just put those names together i thought i'd just be my 0.77

00:26:00.600 wife for a laugh god it's just it's just a really unusual but there are loads of unusual names oh 0.80

00:26:06.680 one of the unusual first names was beak that's interesting because i was having a conversation

00:26:13.260 with judith um langland scott our good friend and she she was we were talking about sort of

00:26:20.840 accusations of witches and she was saying that one of the things that happened was they were given

00:26:24.780 a new name when um when they when they were rechristened or unchristened by the devil when

00:26:30.880 they were taken in by the devil and um and beak sounds more like one of those kind of names oh

00:26:36.780 yeah because because something yeah rosy just as an aside i went very recently um to see the

00:26:45.940 gunpowder plot in London yeah and it's interactive firstly it's my first experience with um virtual

00:26:54.920 reality putting the goggles on they were right that was brilliant I loved that but it was the 0.84

00:27:00.800 story of James after he'd decimated Scotland getting rid of lots and lots of women who weren't

00:27:06.700 witches by James you mean King James the first yes indeed I just think of him at this stage yeah

00:27:12.800 and then he came down to England

00:27:15.700 and was causing lots of trouble there

00:27:18.360 and it was about the gunpowder plot

00:27:21.100 but it was really, really interesting

00:27:22.740 and if you're down there, definitely go and see it

00:27:24.960 anyway, I don't know why I went to that aside

00:27:26.760 anyway, the other interesting part that I love

00:27:29.900 because Zoe and I both have a love of

00:27:32.600 finding out about words and their derivation

00:27:36.500 is a glossary of some really interesting words

00:27:40.120 now the glossary is huge

00:27:41.440 The first thing that caught my eye was ert and peart, which is our modern day, what we call, it's still a very old language we use in criminal law, art and part, which basically means if you're acting along with someone else and involved in it, therefore equally criminal liable, we call it art and part.

00:28:04.100 if you're art and part involved in something

00:28:06.480 they called it eart and peart

00:28:08.600 which is not very difficult

00:28:10.580 to see where we got that from

00:28:11.940 but there are some words

00:28:14.380 which I thought were really interesting

00:28:16.560 and I'm going to here

00:28:18.060 attempt a wee idea

00:28:20.780 Zoe, where I'm going to ask you

00:28:22.800 what you think they mean

00:28:24.340 reach yourself listeners

00:28:26.380 this is going to be

00:28:27.780 wild

00:28:29.040 Borrowing days

00:28:31.740 Zoe, what does borrowing days mean?

00:28:34.100 absolutely no idea like it just that just makes me think about special days you can go to the

00:28:39.880 library yes that's not what it is so our special days you can return the books as an amnesty

00:28:45.360 because they're over by five years no borrowing days are what what are the last three days of

00:28:52.960 march and it comes from a fable that march borrowed three days from april okay do you know that fable

00:29:02.280 never heard that in my life and this is a scottish thing this is a scottish thing so the last

00:29:07.340 three days of march are called borrowing days didn't know this now this you'll be just are

00:29:14.520 these just interesting things that you've just got discovered on your travels claire no i've

00:29:18.780 discovered them from the survey of scottish witchcraft that's got this has i didn't realize

00:29:23.180 that i had this at all so the survey of scottish witchcraft has got stuff about language and the

00:29:28.040 way that language has developed this is the new stuff zoe yeah this is this is their new

00:29:34.520 um that they've got so okay i'm going to try another one with you b-i-r-r-i-c-h-t i do know

00:29:46.800 what this means and the only reason i know what this means is because i've been writing about it

00:29:50.700 recently and again it was with reference to christian cadel because that's the idea that

00:29:55.620 if you brought the accused next to the body like the dead body that they'd been accused of killing

00:30:01.520 through witchcraft that it would bleed if they if they interacted with it so if they were they

00:30:07.040 they like laid their hand on the body that the body would still bleed it was one of the cases

00:30:11.660 that i think it was christian caddell it was either christian caddell or john kincaid where

00:30:16.020 that no sorry it was john kincaid that that was that there's documented evidence where that was

00:30:20.400 one of the things he was involved with in one particular case that's awkward listeners she is

00:30:25.280 absolutely correct it's described in the glossary as when a corpse bleeds when touched by the person

00:30:31.100 who was guilty of their murder I wonder if that idea stopped um after the witch trials is that

00:30:38.400 I wonder if that's something that was only thought of in terms of a witch being next to the body or

00:30:43.520 if that was a thing that existed after that in legal cases you know like that that would be like

00:30:49.320 a proof quote-unquote of a murder

00:30:51.420 brought into the body. Yeah I'm going to try

00:30:53.400 and find out. I hope so.

00:30:55.420 I hope that I ended then

00:30:56.980 but I actually don't know. So I'm going to

00:30:59.280 I will look that up

00:31:01.300 although I'm not sure how I will look up. Okay

00:31:03.240 here's the last one. This is my favourite

00:31:05.040 because I'm going to try

00:31:07.340 and bring it back into common parlance.

00:31:10.260 Alright.

00:31:11.140 Zoe, somebody has been

00:31:13.260 put to the horn. I don't know

00:31:15.340 why it makes me want to say that in a

00:31:17.440 kind of posh

00:31:19.320 He's being put to the horn.

00:31:21.700 But actually, to me, it puts me more in the mind of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

00:31:27.580 OK, no, not that type of horn.

00:31:30.360 I have absolutely no idea, but I feel compelled to stand up

00:31:33.240 and start rubbing my thighs really vigorously like Vic used to do on Shooting Stars.

00:31:37.180 OK, I'm glad that that's not what it is.

00:31:40.380 Being put to the horn is being declared an outlaw,

00:31:44.700 usually for non-appearance at trial.

00:31:47.400 So if you're a witness or an accused person and you've been cited to attend court and don't attend, people usually say, oh, we usually say in criminal law, FTA, failure to appear.

00:32:02.140 You'd write that down in the notes, FTA, failure to appear.

00:32:05.840 I sometimes write that on medical notes, I do DOA, that means dead on arrival.

00:32:10.580 For the avoidance of doubt, once again, Zoe is not either a lawyer or a doctor.

00:32:16.860 or indeed the witch which I'm very much sounding like the uh the stereotype of it anyway sorry

00:32:21.880 carry on so uh I'm just going to try and bring that back into common parlance it's the horn

00:32:27.440 to say uh Miss Mitchell is your client here today no blood he's been put to the horn so what do you

00:32:34.780 think that means that like then like I'm imagining like them I know they wouldn't have done this but

00:32:39.840 like tooting a horn because the person...

00:32:42.100 Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

00:32:45.020 Exactly.

00:32:46.000 A bit like the sound for In the News,

00:32:49.900 but just one long continuous, like...

00:32:52.320 He's an outlaw.

00:32:55.480 Catch that man. 0.85

00:32:56.880 Yes, yes.

00:32:58.380 I like it.

00:32:59.280 Okay.

00:32:59.840 Yeah, there we go.

00:33:00.640 So, thankfully, that's not going to be one of our new parts

00:33:06.120 to this podcast, although it would be quite funny

00:33:08.080 just to listen to us stumbling through what words meant because you do get an insight into

00:33:12.500 what's going on in our minds. It's a bit like a Rorschach test. It is exactly, exactly. So other

00:33:19.340 important categories in the newly updated survey of Scottish witchcraft include things like

00:33:24.500 whether or not the accuser of the woman accused of witchcraft was male or female.

00:33:31.440 Yeah, whether or not they were arrested, whether or not they were interviewed, whether or not they

00:33:36.600 were kept for watched and waking you know so it get it tries to give you as as much

00:33:43.500 deconstructed information as possible that's fascinating it's such a wonderful wonderful

00:33:50.660 resource and we are definitely going to get you in on from the survey of scottish witchcraft

00:33:55.980 and also be good to get i think um ruby in too to talk about what the team were doing to update it

00:34:02.840 and where they got their ideas from

00:34:04.100 and how they kind of smoothed it all out

00:34:05.500 because it is much more easy to use now.

00:34:07.920 And I just think we're so incredibly lucky

00:34:10.380 that it's free.

00:34:12.140 Like we're able, I mean,

00:34:13.560 it's such a fantastic research tool.

00:34:15.840 Like how lucky are we?

00:34:16.840 We live in an age where things like that

00:34:18.940 can actually be accessed for free

00:34:20.200 and long may it continue

00:34:21.100 because knowledge is power.

00:34:23.440 Not only accessed for free, Zoe,

00:34:25.460 but accessed with anyone

00:34:26.520 that's got a mobile phone or a laptop.

00:34:29.900 Yeah.

00:34:30.340 You can sit there and I wonder

00:34:31.700 I wonder what put to the horn means

00:34:34.140 quick google

00:34:34.820 I think it's just

00:34:38.200 amazing, I just think it's amazing

00:34:40.200 and moving on swiftly

00:34:42.060 because we've tarried quite a while

00:34:44.200 with our previous in the news items

00:34:46.640 yes

00:34:47.640 let's move on

00:34:48.860 to the names of people 0.99

00:34:52.160 that were women, not witches

00:34:54.380 indeed

00:34:55.220 so we

00:34:58.140 have used

00:35:00.280 the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft to identify two people who were accused of the same things

00:35:08.700 and it sounds like a funny thing obviously was not a funny thing but it just shows you the detail

00:35:14.680 in which the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft can break down and identify different allegations

00:35:20.560 and put them together and it was it was one of the allegations that I saw that I thought surely

00:35:27.540 How many people said that they had done this when they were being questioned, when they're being tortured?

00:35:36.060 And so I went down a rabbit's hole because the allegation, Zoe, was as part of the demonic pact,

00:35:43.660 not only did they renounce their baptism, not only did they swear allegiance to the devil,

00:35:49.820 but in order to seal the deal, as it were, oh dear, I've gone down a very dark path,

00:35:55.100 they kissed the devil's bottom and it is it is but obviously these were things that people were

00:36:02.800 thinking of you know what's the most horrible thing yeah what's the most horrible and awful

00:36:08.560 thing that i can think of to do and so i looked at one or two of the accusations there and i thought

00:36:15.700 actually some of these stories are very um interesting particularly um the second one who

00:36:22.740 was a man called Andro Mann, which we'll come to.

00:36:26.960 I think we've covered part of his story before, but not this part.

00:36:31.300 So the first person who said as part of her, inverted commas, confession

00:36:37.600 that she had kissed the devil's bottom as part of the demonic pact 0.88

00:36:41.620 was an Isabel Oig. 1.00

00:36:44.260 Her name's O-I-G-E, so I'm saying Oig, but I'm not sure if that's correct.

00:36:49.540 Her case began in 1597 and it appears from the designation of her interrogators that this is an Aberdonian case.

00:37:00.960 She was accused, quite terribly, of being able to cause storms by hanging a beetle from a thread and whispering words to it.

00:37:11.380 I mean, you know, we sometimes say to people, or you sometimes say when you're reading a book, don't you, where did they come up with that idea?

00:37:20.500 But, you know, in everyday life, when people's imaginations are allowed to go where they want, people come up with all sorts of ideas.

00:37:32.340 Do you think that the beetle was the devil, that that's how the devil appeared to her?

00:37:36.740 I don't know.

00:37:38.800 Is it her familiar?

00:37:39.520 it's possible that's possible

00:37:41.760 it doesn't make out but it says

00:37:43.760 anyway

00:37:44.200 she was able to cause storms by hanging the beetle

00:37:47.660 from a thread and whispering words to it

00:37:49.800 she was also accused Zoe

00:37:51.740 of having a special green 0.78

00:37:53.720 thread to wait for it

00:37:55.600 bewitch cloth 0.86

00:37:57.020 so that that cloth would sell

00:37:59.480 at market

00:38:00.340 so like entice

00:38:03.720 people and bewitch them to buy that

00:38:05.720 so 1.00

00:38:06.600 two other women had a share in the cloth that Isabel Oig promised them and she promised them

00:38:16.300 that it would get a good price at market the woman asked her how it would get a good price

00:38:22.400 at market and she said that she had enchanted the cloth with green thread so basically she's

00:38:28.820 the owner of the cloth wholesale she is passing on to women to say buy my stuff and sell it at the

00:38:34.980 market and they say well how do we know this is going to sell she says don't worry ladies i've

00:38:40.760 enchanted it yeah yeah and the cloth was sold at market when other people's cloth was not

00:38:48.100 and therefore lo and behold she must be a witch now what's really interesting about that is i

00:38:56.360 wondered about the women who were going to sell that cloth at market because they would be

00:39:03.560 emboldened by the idea that their cloth was so bewitching that people would want to buy it 0.70

00:39:11.080 and I wondered whether or not it would have like a kind of the placebo effect where they were so

00:39:17.280 bold about how great their cloth was and you know that they just encouraged people subliminally to

00:39:25.640 come towards their cloth and buy this cloth in the alternative people had never seen cloth with

00:39:30.940 green string and thought oh that's unusual i'll buy that but in any way or it's just circumstantial

00:39:37.440 evidence claire and somebody just wanted to buy the cloth and nothing to do with anything i mean

00:39:41.860 the lawyer speaks yeah yeah i mean you know i hate to bring it back there's i mean like it's an odd

00:39:49.520 thing why what i like about that i don't like what's interesting to me about that story is

00:39:53.380 that it's so domestic you know it's it's just such a like you know a low-key ordinary story

00:40:02.940 you know like her familiar isn't like a massive stag it's not like a big creepy cat you know it's

00:40:09.220 it's a beetle it's just a little ordinary thing and that it's about selling a piece of cloth at

00:40:14.360 market you know like and it just really speaks the desperation and sort of the paucity of like

00:40:18.800 you know I don't know security you know it's over such a small thing and that people were

00:40:25.220 so convinced that she was then in league with the devil because of that well listen people

00:40:30.320 were convinced she was in league with the devil but here's a really a really sad part to this

00:40:36.540 story so the jury found her guilty of using a beetle to change the weather and marking the

00:40:42.180 off with green thread but the jury didn't think that what had happened meant that she should die

00:40:49.400 and what they said when they returned their verdict was that although they'd found her guilty

00:40:54.920 of witchcraft they don't think that she should have got the death penalty. Sadly the judge

00:41:02.400 disagreed and sentenced her and indeed she was strangled and burned on the 24th of the 4th 1597

00:41:12.020 at a place which is just designated as the hills where was that again that was aber

00:41:18.940 somewhere in aberdeenshire yeah crumbs okay the hills so the next person um that was involved in

00:41:27.400 an allegation of kissing the devil's bottom was a man called andro man a-n-d-r-o-m-a-n

00:41:35.960 um and as i say i think we've covered this story before the name was familiar to me

00:41:40.980 He was an older man, estimated about 70 years of age, and he claimed that the Queen of Elphins,

00:41:48.280 so the Queen of the Fairies, came to him when he was only a small boy.

00:41:52.760 The unusual thing about his confession, apparently, was that it was witnessed by 10 local lairds.

00:42:02.360 That means that over the period of time where he was being interviewed, where he was being kept awake,

00:42:08.040 there were no less than 10 of the local senior men

00:42:11.540 that were brought in to hear his confession.

00:42:15.040 This was in Aberdeenshire again.

00:42:19.160 And it was in a place called,

00:42:22.300 now I'm going to get this wrong,

00:42:24.680 it's spelt C-U-L-T-S.

00:42:28.200 Oh, that's cults.

00:42:29.620 Oh, is it just as it's pronounced?

00:42:31.300 Yeah, yeah, that's just a place.

00:42:32.940 Okay, okay.

00:42:33.880 I thought it would have some...

00:42:36.040 Well, I think it is.

00:42:37.520 I mean, that's how I've said it.

00:42:38.660 I worked in Aberdeen for a little while.

00:42:40.120 I'm sure people will correct us if I've got that wrong,

00:42:41.980 but I do, I remember people saying cults.

00:42:43.500 It's cults.

00:42:44.120 Okay, well, that's good.

00:42:45.540 I mean, after I was so badly thrown off after Curus,

00:42:49.540 which is spelt Cull Ross,

00:42:51.080 I thought that can't be as straightforward.

00:42:53.240 But anyway, he...

00:42:54.600 Well, now I feel a bit like maybe

00:42:56.220 I've been a bit too definite there.

00:42:58.760 It probably isn't pronounced that way at all.

00:43:00.900 Maybe it's Queets or...

00:43:02.500 Please let us know if we've been wrong about that.

00:43:05.760 so again this is an Aberdeenshire case as I said

00:43:10.080 and there seems to be very good record keeping of that

00:43:13.060 so we also know the name of the prosecutor

00:43:15.020 which can now be searched on the database

00:43:17.860 that's another thing that can be searched

00:43:20.100 so you can find the prosecutor

00:43:21.660 and then you can find out what cases they prosecuted

00:43:24.120 which is interesting

00:43:26.440 apparently they found the devil's mark

00:43:28.980 on the third finger of his right hand

00:43:31.060 he kissed the devil's bottom 0.95

00:43:33.920 and it is recorded the word sex now julian goodere told us a long time ago that men would 0.99

00:43:41.880 not have had sex with the devil in there because they just absolutely would not even consider the 0.98

00:43:47.900 idea of men having sex with other men yeah women having sex obviously with the devil's completely 0.99

00:43:53.580 fine but the idea of men and men together was just so abhorrent to them that they wouldn't even 0.84

00:43:58.600 consider it. Yeah so this

00:44:00.700 poor Mr Andorro man

00:44:02.720 it just says the word sex and it said we don't know 0.99

00:44:04.680 if he witnessed it or had sex with the 0.99

00:44:06.880 devil 0.98

00:44:07.580 it said Andorro man 0.83

00:44:10.380 get this, hit animals

00:44:12.700 with a bird to cure them 0.99

00:44:14.680 yeah exactly

00:44:16.660 I think it must be

00:44:18.660 a dead bird I'm assuming

00:44:19.980 and also

00:44:22.140 what he got was black

00:44:24.780 wool and salt as a remedy

00:44:26.540 for disease

00:44:27.580 and this is the bit that we've covered before

00:44:30.060 he put four stones in the four corners of a ward

00:44:33.220 a ward is a piece of land

00:44:34.820 to protect the crops and the goods

00:44:37.420 so what he would do is essentially put down

00:44:40.540 four things that he'd put a spell on

00:44:43.260 in the corners of each to protect them

00:44:45.840 and unfortunately for him

00:44:49.140 he confessed to witchcraft

00:44:52.180 but his confessions were so fantastical

00:44:57.380 and lurid. Maybe that's why we have so much record of what he said, because he talks about

00:45:05.120 things like he put a man nine times through a piece of yarn, transferred sickness into a cat

00:45:12.940 by doing so, which he put backwards through the same piece of yarn. He summoned the Queen of the

00:45:20.020 elves and he

00:45:22.020 claimed if an iron plough was

00:45:23.960 dipped in salmon water

00:45:25.540 it would help the oxen from running

00:45:28.100 away. So he

00:45:29.500 either had all of these fantastical

00:45:32.000 ideas about

00:45:33.860 spells etc or these have been

00:45:36.060 attributed to him or he was 0.63

00:45:38.060 just absolutely crazy.

00:45:39.920 Do you know what's quite interesting and it's something

00:45:41.720 I'd like to talk to somebody

00:45:44.000 at some point in the podcast about this

00:45:45.520 but this kind of grey area

00:45:48.160 between being a charmer

00:45:50.020 and then being a witch you know like and i know that charmers obviously weren't they weren't in

00:45:54.420 league with the devil and that's when he became a witch was when the devil got involved with it

00:45:57.580 but these sound very much like the things that charmers would do you know the stones in the

00:46:01.740 corners and you know the the wool and salt and that sort of thing you know like they're

00:46:06.980 you know i suppose the intent is is different if you're if you're involved with the devil you're

00:46:12.840 doing these things you know for the various things i suppose but yeah it sounds like people would

00:46:17.340 just make things up like you would crack like your brain would crack and you just get people

00:46:22.360 to leave you alone i think and i hope i'm not wrong the recording history but this is just

00:46:27.040 my thoughts i think that this guy probably was a charmer of sorts because if it was said that he

00:46:32.500 was doing these things with stones and you know people were going to him for help that's exactly

00:46:38.900 what he sounds like he was just crossed over into he displeased somebody or one of these charms went

00:46:44.080 wrong or something like that and then they were like well he's obviously in league with the devil

00:46:47.300 and then of course being kept awake and tortured he just said that he was so it would stop and he

00:46:53.400 also said that he kissed the devil's bottom which is where we started from so i don't believe he did

00:46:58.500 say that well you know all these things have been attributed to them who knows i suppose but today

00:47:04.920 we remember two people a woman and a man who were just folk people not witches women not witches as

00:47:12.520 we see isabel ogie and andrew mann and now we move on to today's guest zoe oh very exciting

00:47:21.640 i love this guest she's so interesting and engaging and the book that she's talking about

00:47:25.760 today you should absolutely if you've not already bought it go out and buy it she's also doing

00:47:29.900 various events so if you get a chance to go and see her she'll be talking as well i believe at

00:47:34.260 the british library on the 4th of november so we're looking forward to seeing her again

00:47:37.340 because we did an event with her back like a year past summer.

00:47:41.840 The guest today is, I'm delighted to introduce, Professor Marion Gibson.

00:47:55.280 Hello, I am absolutely delighted, as is my wife Claire.

00:47:59.580 Sorry, that's the beginning of a wedding speech.

00:48:01.220 My wife and I.

00:48:02.680 My wife and I are delighted to have you back on the show again, Marion.

00:48:06.460 it's very exciting because we love what you do and we quote you frequently when we talk to other

00:48:11.740 people and you're you're one of our definitely one of our favorite um academics because you

00:48:16.760 explain things in a really nice straightforward way and also get the fact that there's a there's

00:48:21.620 a female angle to this which not all historians are into not all historians it's funny how it's

00:48:30.140 a woman historian that gets it yeah it is all that isn't it I found myself saying on a couple

00:48:36.440 of talks that I've given recently you know and some historians don't see it as a gendered issue

00:48:42.120 but I'll tell you this Professor Marion Gibson sees it as a gendered issue and then I always 0.98

00:48:46.720 name check you and all the women in the audience go oh yes yes I'm glad to hear I'm a thorn in 0.78

00:48:52.060 everybody's side that's basically what I get up for so Marion you're on here to talk about

00:48:58.860 your latest publication so can you tell us what that is and what our readers readers listeners

00:49:05.240 should know well i hope they'll be listeners and readers that's what we're all aiming for isn't it

00:49:10.840 um so it's it's called witchcraft a history in 13 trials and it covers a very broad range of time

00:49:19.140 which at times when i was writing the book i wished i hadn't started really so it goes for 700 years

00:49:24.800 you can see why I was a little bit taken aback by the ambition of what I had decided to do there

00:49:30.660 so we start in 1485 with a witchcraft case in Austria and that's the one involving somebody

00:49:37.780 who you will know very well Heinrich Kramer the author of Malleus Maleficarum so we talk about

00:49:43.800 one of the women who stood up to him which is really cool and then we move forward and the

00:49:49.160 first half of the book is about witches in the 15th. Can I ask? Oh, sorry. Can I ask? Sorry,

00:49:56.720 Marion. Is the woman that stood up to the one that there was a public meeting and she said, 0.97

00:50:02.480 this is a load of nonsense. And he said, you're a witch. Effectively. Yes. That does sum it up 1.00

00:50:08.800 reasonably well. There you go. Her. She's called Helena Schuyberin. And I think readers will want

00:50:14.320 to know about her she's she's a very cool woman and then dinners in her honor i mean yes we should

00:50:22.820 if if it could all have just been nipped in the bud there if somebody had said look this is a 0.94

00:50:27.580 load of nonsense stop harassing woman then it would have been so much better yeah if she'd won 1.00

00:50:34.160 i mean she does win in a sense yeah so it's not a complete gloom fest but she doesn't win she

00:50:41.060 Well, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you.

00:50:44.520 It's in the book, Clare. You have to read the book.

00:50:46.580 Yeah, you have to read the book, you see. This is what's called a spoiler, if I tell you.

00:50:53.340 I'm sorry, it's too much for a lawyer to hear about 13 trials, none of which I'm allowed to know the detail of.

00:50:58.900 No, you're really not. No, I'm going to withhold it all. Isn't that mean?

00:51:04.700 So the first half of the book deals with what then?

00:51:07.540 yeah the first half of the book deals with kind of the 15th or 18th centuries basically so we look

00:51:15.320 at we look at some cases that readers might have heard of um so people like the the victims of the

00:51:21.820 witch finder general trials in the 1640s in england again some people who you'll know very

00:51:28.040 well annie sampson and gilly duncan the two of the quotes north berwick witches we look at those

00:51:34.720 And we end up that that first section of the book with with Salem, 1692.

00:51:40.080 And then in part two, and this is where the book kind of goes off piste a little bit from your regular history of witchcraft.

00:51:47.300 I thought I'd look at bringing it up to date.

00:51:50.020 So what do which what does which mean now?

00:51:52.760 What does which trial or which hunts mean now?

00:51:55.020 And that's something we've heard a lot about in the news recently.

00:51:57.280 So the book goes forward from the 18th century to the present, looking at people who've either been accused of witchcraft, you know, in reality.

00:52:06.840 So people literally think they are witches or they've been accused in some sort of metaphorical way.

00:52:12.680 So we've got a spiritualist medium who was on trial.

00:52:15.560 People might know about her, Nellie Duncan, another Scott.

00:52:18.520 Hellish Nell. 1.00

00:52:19.780 Hellish Nell.

00:52:20.700 we talk about her um and then we talk about we talk about a man who was accused of witchcraft

00:52:28.800 in the 1920s in america and and in that case was actually murdered and somebody else was put on

00:52:34.320 trial as a witch for murdering him so whoa wow that sounds amazing and i love the modern angle

00:52:42.280 or the more modern angle so that i mean presumably i am not a historian presumably you wouldn't tend

00:52:49.320 to deal with things as recent I guess so a bit of a departure for you it is a bit of a departure

00:52:55.240 yeah and I brought it right up to date with Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels so I that really felt

00:52:59.980 like that is well out of my comfort zone but I felt like I had to do it because of course he

00:53:05.600 has repeatedly said he is the victim of a witch hunt I do not agree with him but it's very

00:53:10.820 interesting that he has picked that term and Stormy Daniels meanwhile his antagonist actually

00:53:16.720 says that she is a witch and a pagan so I thought well that's fascinating you really have to explore

00:53:21.800 that right I did not know that no I didn't know that either wow until I started looking at that

00:53:28.440 case and I just thought okay you have to tell this story don't you oh yeah yeah I mean she couldn't

00:53:33.860 really be more perfect actually then as the kind of a foil to him that's amazing yes it's very very

00:53:39.900 neat it felt like that was meant really we were definitely meant to end up there so that one I

00:53:44.660 think I think you probably know Claire I think you probably know where that one ends again as ever

00:53:50.220 we've just been interviewing somebody else very recently and we were we were talking about how

00:53:54.100 a lot of it hinges on sex and sexual repression you know it's this whole idea about the fear of

00:54:00.660 women the contempt for women as they're not sexually viable or if they don't make themselves

00:54:05.400 sexually available you know there's just so much of that in the background of a lot of these stories

00:54:10.460 I know not always, but there just does seem to be such an issue about fear of women and their sexuality.

00:54:17.160 Yeah, I think that's right. And she, Stormy Daniels, brings that right to the fore of the stories.

00:54:22.900 Absolutely. So you know where you're going with that one.

00:54:25.780 I've just Googled Stormy Daniels and witch and there's a whole like Reddit section. 0.96

00:54:31.580 Stormy Daniels is the baddest witch, witches be the patriarchy. I'm going to read that. 0.73

00:54:36.360 yeah exactly there's a what there's a famous tweet that she put out when she she was

00:54:41.500 somebody had taken her to court for something and and and she put out a tweet saying what do

00:54:46.080 you wear to a witch trial and she's very very good at talking that kind of language listen

00:54:52.200 listen did you did you get a chance to speak to stormy daniels no i didn't uh i thought about it

00:54:59.220 obviously i mean i would like to do that i thought about it but i thought i haven't i haven't got the

00:55:06.160 chance to speak to anybody else who's a witch or accused witch or a witch hunter in the book

00:55:12.100 so probably what I need to do is maintain some distance and tell the story um also for parity

00:55:18.680 you'd probably have to attempt at least to speak to Donald Trump and could you imagine

00:55:22.840 how how awful that'd be if actually you did speak to him and it'd be exactly the sort of thing he

00:55:28.780 would do to be weird and then you'd have to talk to Donald Trump and I don't think any book's worth

00:55:32.620 I don't think it would really go anywhere that, would it? 0.52

00:55:35.380 Yuck, puke.

00:55:36.820 But Zoe, we don't need parity. 0.98

00:55:39.480 So what if we read Marianne's book

00:55:41.580 and then say we've been inspired by Professor Gibson?

00:55:45.460 Can we speak to you about witches and witchcraft trials?

00:55:48.560 Come on, that would be interesting.

00:55:50.120 Go on.

00:55:50.680 Obviously, Marianne, you'd have to be on that podcast, obviously.

00:55:53.600 If you manage that, I will be delighted

00:55:56.960 because I would genuinely like to know what she has to say.

00:56:01.080 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:01.800 and the book's out now so that's okay so it's all right it is yeah so did you discover i mean you

00:56:08.680 you must know pretty much everything there is to know now but did you discover anything new or

00:56:12.960 anything surprising when you were researching yeah loads this is the thing you see well you know you

00:56:19.480 you know you start you you do start thinking okay i know quite a bit about this and then you read

00:56:23.460 some more and you think oh no wait there's all this other stuff i found out loads of stuff i

00:56:28.120 I mean, in particular, there's a chapter later on in the book

00:56:30.820 about witch trials in contemporary Southern Africa.

00:56:34.320 And I sort of themed it around.

00:56:35.740 Do you remember that film, I Am Not a Witch, from 2017?

00:56:40.620 I sort of themed it around that.

00:56:42.120 So I started with that, thinking, oh, well, I've seen this film,

00:56:45.320 so I have some sense maybe of where to begin this story.

00:56:48.120 But it was a lot harder than I thought.

00:56:50.320 Is that the film with a girl?

00:56:50.760 Is that the film with a girl?

00:56:51.460 Yeah, I love that film.

00:56:53.000 Yeah, it's a fantastic film.

00:56:54.720 So for listeners that haven't seen that,

00:56:56.960 it's really really worth seeking out it's kind of like it's kind of magical um it's not a

00:57:02.200 documentary but there's stuff in it that is true stuff and it's it's a really visually interesting

00:57:07.540 film as well it's definitely worth watching it's a good one it's a beautiful film and and the

00:57:12.360 director rungano nioni she researched it really carefully so it does talk about things that

00:57:19.200 really happen um and it's set in zambia and it sort of draws from from trials across different

00:57:25.420 countries for the experience of this little girl and and so I thought that would be a great place

00:57:30.640 to start but once I I wandered out beyond that you know I found out all sorts about the kind of

00:57:36.740 trials that are going on and just the sheer numbers of people who are being accused I you know I know

00:57:41.260 you've spoken to people like Leo Igwe haven't you about this issue and yeah I was genuinely shocked

00:57:47.700 by the the scale of witchcraft persecution in in contemporary countries. We're also going to speak

00:57:54.320 to somebody on the podcast that we met um when zoe and i were given our doctor of laws at the

00:58:01.060 university of dundee um just zoe's like did we did we clear you know it's more like claire

00:58:08.100 you're such a show can't help it i'm so proud of it um it's a good thing oh it's so it was so kind

00:58:15.920 of them we're so made up but we we met on that particular day and it just shows you how good it

00:58:20.520 is to bring people together from completely different worlds.

00:58:23.420 A doctor who was getting another doctor of laws

00:58:26.480 in relation to climate change,

00:58:29.220 and we spoke to him,

00:58:31.080 and he was explaining to us that in his country

00:58:33.560 there were witchcraft accusations because of climate change,

00:58:38.080 because people did not understand

00:58:40.020 the changes in the weather that were happening.

00:58:43.180 And lo and behold, we have 21st century weather witches,

00:58:47.500 people being accused of changing the weather

00:58:49.280 when it's actually down to climate change that's that's professor austin chiofwa who's in malawi

00:58:54.820 so he's the stuff he was talking about and i was talking to a kenyan lawyer recently who was saying

00:59:00.540 to me that pre-colonialism pre the colonizers there was always an understanding like a sort

00:59:07.600 of cultural spiritual understanding about magic and it wasn't seen as necessarily being something

00:59:12.760 that had to be punished it was just something that existed and then and it just really sort

00:59:17.100 of made me think about i'd really like to get somebody on that is a historian about colonialism

00:59:21.300 that knows about that like how much of it was that um that there wasn't an issue until the 0.95

00:59:26.340 europeans arrived and then there was an issue because they brought all that crap with them

00:59:29.400 and that's the kind of thing i say in the book yeah but i really wouldn't claim to be the expert

00:59:33.880 at all i'm sure there are lots of people who know more but i do think it's a completely legitimate

00:59:39.580 argument yeah i think before you know before european missionaries went there taking with

00:59:46.060 them demonology among all the other things i mean many of the things that they brought with them

00:59:50.880 were yeah well meant stuff like you know maternity clinics and schools and all of this kind of thing

00:59:56.360 but they also took with them demonology and that that's a terrible curse rather than a gift which

01:00:01.940 is we when we went to see it as a handy size for travel i always thought it was like a disney book

01:00:06.700 of spells you know one of those giant things that was like the you know you wouldn't fit in a

01:00:11.560 backpack that turns out to be a pamphlet so you know easy to count yeah it's true that's wonderful

01:00:17.380 a travel size a fun size terminology how lovely you could imagine them like traveling about

01:00:25.080 whether it's you know across continents or it's around britain around england around their beat

01:00:29.440 as as you know as witch finders or as prickers or whatever with them having that on them you know as

01:00:34.940 a you know as a how-to it's like a lonely planet guide but like witches and how to you know

01:00:40.600 horrifying but it is horrifying it was a really interesting example of how the written words

01:00:46.040 can have so much power and that was that was just held up and i we did well i did an event recently

01:00:53.260 where i was talking to a group of american lawyers and one of the things we talked about was

01:00:57.040 the james the king james translation of the bible and whether he had because of his

01:01:02.320 his sort of leanings shall we say whether the translation was sort of tilted towards his

01:01:09.720 worldview you know like thou shalt not suffer a witch if it was actually the word witch was there

01:01:15.020 or if it's an interpretation of something that maybe wasn't a witch so if you know like a

01:01:18.960 theological translation expert just let me know yeah that would be interesting too and again that's

01:01:25.140 not me but it would be great to talk to somebody about that wouldn't it yeah yeah so when you when

01:01:31.940 you moved sort of through the first half of the bit with the early things did all the characters

01:01:37.260 well they're not characters the real people the people that you wrote about had you known of them

01:01:41.280 previously or did you find some as you're researching about all the ones in part one i

01:01:48.100 guess but some of them i didn't know very well so one of the chapters is about the norwegian

01:01:54.180 witches um that liv elaine willemson has written about i don't know if you've come across her in

01:01:59.720 your travels we've recently interviewed the um the writer anya bergman that wrote oh yes yes

01:02:05.520 yes bardo so it's all about that and she did lots of research with the writer the historian

01:02:12.280 that you're talking about yeah and also we must give a shout out to um the two people in orkney

01:02:18.200 that did the orkney memorial because a lot of their work was underpinned by live's work too

01:02:23.180 that's lovely yeah and i didn't know as much about that as some of the others and then again that was

01:02:28.280 a real journey of discovery i ended up talking about the indigenous woman who was initially

01:02:32.900 accused in that case quite a lot and I sort of paralleled her with Tituba from the the Salem

01:02:38.380 witchcraft trials and what I tried to do was as far as you can give them back some sense of their

01:02:45.280 own history their own autonomy and try to see it a bit less through the eyes of the colonizers who

01:02:49.880 who accused them and I renamed Tituba as well and again it's really an attempt to kind of give her

01:02:57.340 back something other than the story that is told over and over and over again about her so

01:03:02.040 i've called her tatter bay because initially the the child in the enslaved child who was found in

01:03:09.240 the records in barbados who does seem to be the girl who grows up into our woman who's then accused

01:03:14.780 in salem when she's taken there that that girl was called tachuba and then fast forward to the

01:03:21.640 end of tituba's trial when and this kind of is a spoiler but people probably know this one by now

01:03:27.360 because it's a really famous case she gets released from jail um she gets released under the name

01:03:32.800 tatterbay it's not spelt tituba and her name's spelt like seven nine different ways during the

01:03:39.560 course of trial so i thought well why not pick the one with which she starts and exits her trial 0.98

01:03:43.580 and call her that instead and maybe maybe you know maybe she did call herself that maybe she

01:03:47.980 didn't I don't know but at least it gives you a different way into that trial I've tried in each 0.62

01:03:53.380 case to shape things up a bit and give readers something new she's not just this stereotyped

01:03:59.040 idea that that we have and in the culture sort of the popular culture about what happened in there

01:04:04.160 yeah that's the idea yeah I'm not sure I've always got it right I mean I think readers will I hope

01:04:10.340 readers will find it really interesting but I also just want to sort of push them to to have their

01:04:14.900 own ideas and and to come back and say you know no I think this should have been like this or

01:04:19.160 why didn't you talk about that one can we have something about that one um but I tried to pick

01:04:23.980 them so that the stories talk to each other and each one offers either new records or it offers

01:04:30.560 a different interpretation or it throws something in that's a bit surprising and gets you to think

01:04:35.680 about so okay what what does which mean then what does which mean now how what's the journey it's

01:04:40.980 gone on i i don't i don't know if it's possible for me for like the third or perhaps fourth podcast

01:04:47.300 in a row to go i recently saw the crucible so my brother may cut this out he's like jesus christ

01:04:52.520 okay you saw the crucible get over it but what i was really interested in in the one that i saw i

01:04:57.600 mean it was it was amazing and if there's any opportunity for you to go and see it um or see

01:05:02.660 online if if that's available and do that but what what was really interested me about it because i

01:05:08.500 haven't seen it since I was a kid I suppose was in the one that certainly they showed I don't know

01:05:15.760 how true it was to form but Tituba hardly had any part in it I think she's maybe like two or three

01:05:21.080 lines and she appeared to be the catalyst for the girls being out in the forest dancing and singing

01:05:26.860 but her part literally in the crucible is is completely sidelined with a different story

01:05:33.160 It's interesting that, I mean, I know it's the story that's made up in The Crucible is entirely made up.

01:05:41.320 Names are borrowed, but the story is made up.

01:05:44.520 But I just thought it was funny that she played such a small part in it, of something that in real life she played such a big part in.

01:05:52.940 Yes, I think that's right. Yeah.

01:05:54.740 and the you know the crucible's always held up isn't it as the great example of showing that

01:06:00.940 witch trials are about persecution and and you know reframing them for modernity but it still

01:06:07.240 was written in the 1950s so it still does have a lot of baggage you know whether that that is about

01:06:13.020 race or gender or whatever yeah i mean it's like oh it shows you that witch trials aren't real

01:06:18.300 yeah but it's basically the story of a child being abused by an older man and then her

01:06:23.740 manipulating the situation to to cause death and carnage you know it's kind of like you know I mean

01:06:30.120 yes it is an absolutely great play don't get me wrong but there's a lot with the modern eye that

01:06:36.040 that is wrong with the way it's presented in a story yes yeah there is it is a very problematic

01:06:43.540 play I thought one of the great things that production did actually was was just turn things

01:06:49.480 around a little bit and gives the women a bit more the female characters were a lot more empathetic

01:06:54.980 it seemed to me than they often are in productions of crucible and i felt like the director and cast

01:07:00.240 had wanted to focus on that because they too were probably a bit fed up with with the kind of classic 0.89

01:07:05.840 reading that oh you know abigail is a very naughty girl and a bit witch-like and isn't it all her

01:07:12.120 fault really instead of isn't it all the quotes witch's fault no i think you get oh sorry no i

01:07:19.800 was just going to say as an english teacher i think it's a i think it's just really important

01:07:23.600 for us all was to say with a fictional text like that if it's from the 50s we don't read it as if

01:07:29.400 we're in the 50s we obviously have our own ideas that we put onto it but we still have to have an

01:07:33.520 understanding of the fact the climate in which it was written and it just if it's still provoking

01:07:37.620 conversation and thought and engagement and interest and then making people then go and

01:07:42.160 maybe pick up your book marian who want to know like the facts behind things that happened at

01:07:47.300 certain times then i'm all for it and it's obviously still hugely captivating i mean i

01:07:52.180 i went in and spoke to um our higher one of our higher english classes a couple of weeks ago

01:07:56.980 about the witches scotland podcast because they're doing the crucible and i could see that the kids

01:08:01.260 were then making a connection and kind of going right okay this isn't an irrelevance even though

01:08:05.940 it's set in in those years and it was written in those years there is a link to scotland and my

01:08:10.660 experience and who i am and that's what a good writer does isn't it is that you link up your

01:08:14.520 story with all the stories you know and it's all human experience yes and it is a wonderful play

01:08:20.580 i i really would say to people if you can get down to london and see it or if it can go on on

01:08:26.120 tall to be fantastic try and get to see this production because it you know i've seen the

01:08:31.500 crucible before like you Zoe I've taught it as well and and it had come to feel like a little

01:08:36.640 bit like oh that again yeah but this really brought new wind into its sails I thought it

01:08:42.620 was a fantastic production I'd love to see it I'm really hoping to get down to that that big city

01:08:48.120 of London and now fingers crossed if you can we're I don't know how long it's on for either

01:08:53.520 of you two got any idea I don't know I'm really hoping it will run we'll put a link we'll put a

01:08:59.080 link to whatever we can find out so that if you're listening to this and you think well i might be

01:09:02.580 able to plan that let's see if we can find out but i mean i know that i'm down in is it october

01:09:08.020 that we're down in london claire i mean i know you're there at the moment but we're down there

01:09:11.700 for for that event at the british library so if it's still on then maybe i'll see it then if not

01:09:15.140 before but it's amazing to make that connection between the stories that you're telling through

01:09:20.120 history and then being real people and that after all is what we're doing with our campaign is that

01:09:25.400 we want people to make that connection and think this this isn't just the name of a person this

01:09:30.460 isn't this was an actual person in an actual community um here's the parallel of things that

01:09:35.740 are happening now so that people get involved with it and say right we're better than this

01:09:40.020 you know and that's the idea yeah to present each individual with as much empathy as possible

01:09:46.820 and with as much factual detail as i could possibly find about them and can i ask you can i

01:09:52.780 push you it's like jeremy paxman can i push you now um not really um to tell us of the 13 what's

01:10:01.020 your favorite trial for whatever reason i think it's the first one yeah i i have thought about

01:10:07.780 this and there are it's like desert island this isn't it you know can i keep can i keep about

01:10:13.020 three or four please but no if i have to really whittle it down i think i would say the first

01:10:17.820 on Helena because I didn't know a massive amount about that case I knew as people do a lot more

01:10:24.300 about Heinrich than I did about the women who he accused because that's how history has been

01:10:29.340 working up to this point and it really shouldn't but when I was looking at Helena I was so impressed 0.93

01:10:35.620 by her I um she's so noisy she won't shut up she keeps heaping insults on her persecutor 1.00

01:10:43.320 you get the sense that she was a woman with strong religious views and with a strong personality and

01:10:49.480 a strong very strong sense of her own innocence and the innocence of the women who were accused

01:10:54.520 alongside her they were all women in this case and I just I was so impressed by her I could I

01:11:01.640 didn't feel like I could get to know her in quite the way that I wanted I mean somebody perhaps one

01:11:06.700 day will turn up more records about her I don't know but there was enough there to hear that

01:11:11.440 woman's voice even though it was seven centuries ago so i'd keep helena if i if i could out of all

01:11:17.300 of them i think so it's amazing what you know what keeps turning up i think with research documents

01:11:24.220 sometime we've just recently had um judith langland scott on we've just interviewed her and

01:11:30.580 she's discovered and i can say this because she's she's tweeted about this that she has now discovered

01:11:35.820 and confirmed where now my understanding of this is the only convicted witch in scotland where her

01:11:43.400 body resides so she's confirmed where that is which is something that she's just discovered

01:11:48.820 in the last sort of few weeks so there is still things that are there there are things in different

01:11:54.440 areas that are there are being confirmed with things so this is the thing yeah you i don't

01:11:59.940 think we ever know it all i really don't i think there is so much to discover and the more people

01:12:05.340 go into archives and poke about looking for individual names the better. What she's also

01:12:11.880 discovered Marion with her research as citizen academic as she is is that she has increased the

01:12:18.380 numbers in her small village in Forfer from something like 42 to 52 or something around that

01:12:24.940 it might not be exactly sorry Judith should just be listening to this going I know the exact amount

01:12:29.120 but she's it was it was an appreciable number of additional names of people that had been accused

01:12:34.800 of witchcraft and you just think if you multiply that right across Scotland then the estimate of

01:12:41.040 4,000 people being accused is is very low and the reason that we get that estimate is from

01:12:47.040 the work that's been done before by academics and in the survey of Scottish witchcraft in the

01:12:53.400 introduction it actually says basically we've been limited by time and money so we've taken the

01:12:59.040 obvious routes to identify when people have been accused of witchcraft and here they are and here

01:13:04.540 of their names but but that caveat thrown up at the start is clear that if somebody had a lot more

01:13:11.380 money and a lot more ability to go through they may uncover different names like judith who who

01:13:17.440 follows the money who goes to the the town records and finds out how many candles were burned to keep

01:13:24.860 people awake how gruesomely how long the rope was that sort of thing yes absolutely i think there's

01:13:31.760 so much more to find i really do and it is it is about time and money and the amount of time and

01:13:37.240 money that people can put into research you know we all we all do our bit and and then somebody else

01:13:42.440 does some more and then somebody else does a bit more and somebody finds something by chance

01:13:46.180 and it's it's this wonderful cumulative process yeah it's really cool i like that and i also like

01:13:52.160 the fact that because of the um the internet and things that are being digitized and so on

01:13:56.960 that that there's people who are not traditional historians that are finding out something about

01:14:01.460 maybe their own family line that then brings something to light that can be shared and can

01:14:05.280 just be another little piece in the in the jigsaw it's really cool yes it really is i think family

01:14:10.140 historians have a lot to bring to this yeah it's fascinating so what's next for you oh well i know

01:14:18.280 already this is the thing you know people start asking me prolific i know i'm tired i'm thinking

01:14:25.920 that since we had you on last time you've had another book out as well in that time

01:14:30.120 so there was the witches of st oseth wasn't there did i don't think we've spoken to you about that

01:14:35.220 because i think we had john last time that was about to come out so we'll have to can we have

01:14:39.260 you back on again to talk about the way you can do a retrospective on that one yeah because it's

01:14:45.920 not the sort of thing where people go oh well that's past now we're not interested it's you

01:14:49.260 know again it'll be on the reading list and people go for god's sake another bloody book

01:14:53.640 It's a fab story. Oh, you're going to love that one. Yeah.

01:14:58.520 Marianne, give us a taster for next time. 0.78

01:15:01.480 So the next one. Yeah, yeah. So, well, give us a taster of your previous book.

01:15:07.020 Yes. Speak to us about the next time.

01:15:09.160 The Witches of St. Oseth is a fabulous, detailed story.

01:15:13.240 This is one case that I talk about in this book.

01:15:15.940 And this is a group of people who were accused in Essex in 1582.

01:15:19.740 and there's a pamphlet about them you know so a kind of early modern news account of their story

01:15:26.560 and just as we've been saying really just now i was able to find out a whole heap of stuff about

01:15:32.080 those individuals which nobody looked for before essentially by using the methods of the family

01:15:36.320 historian and going back to the parish registers and you know picking through deeds and wills and

01:15:41.180 manor records and all that kind of thing oh it's a great story how cool is it to uncover stuff that

01:15:48.620 people haven't known about for a hundred of years and think I'm the person that knows that that must

01:15:53.480 be amazing it is amazing and I feel I just feel so happy every time that it sort brings tears to

01:16:01.360 my eyes I'm so happy I have found this woman I have found something about her that nobody knew

01:16:07.500 and would have made such a difference to her story and the way that it's been told if they

01:16:12.480 had known that you think people in thousands of years time will uncover the witches of Scotland

01:16:17.480 podcast and say we have found marion clear and zone yes and here they are here they are

01:16:24.940 suffering through their research look at that and there'll be people in 3 000 years time going

01:16:30.080 nothing's changed nothing's changed i know i remember you saying that previous i don't know

01:16:35.300 if it was in in the speech you made to the the scottish parliament when you were giving evidence

01:16:40.020 i think it might have been and i yeah i do remember you saying that are we going to look

01:16:44.900 back on this and think nothing was that different yes things had changed to some extent but really

01:16:49.900 had they underlyingly changed were we not still scapegoating and persecuting people

01:16:54.400 particularly women in some cases and that was yeah i thought that was very insightful thing

01:17:00.300 that you said there there's no better point to stop on i think there's a way yes it's true it's

01:17:06.260 true i mean like claire and i sometimes talk about what will our next campaign be but it would it

01:17:10.940 would have to be another campaign that related to women you know and it would probably be a modern 0.58

01:17:16.380 day thing about violence against women because it never fucking changes i'm sorry to swear but it's 0.61

01:17:23.060 just it never changes don't you apologize so it's very very least we're doing at this particular 0.89

01:17:29.280 stage in the justifiable it's justifiable to swear yeah i think so anyway i really do but

01:17:35.980 it's been an absolute treat to have you back on i'm really glad you're secured to come back again

01:17:40.200 it's a pleasure it's a pleasure it's always fun to talk to you excellent well have have a lovely

01:17:46.200 summer and uh and our listeners can find various books that you've written but particularly this

01:17:53.180 new one tell us the title again so they know exactly who to ask for in the shop so this is

01:17:57.720 witchcraft a history in 13 trials great title really good title for various reasons so go and

01:18:05.440 look that up listeners and thank you once again professor marian gibson thank you claire thank

01:18:11.900 you can't wait see you bye yeah bye bye

01:18:15.620 well thank you so much for joining us today on this particularly uh ramblingly introduced

01:18:30.280 episode i feel like that's maybe one of the longer intros we've ever done claire

01:18:34.420 and I hope that you all have enough sense

01:18:36.680 to just fast forward to

01:18:38.140 when the guest comes

01:18:40.840 on because I think I probably would

01:18:42.580 but it's been really nice having you

01:18:44.800 all here again, hi, hello

01:18:46.520 Hi everyone, we're so so sorry

01:18:48.680 and I think we should

01:18:50.820 do, you know how we're continually

01:18:52.780 surprised by

01:18:54.280 how many podcasts we've done

01:18:56.200 should we continually promise that we're going

01:18:58.760 to do another edition

01:19:00.900 every two weeks at the end

01:19:02.660 I think we should promise that

01:19:04.700 and we should really mean it

01:19:06.360 which we always do

01:19:07.160 but we should really make it actually happen

01:19:09.120 also

01:19:09.940 okay

01:19:10.180 we thought the last time if we said it

01:19:13.280 it would definitely prompt it to happen

01:19:15.540 but we're just very busy ladies 0.94

01:19:17.280 we are

01:19:18.220 we're not just sitting around

01:19:19.780 life is bananas

01:19:21.000 but we will get another one out

01:19:23.760 sharpish

01:19:24.620 I really hope you enjoyed this one

01:19:27.000 because we really enjoyed recording with Marion

01:19:29.020 she was really really great

01:19:30.240 and is definitely worth going to see

01:19:32.100 she's like really fascinating and just very wise and has a nice way of communicating a wise woman

01:19:38.240 yes i don't know zoe i mean i i know like i'm doing like various things um you know endlessly

01:19:46.080 scrolling and tick tock that sort of thing but i mean quite a lot of your time so you tell me

01:19:52.800 is still taken up with a raccoon and raven training yes right but i've got them to a stage

01:20:00.560 now where i've got them doing small administrative tasks for me which is quite useful if we could

01:20:06.340 just train them to speak we could get them to do the intro and the outro have you thought about

01:20:10.500 administrative tasks away yeah you know um like responding to emails i'm selling a lot of stuff

01:20:18.100 on vintage just now so they're able to go down and deliver it to the yodel thing at the co-op

01:20:22.960 shameless plug

01:20:24.100 no i've been like i don't have like a shop or anything it's just stuff that i'm just trying

01:20:31.000 to clear my house out a little bit but um yeah that sort of thing um uh yeah they're they're

01:20:37.120 quite useful in that way yeah yeah i mean as a as a thing to be able to do taking your stuff

01:20:45.860 to the post office i mean you know that's as useful as anything else yeah the two of the

01:20:51.400 ravens carry the package in between them if it's like reasonably sized i just tie the instructions

01:20:56.020 around their ankle i think the next thing our code on its phone i think the next thing that

01:21:02.560 you should do is train three of them to stand on top of one another put a put a raincoat on them

01:21:09.360 and go and fill up your car with petrol go and look outside your window claire i've done that

01:21:13.860 very thing just to see them out ladies and gentlemen we have to bring a short close to this

01:21:19.420 podcast I have to go and regard some raccoons it's so rambly right okay Claire it's been a

01:21:27.060 pleasure talking to you listeners thank you for bearing with us on this very difficult point in

01:21:31.460 our lives and and we will see you in two weeks will you hear from us in two weeks yeah if you

01:21:36.840 see us in two weeks then it does mean we've tracked you down yes bye bye

01:21:42.760 if you'd like to learn more about the witches of Scotland

01:21:47.700 please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

01:21:50.420 sign up for our mailing list

01:21:52.500 at www.witchesofscotland.com

01:21:56.540 to keep updated with the campaign

01:21:58.340 on that site you'll be able to find

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Witches of Scotland - October 09, 2023

EPISODE 70 - PROFESSOR GIBSON - WITCHCRAFT - A HISTORY IN 13 TRIALS

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