The impetus for this phenomenon can be laid at the door of
The Reformation and the attitude and writings of the Scottish King, James VI
(also to become James I of England)(1) It was through these forces that what
was considered as ‘witchcraft’ was effectively criminalised. Before such people
would have been perceived at worst warily but usually as folk who could concoct
herbal cures for fevers and agues and assist as ‘Spae wives’ with the delivery
of local children.
The persecution of ‘witches and sorcerers’ was a form of
social control and the insinuation of the power of the church and the peculiar
madness of a King willing to believe that cat’s tails and devilish incantations
could summon up storms in the sea.(2) Perhaps witch-finding was more prolific
in Scotland than England due to the force of Presbyterianism which felt it had
something to prove to its Episcopalian neighbours?
Unless you believe there was a Devil at large then these
‘witches and sorcerers’ were no less than ‘fitted-up’: provoked to ‘confess’ by
cunning and torture or else they were somewhat mentally deluded individuals
looking for fame in the seventeenth-century version of ‘X-Factor’, their
celebrity achieved on the gallows or at the stake. These innocent people died
because of a mad King’s delusions, religious zealots and folk with local
grievances and in a more sinister sense perhaps by a church flexing its muscles
and intent on enforcing ‘a Godly society’ and scapegoating old women and
eccentrics to do so.(3)
Indeed, it was in heavily populated areas where the church
had control and influence over Parish affairs that the preponderance of
witch-hunts took place. The Highlands, sparsely populated region where
Presbyterianism had no such hold, knew little of the barbarity that was going
on elsewhere, although, as Henderson, L has pointed out, it was by no means
unheard of.
The rich and powerful were very seldom accused of
witchcraft in Scotland. They were wives of farmers or cottars or poor old
widows or tinkers and vagabonds.
Basically, if you were accused of being a witch if that
finger were pointed at you, you were done for. Barbaric methods of torture such
as thumb-screws (‘pilliewinkies’), breaking irons, sleep-deprivation and
‘witch-pricking’ were used to force a confession, and it didn’t end there. The
powers that be were convinced that witches operated in covens of thirteen so
they demanded twelve other names which were duly offered by the poor woman in
her agony. Then those others were forced to give up more names and thus the
numbers increased. One wonders if competing parishes were trying to out-do each
other in ‘godliness’ and extirpating evil-doers.
Witch-hunting died out in Scotland towards the middle of the
18th century as society moved into early enlightenment and the barbarity and
irrationally of such a practice was more widely perceived among those with the
power to stop it. Janet Horne(4) was the last witch executed in Scotland in
1727 nine years before the witchcraft acts were finally repealed.
1. ‘Daemonologie’
published in 1597
2. North
Berwick Witch Trials of 1590 which ran for two years with over 70 executed.
James VI attended these trials as
the accusation was that a coven from near North Berwick had cast spells on the sea to raise a storm to
kill James and his new wife who were returning from Denmark.
3. It was
also a method of getting rid of undesirables as when Chisholm the landlord in
the Highlands used the accusation of witchcraft to rid himself
of tenants.
4. Although
this may not have been her real name as ‘Janet’ or ‘Jenny Horne’ was a generic name for witches in certain parts of
Scotland. ‘Horne’ perhaps denoting the Devil.
‘A History of the Scottish People: 1560 – 1830’ Smout T.C.
(1998) Pilgrim
‘Goodnight My Servants All: The Sourcebook of East Lothian
Witchcraft’ Robertson, D.R. (2008) The Grimsay Press
‘The Witches of Fife: Witch-hunting in a Scottish Shire,
1560 1710)’ MacDonald, S (2002) Tuckwell Press
‘Witch-hunting and witch belief in the Gaidhealtachdt’,
Henderson, L. (2008) University of Glasgow
‘North Berwick Witch Trials’ Stewart, T History UK
http://thebookofross.com/chiefs.php
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