360-year-old papers to name dozens of ‘witches’

THEY were tried and executed as witches, persecuted on the basis of suspicion and fear.

Thousands of women were publicly accused of using magical powers in Scotland, despite the fact they were often healers practising folk medicine.

Now, documents set to be published online have cast new light on a dark period of Scottish history.

The Names of Witches in Scotland, 1658 collection, holds the names of around 100 people, mostly women, who were accused of what was a capital crime. The records, which are held by the Wellcome Library, will be digitised by the family history website Ancestry.

Along with the names and towns of the accused, there are also notes concerning their confessions.

About a Helene Minhead of Irongray, dumfries, it is written: ‘Her Confessione Is In The Hands of Mr Patrike Cuamlait Minister At Irongray.’

other notes give small insights into the lives of those accused. Jon Gilchreist and robert Semple from dumbarton are recorded as sailors. And, mysteriously, a James Lerile of Alloway, Ayr, is noted as ‘clenged’, in other words cleansed or made clean.

His fate is unclear but likely to have been banishment or death.

It is estimated that between 3,000 and 5,000 women were publicly accused of being witches in 16th and 17th century Scotland, a much higher number than neighbouring England.

The outbreak of witch-hunting in the years 1658-1662, a time covering the period in which this list of names was created, is generally seen to represent the peak of the persecution. Ancestry’s senior content manager Miriam Silverman said that although witches today are seen as a possible fancy dress theme for costumes at Halloween, they were once a real fear to many Scots.

‘People believed that the unholy forces of witchcraft were lurking in their communities,’ she explained, ‘and those accused of being witches were persecuted on the basis of these dark suspicions.’

dr Christopher Hilton, senior archivist at Wellcome Library, said the records gave an insight into an often undocumented world.