‘The whelk ye freely confessed’: The Witch Trials in Crook of Devon

One day in the early spring, Isabel Rutherford got a knock on her door. We don’t know whether she had a husband, friends or children. We certainly know that she had enemies. Isabel was accused of witchcraft and confessed. On the 3rd of April she was tried and convicted for witchcraft. On 5 April, she was taken to Lamblaires, a field close to the Crook Mill. She was strangled and her body was burned at the stake. Were her friends and family there to say goodbye? Were her accusers there? We don’t know. Two other convicted witches were executed alongside her and more were to follow. The year is 1662; the place is Crook of Devon, a rural village in Kinross-shire in Scotland.

350 years ago, people believed in the existence of witches. This belief was so entrenched that in Scotland alone, thousands of people were accused of witchcraft and in many cases convicted and executed. Around 3,000 people were tried, although gaps in the records make an accurate count impossible. There could have been other, local hunts of which we have no records. The figure on executed witches now stands at 1,500 in Scotland and 40,000 in the Western world.

Between the early 16th and into the 18th century there were several periods in which this witch-hunt intensified. The years 1661 and 1662 saw a huge increase in accusations in Scotland; over 400 people were involved in what is now called the ‘Great Scottish Witch- Hunt’. In Crook of Devon thirteen people were accused; twelve women and one man. Of the women, one probably died before she could be executed and one got a reprieve because she was pregnant. The others, eleven in total, were strangled and burned at the stake. Many others were ‘delated’ (accused) by the convicted witches. We can only hope that changes in the legal procedures that came into effect in 1662 have helped them to escape a similar fate.

The proceedings of the trials in Crook of Devon have survived. Though written in the formal language of the court, they offer us an insight in what the accused and the community have had to go through. Crook of Devon was (and still is) a small village; 350 years ago, most would have been related in one or another way to the witches; neighbours, family, work-relations- the whole community was involved. The names of the farm towns where the accused lived are still used today; the Cruick Mill still stands and the house where the actual trials are said to have been held is still inhabited.

It is hard to know how the villagers would have reacted to the trials and executions. Perhaps they agreed. Perhaps they had seen a cow die after being cursed by one of those on trial. But what if their neighbours were accused, their wives and daughters being tried? What if one day their names came up? Thirteen were formally accused; over twenty others implicated and that must have been a sizeable proportion of the whole community. Why did this practice go on largely unquestioned?
The bare bones of this tragedy are fairly well known. The court met on five separate occasions throughout the year 1662: on the 3rd of April, to try Agnes Murie, Bessie Henderson and Isabel Rutherford; on the 23rd of April, to try Robert Wilson, Bessie Neil, Margaret Litster, Janet Paton from Crook of Devon and Agnes Brugh; Agnes Pittendriech was also brought to this court but was released because of her pregnancy; on the 5th of May the Court met to try Margaret Huggon and Janet Paton of Kilduff; on the 21st of July, to try Janet Brugh and Christian Grieve. The latter was acquitted but retried on the 8th of October to be convicted. Margaret Huggon seems to have died in prison, Agnes Pittendreich was given a reprieve because of her pregnancy but the others, eleven in total, were convicted and executed. Apart from these thirteen people, between sixteen and twenty more that we know of were ‘delated’ or accused from being present at meetings with the devil.

Agnes Murie was unmarried when she was tried early April 1662. Who was she? Did she look like a stereotypical witch? We know from what has been assembled by the Scottish Survey of Witchcraft that the majority of those accused were poor, but not desperately poor. Certainly all the accused in the Crook of Devon trials were peasants. They would have been employed in and around a farm. Most families would have a kail yard, a patch of land to grow some vegetables. Margaret Lister was digging her kail yard when she told Thomas Anderson from Gelvin about her meetings with the devil. In these court proceedings, as in others that have survived, several complaints are recorded about cows straying into neighbouring fields. Many arguments that preceded witchcraft accusations would originate in neighbourly conflicts like these. Witches were poor, but most had some animals and a scrap of land and guarded those zealously.

Not all witches were old. Margaret Huggon was over ‘three-score and nineteen’ (79) years old but Agnes Pittendreich was expecting a baby. Of the thirteen involved, four were recorded to be married and two were widows or relicts (the formal expression for widows). Family connections are not always easy to trace; most women kept their own name on marriage. The Scottish Witchcraft Survey has not been able to record all the ages of the accused, but as far as there are ages recorded, the median lies in the age group of between 40 and 50 years old. As the life expectancy in the 17th century was significantly lower than in later centuries, it means that a larger proportion of those accused and tried for witchcraft was in the older age group.

According to the Scottish Witchcraft Survey only around 15% of the accused in Scotland were male. The gender balance elsewhere in Europe was only slightly different. In Scandinavia and some parts of France a higher proportion of men were accused and of the 21 witches executed in Iceland, only one was female. Compared to England however, Scotland had a much higher incidence of executions for witchcraft: in England, with a population of four million people, 500 witches were executed between 1563 and 1685. Scotland had a population of one million, but in the same period 1,500 witches were executed, meaning that women north of the border had a much higher chance of getting implicated in witchcraft.

The explanations for this extraordinary gender bias vary widely. One explanation lies in the influence that the infamous treatise: Malleus Maleficarum (the Hammer of Witches) has had on the ruling classes’ ideas about witchcraft. It was first published in 1486 and women did not get a very good write-up, to say the least. Heinrich Kramer wrote this book with co-author Jacob Sprenger, to emphasise the importance of catching and prosecuting witches in Germany. The text would certainly have been known in Scotland. Kramer argued that women are more impressionable, feeble, have slippery tongues, and are more carnal than men. Such a misogynistic streak has run throughout the history of the Catholic Church and this perception of and attitude towards women very much persisted after the Reformation.

Scottish society was generally patriarchal; women were considered inferior to men and did not even have the solace of the belief in the Virgin Mary and the female saints like they would have had before the Reformation.

Perhaps more importantly, women were mostly responsible for domestic work including the care for children. They would make the bread, beer, butter and cheese. So if a child would fall ill, or butter refused to set, or beer went stale, the suspicion would easily fall on any woman who was around at the time. Women would use herbs for common ailments, perhaps charms of some sort. There is no doubt that some women used their alleged magic powers to exert influence to get things given to or done for them. It has also become clear that women who were quarrelsome and outspoken were more likely to be regarded as possible witches. Some may even have used the fear for witches to put pressure on their neighbours.

The mysterious capacity to bear children could evoke fears and suspicions in men. We all know the myths -some still in existence- about menstruating women; even now many societies enforce cleansing rituals for women after menstruation or childbirth. So women were by nature feeble (and thus more prone to advances from the devil) and at the same time more mysterious, powerful, wicked, lustful and evil than men. In short: women couldn’t win.

If we are to believe the proceedings in the Crook of Devon trials, there had been several conflicts between the accused and the community spread out over a period of time. Suspicions would grow to such an extent that the matter could not be ignored anymore. For a witch to come to the attention of the authorities it was necessary that he or she would have a reputation- ‘of ill fame’. Neighbour disputes could start such a reputation: cattle would stray in someone else’s kail yard, harsh words would be exchanged and the occasional curse uttered. But what if that curse came true? The horse goes lame or gets colic, the cow stops giving milk, the beer gets stale or the butter refuses to set. Worse even, unexplained illness strikes a family. Suddenly there is a rumour going round. Others may remember that their animals too sickened after a conflict with the witch, sometimes years ago.

The refusal of charity would have been another starting point for conflict. Agnes Murie was reputed to have laid on a sickness to several animals: ‘ane grey mair that took an shaking and when the meir began to mend one of his master’s best ewes died, and when the meir was well ane of his plow of oxen grew sick’(Proceedings,1888). Refusing a drink of milk or some feed for cattle could thus have dire consequences.

Sometimes it was not animals, but people who became ill and died. Margaret Litster went to visit James Paton in Aldie to ask for some meat and to sell her leeks. He had a son of about seven months old. Margaret must have been turned away because she put ‘a bunch of leiks in the said bairn’s hand and streaked down his head twice or thrice and said: “this is not for your father’s sake, not your mother’s sake, but for your own sake”, and the morn before the sun rose the bairn took the falling sickness’ (Proceedings,1888).
Scholars have argued that many of the accused built up their reputation through healing. There was a large grey area between official healing (which was just in the process of becoming a profession) and folk healing. Folk healers would use herbs and minerals, some of which have proven medicinal properties, along with charms like stones, threads, south-running water and rituals, like incantations. The latter were often based on half-remembered Catholic prayers, such as the Hail Mary, or prayers invoking the saints. That made it very suspect, as Protestants regarded most of the Catholic rituals as superstitious, even as a sort of magic.

‘I forbid the quaking fevers, the sea fevers, the land fevers, And all the fevers that ever God ordainis, Out of the head, out of the heart, out of the back, Out of the sides, out of the knees, out of the tides, Frae. the points of the fingers to the nebs of the thies, Out sall the fevers go, some to the hill, some to the hope, Some to the stone, some to the stock; In St Peter's name, St Paul's name, and all the saints of Heaven; In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghaist.’
(Healing incantation, Rogers, 1884)

Margaret must have had a reputation for ‘laying off and laying on illnesses. Curing someone with magic was possible when transferring sickness from one person to another.

‘Janet Graham, spouse to John Marshall, being solemnly sworn, declared upon her great oath that six years since or thereby, her son, James Robertson, being diseased of the falling sickness, occasionally met with Helen Livingstone, daughter to Thomas Livingstone, at Cruik Miln, who desired her to go to Margaret Litster, who had declared to her that the said Margaret had cured William Anderson, in Kirkaldie, of the same disease, and, according to the said Helen, her desire, she went to the said Margaret and asked whether or not she could cure her sick son of the said disease, who answered, she could both cure beast and bodie, and said her said son did gif her ane stand of cloathes, whilk the said Marget, her husband, did wear thereafter, and the said Janet gave her meal and groats at several times, and thereafter the lad was in health two years and more, and during the whilk space they had ane cow that ever wanted the said disease ; and two years thereafter the said James, being at John Mailer's brydale, in Cruik of Devon, at Andrew Hutton's house, the said Margaret Litster desired him to go home, and he said to her, "What have ye to do with me? I will not go while I be ready," and upon the morn thereafter he took the said disease far worse than ever he had before, and continues so as yet ; and thereafter the said Janet went to the said Margaret Litster's house upon the morrow thereafter and asked for the said Marget, and they said to her that she was at the place, but the truth is she found her sitting at William Livingstone's fireside at Crook Miln, and desired not to speak to her there, but called her forth and told her that the lad was not well enough, and shortly thereafter, the lad continuing in the said disease, the said Janet went to her house.’ (Proceedings,1888).

The laying on and off of illnesses is a recurring theme in witchcraft cases. Isabel Rutherford was also a charmer (healer) and tried to cure James Kid of Muirhauch from the ‘trembling fevers’. In the 17th century, magic was an integral aspect of everybody’s life. Many natural phenomena were not understood or explained and were thus attributed to magic: strange happenings in the sky, unexpected illnesses of failure of crops. In order to exert power over their lives, people would resort to magic. When people believe in the reality of magic, it will often work: the placebo effect is well known and used by both the official medical profession as well as non-traditional healers.

will be continued