Witches of Scotland - MAIRI KIDD WARRIORS & WITCHES & DAMN REBEL BITCHES

00:00:00.200 Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell, QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:05.220 I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases,

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

00:00:11.580 about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted,

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

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

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

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

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

00:00:33.120 Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.

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

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

00:00:55.680 Welcome to episode three of Witches of Scotland podcast.

00:00:59.160 We've had a busy week and we've been lining up great guests for the coming shows.

00:01:02.700 Thanks for all your messages on social media in the past week.

00:01:05.000 We love hearing from you, so do keep getting in touch.

00:01:07.880 This week we're joined by Mari Kidd, who's the author of various different books,

00:01:11.640 including Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Witches,

00:01:15.260 and more recently, Feisty and Fiery and Fierce, 1.00

00:01:18.440 Badass Celtic Women to Live Your Life By from Scotland, Ireland and Wales. 0.74

00:01:23.240 Mari has an incredible knowledge of Scottish history, folklore and tradition, 1.00

00:01:26.840 and in this episode she tells us about some of the most notable witches of Scotland

00:01:30.680 and some of her favourite stories and tales.

00:01:34.520 Mary, I bought the book, absolutely love it.

00:01:37.320 I just wondered why was it that you decided to write about witches at all?

00:01:41.560 That's a great question.

00:01:42.900 I don't remember consciously deciding I wanted to write about witches

00:01:46.260 but I think it's impossible to write about the history of women in Scotland

00:01:49.320 without writing about witchcraft because we were such a shocking nation.

00:01:53.520 We attempted to set ourselves up as, what do we say, in godly nation and our persecution of women.

00:01:59.760 I think also in the Gaelic tradition, there's a lot of reference to women being buried in slightly odd ways. 0.90

00:02:07.580 So, for example, the poet Marie Ninalz de Roi, Mary MacLeod of Rodol, she was buried face down as a witch.

00:02:13.680 Sorry, I should say she was buried face down in the way the Norse buried a witch under stones because she made poetry.

00:02:20.240 So I think wherever there are women, there's a notion of something around witches.

00:02:24.520 So I think it would be impossible to write about women in Scotland without writing about witches.

00:02:28.040 I mean, that's quite a thing, isn't it?

00:02:30.120 Really, to say that the history of women in Scotland is the history of being called a witch.

00:02:35.580 It just shows you how pervasive it is through our society.

00:02:40.160 Absolutely. And so much discourse.

00:02:42.400 I think it's actually mentioned in the book.

00:02:44.240 I was thinking about, you know, this burn the witch stuff around Hillary Clinton and the campaign trail in 2016.

00:02:49.800 being caricatured as a witch yeah yes forward very much in those hundreds of years

00:02:54.840 and i've talked about this quite a lot about the sort of the modern usage of the word witch hunt

00:03:00.540 and about how witch is like you're saying very neat and tidy way of shutting a woman down

00:03:05.280 you know and of sort of introducing an element of you know she's not to be trusted she's uncanny in

00:03:10.960 some way i think that's it's very interesting that that still exists so many hundred years

00:03:15.660 after the fact of the great witch trials.

00:03:19.280 I hope it's not a very unserious thing to say,

00:03:21.700 but one of my favourite writers in the world

00:03:23.940 is Terry Pratchett,

00:03:25.400 because I just loved the way he wrote witches,

00:03:27.580 because he just recognised that they were women

00:03:29.980 who were really sensible.

00:03:32.160 And, you know, Granny Weatherwax

00:03:33.560 is one of my favourite characters in all of literature,

00:03:36.060 with all of her hedology, as she calls it,

00:03:37.900 when she just basically practises

00:03:39.320 a lot of really clever medicine 1.00

00:03:41.080 and gives people a dose of what they need.

00:03:43.360 And I just, I love the idea

00:03:44.480 that he brought witches down to just being actually really sensible women so he almost

00:03:48.480 flipped it. Zoe and I were also talking as well and we reckoned that in the modern day

00:03:54.320 women just kind of walk around assuming that if they lived in those times they would have been

00:04:00.380 called a witch. I think there's a big element of that I'm reading at the moment Laura Bates's book

00:04:05.960 on the incel culture and it went men who hate women absolutely fascinating you start to see

00:04:12.680 the same kind of level of discourse coming through she also wrote a young adult book the burning

00:04:17.380 which is about a teenage girl and i don't want to give too much away here but a teenage girl who has

00:04:22.600 to relocate from england to scotland because of some modern pressures around social media and it

00:04:29.020 then delves backwards into the story of a witch from fife in the past i'd really love to get her

00:04:35.480 on the podcast to talk about the sort of the modern issues about witch hunts and obviously

00:04:40.040 with her specialist knowledge about toxic masculinity and so on i think she'd be a fantastic

00:04:44.880 guest to get on i was i should say i was really lucky last year i interviewed laura on stage about

00:04:49.620 the young adult novel at the book festival and it was great it was a great discussion and i think

00:04:55.600 that her parallels between witch hunting and how young women are treated by society at large today

00:05:02.280 was absolutely brilliant i've got a teenage daughter and although nothing nothing's happened

00:05:07.760 to her that's similar to story in the burning we see it with adults of course don't we particularly

00:05:12.100 on twitter to fall foul of the consensus of thought and then and then what can happen with

00:05:17.960 that it's a really interesting and horrifying area absolutely when you were writing the book

00:05:23.000 were there particular witches that you warmed to or their story resonated with you i think yeah

00:05:30.800 absolutely it's interesting thinking about warming to them i don't fully know how to say her first

00:05:35.040 name Euphemi or Euphemia, as we would know the name today, but her surname is McLean.

00:05:40.600 And she is not precisely the idea that I think most of us who think actively about the witch

00:05:46.620 persecutions maybe have of a witch. We kind of tend to think about women who perhaps were isolated,

00:05:52.480 who didn't have male protection, who perhaps, you know, practiced midwifery or some other form of

00:05:58.580 women-centric and women-dominated medical care, or, you know, who were isolated in other ways,

00:06:04.540 dementia or illness or social isolation or poverty euphemia was quite different she was the daughter

00:06:11.700 of lord clifton hall she was his only child and so she became his heir she inherited his

00:06:20.040 substantial properties and she married a man called patrick mosscrop and it wasn't a particularly

00:06:28.320 happy marriage on the face of it you kind of think yay for her because he took her surname

00:06:33.160 and you kind of think that's very modern

00:06:35.120 but it was not a happy scenario

00:06:37.000 and I think there's a lot of suggestion

00:06:38.880 that he resented her and her power

00:06:41.080 and at the point she was accused

00:06:43.340 of witchcraft, she was caught up

00:06:45.240 in the North Beric witch trials

00:06:46.820 and at that point he'd actually left her

00:06:49.180 they were living apart and he was in France

00:06:51.480 and she was accused

00:06:53.340 by Galus Duncan

00:06:54.660 whose name of course has been stolen

00:06:56.920 by Outlander but who was

00:06:59.080 one of the primary witnesses

00:07:01.000 in the North Beric persecutions

00:07:02.920 And Gaelis Duncan worked for a man called David Seaton, who was one of the kind of movers and shakers in the witch persecutions. 0.71

00:07:11.340 And he passed on the accusations against euphemia. 0.50

00:07:15.880 And he was married to her sister-in-law, to Catherine Moskrop, Patrick Moskrop's sister.

00:07:21.780 And there had been some bitter feuding around property.

00:07:25.280 suddenly all of the moss crops just piled on and found all these nonsensical accusations

00:07:32.320 to raise against euphemia and she was tried she was interestingly she was on her own in terms of

00:07:39.160 protection at that point the husband had absconded and she only had daughters he maintained he'd

00:07:45.440 absconded because he was in fear of his life um so she was taken up and she was tried and the

00:07:51.040 sentence makes horrible reading i think i've actually got it here do you want me to

00:07:54.800 this is a sentencing statement passed on eupheme mclean in 1591 and it says eupheme mclean

00:08:04.900 as culpable and guilty thereof to be taken to the castle hill of edinburgh and there bound to the

00:08:11.780 stake and burned in ashes quick to the death and all in sundry her lands heritages tax steadings

00:08:20.460 rooms possessions corns cattle goods and gear to be forfeited and as cheats to the sovereign

00:08:27.740 lord's use so what they were doing there was taking all her property off her while they killed 0.69

00:08:33.300 her and burning her alive because quick to the death of course means alive to that it's quick 1.00

00:08:37.960 in the sense that you say a baby quickens it's alive so she was burned alive other women who 1.00

00:08:44.900 were usually strangled first 0.73

00:08:48.640 and then when they were burned

00:08:50.400 they had already been strangled

00:08:52.680 it was a way to get rid of the body

00:08:54.020 but that was a particularly cruel death

00:08:56.720 to decide to kill her in that way

00:08:58.620 Absolutely, and part of me thinks that 0.98

00:09:00.440 that is because she was a threat to power

00:09:02.660 and there's a kind of postscript to the story

00:09:04.920 which is really miserable

00:09:05.900 This gentleman, David Ogilvie

00:09:08.020 sort of appears in the story

00:09:09.500 and he comes and he speaks for her at her trial

00:09:12.120 and he speaks to Gellis

00:09:13.740 He gets permission to speak to Galis Duncan and he says, you know, she admits that she'd never even met the woman when she accused her.

00:09:21.600 But of course, she's a servant in the house of this woman's brother-in-law who has every reason to want to destroy her.

00:09:29.040 And David Ogilvie, of course, he doesn't manage to obtain any mercy for her.

00:09:33.180 But later, after she died, after she was killed, he was able to get her property back to the family.

00:09:40.720 And thereupon, you think he's a kind of decent guy trying to do the right thing.

00:09:44.860 Doesn't he, of course, marry the daughter and ensure that the property is passed back into the control of the males of the family? 0.88

00:09:51.540 What steps someone will go to to obtain control of property from women? 0.88

00:09:55.880 And it seems pretty clear there. 0.99

00:09:57.900 Claire, when you were reading out the sentencing statement, it seems very much as if it is.

00:10:02.160 And this is all about belongings and money and status and power.

00:10:05.580 It seems like a very cut and dried financial thing.

00:10:10.720 Yeah, it certainly looks that way from the way she was sentenced.

00:10:14.720 It was clear it was a punishment and taking her belongings from her.

00:10:18.060 And isn't it just the way that they, I mean, everything is listed,

00:10:21.580 you know, our lands, our heritages, our tax, our steadings, our rooms,

00:10:25.100 the rooms, not just the buildings, but the rooms.

00:10:27.900 We're having it all.

00:10:29.000 You know, it's just so absolutely barefacedly greedy and grabbing. 1.00

00:10:35.280 And the idea that a woman could be owning all of these things, 0.92

00:10:37.880 I read it as really telling you the absolute offence that that gave to the men of Scotland

00:10:43.060 at the time. I like you. You finished that chapter, Mary, with the phrase,

00:10:47.860 the gender hierarchy was firmly back in place. Yes, absolutely. I mean, it all just looks like 0.97

00:10:53.500 a takedown, doesn't it? With the benefit of hindsight. And who knows, perhaps it looked

00:10:57.640 like a takedown at the time. There were people, including James, who obviously wrote the book

00:11:03.920 demonology james the sixth and the first there were people who came around even including him

00:11:09.940 to the view that some people that had been killed as witches weren't witches and wasn't it in this

00:11:14.580 case james the sixth that granted that power to allow them to get their property back yes although

00:11:20.800 interestingly back into the hands of the main you know i was thinking about james the sixth and first

00:11:25.620 the other day just kind of what his life must have been like as a child you know his mother

00:11:30.380 imprisoned the narrative being that she was a dreadful woman and of course that his faith and

00:11:37.000 her faith had gone asunder as it were and you just think what sort of damage was he carrying

00:11:42.040 around not that it's an excuse but it's an interesting thought with my very very poor

00:11:47.080 scottish history was he the son of mary queen of scots yes he was right i'm really glad i got that

00:11:55.580 right that's probably embarrassing and she's she's one of your witches as well isn't she she's one of

00:12:00.920 my witches i've got lots of women who weren't necessarily accused of witchcraft they were

00:12:05.120 certainly called witches at points just in the way that it could be used as a casual insult but

00:12:10.460 there's a lot of reference to her being bewitching there was one i can't now remember the the one but 0.91

00:12:16.660 one of them was was accused of having caused their neighbor to get an erection oh my god 1.00

00:12:21.920 and so obviously that was witchcraft exactly the idea and in a way so I put in some women who were 0.98

00:12:30.220 just according to history or oral tradition were bewitching in their own right I also I mean I had 0.99

00:12:35.380 some quite funny ones I had Helen Duncan who was not a witch but she was a bit of a charlatan she 0.91

00:12:40.100 was a false medium so she was the last person to be tried under the witchcraft act people were 0.96

00:12:45.320 asking about her they when they ask about how can you want to obtain a pardon she was clearly a 0.57

00:12:50.240 charlatan the answer is that we're not trying to obtain pardons for those people we're trying to

00:12:55.360 obtain pardons under the scottish witchcraft act and that's between the 16th and 18th century so

00:13:01.280 people who think we're trying to get convictions overturned for people who were usually fleecing

00:13:07.340 people for money by saying that they could speak to dead people and passing on messages

00:13:12.220 holding seances where all sorts of tricks were played and people were not trying to get pardons 0.99

00:13:17.540 Although, do you know, it's a terrible thing to say, but I quite like the bad women in my books.

00:13:22.100 Rachel Cheesley, Lady Grange, she was born in the house I used to live in and she felt like my flatmate just 400 years out of time. 0.57

00:13:29.420 And I kind of admired for all some of her madder and most awful eccentricities.

00:13:34.280 I kind of loved her. And Helen Duncan, I just have to take my hat off to somebody that can swallow and regurgitate the amount of material she did to pretend she had extra glasses. 1.00

00:13:42.120 Can I just check what you said there? 1.00

00:13:44.000 Your house was the house where one of your women, 1.00

00:13:47.360 was she a witch? 1.00

00:13:48.180 She wasn't a witch.

00:13:49.460 So I don't live there anymore,

00:13:50.940 but I used to live in Dalry House in Edinburgh,

00:13:53.080 which is a mansion built around 1600.

00:13:55.740 And it was home to a gentleman.

00:13:58.140 He got a divorce.

00:13:59.300 Well, he was divorced.

00:14:00.240 His wife got a settlement from George Lockhart of Carnoise,

00:14:04.540 and he was a senior law lord in Scotland at the time.

00:14:07.480 And he awarded Margaret Nicholson a relatively paltry amount

00:14:11.880 for her own upkeep and the upkeep of their 10 children.

00:14:15.000 And John Cheesley, the owner of Dalry House,

00:14:17.240 was so put out that he killed him on Easter Sunday in 1689

00:14:21.940 in front of the full populace of Edinburgh outside St Giles.

00:14:25.500 And he was taken up.

00:14:26.460 They cut off his hands because it was a politically expedient murder

00:14:29.580 for many people.

00:14:30.800 He was subsequently hanged and he's supposed to haunt Dalry

00:14:33.480 as Johnny Onearm.

00:14:34.560 But his daughter, Rachel Cheesley, married Lord Grange,

00:14:37.720 who was the brother of Bob and John, the Earl of Mar.

00:14:40.560 He was the Lord Advocate and he was also a closet Jacobite.

00:14:44.040 She threatened to expose him and he had her kidnapped by all of his other closet Jacobite conspirators.

00:14:50.420 And she was spirited off to St Kilda, where she spent the rest of her life only being moved very late in her life to Skye, where she died.

00:15:00.820 She was also, Edinburgh is full of names linked to them.

00:15:04.720 So Thomas Hope of Rankeeler, as in Rankeeler Street.

00:15:07.640 he was her lawyer and he tried to launch an expeditionary force to find her they were going

00:15:13.040 towards St Kilda but they never did find her you don't get lawyers like that anymore you said there

00:15:18.300 she was your first flatmate she was there in spirit with you I always wanted to tell her story

00:15:23.520 and because I'm a Gaelic speaker and she's part of Gaelic tradition too because this noble woman was

00:15:28.320 just dropped on them in St Kilda you know with not a word of Gaelic because obviously she'd you know 0.82

00:15:34.060 she'd transgressed and her husband had got shot of her.

00:15:37.380 Mary, I was wondering,

00:15:38.360 did you ever have any spooky experiences in the flat?

00:15:41.540 I think the answer is yes and no,

00:15:43.580 in that we fully accepted we shared our house with Johnny one arm.

00:15:47.380 And our cat used to walk across the,

00:15:49.520 we lived in what was the Great Hall,

00:15:51.340 which had been transformed into this amazing open plan flat

00:15:54.240 with the original Jacobean strapwork ceiling.

00:15:56.280 It was a gorgeous space.

00:15:57.260 And the cat would trot across,

00:15:58.980 he would trot across the floor

00:16:00.200 and then he would just stop dead,

00:16:01.860 arches back and start hissing at a spot you know three feet in front and all the doors opened and

00:16:07.400 closed themselves all the time so I mean by the end we'd just be like why's why's that spoon come

00:16:13.500 out of a drawing on the floor now that's just Johnny. Speaking about cats could I ask you about

00:16:18.620 my favourite witch Gormel because there's an image of her with the ship where she has like a kind of

00:16:24.300 an army of cats that go on and burn the ship down and I'd love to hear more about her. So her

00:16:29.600 Gaelic name is Góremúl Vór Nemea, and Góremúl means blue-eye, which is quite a lovely name.

00:16:35.780 That's lovely.

00:16:36.380 She was around towards the end of the 1400s, beginning of the 1500s. At that point, Gaelic

00:16:42.760 folklore coming from Argyll and the West Highlands is just packed with these witches and

00:16:48.260 Dóchchóch Búlach and all of these other witches, and they've all got these kind of

00:16:51.820 amazing powers. So, for example, the Witch of Júra has a power to turn into a midge, 0.99

00:16:57.940 which I absolutely love. There's this one, the Witch of Islay. She can travel around in an eggshell 1.00

00:17:04.580 across the water. So, you know, they're kind of brilliant. And I honestly, I think I say in the

00:17:08.400 book that there is a children's cartoon waiting to happen around these witches. This links kind of

00:17:13.900 interestingly into something that I discovered when I was working on Feisty and Fiery and Fierce,

00:17:18.040 which is that Ireland actually didn't really persecute witches to any great enormous degree,

00:17:23.920 which I suppose is obvious because we know Scotland was one of the worst places and we hear

00:17:28.920 much less about witch persecutions in Ireland but it does make me think that in Gaelic tradition

00:17:34.280 because at the point that we started witch persecutions in earnest here, Ireland was still

00:17:39.640 very much a Gaelic country and in a sense Gorhamul is part of a whole tradition that suggests that

00:17:46.080 witches and that kind of women's power, you know the second sight, as you say in Gaelic,

00:17:51.520 ability to see the future, Feshniach, that these powers were actually maybe just more

00:17:56.220 accepted, that they were part of a tradition that was very much older.

00:18:00.600 So, for example, the Irish word, which is an older Gaelic word for a poet, Fili, has

00:18:05.580 got something to do with being a seer, you know, in terms of its roots.

00:18:09.340 So maybe a culture that was more easy with magic and less inclined to think it was the

00:18:14.000 work of the devil.

00:18:15.440 So in those cultures, calling people a witch, I mean, that's so interesting that you say

00:18:19.960 that about ireland and having and having less witches because perhaps the idea of calling

00:18:25.680 someone a witch just wouldn't take as easily as being an insult i think that's it and i think

00:18:29.260 that obviously i mean you know in gaelic the word witch isn't an insult it's just a word that means

00:18:32.740 witch you actually in gaelic you call someone a budge and then in order to say they're a female

00:18:37.800 witch you call them a banavudge so there's like a wee prefix so even the word isn't gendered in the

00:18:43.140 way that it is in english so goromol was it actually kind of a wee bit of a an advisor to

00:18:48.540 a chief she was associated to cameron of lochiel she was a member of his clan so related at some

00:18:55.700 level there's a story that she gets all of these cats to come and kind of help her do her magic so

00:19:01.880 there's a story that she she got her cats to help lochiel work out how to do penance for a sin

00:19:07.980 and there is an association between clan mackintosh and the camerons and it might be that

00:19:16.780 she controlled cats that were associated with

00:19:18.860 her enemy, if you see what I mean. Are you saying

00:19:20.780 that cats were her familiar

00:19:22.560 but then if you

00:19:24.780 your enemy had a cat, she would be able

00:19:26.760 to infiltrate it via that

00:19:28.960 cat? Yeah, I think that's

00:19:29.780 essentially just that, you know, look at me, I've even got power

00:19:32.800 over the thing that's associated with you

00:19:34.560 Gaelic tradition is really really bizarre

00:19:36.660 there's a story about

00:19:37.920 the great Toad of Clan Ranald

00:19:40.440 which is that Machi Schelling, the chief of Clan 0.99

00:19:42.700 Ranald, a real badian, whatever he'd done 0.96

00:19:44.900 His conscience followed him around in a visible form as this great black toad. 0.99

00:19:48.840 You know, this idea of familiar is not particularly gendered.

00:19:52.600 There is a story that a Spanish ship moored in Tobermory and McLean of Dewart, who was married, fell in love with a woman on board.

00:20:02.420 And Mrs. McLean of Dewart, whatever her name was, sent for Gorimel.

00:20:07.080 Gorimel turned up with her flock of cats in tow, essentially said to the cats, get on it and attack.

00:20:14.440 And the cats are supposed to have sparked with their claws, sparks, that ignited the

00:20:19.420 cargo of gunpowder, exploded the ship, and the mistress is gone.

00:20:24.380 It's bananas, but it's brilliant.

00:20:27.040 I'm wondering if the cats went down with the ship, whether they all sort of sailed off

00:20:31.160 in their own individual wee bits of wood.

00:20:34.100 My experience of cats is that whatever wreckage a cat causes, somehow the cat escapes unscathed.

00:20:40.020 Do you know what I mean?

00:20:40.940 Yeah.

00:20:41.200 Good, yeah.

00:20:42.260 Good. 0.96

00:20:42.480 I'm glad to because even though you told me that you were telling that story about that poor woman

00:20:47.600 and how her boat went down I'm immediately thinking but were the cats safe? Well you're a

00:20:52.420 woman after my own heart. Terrible terrible. So in your new book Feisty and Fiery and Fierce

00:21:00.760 which is not only about Scotland but Ireland and Wales too are there any standout stories you can

00:21:05.700 tell us about? I love your titles by the way Mary. It's always fun coming up with a title

00:21:09.800 although Warriors and Witches and Damn Ribble Bitches 1.00

00:21:11.420 was hard to follow, I will say that. 1.00

00:21:13.380 It became quite difficult.

00:21:15.080 Yes, it would be.

00:21:16.220 I can imagine that.

00:21:17.880 As soon as I saw it on the bookshelf,

00:21:21.280 I didn't know what it was,

00:21:23.060 but I was definitely having it

00:21:24.280 even when I was looking at the stories for witches.

00:21:26.140 I imagine you just coming up with that title

00:21:28.120 and then putting your pen down and going,

00:21:30.000 that's it.

00:21:31.240 Quite, that's it.

00:21:32.220 Other people will have to do the titles from here on in.

00:21:34.700 No, there are some great,

00:21:36.820 there's a couple of great stories from Ireland

00:21:39.040 and I'll just mention one briefly in passing.

00:21:41.600 One of them is the story of a woman called Florence Newton

00:21:43.900 in Yole and Cork.

00:21:45.520 She's an interesting one. 0.71

00:21:46.680 She was actually taken up as a witch

00:21:47.960 in a mould we might recognise happening in Scotland. 1.00

00:21:51.820 It was a Protestant community 0.77

00:21:53.000 and so there's something quite interesting about the idea

00:21:55.440 that maybe with plantation in Ireland

00:21:57.900 some of the witch persecution issues were taken with them.

00:22:02.940 Sorry to use a flippant phrase

00:22:04.400 but she's a bit of the cookie cutter of the woman 1.00

00:22:06.880 who's you know perhaps got dementia or is a bit socially kind of unusual and she's poor she's

00:22:14.480 begging and she's accused of witchcraft and then this whole story goes up about the fact that if 0.91

00:22:18.760 she kisses you you'll die. Of course psychosomatic lots of people do then become ill when she's

00:22:24.340 kissed them and it's a sad story but the one that I've had in my mind a long time because it's quite

00:22:29.480 a famous story is the story of Petranila de Meath. She was effectively accused of witchcraft 0.80

00:22:36.020 But Ireland had no witchcraft legislation. This is the 1300s and Petronilla was a servant in Kilkenny in the house of a woman called Dame Alice Keiteller.

00:22:48.040 And actually, if you visit Kilkenny, there's a lot about Dame Alice.

00:22:51.220 And I forget now the name of the author, but there is a gorgeous collection of stories in which Dame Alice appears still being alive today,

00:22:58.800 having bought her immortality through various means, but still regretting what happened to

00:23:04.120 Petronilla de Meese, which is essentially that she was taken up when Dame Alice's enemies decided,

00:23:10.880 for similar reasons that we've discussed with Euphemia McLean, Dame Alice's enemies decided

00:23:16.440 to stop her. She was very powerful. She was very wealthy. She was actually so powerful that when 0.88

00:23:22.440 she was accused of witchcraft, she was able to invoke the protection of powerful enough family

00:23:29.660 members that she got out. And what she left behind was Petronella Demis, her servant, who was then

00:23:37.160 burned in Kilkenny. And there's a suggestion, more in oral tradition than anyone else, that Dame Alice

00:23:43.200 took Petronella's daughter with her. But who knows if Alice could have taken Petronella or not.

00:23:48.120 But I mean, Petronella gave some amazing statements and I've got one here that the Bishop of Ossuri wrote down her statement.

00:23:56.940 She said that with her own eyes, she had seen the aforesaid demon appearance three in the form of three black men, each carrying an iron rod in the hand. 0.88

00:24:05.420 A note in passing that the black men stuff is brilliantly racist. 0.97

00:24:08.820 And while Petronella herself was watching, the apparition had intercourse with Alice after this disgraceful act. 0.99

00:24:15.540 with her own hand she wiped clean the disgusting place with linen from her own bed and you just 0.97

00:24:20.920 think what a bunch of perverts imagining what women were up yeah the detail of it yeah exactly 0.81

00:24:27.020 that's what i was going to say zoe it's the bizarre details that they go into wow so it's very early

00:24:33.700 far too early for ireland to have thought up having any witchcraft legislation so as i say

00:24:38.160 she was tried under the heresy laws and she was burned as a heretic but she is broadly considered

00:24:43.880 to be Ireland's first woman to die as a witch.

00:24:50.860 Thanks so much to Mary Kidd for joining us this week. 0.99

00:24:53.940 Her books Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Witches

00:24:56.520 and Feisty and Fiery and Fierce

00:24:59.020 are now available at all good bookshops

00:25:01.440 and we'd highly recommend you pick them up.

00:25:03.740 Thanks to you two for listening.

00:25:05.480 Please subscribe wherever you can get your podcast

00:25:07.300 and remember to share the podcast with your friends.

00:25:10.800 If you'd like to learn more about the Witches of Scotland,

00:25:13.180 please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts

00:25:15.900 sign up for our mailing list

00:25:17.980 at www.witchesofscotland.com

00:25:22.040 to keep updated with the campaign

00:25:23.820 on that site you'll be able to find

00:25:26.400 how to link with us

00:25:27.280 on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

00:25:29.740 poor Petronella

00:25:34.120 can you hold on 0.99

00:25:35.700 sorry, can you hold on a second

00:25:36.920 my partner's coming in

00:25:37.840 he needs to get something

00:25:38.700 just to get me to pick up my broomstick

00:25:40.720 come off to Tesco's

00:25:41.760 Paul's here to pick up his broomstick.

00:25:43.680 He's off the test course.

00:25:44.940 Goodbye.

Witches of Scotland - October 11, 2020

MAIRI KIDD WARRIORS & WITCHES & DAMN REBEL BITCHES

Episode Stats

Transcript