“Hunting Witches in Galloway” was the enthralling subject of Stewartry U3A’s September meeting. Our speaker, Dr Lizanne Henderson, is author of Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment: Scotland, c.1670-1740, the winner of the Katharine Briggs Book Award 2016, so we knew we would hear an authoritative account, and it was an added bonus that the speaker was also very engaging.
The legal framework of witch hunting in the period was the Witchcraft Act, 1563 which was repealed in 1736. However the reasons for the persecution were many and varied. A lot of accusations stemmed from neighbour disputes and were essentially malicious. Others arose when “charmers” or folk healers remedies failed and patients died.
Lizanne compared the incidence of witch hunting in Galloway with Europe, for it was certainly not just a local preoccupation! Across Europe there were estimated to have been over 100,000 witch trials, and about half resulted in executions. In Scotland, population around one million at the time, there were 3837 trials, and around 2000 executions. Around 15% of cases were men. In our region in the period there were 78 cases tried in Dumfries, 35 in Kirkcudbright and 15 in Wigtown.
The “witch panics” of the late 16thcentury were fuelled by the King, James VI, who was of the opinion that he was being personally attacked and 300 suspected witches (mostly from Lothian) were accused. He published a work on the subject, Dæmonologiein 1597.
A later “panic” in the 1661-2, when around 600 people were accused in Scotland, coincides with the covenanters, but Lizanne does not find evidence of a link as both Protestants and Catholics were equally concerned.
Fear of the unknown was at the root of people’s belief in the evil of witches. The accounts of these cases give an insight into the lives of people at that time. If an animal died unexpectedly, or a crop failed, the owner may recall a neighbour cursing them and lay the blame there. The mark of the devil would be searched for on the body of the accused; the head would be shaved and the body pricked with a pin to find evidence. The minister and church session had a significant role in investigating cases, it was considered their duty to rid society of this social pest and enemy of God. The Synod of Galloway at Kirkcudbright in 1669 found much wickedness and necromancy in the country, the presbyteries of Wigtown and Stranraer being the worst!
Examples of witches include Jonet Miller a folk healer of Rerrick, who was executed in 1656. It is understood she invoked the help of fairies in her work, an unforgiveable deed, and used foxglove as a medicine which may have brought about the death of a patient. Execution was by strangling and then burning.
Bessie Paine was imprisoned in Kirkcudbright Tolbooth in 1671 with 5 others in a dark dungeon, and it is recorded “she died of cold and hunger due to the inconvenience of prison”. She was a charmer, a self confessed professional witch, who treated people and livestock, but unsurprisingly not always with success.
Many were acquitted Marione Lewers of Richorn complained to the minister in 1658 that she was being slandered as a witch, she was however listed as a delinquent for misdemeanors against her neighbours.