AS WE approach what is traditionally the spookiest time of the year, we like to scare ourselves with tales of “ghosts and ghoolies and long-legged creatures, and things that go bump in the night”, not to mention that perennial Hallowe’en favourite – the witch.
But spare a thought for those women arrested, tried and executed for being witches.
We now know that many of them were harmless herbalists – valuable in communities with no doctors, or no money to pay one – or midwives, or perhaps just eccentrics who aroused the suspicion of the community.
In any event, there were plenty done to death in our local area, and at this time of year perhaps we should consider just a few of them, and their needless deaths.
Take the year 1662, when an astonishing 600 formal accusations and around 300 executions took place across Scotland.
One Dunoon woman, Elizabeth Wark, was imprisoned at Bailliemore on a charge of witchcraft.
On Bute 51 were accused, 24 went to trial and four were executed at the Gallowscraig in Rothesay.
The four women (a fifth one had escaped) were seen frequenting the company of spirits and cavorting with them on the shore at Rothesay “at a place called Butkee”.
The escapee, Janet McNicol, remained on the run for 12 years – only to come back to Rothesay where she was charged with having “consorted” with the devil at Hallowe’en.
She was strangled and her body burnt, probably very close to the end of Esplanade gardens.
Just as in the famous Salem Witch Trials, hysteria and suspicion had a lot to do with the witch hunts.
Plus it was a handy way of taking revenge on an enemy or someone you had fallen out with – just point the finger and cry ‘witch’ and let the law do the rest.
The Bute witches were thought to cause cows to stop giving milk, or even producing blood instead of milk, or with causing sickness and death in animals and humans.
They were said to kill children and horses with an elf-shot, a magical arrow or dart.
More benignly (but still suspicious) the women cured certain illnesses with herbs and charms.
Joan McNeill cured Jonat Man’s son by putting a string of beads around him for two days, then removed the string and hung it round a cat – which died immediately, as the boy’s illness was transferred to it.
Apart from the above, witches were also held responsible for rough seas and poor fishing results.
Margaret McLevin could calm rough seas and bring sailors home safely but she also created a storm by throwing a pebble into the sea, in order to sink a boat.
Seemingly the devil once lifted her up and carried her to Inchmarnock to sink a boat on its way to Arran, but McLevin said God prevented this by turning the boat on another course.
Elsewhere in Scotland meetings with the devil were not particularly common – but they were of great importance in the Bute witch hunts.
Satan was said to appear to them as a ‘little brown dog’, a cat, a ‘wele-favoured youngman’,a‘blackrough fierce man’ and as a ‘gross copperfaced man’.
The witches were said to enter into a pact with the devil in return for favours.
Issobell McNicoll met him in the likeness of a young man, when he came into her house while shewas making whisky.
He promised that she should ‘not want’ and so she promised to become his servant.
To seal the contract he performed a profane baptism and renamed her Caterine.
The large scale of the Bute witch hunt sets it apart from elsewhere at the same time.
Witch hunting in the numbers seen on Bute was uncommon throughout the Gaidhealtachd or anywhere in Scotland.
One woman, Margaret NcWilliam, confessed to dancing with other witches at Hallowe’en on Kilmory Hill and to entering into a pact with the devil.
Margaret NcWilliam was noted in the records as being known as a witch “since the memory of anyonealive”.
Over the course of 30 years, she was accused and imprisoned in 1631, 1645, 1649 and in 1662 – that bumper year for Bute witch hunters.
Her initial brush with the law was in 1631, when a group of witches were left to die in Rothesay Castle, and who named NcWilliams as another witch.
It was in that year she was finally executed, and her confession told tales of infanticide and devil- worship. Her testimony was probably the result of torture or extreme pressure, as her claims of encounters with the devil play heavily on accepted folk tradition and fairy beliefs.
The familiar stories would then have been accepted as a true confession for those officials eager to up their dead witch count.
It was a superstitious time.
During the Civil War, records note that 36 gentlemen of the name of‘Lawmond’,werehung upon a single tree in the kirk-yard of Dunoon, among whose number was the Provost of Rothesay.
The tree was then cursed to never flourish or bear leaves thereafter; but when it was cut down there arose from the root “a spring like unto blood”, which continued for some time, with people coming from far and wide to see it.
Eventually the root was “houked” out and the hole covered in.
These are just a few of the many stories of witchcraft round these airts, so when you celebrate Hallowe’en onFriday, remember it was all just ignorant superstition – or was it …?
We are grateful to Bute Museum for sharing their extensive records with us.
