June 11, 2025 • 53 mins
Join Josh and Sarah as they explore one of Scotland's most notorious witch trials - the Paisley Witch Trials of 1697 (also known as the Bargarran or Renfrewshire Witch Trials). This case represents a major witch hunt and mass execution in late 17th century Europe, where seven people lost their lives in Paisley after being accused by eleven-year-old Christian Shaw.
What You'll Learn: • How eleven-year-old Christian Shaw's accusations against 35 people spiraled into Scotland's last major witch hunt • The story behind the seven executions that took place in Paisley on June 10, 1697 • How fear and superstition transformed a Scottish community into a site of tragedy • The connection between the Paisley trials and other witch hunts across Europe and America • Insights from someone who has walked the very streets where these events unfolded
The Seven Executed on June 10, 1697: • Margaret Lang • John Lindsay • James Lindsay • John Lindsay of Barloch • Katherine Campbell • Margaret Fulton • Agnes Naismith
Our guest, Gayle Pollock, brings a unique perspective to this dark history. Gayle doesn't just study these events - she lives and breathes them. Walking the same streets where the accusations were made and lives were lost has given her an intimate understanding of how this tragedy actually unfolded. Her immersion in the landscape and the story provides insights you simply can't get from books alone.
As we remember the accused in Paisley in 1697 and honor Bridget Bishop, who was hanged in Salem on June 10, 1692, we're reminded of the importance of questioning fear and superstition wherever it may lead.
Don't forget to check out this week's episode of The Thing About Salem podcast, and join us next time as we continue to examine the dark corners of history.
#WitchTrials #ScottishHistory #PaisleyWitches #RenfrewshireWitches #SalemWitchTrials #HistoryPodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome back to The Thing About Witch Hunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack.
Today we're looking into Scotland's Renfrewshire Witches
of 1697. This case is particularly
chilling because it represents the last major witch hunt and
mass execution in Western Europefor witchcraft.
(00:20):
We're talking about 7 people wholost their lives in Paisley
after being accused by an 11 year old girl named Christian
Shaw. What started with Shaw's
accusations it gets 35 individuals quickly spiraled
into a community white hunt thatwould forever mark the Scottish
town. The trials took place in early
June 1697 and June 10th is the Renfrewshire Memorial Day for
(00:45):
the victims. To help us understand the full
scope of this tragedy, we're joined by GAIL Pollock.
GAIL doesn't just study this history, she lives and breathes
it. Walking the same streets where
these events unfolded, standing in the very locations where
accusations were made and lives were lost, has given her an
intimate understanding of how this tragedy actually played
(01:07):
out. That kind of immersion in the
landscape in the store gives GAIL a unique perspective that
you simply can't get from books alone.
Xing has spent years connecting the dots between locations,
events and the people caught up in this nightmare.
So settle in as we explore the dark history of the Paisley
witch trials through the eyes ofsomeone who has truly made this
(01:28):
history her own. It's important to remember that
early June marks a time of remembrance for the accused in
Paisley in 1697. And it also brings us to June
10th, 1692, the day Bridget Bishop was hanged in Salem,
becoming the first victim of those infamous witch trials.
These dates remind us to honor all those who have lost their
(01:48):
lives to fear and superstition. We're so happy to bring you on
the show to talk about witch trial history in Scotland.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your organization.
Hi. My name's Gil Pollock and I am a
trustee and volunteer for the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697.
(02:10):
So we are the oldest heritage witch hunt group in Scotland.
We came together around about 2010 and we became an actual
charity in 2011 and at the very beginning it was more to educate
(02:32):
our local community on one of the darkest periods of history
in Paisley. So Paisley is the main town in
the county of Renfrewshire, which is just West of Glasgow,
and Glasgow Airport actually sits in Renfrewshire County even
(02:55):
though it is Glasgow Airport. We basically started to teach
people about the Begarin witch hunt or some call it the Paisley
witch hunt or the Renfrewshire witch hunt.
It's basically all the same period.
We also started to look at otherwitch trials that happened also
(03:19):
in the area. We seem to have our witch hunts
and trials in the latter part ofthe history of witch hunts and
trials in Scotland because of course they started a way back
in around about 1591 and our period of history is 1697.
(03:40):
As it says in the title, the earlier period is more to do
with religion. The latter period of the history
of where we fall into it is a lot darker.
So yes, there's, there's some funny things that happened.
I know it sounds strange, but there is some funny things that
(04:02):
happened during witch hunter trials here.
There is some terrible things that happened.
Scotland seems particularly bloodthirsty when it comes to
witch hunts and trials. We seem to have a talent for
that, but she's quite horrendous.
But that's how Witch Hunt started its life, and it's still
(04:28):
going strong. So great to see organisations
like yours be active and help people to engage with the
history because it's a story that's worth telling again and
again. I quite agree.
It's very strange ever it's evera history of witch Hudson
(04:53):
trials. It takes up nearly 200 years and
yet it wasn't till about 20 years ago that it became public
knowledge. And I think it's more to do with
the fact that history was drivenby men, it was made by men and
(05:13):
it was written by men. And the witch hunts are
predominantly a women's history.And so if you would stop
somebody in the street here and ask them when they believed that
the witch hunt or the witch house happened, they would
actually be very hard cooked to actually figure out what time
(05:36):
period that would actually fit into.
And when you actually tell them,they're actually quite surprised
because it traverses such a large period of time.
And one of the great things about your organization is you
(05:56):
are engaging face to face with your local community about this
history. That's amazing.
Can you tell us about that? At the very beginning we used to
do reenactment. So we would have people dressed
up as the accused, people dressed up as the clergy, people
(06:18):
dressed up as the commissioners.And then we would put the
accused onto what we call a tumbro, which is like a wagon.
And they would then be taken through the town down to what is
the last remnants of the Gallow Green.
(06:38):
And they would then do a speech of what happened on June the
10th, 1697, which was the day ofexecution.
And they also tell about what was said or what is believed to
be said. And slowly but surely that has
(07:00):
now come to the point of we now do tours, we do walks through
Paisley. We also do talks at the
University of the West of Scotland, which is in the town
and we cover a whole multitude now of things.
(07:20):
We do a talk and a walk called The Three Witch Trials of
Paisley. We do a talk called The Memory
of Witches, which is about witchmemorials and sites around the
world. And recently we did a talk on
Burn and the Witches which was about Tamil Shanter, and a lot
(07:43):
of the community have really gotinvolved with it.
It seems to be that they really engage with it.
They know some folklore but theydon't know what timeline it's
in. So they're really engaged with
what we do with them and and we're also got social media.
(08:04):
So it's really exciting when youget somebody who wants to talk
to you about it, because we're more than happy to talk about
it. And what would you like us to
know about your local community about Renfrewshire?
So Renfrewshire, the Renfrewshire at the moment that
(08:25):
we have quite small, but the original Renfrewshire of the
time period went from the Clyde coast.
So it covered Rimsby, Greenock, Gurrock, Port Glasgow and then
it came up and over into the villages which covered
(08:46):
Kilmacombe, Houston and Crossley, Lynnwood, Bridge of
Weir, Lochwinnock, Howard, Johnston and then it pulled its
way into Paisley Renfrew and I actually took in the area called
Pollock, which is now actually part of the Glasgow area.
(09:08):
And so Paisley was a judicial area for all of this through any
witch trials that happened in Paisley Abbey and the executions
happened at the Gallow Green in Paisley.
So this is basically the geograph of Renfrew.
Then. Now rainfall showers are a lot
(09:31):
smaller. It's more of a political area
which is run by a council. But we have a lot of beautiful
places, a lot of parks, a lot ofhillsides.
We have the River Cart which runs right through the whole
area and we have the Weaver's Cottage which is owned by the
(09:56):
National Trust of Scotland. And of course we have Paisley
Museum. And Paisley is also famous for
the Paisley pattern and court thread and anchor thread.
This was all done. It's, this is a, a piece of
history that drowned out earlierhistory was the Victorian era of
(10:19):
industrialisation where the mills happened in Paisley.
And as I said, it's only last 20years where people have now
started to look beyond the industrialisation of Victoria
and Paisley and started to look at what else Paisley was known
for. And of course this is what it
(10:41):
was known for. Witch Hudson trials, linen
making, mining and farming. Really.
So that's Renfrewshire. Thank you.
When were the Paisley witch trials?
So we have if so we had the veryfirst mention of a witch trial
(11:04):
for Paisley and this is in the database by Edinburgh
University, which is a wonderment of of Western
civilization is this database. And so it was 1650 and there was
no verdict. I actually recorded then the
(11:25):
next one is what we call the Pollock witch trials.
And so this is a witch hunt thathappened in Pollock Estate and
the victim was Sir George Maxwell, who was a bit of a bad
boy. And so their trials came to
(11:47):
Paisley and they were executed in Paisley and that was in 1677.
And then the infamous by garden witch hunt and trial started in
August of 1696 and the trials and execution happened in 1697.
(12:07):
So that is basically the the three witch trials, but we also
influenced the witch hunt and a little town called Pettenweeden
and five sadly, which resulted in a lynching.
(12:29):
So we've got other things, but there was a witch hunt in Echo
Barking, which I love. I know it sounds strange to say
that you loved a witch hunt, butit was so ridiculous.
But that is basically at the moment, that is the witch hunts
and trials that we discussed that we educate the community in
(12:52):
one of our volunteers, Juliana, she also looks into the Witch
Hudson trials in an area called Inverclyde, which was originally
part of the original Renfrewshire County.
So it covers Greenock, Gurrock, Port Glasgow, Rimsby and she
(13:14):
looks into the Witch Hudson trials down in Inverclyde.
You have no shortage of materialto engage with your guest son.
No, it's as I said, we were a bloodthirsty lot.
We've also got to the West of us, we have Ayrshire, so that's
(13:38):
the Ayrshire coast. So that takes in Troon,
Prestwick, Larks, Saltcoats and Irvine, Ayr and they had their
own witch trial and witch hunts.And then to the north of us
across the River Clyde we go into Dunbartonshire and Argyll
(14:01):
and Bute. And so we had the Bute witch
trials, which is one of the mostbeautiful island in the West
Coast of Scotland is the Isle ofBute.
And do they had a terrible history with witch Hudson trials
as well. So for a long time there's been
(14:22):
our concentration of the witch hunts and trials on the East
Coast because of course everything was taken to
Edinburgh. But in recent years our history
is evolving and we're now finding there was more happening
in the West Coast Scotland, which is where we come in.
(14:44):
How did the Bargeren witch hunt start?
Oh, so this is a bit of an infamy sort of thing.
It started with an 11 year old girl, as most of them do
actually. There's always a young girl or a
group of girls. So her name was Christian Shaw.
(15:07):
She was one of four children andher father was John Shaw or the
Leader Shaw and her mother Lady Shaw, and they lived in Bagaron
House, which was in an area called Bygarin an Erskine.
And I always say in my talks that the Shaw family's moral
(15:28):
compass was broken. They were not a good and they
were not a great family. The father had made a lot of
money being a commissioner on other witch hunts and files.
And so Christian was an 11 year old girl and they had a servant
(15:51):
called Catherine Campbell and she came from the Highlands of
Scotland. So we could do just for this,
her being in the Highlands of Scotland.
And over this time period that English was probably her second
language. She probably spoke Gaelic and
(16:12):
she was probably not Church of Scotland.
She would either be Catholic or we Free Presbyterian and of
course where we are here in Paisley and the Garden, it was
what would be classed as the Bible Belt of the Church of
Scotland. And so she had a lot of things
(16:36):
going against her. She probably had an accent, she
wasn't of the face and accounts of the time state that she had a
bit of a temper, which is not a good thing for a servant and
Christian came across her drinking some milk from a milk
charm. I believe she was tasting it to
(16:57):
see if it had cuddled, but she went to her mother, claimed that
Catherine was stealing the milk.The Lady Shaw took her to task
and Catherine was not pleased, bided her time and a few days
later she came across Christian.They had a big argument, some
say she said it three times, some say she said it once, but
(17:21):
she basically threw a curse at Christian Shaw and she said may
the devil harl your soul throughhell.
So basically, may the devil dragyour soul down to hell.
And this started an Oscar winning performance of this 11
year old from the August of 1696through to Christmas.
(17:48):
And she put on such a performance that made it totally
believable to the clergy, made it believable to the doctors of
the period, and subsequently brought about one of the darkest
periods of piece of history. Was she showing affliction?
(18:09):
Is that what her performance was?
Yes. So she had claimed there was
some of the accused had been brought to the house and were
named. And so subsequently she would go
into trances or she would go into seizures and she would
(18:29):
claim that these seizures were being brought about by ML, which
would have been Margaret Lane orby JL which would have been John
Lindsay. She was also known while whilst
lying in her bed she was known to cough up pin hair, candle
(18:52):
wax, coal dust, feathers. All this she was supposed to.
They took her to Glasgow to the doctors and they couldn't figure
out anything what was wrong withher.
She was brought back to Bagaron and and then the clergy came in
(19:14):
and they said it was possession.They stated it was witchcraft
and out of all the clergy there was 2 clergymen who were
extremely ambitious. Extremely ambitious, the
Reverend Thomas Blackwell and the Reverend Brisbane.
(19:34):
They constantly complained to the Church of Scotland that they
were too good for where they were, that they deserved more
money, better housing and that their congregations were
unwashed and unlettered and totally beneath them.
(19:55):
So I think they saw this as an opportunity to better
themselves. And so when Christian started to
go through these afflictions, I think they all jumped on board.
Her father made money out of this by being one of the
commissioners. She was also seen to levitate
downstairs, which is a nifty trick.
(20:18):
Why she was levitating downstairs I do not know.
But she was seen to levitate by the family doctor and she
continued this from the August to the December.
I don't know how she had the energy be honest, but this is
what she apparently went through.
(20:42):
Yeah, this case reminds me so much of the Salem witch trials
because like you said, it's often the case in witch trials.
We've seen this in so many places back then and in witch
hunts happening now. It's a young girl that starts it
off, and somehow it's these prepubescent and pubescent girls
(21:05):
that are really more prone to being afflicted, as it were, by
witches apparently. So they're always starting this
stuff. And this also was just a few
years after Salem, which itself was a very late witch hunt.
So this was extremely late in the witch hunting, wasn't it?
(21:27):
Yes, aha. So Salem was 1692, which was a
big year in Scotland as well, because it was the massacre of
Glencoe where the Campbell's massacre into the McDonald's.
We had a lot of unrest. The Covenanters were running
amok around Scotland, having battles left, right and centre,
(21:50):
so there was a lot of religious unrest in Scotland.
And of course by 1696, when thisall kicked off, Cotton Masseur
had wrote his pamphlet. It'd come over to Britain, so
anybody who could read had read it.
And then of course, oral history.
(22:10):
It would then be passed about byword of mouth.
So I would probably say by 1696,it was the least common
knowledge in Scotland of what happened over in Salem.
And so it's quite surprising when you actually look at the
(22:31):
trial notes and the afflictions that she went through as an
eerie echo of what happened in Salem.
And the real thing is recently the Inverclyde archivist
Lorraine Quinn, she came across trial notes of the Kilmacombe
(22:55):
witch hunt, which happened a year later after began.
And so I would have been 1698. And it was kicked off by a young
girl who had an affliction. She was coughing up pens, hair,
candle wax, feathers and she wasa younger sister of Christian.
Sure, but I don't know. Yes.
(23:21):
And as quick as she made the accusations and had the
inflictions, she then disappeared from history but
left in its wake such a disturbance in the village of
Kilmacone. And so you start to think there
was something going on here. Two children from the same
(23:41):
family who made money out of these witch hunts, having the
same afflictions but caused by different people.
Wow. What?
What was the trial like? Did it go to trial?
Yes, by December of 1696 they started to round everybody up
(24:06):
and sadly in Paisley we were into sleep deprivation and witch
pricking as a form of interrogation or read torture
for that. And so it was basically there
(24:27):
was a woman called Agnes Naismith.
So she was one of the accused and she was a beggar woman.
She would go about how she's begging for food.
My personal belief is her currency was gossip.
You go to somebody's door, you ask for a loaf of bread or a
slice of bread, they go no. But then if you say to them, did
(24:50):
you hear about Mrs. Mcginty's daughter, that better gossip.
Come in, come in. So she was known at Beggarin
House and I think she got wind of the rumblings that were
happening up at the house was Christian and she went up and as
she was in the house Christian took effect.
(25:13):
And so it was believed that Agnes through witchcraft had
brought this fit about onto Christian.
There was Robert Lindsay of Barking, so he was a tenant
farmer of the Shaws. And at this time in Scotland it
was called the Little Ice Age. So crops were failing.
(25:34):
Summers were cold and wet because there was a volcano
called Heckler in Iceland that kept on going off periodically.
So of course the ash cloud was coming over Scotland and ruining
summers. The the rate of stillbirths was
rising, and so people want to blame somebody for their lot in
(25:58):
life, which was miserable. And so his farm was failing.
He couldn't make the names. He was trying to sort something
out. And while he was in the house,
Christian apparently fell into afit.
She touched his coat and the fitstopped.
So because he stopped the fit with witchcraft, therefore he
(26:22):
was a witch and there was no land dispute anymore because a
witch can't own a farm. There was a midwife.
There's always a midwife in thisthese things, because these are
women of knowledge, of trust. And most of them could actually
read, which was the triple threat to any doctors who
(26:46):
weren't really doctors. And Margaret, she was also a
devout Christian. She is in the parish records for
at least three of the kirks in the area and of Paisley Abbey.
She was not to carry a Bible, but even she was blamed for the
(27:08):
stillbursts in the area and so she was claimed to be a witch.
There was another and it's a bitof an echo now of what is
happening in Africa now. There was another woman, and she
probably had dementia or Alzheimer's.
(27:28):
She was married. But she would wander the streets
and tell people that she'd visited the fairies, that she'd
had tea with the fairies, that she'd danced with King Oberon of
the fairies, and she'd had tea with Queen Titania.
And for every one person that looked kindly and pitifully upon
(27:49):
her, there was another person that felt threatened by her or
was frightened by her wandering about.
So she was claimed to be a witchbecause of this.
Two brothers who had a bit of a problem with someone because for
long and wary it was stated thatthey were 11 and 14.
(28:12):
And this all goes back to fake news.
Not long after, the child was a pamphlet written.
And to make it more salacious, it was named that the 2 Lindsay
brothers were 11 and 14 and thatthey were the head of this coven
and they gave them the titles ofthe curate and the Bishop, which
(28:32):
is ecclesiastical names. There was 2 Lindsay boys, 11 and
14 who were witnesses, but the two brothers who were accused
were young tenant farmers, so they were actually a lot older.
But this pamphlet was then rewritten into a book.
(28:55):
And for the next 300 years, anybody who wrote a magazine
article, a play, a song, anotherbook, all referenced this one
book called Sadhusamus de la Bartis, which stated it was to
be boys. And about a few years ago, we
finally unearthed the trial notes and that's when we found
(29:19):
out that they weren't to be boys, they were young men.
And lastly, there was blacksmiths.
Blacksmiths on another group of people that were looked
suspiciously because of course they worked for fire.
And who's got domain over fire? The Devil.
Or in Scotland we call him Old Nick.
(29:41):
And so his name was just pluckedout of the air because they'd
started to at Christmas, they started to pull in people,
including some of the final accused.
Then they pulled down a family who then blamed each other just
to stop the interrogations. And this was when people's names
(30:05):
were just plucked out of thin air.
You would be getting witch pricked or you were day three of
sleep deprivation and you'd be like, tell us any witches that
you know and you would name yourneighbor or you would remember
that you'd walked past a friend that morning and you would name
them. And so poor John Reed, Owen
(30:28):
Shannon the blacksmith, that's how his name was brought up.
And so there was over 35 people who were accused and
interrogated. And out of the 35, eight of them
were found guilty, and that was Catherine Campbell because she's
through the curse, John Lindsay of Barrackin, John Lindsay and
(30:53):
James Lindsay, the brothers of Fort Macken Mill, Margaret Lang,
Margaret Fulton and John Reed. Now, some instances people say
there was only 7. And this is all because John
read, sadly, while waiting for execution, committed suicide.
(31:16):
He was held in revenge through toll booths.
And so while eight of them were found guilty, only 7 went to
execution. So that's how sometimes the
numbers get mixed up. Eight were found guilty, but
only seven were executed. And so, as I said, it was a
(31:39):
dark, dark day in Paisley. One thing you hit upon was how
this knowledge of other witch trials was transmitted around
not only Scotland, but around the Atlantic world, coming from
Massachusetts over to the UnitedKingdom, and specifically about
(32:03):
Cotton Mather and his book Wonders of the Invisible World,
Getting over across the sea and possibly informing the
afflictions. Basically, the girl was either
acting out or maybe she had somedisorder, conversion disorder or
something, but what she knew wasthe afflictions of the Salem
(32:27):
girls. The Salem girls, in turn, knew
about afflictions in Boston fouryears before the Salem witch
trials because of a Cotton Mather book that he wrote about
a witch child in Boston of GoodyGlover.
So he's spreading the word aboutthis.
And before that, his father before him used to write all
(32:50):
these books about remarkable andillustrious provinces and have
all these wild stories about ghosts and witches and
everything. And so we've just seen before
that these ideas are being shared across society and people
again and again. The afflictions sound the same.
(33:12):
What the witches are confessing to sounds the same.
And it's all this word of mouth.I mean, the printed word pushed
so far and then word of mouth just set fire to it basically,
and it just went and white bread.
The Pollock witch trials, which happened in 1677, as a really,
(33:39):
I'm really interested in those because it was a mute girl who
started it, so she didn't have the power of speech, apparently.
And then when it came to her informing them that she could
find witches, she found the power of speech.
(33:59):
But not only did she find the power of speak, it was stated
that she could speak and read English, Latin and Greek.
Now, if that's not witchcraft, Idon't know what is.
Her name was Janet Douglas and she was called the Witch Finder.
And she claimed that she could find who were the people who
(34:22):
were putting curses on Sir George Maxwell.
As I said, she was about one or two boy.
His hobby was travelling around Scotland, either being a
commissioner on witch trials or just watching witch hunts and
taking part in them. And he came home one from one of
these witch hunts extremely ill or as my Gran would say, hell
(34:47):
slap it in to him. His lifestyle caught up with
him. And so she then claimed that a
family called the Massey Stewart.
So it was the mother, her son John, who was later named as the
Warlock of Pollock, and her 14 year old daughter Annabelle were
(35:11):
claimed to be witches. And then three other women who
also worked on the estate. So there was Bessie Weir,
Margaret Jackson, Marjorie Craigand Bessie Weir was actually
married to a Paisley Weaver. And so it's really quite strange
(35:32):
that young girls, young women were claiming things and yet
this all kicked off in Pollock by a girl who was mute and the
accused were brought to Paisley,sadly were found guilty.
Annabelle's execution was commuted to incarceration.
She was sent to Glasgow Tollbooth, which is still
(35:54):
standing today and sadly for therest of her life the claim of
witchcraft chased her no matter where she went.
Sir George Maxwell died and his son Sir John took over the title
and he became one of the commissioners on the Begaron
(36:16):
witch trial, which happened nearly 20 years later.
Janet Douglas. It's very interesting.
She disappears and then in the 1680s she reappears in
Edinburgh, married, and she starts to claim that she can
find witches, but it backfires on her and she is incarcerated
(36:38):
in Edinburgh. Tobus.
And so then it becomes a bit vague.
They decide that they're going to extradite her.
They're going to deport her fromScotland, but no ship's captain
will take her because witchcraftis involved.
And then the story goes cold. But there is AI found piece of
(37:02):
writing for you in a poem. Somebody said that they'd found
a story. Now, if this story is true, it
should be made into a film. There's no evidence to say it's
not true, but there's no evidence to say it is true.
It's a great story. So the story is Janet Douglas is
(37:23):
finally forced onto a ship. Remember this, in the 1680s,
late 1680s, she is taken to the Americas and she lands in
Massachusetts. And in 1692, she finds herself
in a little town called Salem where she starts her shenanigans
(37:44):
again by Cleveland witchcraft. It would be brilliant if it was
true. There's we can't write any
everything, say yes or no, but it would be a great story.
It really would. And so the fact that this story
has appeared somewhere. And so you're thinking to
yourself, well, that is probablybecause oral history of the
(38:09):
witch trials that were happeningin the UK and Britain were
making their way over to America.
And then vice versa, the oral history of Americas, we're
coming back to the British Islesand circulating here.
And it just became a sort of melting pot of folklore and such
(38:30):
like. And it was easier to blame
people than actually figure out what was wrong.
And people were making money outof it as well.
So, but it is very interesting how you could sort of follow it
sort of back and forth. But yeah, very interesting.
(38:54):
You know, yeah, what a great story that would be if that is
true. So somebody find a an authentic
document. A document.
Authentic one. An authentic 1 yes.
Feed something? Yeah, you've got these images
(39:15):
behind you with the horseshoe and also on your jacket.
Would you like to tell us about what that symbol is?
So basically when the execution happened on June the 10th 1697,
Agnes Naismith the beggar woman did not go quietly, neither did
(39:36):
Catherine Campbell. They harangued the people
watching and Agnes Naismith laida dying woman's curse on Paisley
and their people. There's various versions but
ethos of it is that the people of Paisley and all their beams
(39:57):
will not know happiness, health or wealth basically.
And so this put the fear of God into the watchers of this
execution. And so the.
The Gallow Green was a common area of ground which ran from an
(40:21):
area called Castle Head, which was a kind of outcrop promontory
of a hill. And what they would do was the
people would sit or stand on thehill looking down on the
execution area. So this area had been used
before. 2 Covenanters had been executed there, the Pollock
(40:44):
accused had been executed there.And so this is where the seven
of the 8 accused of the Begar inwitch trials were executed.
And as I said, Agnes de Smith hurrying a dying woman's curse
upon the crowd and Paisley. So they decided that once they
(41:06):
burned their bodies, that when they buried their remains, they
would put an iron horseshoe on the top to lock the curse into
the earth. And strangely enough, the
horseshoe sat there. We haven't been able to find any
(41:27):
written evidence from the time it was laid there until around
about the 1950s. Strangely enough, we might not
have found it yet. I can't.
I think it very hard to believe that nearly 300 years went by
and nobody has once mentioned the horseshoe.
(41:47):
But in the 1950s and there was anewspaper article saying that
the horseshoe had went missing, and this started a folklore of
the Paisley buddies. So if you were born in Paisley,
you're called a buddy. So the Paisley buddies started
(42:07):
this folk horse stating that if the horseshoe went missing, the
dying woman's curse come alive and walk the streets Paisley.
And so a new horseshoe was put in place and subsequently over
the years, this horseshoes went missing or it's broken and it's
been replaced. It sits in a very busy
(42:32):
crossroads called Maxwellton Cross at the West End of
Paisley, and a lot of traffic, public transport, ambulances
going to the local hospital, thefire brigade, because their
station is just down the road, all use this and to change.
(42:52):
So it's a really heavy trafficked area.
And around about 2010 the horseshoe went missing again and
two local businessmen, Tony Lawler and Piero Piercini, they
decided to set up a charity called the Paisley Development
Trust and they decided somethinghad to be more permanent than
(43:15):
just a horseshoe and some concrete.
So they went to the royal sculptor who was a man called
Sandy Stoddart. He was asked if he would design
and make something, so he designed the witch's tondo.
(43:35):
So it's a burnished stainless steel desk being a tondo and
round the outer edge there is a word stating pain inflicted,
suffering endured, injustice done.
And then using a tent grew rod, the horseshoe is put in the
(43:56):
middle and it's sat there. And just before Christmas,
myself and one of the other trustees, Julianna Merrick, were
driving home from one of the talks.
And we went over the horseshoe and she said to me, did the
horseshoe look awful high to you?
(44:19):
I don't make that was on a Thursday night.
And on a Tuesday morning, we woke up to find Facebook, all a
Twitter over the fact that the horseshoe was missing this.
And people were, oh, this was terrible.
This was awful. The curse was a bone.
And eventually it came about that our postman, on his early
(44:44):
rounds, found the horseshoe at the side of the road.
And it just so happened that three of the rods had just worn
away and it popped itself out. He handed it into the council
offices and so we contacted the council and they said Jess,
we're going to replace, we're going to close the roads down
(45:04):
and put it in place. So on the 17th of December,
which was a Tuesday night, myself and Juliana got a call to
see, would you like to come downand see the horseshoe being put
back? So we did and we watched it.
We held the horseshoe, we took photographs of it.
And strangely enough, we're standing with a group of
(45:27):
workmen. There was about 8 of them and
the lovely Graham, who was the supervisor who had the
horseshoe. And we were waiting for the
blacksmith to arrive, which I found very auspicious that we
were yet again waiting for a blacksmith to come because he
(45:49):
had to drill out the three rods that were stuck and to Weld some
new ones in. And as we stood looking down at
the torn door, a couple of the workmen claimed that they'd
heard rumours about what was claimed about the horseshoe.
So I told them what I just told you about the folklore behind
(46:14):
it. And then we stood in a bit of
unsettled silence. And then one of the workmen
went, so that dirt pipe burst inthe Neilston Rd. just the other
day there and closed off the roads.
And it's also burst another pipeand we all just looked at each
(46:36):
other. And then one of the other men
went, yeah, we had a power cut just the other night there.
Then somebody else said our Wi-Fi went down, the whole
street had no Wi-Fi, and we justdid there.
Really unsettled silence. Nobody to claim that was because
(46:59):
the horseshoe went missing, but the fact that they were standing
there holding the horseshoe waiting for the blacksmiths.
Wow. So the horseshoes back in place,
I'm happy to report and hopefully it'll stay there for a
little while longer, but they'regoing to be resurfacing the
(47:20):
road. So the council think it's about
time that they'll do some TLC onthe what she's taught because
it's been there now for about 10years.
So they're probably going to talk to Sandy Stoddart, who is
well known because he was asked,I think it was it Yale, I think
(47:41):
it was Yale College had the anniversary.
And they asked him to design andmake 2 statues of the Reverend
Witherspoon. SO1 stands in the grounds of
Yale and one stands outside the University of the West of
Scotland and Paisley. So that's his link to America is
(48:05):
through Reverend Witherspoon, who is the ancestor of the
actress Reese Witherspoon. Oh.
Really. And he was also a signatory of
the Declaration of Independence,and he came from Paisley.
So that's Paisley's wee link to America.
(48:29):
Important thing. So that's the witch's tondo
thank. You thank you so much for
joining us today. Is there anything that you
wanted to cover today that we haven't gotten to?
They're not really, at the moment, another group called the
Witches of Scotland. They have a brilliant podcast,
(48:52):
Claire and Zoe, and we are stilltrying to get a pardon put
through. And just recently they announced
that they designed tartan, so they did, which looks fabulous.
They're just about to bring out a book of theirs as well and we
(49:14):
are trying to. We are now in the process of
planning our next memorial and we're just about to kick off our
walks and talks again because the weather is a lot better here
and we're in the process. Myself and Juliana are in the
process of redesigning a websitefor ourselves.
(49:36):
We're not that way inclined, so it's a bit of a bugbear with us.
We're trying to see if we can pay somebody to help us.
Every once in a while we find something new.
One of my favourite ones is in Quebec and there was a witch
hunt of Mod Gaul. And in the British Isles there
(49:57):
is only four lesbian witches. So there is and Mod Gaul is
Scotland only one and she was married with two female servants
and one servant. Agnes Mitchell arrived in the
church and to the presbytery meeting and claimed she was
(50:20):
being abused by her mistress andthey had a trial and they found
her not guilty and so she went back and had a happy life with
her husband and the other femaleservant.
She's our most recent find of witch hunts and trials is Mod
Gault. So we're always digging away,
(50:43):
finding something else that looks amazing or looks sad or
just adds to the tapestry of what the history.
Is can you remind us how our listeners can find you on the
Internet? And if they come to the Paisley
(51:04):
area, how can they enjoy a tour?OK, we have one on Facebook
page. So that's the name for Shy Witch
Hunt 1697. So we're on Facebook.
We have a Pinterest page as well.
We do have a Twitter account butat the moment, well, I'm trying
(51:27):
to find time to try and do everything.
We hopefully will have our website up and running.
Our walks and talks are advertised on our partnership
website called Paisley Heritage.So they've kindly promoted our
(51:48):
walks and talks. If you go onto their website or
to their Facebook page, there will be a link and you can book
a place on our walks or our talks and we have what we call
the Witch's Hub. So in the centre of Paisley, on
the High Street, there is the Paisley Centre, which is like a
(52:11):
shopping mall and we have a tinylittle area and we show the
stories of the different witch trials.
That's 16771, the Pollock witch trial, the Begarin witch trial
and the Pit and Wean witch trial.
And we then do a general information wall on other witch
(52:33):
Hudson trials in Scotland. So we're usually in there as
well if they were dropping by. Or they could just drop us a
text and ask as Anderson. Really.
GAIL, thank you for such an excellent discussion and for
bringing the history to life in such a powerful way.
(52:55):
Everyone, don't forget to download this week's episode of
The Thing About Salem podcast. You don't want to miss it.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
Welcome back to The Thing About Witch Hunts.
I'm Josh Hutchinson. I'm Sarah Jack.
Today we're looking into Scotland's Renfrewshire Witches
of 1697. This case is particularly
chilling because it represents the last major witch hunt and
mass execution in Western Europefor witchcraft.
(00:20):
We're talking about 7 people wholost their lives in Paisley
after being accused by an 11 year old girl named Christian
Shaw. What started with Shaw's
accusations it gets 35 individuals quickly spiraled
into a community white hunt thatwould forever mark the Scottish
town. The trials took place in early
June 1697 and June 10th is the Renfrewshire Memorial Day for
(00:45):
the victims. To help us understand the full
scope of this tragedy, we're joined by GAIL Pollock.
GAIL doesn't just study this history, she lives and breathes
it. Walking the same streets where
these events unfolded, standing in the very locations where
accusations were made and lives were lost, has given her an
intimate understanding of how this tragedy actually played
(01:07):
out. That kind of immersion in the
landscape in the store gives GAIL a unique perspective that
you simply can't get from books alone.
Xing has spent years connecting the dots between locations,
events and the people caught up in this nightmare.
So settle in as we explore the dark history of the Paisley
witch trials through the eyes ofsomeone who has truly made this
(01:28):
history her own. It's important to remember that
early June marks a time of remembrance for the accused in
Paisley in 1697. And it also brings us to June
10th, 1692, the day Bridget Bishop was hanged in Salem,
becoming the first victim of those infamous witch trials.
These dates remind us to honor all those who have lost their
(01:48):
lives to fear and superstition. We're so happy to bring you on
the show to talk about witch trial history in Scotland.
Please introduce yourself and tell us about your organization.
Hi. My name's Gil Pollock and I am a
trustee and volunteer for the Renfrewshire Witch Hunt 1697.
(02:10):
So we are the oldest heritage witch hunt group in Scotland.
We came together around about 2010 and we became an actual
charity in 2011 and at the very beginning it was more to educate
(02:32):
our local community on one of the darkest periods of history
in Paisley. So Paisley is the main town in
the county of Renfrewshire, which is just West of Glasgow,
and Glasgow Airport actually sits in Renfrewshire County even
(02:55):
though it is Glasgow Airport. We basically started to teach
people about the Begarin witch hunt or some call it the Paisley
witch hunt or the Renfrewshire witch hunt.
It's basically all the same period.
We also started to look at otherwitch trials that happened also
(03:19):
in the area. We seem to have our witch hunts
and trials in the latter part ofthe history of witch hunts and
trials in Scotland because of course they started a way back
in around about 1591 and our period of history is 1697.
(03:40):
As it says in the title, the earlier period is more to do
with religion. The latter period of the history
of where we fall into it is a lot darker.
So yes, there's, there's some funny things that happened.
I know it sounds strange, but there is some funny things that
(04:02):
happened during witch hunter trials here.
There is some terrible things that happened.
Scotland seems particularly bloodthirsty when it comes to
witch hunts and trials. We seem to have a talent for
that, but she's quite horrendous.
But that's how Witch Hunt started its life, and it's still
(04:28):
going strong. So great to see organisations
like yours be active and help people to engage with the
history because it's a story that's worth telling again and
again. I quite agree.
It's very strange ever it's evera history of witch Hudson
(04:53):
trials. It takes up nearly 200 years and
yet it wasn't till about 20 years ago that it became public
knowledge. And I think it's more to do with
the fact that history was drivenby men, it was made by men and
(05:13):
it was written by men. And the witch hunts are
predominantly a women's history.And so if you would stop
somebody in the street here and ask them when they believed that
the witch hunt or the witch house happened, they would
actually be very hard cooked to actually figure out what time
(05:36):
period that would actually fit into.
And when you actually tell them,they're actually quite surprised
because it traverses such a large period of time.
And one of the great things about your organization is you
(05:56):
are engaging face to face with your local community about this
history. That's amazing.
Can you tell us about that? At the very beginning we used to
do reenactment. So we would have people dressed
up as the accused, people dressed up as the clergy, people
(06:18):
dressed up as the commissioners.And then we would put the
accused onto what we call a tumbro, which is like a wagon.
And they would then be taken through the town down to what is
the last remnants of the Gallow Green.
(06:38):
And they would then do a speech of what happened on June the
10th, 1697, which was the day ofexecution.
And they also tell about what was said or what is believed to
be said. And slowly but surely that has
(07:00):
now come to the point of we now do tours, we do walks through
Paisley. We also do talks at the
University of the West of Scotland, which is in the town
and we cover a whole multitude now of things.
(07:20):
We do a talk and a walk called The Three Witch Trials of
Paisley. We do a talk called The Memory
of Witches, which is about witchmemorials and sites around the
world. And recently we did a talk on
Burn and the Witches which was about Tamil Shanter, and a lot
(07:43):
of the community have really gotinvolved with it.
It seems to be that they really engage with it.
They know some folklore but theydon't know what timeline it's
in. So they're really engaged with
what we do with them and and we're also got social media.
(08:04):
So it's really exciting when youget somebody who wants to talk
to you about it, because we're more than happy to talk about
it. And what would you like us to
know about your local community about Renfrewshire?
So Renfrewshire, the Renfrewshire at the moment that
(08:25):
we have quite small, but the original Renfrewshire of the
time period went from the Clyde coast.
So it covered Rimsby, Greenock, Gurrock, Port Glasgow and then
it came up and over into the villages which covered
(08:46):
Kilmacombe, Houston and Crossley, Lynnwood, Bridge of
Weir, Lochwinnock, Howard, Johnston and then it pulled its
way into Paisley Renfrew and I actually took in the area called
Pollock, which is now actually part of the Glasgow area.
(09:08):
And so Paisley was a judicial area for all of this through any
witch trials that happened in Paisley Abbey and the executions
happened at the Gallow Green in Paisley.
So this is basically the geograph of Renfrew.
Then. Now rainfall showers are a lot
(09:31):
smaller. It's more of a political area
which is run by a council. But we have a lot of beautiful
places, a lot of parks, a lot ofhillsides.
We have the River Cart which runs right through the whole
area and we have the Weaver's Cottage which is owned by the
(09:56):
National Trust of Scotland. And of course we have Paisley
Museum. And Paisley is also famous for
the Paisley pattern and court thread and anchor thread.
This was all done. It's, this is a, a piece of
history that drowned out earlierhistory was the Victorian era of
(10:19):
industrialisation where the mills happened in Paisley.
And as I said, it's only last 20years where people have now
started to look beyond the industrialisation of Victoria
and Paisley and started to look at what else Paisley was known
for. And of course this is what it
(10:41):
was known for. Witch Hudson trials, linen
making, mining and farming. Really.
So that's Renfrewshire. Thank you.
When were the Paisley witch trials?
So we have if so we had the veryfirst mention of a witch trial
(11:04):
for Paisley and this is in the database by Edinburgh
University, which is a wonderment of of Western
civilization is this database. And so it was 1650 and there was
no verdict. I actually recorded then the
(11:25):
next one is what we call the Pollock witch trials.
And so this is a witch hunt thathappened in Pollock Estate and
the victim was Sir George Maxwell, who was a bit of a bad
boy. And so their trials came to
(11:47):
Paisley and they were executed in Paisley and that was in 1677.
And then the infamous by garden witch hunt and trial started in
August of 1696 and the trials and execution happened in 1697.
(12:07):
So that is basically the the three witch trials, but we also
influenced the witch hunt and a little town called Pettenweeden
and five sadly, which resulted in a lynching.
(12:29):
So we've got other things, but there was a witch hunt in Echo
Barking, which I love. I know it sounds strange to say
that you loved a witch hunt, butit was so ridiculous.
But that is basically at the moment, that is the witch hunts
and trials that we discussed that we educate the community in
(12:52):
one of our volunteers, Juliana, she also looks into the Witch
Hudson trials in an area called Inverclyde, which was originally
part of the original Renfrewshire County.
So it covers Greenock, Gurrock, Port Glasgow, Rimsby and she
(13:14):
looks into the Witch Hudson trials down in Inverclyde.
You have no shortage of materialto engage with your guest son.
No, it's as I said, we were a bloodthirsty lot.
We've also got to the West of us, we have Ayrshire, so that's
(13:38):
the Ayrshire coast. So that takes in Troon,
Prestwick, Larks, Saltcoats and Irvine, Ayr and they had their
own witch trial and witch hunts.And then to the north of us
across the River Clyde we go into Dunbartonshire and Argyll
(14:01):
and Bute. And so we had the Bute witch
trials, which is one of the mostbeautiful island in the West
Coast of Scotland is the Isle ofBute.
And do they had a terrible history with witch Hudson trials
as well. So for a long time there's been
(14:22):
our concentration of the witch hunts and trials on the East
Coast because of course everything was taken to
Edinburgh. But in recent years our history
is evolving and we're now finding there was more happening
in the West Coast Scotland, which is where we come in.
(14:44):
How did the Bargeren witch hunt start?
Oh, so this is a bit of an infamy sort of thing.
It started with an 11 year old girl, as most of them do
actually. There's always a young girl or a
group of girls. So her name was Christian Shaw.
(15:07):
She was one of four children andher father was John Shaw or the
Leader Shaw and her mother Lady Shaw, and they lived in Bagaron
House, which was in an area called Bygarin an Erskine.
And I always say in my talks that the Shaw family's moral
(15:28):
compass was broken. They were not a good and they
were not a great family. The father had made a lot of
money being a commissioner on other witch hunts and files.
And so Christian was an 11 year old girl and they had a servant
(15:51):
called Catherine Campbell and she came from the Highlands of
Scotland. So we could do just for this,
her being in the Highlands of Scotland.
And over this time period that English was probably her second
language. She probably spoke Gaelic and
(16:12):
she was probably not Church of Scotland.
She would either be Catholic or we Free Presbyterian and of
course where we are here in Paisley and the Garden, it was
what would be classed as the Bible Belt of the Church of
Scotland. And so she had a lot of things
(16:36):
going against her. She probably had an accent, she
wasn't of the face and accounts of the time state that she had a
bit of a temper, which is not a good thing for a servant and
Christian came across her drinking some milk from a milk
charm. I believe she was tasting it to
(16:57):
see if it had cuddled, but she went to her mother, claimed that
Catherine was stealing the milk.The Lady Shaw took her to task
and Catherine was not pleased, bided her time and a few days
later she came across Christian.They had a big argument, some
say she said it three times, some say she said it once, but
(17:21):
she basically threw a curse at Christian Shaw and she said may
the devil harl your soul throughhell.
So basically, may the devil dragyour soul down to hell.
And this started an Oscar winning performance of this 11
year old from the August of 1696through to Christmas.
(17:48):
And she put on such a performance that made it totally
believable to the clergy, made it believable to the doctors of
the period, and subsequently brought about one of the darkest
periods of piece of history. Was she showing affliction?
(18:09):
Is that what her performance was?
Yes. So she had claimed there was
some of the accused had been brought to the house and were
named. And so subsequently she would go
into trances or she would go into seizures and she would
(18:29):
claim that these seizures were being brought about by ML, which
would have been Margaret Lane orby JL which would have been John
Lindsay. She was also known while whilst
lying in her bed she was known to cough up pin hair, candle
(18:52):
wax, coal dust, feathers. All this she was supposed to.
They took her to Glasgow to the doctors and they couldn't figure
out anything what was wrong withher.
She was brought back to Bagaron and and then the clergy came in
(19:14):
and they said it was possession.They stated it was witchcraft
and out of all the clergy there was 2 clergymen who were
extremely ambitious. Extremely ambitious, the
Reverend Thomas Blackwell and the Reverend Brisbane.
(19:34):
They constantly complained to the Church of Scotland that they
were too good for where they were, that they deserved more
money, better housing and that their congregations were
unwashed and unlettered and totally beneath them.
(19:55):
So I think they saw this as an opportunity to better
themselves. And so when Christian started to
go through these afflictions, I think they all jumped on board.
Her father made money out of this by being one of the
commissioners. She was also seen to levitate
downstairs, which is a nifty trick.
(20:18):
Why she was levitating downstairs I do not know.
But she was seen to levitate by the family doctor and she
continued this from the August to the December.
I don't know how she had the energy be honest, but this is
what she apparently went through.
(20:42):
Yeah, this case reminds me so much of the Salem witch trials
because like you said, it's often the case in witch trials.
We've seen this in so many places back then and in witch
hunts happening now. It's a young girl that starts it
off, and somehow it's these prepubescent and pubescent girls
(21:05):
that are really more prone to being afflicted, as it were, by
witches apparently. So they're always starting this
stuff. And this also was just a few
years after Salem, which itself was a very late witch hunt.
So this was extremely late in the witch hunting, wasn't it?
(21:27):
Yes, aha. So Salem was 1692, which was a
big year in Scotland as well, because it was the massacre of
Glencoe where the Campbell's massacre into the McDonald's.
We had a lot of unrest. The Covenanters were running
amok around Scotland, having battles left, right and centre,
(21:50):
so there was a lot of religious unrest in Scotland.
And of course by 1696, when thisall kicked off, Cotton Masseur
had wrote his pamphlet. It'd come over to Britain, so
anybody who could read had read it.
And then of course, oral history.
(22:10):
It would then be passed about byword of mouth.
So I would probably say by 1696,it was the least common
knowledge in Scotland of what happened over in Salem.
And so it's quite surprising when you actually look at the
(22:31):
trial notes and the afflictions that she went through as an
eerie echo of what happened in Salem.
And the real thing is recently the Inverclyde archivist
Lorraine Quinn, she came across trial notes of the Kilmacombe
(22:55):
witch hunt, which happened a year later after began.
And so I would have been 1698. And it was kicked off by a young
girl who had an affliction. She was coughing up pens, hair,
candle wax, feathers and she wasa younger sister of Christian.
Sure, but I don't know. Yes.
(23:21):
And as quick as she made the accusations and had the
inflictions, she then disappeared from history but
left in its wake such a disturbance in the village of
Kilmacone. And so you start to think there
was something going on here. Two children from the same
(23:41):
family who made money out of these witch hunts, having the
same afflictions but caused by different people.
Wow. What?
What was the trial like? Did it go to trial?
Yes, by December of 1696 they started to round everybody up
(24:06):
and sadly in Paisley we were into sleep deprivation and witch
pricking as a form of interrogation or read torture
for that. And so it was basically there
(24:27):
was a woman called Agnes Naismith.
So she was one of the accused and she was a beggar woman.
She would go about how she's begging for food.
My personal belief is her currency was gossip.
You go to somebody's door, you ask for a loaf of bread or a
slice of bread, they go no. But then if you say to them, did
(24:50):
you hear about Mrs. Mcginty's daughter, that better gossip.
Come in, come in. So she was known at Beggarin
House and I think she got wind of the rumblings that were
happening up at the house was Christian and she went up and as
she was in the house Christian took effect.
(25:13):
And so it was believed that Agnes through witchcraft had
brought this fit about onto Christian.
There was Robert Lindsay of Barking, so he was a tenant
farmer of the Shaws. And at this time in Scotland it
was called the Little Ice Age. So crops were failing.
(25:34):
Summers were cold and wet because there was a volcano
called Heckler in Iceland that kept on going off periodically.
So of course the ash cloud was coming over Scotland and ruining
summers. The the rate of stillbirths was
rising, and so people want to blame somebody for their lot in
(25:58):
life, which was miserable. And so his farm was failing.
He couldn't make the names. He was trying to sort something
out. And while he was in the house,
Christian apparently fell into afit.
She touched his coat and the fitstopped.
So because he stopped the fit with witchcraft, therefore he
(26:22):
was a witch and there was no land dispute anymore because a
witch can't own a farm. There was a midwife.
There's always a midwife in thisthese things, because these are
women of knowledge, of trust. And most of them could actually
read, which was the triple threat to any doctors who
(26:46):
weren't really doctors. And Margaret, she was also a
devout Christian. She is in the parish records for
at least three of the kirks in the area and of Paisley Abbey.
She was not to carry a Bible, but even she was blamed for the
(27:08):
stillbursts in the area and so she was claimed to be a witch.
There was another and it's a bitof an echo now of what is
happening in Africa now. There was another woman, and she
probably had dementia or Alzheimer's.
(27:28):
She was married. But she would wander the streets
and tell people that she'd visited the fairies, that she'd
had tea with the fairies, that she'd danced with King Oberon of
the fairies, and she'd had tea with Queen Titania.
And for every one person that looked kindly and pitifully upon
(27:49):
her, there was another person that felt threatened by her or
was frightened by her wandering about.
So she was claimed to be a witchbecause of this.
Two brothers who had a bit of a problem with someone because for
long and wary it was stated thatthey were 11 and 14.
(28:12):
And this all goes back to fake news.
Not long after, the child was a pamphlet written.
And to make it more salacious, it was named that the 2 Lindsay
brothers were 11 and 14 and thatthey were the head of this coven
and they gave them the titles ofthe curate and the Bishop, which
(28:32):
is ecclesiastical names. There was 2 Lindsay boys, 11 and
14 who were witnesses, but the two brothers who were accused
were young tenant farmers, so they were actually a lot older.
But this pamphlet was then rewritten into a book.
(28:55):
And for the next 300 years, anybody who wrote a magazine
article, a play, a song, anotherbook, all referenced this one
book called Sadhusamus de la Bartis, which stated it was to
be boys. And about a few years ago, we
finally unearthed the trial notes and that's when we found
(29:19):
out that they weren't to be boys, they were young men.
And lastly, there was blacksmiths.
Blacksmiths on another group of people that were looked
suspiciously because of course they worked for fire.
And who's got domain over fire? The Devil.
Or in Scotland we call him Old Nick.
(29:41):
And so his name was just pluckedout of the air because they'd
started to at Christmas, they started to pull in people,
including some of the final accused.
Then they pulled down a family who then blamed each other just
to stop the interrogations. And this was when people's names
(30:05):
were just plucked out of thin air.
You would be getting witch pricked or you were day three of
sleep deprivation and you'd be like, tell us any witches that
you know and you would name yourneighbor or you would remember
that you'd walked past a friend that morning and you would name
them. And so poor John Reed, Owen
(30:28):
Shannon the blacksmith, that's how his name was brought up.
And so there was over 35 people who were accused and
interrogated. And out of the 35, eight of them
were found guilty, and that was Catherine Campbell because she's
through the curse, John Lindsay of Barrackin, John Lindsay and
(30:53):
James Lindsay, the brothers of Fort Macken Mill, Margaret Lang,
Margaret Fulton and John Reed. Now, some instances people say
there was only 7. And this is all because John
read, sadly, while waiting for execution, committed suicide.
(31:16):
He was held in revenge through toll booths.
And so while eight of them were found guilty, only 7 went to
execution. So that's how sometimes the
numbers get mixed up. Eight were found guilty, but
only seven were executed. And so, as I said, it was a
(31:39):
dark, dark day in Paisley. One thing you hit upon was how
this knowledge of other witch trials was transmitted around
not only Scotland, but around the Atlantic world, coming from
Massachusetts over to the UnitedKingdom, and specifically about
(32:03):
Cotton Mather and his book Wonders of the Invisible World,
Getting over across the sea and possibly informing the
afflictions. Basically, the girl was either
acting out or maybe she had somedisorder, conversion disorder or
something, but what she knew wasthe afflictions of the Salem
(32:27):
girls. The Salem girls, in turn, knew
about afflictions in Boston fouryears before the Salem witch
trials because of a Cotton Mather book that he wrote about
a witch child in Boston of GoodyGlover.
So he's spreading the word aboutthis.
And before that, his father before him used to write all
(32:50):
these books about remarkable andillustrious provinces and have
all these wild stories about ghosts and witches and
everything. And so we've just seen before
that these ideas are being shared across society and people
again and again. The afflictions sound the same.
(33:12):
What the witches are confessing to sounds the same.
And it's all this word of mouth.I mean, the printed word pushed
so far and then word of mouth just set fire to it basically,
and it just went and white bread.
The Pollock witch trials, which happened in 1677, as a really,
(33:39):
I'm really interested in those because it was a mute girl who
started it, so she didn't have the power of speech, apparently.
And then when it came to her informing them that she could
find witches, she found the power of speech.
(33:59):
But not only did she find the power of speak, it was stated
that she could speak and read English, Latin and Greek.
Now, if that's not witchcraft, Idon't know what is.
Her name was Janet Douglas and she was called the Witch Finder.
And she claimed that she could find who were the people who
(34:22):
were putting curses on Sir George Maxwell.
As I said, she was about one or two boy.
His hobby was travelling around Scotland, either being a
commissioner on witch trials or just watching witch hunts and
taking part in them. And he came home one from one of
these witch hunts extremely ill or as my Gran would say, hell
(34:47):
slap it in to him. His lifestyle caught up with
him. And so she then claimed that a
family called the Massey Stewart.
So it was the mother, her son John, who was later named as the
Warlock of Pollock, and her 14 year old daughter Annabelle were
(35:11):
claimed to be witches. And then three other women who
also worked on the estate. So there was Bessie Weir,
Margaret Jackson, Marjorie Craigand Bessie Weir was actually
married to a Paisley Weaver. And so it's really quite strange
(35:32):
that young girls, young women were claiming things and yet
this all kicked off in Pollock by a girl who was mute and the
accused were brought to Paisley,sadly were found guilty.
Annabelle's execution was commuted to incarceration.
She was sent to Glasgow Tollbooth, which is still
(35:54):
standing today and sadly for therest of her life the claim of
witchcraft chased her no matter where she went.
Sir George Maxwell died and his son Sir John took over the title
and he became one of the commissioners on the Begaron
(36:16):
witch trial, which happened nearly 20 years later.
Janet Douglas. It's very interesting.
She disappears and then in the 1680s she reappears in
Edinburgh, married, and she starts to claim that she can
find witches, but it backfires on her and she is incarcerated
(36:38):
in Edinburgh. Tobus.
And so then it becomes a bit vague.
They decide that they're going to extradite her.
They're going to deport her fromScotland, but no ship's captain
will take her because witchcraftis involved.
And then the story goes cold. But there is AI found piece of
(37:02):
writing for you in a poem. Somebody said that they'd found
a story. Now, if this story is true, it
should be made into a film. There's no evidence to say it's
not true, but there's no evidence to say it is true.
It's a great story. So the story is Janet Douglas is
(37:23):
finally forced onto a ship. Remember this, in the 1680s,
late 1680s, she is taken to the Americas and she lands in
Massachusetts. And in 1692, she finds herself
in a little town called Salem where she starts her shenanigans
(37:44):
again by Cleveland witchcraft. It would be brilliant if it was
true. There's we can't write any
everything, say yes or no, but it would be a great story.
It really would. And so the fact that this story
has appeared somewhere. And so you're thinking to
yourself, well, that is probablybecause oral history of the
(38:09):
witch trials that were happeningin the UK and Britain were
making their way over to America.
And then vice versa, the oral history of Americas, we're
coming back to the British Islesand circulating here.
And it just became a sort of melting pot of folklore and such
(38:30):
like. And it was easier to blame
people than actually figure out what was wrong.
And people were making money outof it as well.
So, but it is very interesting how you could sort of follow it
sort of back and forth. But yeah, very interesting.
(38:54):
You know, yeah, what a great story that would be if that is
true. So somebody find a an authentic
document. A document.
Authentic one. An authentic 1 yes.
Feed something? Yeah, you've got these images
(39:15):
behind you with the horseshoe and also on your jacket.
Would you like to tell us about what that symbol is?
So basically when the execution happened on June the 10th 1697,
Agnes Naismith the beggar woman did not go quietly, neither did
(39:36):
Catherine Campbell. They harangued the people
watching and Agnes Naismith laida dying woman's curse on Paisley
and their people. There's various versions but
ethos of it is that the people of Paisley and all their beams
(39:57):
will not know happiness, health or wealth basically.
And so this put the fear of God into the watchers of this
execution. And so the.
The Gallow Green was a common area of ground which ran from an
(40:21):
area called Castle Head, which was a kind of outcrop promontory
of a hill. And what they would do was the
people would sit or stand on thehill looking down on the
execution area. So this area had been used
before. 2 Covenanters had been executed there, the Pollock
(40:44):
accused had been executed there.And so this is where the seven
of the 8 accused of the Begar inwitch trials were executed.
And as I said, Agnes de Smith hurrying a dying woman's curse
upon the crowd and Paisley. So they decided that once they
(41:06):
burned their bodies, that when they buried their remains, they
would put an iron horseshoe on the top to lock the curse into
the earth. And strangely enough, the
horseshoe sat there. We haven't been able to find any
(41:27):
written evidence from the time it was laid there until around
about the 1950s. Strangely enough, we might not
have found it yet. I can't.
I think it very hard to believe that nearly 300 years went by
and nobody has once mentioned the horseshoe.
(41:47):
But in the 1950s and there was anewspaper article saying that
the horseshoe had went missing, and this started a folklore of
the Paisley buddies. So if you were born in Paisley,
you're called a buddy. So the Paisley buddies started
(42:07):
this folk horse stating that if the horseshoe went missing, the
dying woman's curse come alive and walk the streets Paisley.
And so a new horseshoe was put in place and subsequently over
the years, this horseshoes went missing or it's broken and it's
been replaced. It sits in a very busy
(42:32):
crossroads called Maxwellton Cross at the West End of
Paisley, and a lot of traffic, public transport, ambulances
going to the local hospital, thefire brigade, because their
station is just down the road, all use this and to change.
(42:52):
So it's a really heavy trafficked area.
And around about 2010 the horseshoe went missing again and
two local businessmen, Tony Lawler and Piero Piercini, they
decided to set up a charity called the Paisley Development
Trust and they decided somethinghad to be more permanent than
(43:15):
just a horseshoe and some concrete.
So they went to the royal sculptor who was a man called
Sandy Stoddart. He was asked if he would design
and make something, so he designed the witch's tondo.
(43:35):
So it's a burnished stainless steel desk being a tondo and
round the outer edge there is a word stating pain inflicted,
suffering endured, injustice done.
And then using a tent grew rod, the horseshoe is put in the
(43:56):
middle and it's sat there. And just before Christmas,
myself and one of the other trustees, Julianna Merrick, were
driving home from one of the talks.
And we went over the horseshoe and she said to me, did the
horseshoe look awful high to you?
(44:19):
I don't make that was on a Thursday night.
And on a Tuesday morning, we woke up to find Facebook, all a
Twitter over the fact that the horseshoe was missing this.
And people were, oh, this was terrible.
This was awful. The curse was a bone.
And eventually it came about that our postman, on his early
(44:44):
rounds, found the horseshoe at the side of the road.
And it just so happened that three of the rods had just worn
away and it popped itself out. He handed it into the council
offices and so we contacted the council and they said Jess,
we're going to replace, we're going to close the roads down
(45:04):
and put it in place. So on the 17th of December,
which was a Tuesday night, myself and Juliana got a call to
see, would you like to come downand see the horseshoe being put
back? So we did and we watched it.
We held the horseshoe, we took photographs of it.
And strangely enough, we're standing with a group of
(45:27):
workmen. There was about 8 of them and
the lovely Graham, who was the supervisor who had the
horseshoe. And we were waiting for the
blacksmith to arrive, which I found very auspicious that we
were yet again waiting for a blacksmith to come because he
(45:49):
had to drill out the three rods that were stuck and to Weld some
new ones in. And as we stood looking down at
the torn door, a couple of the workmen claimed that they'd
heard rumours about what was claimed about the horseshoe.
So I told them what I just told you about the folklore behind
(46:14):
it. And then we stood in a bit of
unsettled silence. And then one of the workmen
went, so that dirt pipe burst inthe Neilston Rd. just the other
day there and closed off the roads.
And it's also burst another pipeand we all just looked at each
(46:36):
other. And then one of the other men
went, yeah, we had a power cut just the other night there.
Then somebody else said our Wi-Fi went down, the whole
street had no Wi-Fi, and we justdid there.
Really unsettled silence. Nobody to claim that was because
(46:59):
the horseshoe went missing, but the fact that they were standing
there holding the horseshoe waiting for the blacksmiths.
Wow. So the horseshoes back in place,
I'm happy to report and hopefully it'll stay there for a
little while longer, but they'regoing to be resurfacing the
(47:20):
road. So the council think it's about
time that they'll do some TLC onthe what she's taught because
it's been there now for about 10years.
So they're probably going to talk to Sandy Stoddart, who is
well known because he was asked,I think it was it Yale, I think
(47:41):
it was Yale College had the anniversary.
And they asked him to design andmake 2 statues of the Reverend
Witherspoon. SO1 stands in the grounds of
Yale and one stands outside the University of the West of
Scotland and Paisley. So that's his link to America is
(48:05):
through Reverend Witherspoon, who is the ancestor of the
actress Reese Witherspoon. Oh.
Really. And he was also a signatory of
the Declaration of Independence,and he came from Paisley.
So that's Paisley's wee link to America.
(48:29):
Important thing. So that's the witch's tondo
thank. You thank you so much for
joining us today. Is there anything that you
wanted to cover today that we haven't gotten to?
They're not really, at the moment, another group called the
Witches of Scotland. They have a brilliant podcast,
(48:52):
Claire and Zoe, and we are stilltrying to get a pardon put
through. And just recently they announced
that they designed tartan, so they did, which looks fabulous.
They're just about to bring out a book of theirs as well and we
(49:14):
are trying to. We are now in the process of
planning our next memorial and we're just about to kick off our
walks and talks again because the weather is a lot better here
and we're in the process. Myself and Juliana are in the
process of redesigning a websitefor ourselves.
(49:36):
We're not that way inclined, so it's a bit of a bugbear with us.
We're trying to see if we can pay somebody to help us.
Every once in a while we find something new.
One of my favourite ones is in Quebec and there was a witch
hunt of Mod Gaul. And in the British Isles there
(49:57):
is only four lesbian witches. So there is and Mod Gaul is
Scotland only one and she was married with two female servants
and one servant. Agnes Mitchell arrived in the
church and to the presbytery meeting and claimed she was
(50:20):
being abused by her mistress andthey had a trial and they found
her not guilty and so she went back and had a happy life with
her husband and the other femaleservant.
She's our most recent find of witch hunts and trials is Mod
Gault. So we're always digging away,
(50:43):
finding something else that looks amazing or looks sad or
just adds to the tapestry of what the history.
Is can you remind us how our listeners can find you on the
Internet? And if they come to the Paisley
(51:04):
area, how can they enjoy a tour?OK, we have one on Facebook
page. So that's the name for Shy Witch
Hunt 1697. So we're on Facebook.
We have a Pinterest page as well.
We do have a Twitter account butat the moment, well, I'm trying
(51:27):
to find time to try and do everything.
We hopefully will have our website up and running.
Our walks and talks are advertised on our partnership
website called Paisley Heritage.So they've kindly promoted our
(51:48):
walks and talks. If you go onto their website or
to their Facebook page, there will be a link and you can book
a place on our walks or our talks and we have what we call
the Witch's Hub. So in the centre of Paisley, on
the High Street, there is the Paisley Centre, which is like a
(52:11):
shopping mall and we have a tinylittle area and we show the
stories of the different witch trials.
That's 16771, the Pollock witch trial, the Begarin witch trial
and the Pit and Wean witch trial.
And we then do a general information wall on other witch
(52:33):
Hudson trials in Scotland. So we're usually in there as
well if they were dropping by. Or they could just drop us a
text and ask as Anderson. Really.
GAIL, thank you for such an excellent discussion and for
bringing the history to life in such a powerful way.
(52:55):
Everyone, don't forget to download this week's episode of
The Thing About Salem podcast. You don't want to miss it.
Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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