86 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
showing the culture gap between the common
folk and the elite.
Confessions Through Torture
Witch-hunters unwittingly created evidence
through torture. Panics were created and fueled
by torturing suspects and then asking them to
name their accomplices. The people thus named
could be arrested and made to confess to a pact
with the devil. Some confessions also included
fantastical elements and told of bizarre experi-
ences. The 1644 trial of Mar-
garet Watson recorded the
following startling details:
“Thou hast confessed that... thou and the rest of the
witches dug up corpses of de-
ceased persons, from whom
you took members to ac-
complish your Devilish de-
signs; at your meetings you
blasphemed God’s name and
you used to drink and dance;
Mallie Paterson rode upon a cat, Janet Lockie
rode upon a cock, thy aunt Margaret Watson rode
upon a hawthorn tree, thou thyself rode upon a
bundle of straw, and Jean Lachlan rode upon an
elder tree.”Sleep deprivation was the most common
method of torture. After about three days
without sleep, not only would a suspect lose
the ability to resist their questioners, but they
would also start to hallucinate, leading to many
confessions that included
exotic details like sailing in
sieves. These are not sober
accounts of real activities;
they are fantasies concoct-
ed by confused, despairing,
and terrified people, search-
ing desperately for the an-
swers that would satisfy
their interrogators.
There was no need for
such suspects to be con-
victed of harmful magic if aCONSUMED
BY FIRE
Burning witches
alive (below)
was common in
Germany and other
parts of Europe,
but in Scotland the
convicted were
usually strangled
before their bodies
were burned.Official
Records
“names of the witches 1658” is a carefully com-
piled list of 114 people accused of witchcraft in
the panic that started that year. The manuscript
is held at the Wellcome Library in London and
has recently been digitized, giving more peo-
ple access to its contents. The 1658 list covers
counties in southwestern and central Scotland,
which seem to have been grouped together for
a regional court. The travel-stained document
was probably used by an official messenger
who went from parish to parish to summon ju-
ries of local men for the forthcoming trials. In
some of the parishes he visited, the messenger
also collected evidence against the accused.
The 1658 document is one of several useful
digitized resources for researching Scotland’s
witch hunts. The University of Edinburgh’s Sur-
vey of Scottish Witchcraft website features an
extensive database of all the currently known
names of accused witches.The document was
written by several hands,
making it difficult for a
layperson to decipher.
Names are often written
in nonstandard forms.The list is organized
by parishes. In this
parish (Alloa in
Clackmannanshire),
five names are listed—
four women and one
man: Katherine Black,
Elizabeth Black, Barbara
Erskine, Elspeth Crockett,
and James Kirk.The list was annotated
after several trials to
note the verdicts. One
woman, Margaret
Harvie, was “clenged”
(cleansed), which meant
that she was acquitted.
Most witchcraft trials
ended in conviction and
execution, but not all.WELLCOME LIBRARYAKG/ALBUM