Excerpt
Excerpt from chapter Witches in Scotland On my travels round the country, I have come across places with a “magical” association, always by chance. All but a few of these places are where witches suffered for their craft. I think it’s that old adage that if you do something good, no one remembers, but if something bad happens, no one forgets. And local communities seem to remember where witches suffered more than for any other reason. We should never forget the torture and suffering involved in accusations of witchcraft. The amount of women who were drowned or burnt after sessions of sleep deprivation, insertions of needles and the like, to elicit confessions from folk maddened with pain, is a stain on our history. Ducking Pools where suspected witches were tied to chairs and suspended underwater, or thrown in to ascertain if they were witches or not, abound in Scotland. If they sank and drowned they were innocent, and if they floated they were indeed, a witch. So it was tails you lose, heads you lose. Even the stream near to my house has the site of a “Witches Pool” where such trials were carried out. The amount of women killed in such ways is well into four figures, although, of course, estimated amounts vary. And the charges brought are outrageous. One witch was accused of turning her daughter into a pony, having her shod, and riding her about town. Really, what is the point? If you had magical powers you might as well have used them to further your community, or in this day and age, choose the winning lottery numbers. But turning family members into animals? And supposedly educated men debated the life or death of a woman on the truth of such matters.