The horrid sinne of Witchcraft

'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ says the Bible (Exodus 22:18) and two hundred years of witch hunters ensured that The Word was spread. In Scotland thousands of men and women stood accused before their Kirk Sessions for the 'horrid sinne of witchcraft' and, just over three hundred years ago, Dumfries and Galloway saw the very last witch trial in the United Kingdom.

AGNES Commes, Janet McGowane, Jean Tomson, Margaret Clerk, Janet McKendrig, Agnes Clerk, Janet Corsane, Helen Moor head and Janet Callon — the names as they would appear today could all belong to the members of a local rural.

These unrelated women with the unremarkable titles, however, suffered the same brutal fate in 1659 — they were strangled and burned at the stake on Dumfries Whitesands for ‘the horrid sinne of witchcraft.’

For over a two-hundred year period, political and religious conviction was responsible for the torture and death of many innocent people across Europe.

In Scotland, during the time of the witch trials, 3,867 formal accusations of witchcraft were made.

Of those, roughly half of the defendants were executed. In this region 128 of those cases came before our Kirk Sessions.

In 1514, the Steward of Kirkudbright was commissioned to apprehend and try named subjects who were suspected of witchcraft.

In 1563 the newly established Church of Scotland made it illegal to be a witch or to consult a witch. An Act of Parliament followed that year making the crime a capital offence.

The coming of James VI marked a very dark and terrifying time for all who lived on the fringes of society.

His treatise entitled ‘Daemonology’ in 1597 passionately denounced the practice of witchcraft and instigated a brutal rampage of slaughter that would last for the remainder of his reign.

Later, the General Assembly continued this work by passing a decade of Condemnatory Acts against witches in the 1640s.

The third peak began in Galloway when nine women were strangled and burned on the Whitesands in 1659.

More and more witch finders came forward, demanding their fees for rounding up suspects and torturing confessions from them.

All methods of inhumanity were utilised to extract a statement of guilt. Witch hunters were also known to torture the suspect’s family in front of them in an effort to exchange confession for coin.

Those found with a ‘witch mark’ would be pricked with 3’ needles through the spot. If the accused cried out in pain, he or she would be deemed innocent of the ‘sinne’. If nothing was felt or it did not bleed, she would certainly be a witch.

Throughout Europe men and (mainly) women were either brandished, banished, jailed or burned for their allegedly evil deeds.

Galloway boasts the last recorded witch burning in Scotland, taking place in 1698 when Elspeth MacEwen was found guilty of, amongst other things, ‘a compact and correspondence with the devil.’

The last witchcraft trial in the United Kingdom took place in Dumfries in 1708 when Elspeth Rule was branded on her cheek with a hot iron and banished from Scotland.

Dr Lizanne Henderson, lecturer in History at Glasgow University’s Crichton Campus, Dumfries, is an authority on European folklore and Scottish history.

She said: ‘Scotland was later in persecuting witches than England, Germany, France, etc, but not by much. Other European countries, such as Hungary, were still persecuting witches well into the 18th century.

‘The Kirk in this part of Scotland very rarely employed witch finders. There were, however, some individual ministers who were reluctant to give up belief in witches as they thought it was linked to atheism and an erosion of Christian belief and values.’

But who were these enemies of God and king?

Dr Henderson explained that there was no evidence to suggest that witches actually performed the feats they were accused of.

‘The average person accused of witchcraft generally would have been mainly female — males made up about 15 per cent of cases,’ she said.

‘This was no an attack on a particular gender nor was it founded upon superstition. Witchcraft was part of the belief system at the time and very real to everyone. When bad things happened — like a cow would stop

milking, a hen refused to lay, crops failed or milk curdled in the churn — the victim would look for a logical explanation for his misfortunes.

‘The practice of witchcraft was a logical explanation at the time and the remedy would be to find the person who was causing it.’

Midwives, people with squints, herbalists, those with deformities and those living on society's social margins were all deemed suspects.

Many of the victims were elderly women who relied on the local landowner or farmer for charitable donations of food to maintain a meagre existence.

In Lanarkshire in 1612, Alison Devise was sentenced to public execution for practising witchcraft. She was 11 years old.

‘What people were fighting against was "the witch", Dr Henderson explained, ‘and people would look for the most likely suspect.

‘This was normally an older person who was perhaps unpopular in the village; or particularly ill-tempered; or had behaved in a certain way over a period of time that would give him or her a bad reputation amongst the villagers.’

It was this reputation, built up over the years, that would brand them as suspicious. But it was the establishment of the day that would eventually condemn them.

‘The legal system and the clergy were not concerned with the actual result of the alleged witchcraft. They were more interested in how the witch was performing her feats and put this down to a relationship with the devil.

‘Witches were accused of denouncing their Christianity and entering into a pact with the devil. This was a far more serious crime and one that imposed most severe penalties.’

The Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1736.

‘After this date it was no longer possible to legally prosecute someone for the crime of witchcraft,’ said Dr Henderson, ‘though you could still prosecute for 'pretended witchcraft' which actually happened to Jean Maxwell from Kirkcudbright in 1805. She was sent to prison for one year.’

Today, it is difficult to believe that eminent members of the church and state could actually entertain the notion that a human being could turn into a beetle, speak with the devil or cause lameness in a horse by just looking at it, let alone fly across oceans on a broomstick.

Some of these individuals could indeed have practised witchcraft as we know it today, but most of them were simply innocent victims of their time.

In a modern society where human rights and individual liberty are sacrosanct, certain factions of the pagan religion are now safe to call themselves ‘witches’ without fear of a painful combustion, yet the stigma remains and our need for the existence of the anti-hero feeds it.

Five hundred years on we carry the same perception of ‘the witch’ as people did then — only we no longer kill them.

Instead many of us erroneously acknowledge their existence with a certain amount of trepidation and sometimes even ridicule.

It takes a very courageous individual to admit to being a witch. The link with Satanism and black magic certainly makes for a bad public image, but the majority of witches are gentle environmentalists and the colour of their magic is normally white and often very green.

Return to Rerrick

A LONELY tree stands twisted and
silent on a hill near Auchencairn.
It has a beautiful panoramic vista which includes the Solway and the mountains of Cumbria.
It is apparently the last of a line of trees that were planted on the site of the former Ringcroft of Stocking a few hundred years ago.
They have come to be known as “The Ghost Trees” and were put there either to contain evil spirits or to remind the living world that there are many more realms to this existence.
Some locals believe that, when the last of the ghost trees dies, the evil spirit that haunted a farmer and his family over three hundred years ago will return.
The Rerrick Parish Poltergeist is a chilling tale and one of the most well-documented
events of its kind.
In 1695 a farmer and his family were subjected to three months of violent paranormal activity in and around their farmhouse in the parish of Rerrick.
Five priests performed an exorcising ritual for two weeks, but the angry spirit only got worse.
In the end, it suddenly left of its own volition and, so far, has not been back.
There are a number of houses close to the site and one of them in particular is purported to be haunted.
An Auchencairn man and his teenage daughter, both of whom prefer not to be named, lived in a small cottage possibly built on the ancient boundaries of the steading.
The man told of strange occurrences in the house while he was living there a few years ago.
“We used to find teaspoons in the hearth in the mornings,” he said.
“I don't know why something should want to put these objects among the ashes but we got so used to it that it didn't really bother us.
“One day my daughter was walking out of the kitchen and heard a loud crash behind her.
“A pan had apparently fallen off the shelf and landed on the floor by her feet.
“There is nothing particularly unusual about something falling off a shelf, only that particular pan must have travelled about five feet through the air and across the kitchen.
It could only have been thrown.
“One morning I was in the kitchen and the kettle switched itself on.
“I tried switching that kettle on and off a hundred times afterwards to see whether it was possible for it to come on by itself.
“The button actually takes quite a bit of pressure to switch it on, so I put that down to the
ghost.”
There were also strange knocks on the door and something twanged the guitar strings on more than one occasion.
The man, who still lives close to Auchencairn, was also told by an elderly local that he was one of the longest serving tenants in that house.
People often came and then left quite swiftly after.
“There were strange things going on in the house, but I never once felt frightened or apprehensive about living there" the man said.
"Whatever it was, didn't particularly bother me.”
The Ringcroft of Stocking did have a reputation for being haunted before the MacKie incident and it appears that perhaps it still is.
Hopefully though, whatever it was that subjected Andrew Mackie and his family to three months of torment and horror over three hundred years ago will never return in our lifetimes.
Let’s hope so.

The Rerrick Poltergeist

THE GHOST TREE: Pictured is the twisted oak that stands in a field just outside the village of Auchencairn. It is the last tree to remain on the site of the Ringcroft of Stocking where one of the most bizarre and violent hauntings ever to have been recorded took place. Local lore says that, when the last of the ghost trees dies, the Rerrick poltergeist will return.

IT seems strange that, despite thousands of years of perfecting our native speech, we have to rely upon our European neighbours to accurately describe a symptom of paranormal phenomenon.
The word “poltergeist” derives from the German “poltern” to make a racket, and, of course,“Geist” which could only mean ghost.There is no alternative translation in the English (and Scots) language.
Perhaps this is why this exotic word strikes fear and apprehension in the unsuspecting.
How can the dead touch the living world and, moreover, what harm can it do?
The supernatural remains unproblematic and simple, provided it keeps itself to itself. When it poses a danger or a threat to the living, however, it is time to worry.
In 1695 a real event happened to real people in the parish of Rerrick (now Auchencairn.On a windswept hill on the outskirts of Auchencairn lies the site of the Ringcroft of Stocking. 
This was once the home of farmer Andrew Mackie and his family.
Apart from a singular tree that stands in a forlorn field, there is little else to mark the existence of one of the most bizarre and violent chapters in the paranormal history of Dumfries and Galloway and probably the world.
The events have been well documented, even in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and someone has yet to come forward and dispute the written testimony of a learned priest at the time and 14 eminent members of the community who bore witness to the strange happenings on the Mackie steading.
One morning in February 1695, farmer Mackie woke up to find his cattle had been set loose from the byre and their ropes had been cut. He thought it strange and remained vigilant.
The property had apparently had a bit of a reputation for being haunted, but nothing could have prepared farmer Mackie and his family for the supernatural onslaught that befell them over the next few months.
The cattle roamed free the following night, only this time a cow had been tethered to a high beam in a shed, so much so that the animal's feet could not touch the ground. No man could have performed such a feat and Mackie's anxiety grew.Soon stones were being hurled at the family and, despite the many efforts to detect their origins, there was no explanation for the vicious assaults.
Household items went missing, only to turn up later in ridiculous places; children were spanked by unseen hands in the middle of the night and strange fires were kindled inside the byres and the farmhouse.
The house was set alight as were sheep and stables.Visitors were cruelly beaten by stones and staves and the unseen entity was purported to: “drag people about the house by their clothes.”
One account stated: “A blacksmith narrowly escaped death when a trough and plowshare were hurled at him. Small buildings on the property spontaneously burst into flames and burned to cinders. During a family prayer meeting, chunks of flaming peat pelted them.A human shape, seemingly made out of cloth, appeared, groaning: 'Whisht... whisht'.”Strangely enough, although battered and bleeding, no-one was badly hurt.Numerous searches of the grounds and night-time vigils came up with no explanation for the strange occurrences.
And so the fame of the Mackie Poltergeist, as it became known, grew wider.There were many efforts to bless and exorcise the seemingly impromptu and malevolent spirit but they were all beaten off with flying stones or clods of earth.
The family and neighbours became so perturbed that they enlisted the aid of the local clergyman, one Reverend Alexander Telfair, whose account was supported by 14 upstanding members of the Scottish community, each of whom personally bore witness to the poltergeist manifestation.
Telfair recorded that the entity: “threw stones and divers other things at me, and beat me several times on the Shoulders and Sides with a great Staff, so that those who were present heard the noise of the Blows.”
It was Mrs MacKie who found a small pile of bones underneath a loose stone at her threshold. They were wrapped in flesh.Witchcraft and murder were suspected.On April 8 a magistrate in the area came up with an idea.
He appealed to the laird of Colline to find every living person who had lived in the house to be examined and made to touch the bones — believing that the guilty person would have an effect on the earthly remains of his victim.
Nothing happened, however, and five local ministers performed an exorcism the following day.On April 9, the ministers began the exorcism of the Ringcroft of Stocking, but this proved an almost hopeless task.
A few of them, including Telfair, claimed that “something had grabbed them by the legs or feet and lifted them into the air.”
The ritual turned into a nightmare as they prayed for deliverance under a hail of flying missiles. The house was said to shake and a huge hole was ripped in the roof. The exorcism took two gruelling weeks.
On Friday, April 26, the evil spirit spoke. With a few furious oaths and a number of hair-raising curses, it told them it would take them all to hell and then said: “Thou shalt be troubled 'til Tuesday.”
As if by magic, on the Tuesday of May 1, 1695, a dark cloud roiled in the corner of Mackie's barn. Many witnessed the strange manifestation and watched it grow and blacken.
As it filled the building, great clods of mud flew outwards and spattered the faces of the horrified witnesses.
Some were gripped with vice-like fingers but this last violent event marked the exit of the Rerrick Parish Poltergeist from the world of men.
For reasons best left to God or coincidence, it took its leave of Rerrick and the Mackies, never to be seen or heard again.