For Bessie: Community unites to remember woman executed in Scotland’s witch trials

She was burned as a witch in the 16th Century but the injustice inflicted on Bessie Dunlop is to help encourage visitors to her town.

Women in Dalry, Ayrshire, hope to install a sculpture next to the A737 in honour of Dunlop, who was one of the thousands persecuted for witchcraft in Scotland.

The Bypass Art group has already brought the community together for a short film celebrating Dalry’s past that was premiered last month.

Julie Wales, chair of the group, said: “Dalry is a lovely town to live in but we thought people might bypass it. We have got such a lot of history that deserves to be known.

“With Bessie, it was a case of all the injustices she had suffered. ..in all the things they said she did they couldn’t actually come up with something that said she harmed anyone. She was a good person.”

Dun lop relied on old superstitions, traditional folk medicine and charms for helping people in her role as a midwife and healer. But, in an age where hysteria around witchcraft was at its peak, she aroused suspicions and found herself reported by a neighbour, arrested and taken to Edinburgh where she was tortured until she confessed under duress. She told the trial of her encounters with the spirit of Thom Reid, a former barony officer from Dalry who had died at the Battle of Pinkie against the English in 1547.

She was found guilty of sorcery, witchcraft and incantation at the High Court of Judiciary on November 8, 1576, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.

The group has plenty of ideas for the art installation and hopes to secure funds to

bring in professional help to determine the costs involved and work on a design.

Dunlop is being remembered as a national campaign for a pardon for all the Scots wrongly persecuted as witches gathers momentum. Founded by Claire Mitchell QC and Zoe Ven di tozzi, the campaign seeks official pardons and a memorial to victims between 1563 and 1736, when the Witchcraft Act was law.

Ven di tozzi said :“The witchcraft trials are never something we learned about – or teach – at school, but it’s such a huge topic. We are trying to change the past, but the reality is people are still being accused of witchcraft around the globe. It’s a historical issue but one so relevant to today.”

The efforts to remember Dunlop have caught the attention of the Ayrshire community, which has already been involved in the efforts to tell its history. A short film based on a poem by John Hodgart, called The Hill tap Toon, brought together 150 people, including schoolchildren and the town’s football team, Dalry Thistle.

The final scenes of the film were shot just before the pandemic hit, so it wasn’t until late last month that it was screened for the first time.

Hodgart, who wrote 64 verses on Dalry through the ages, was delighted to see the story of his town and Dunlop brought to life. “It’s a great medley of voices of all ages, who brought their own character, humour, personality to each bit they delivered. It’s a wonderful record of the community now as well, which has made it very special to me.

“There’s folk who were at school with me, and people I taught. In a way, it’s a love poem to a place.”

Hodgart first heard of Dunlop as a teenager in his granny’s house, where his elderly aunts spoke of bottling water at a well once frequented by the woman who’d become known as the witch of Dalry.

The fascination stuck with him, leading him to write about her in a play, books and the new poem. And he’s not alone. Scholar Robert Pitcairn compiled Dunlop’s case in his volumes of Ancient Criminal Trials In Scotland and Sir Walter Scott wrote of her in Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft.

“Bessie’s been with me for a long, long time,” Hodgart said. “Her case is one of the earliest and most extraordinary cases on record because it was recorded in great detail, all the things she confessed to – or was persuaded to say under extreme torture. It’s a classic case of a male hierarchy wanting to suppress the power that women had that they feared.

“Misogyny was one of the big drivers behind the witch prosecutions and that raged over Europe for a couple of centuries. The story is so relevant to the modern world today. Scapegoating and persecution of someone who is a threat to the order of the time – these things are still going on.”