2000 AD Online Forum

Hiya Bou.

You probably already know this, but just in case you don't, there's a programme on telly tonight, BBC 2 at 9pm, that you'll more than likely be interested in. I'll definitely be watching.

Witchcraze.  About the Edinburgh and East Lothian women who were slaughtered in the witch-hunt between 1589-1591. It recommends that you have a strong stomach.

Oh, and Marion and Geoff is back on too, Yay.

Joolz

I may not be Bou (I've not checked recently so I'm not absolutely sure) but I'm glad you reminded me that that's on. Cheers Mal.

P.S. Why do you have Howard from the Hallifax as your Icon?

Hopefully this will show how King James used Witchcraft to 'do in' his political opponents and the prog will touch on his changing the text of the bible translation to fit his agenda and the misogyny of the times. Or is that hoping too much?

It all started with a woman fron Tranent, and living with one, I know why!

 

cheers malchi, good call, i never know whats on tv. i shall watch this & get into a righteous rage !

grrr down with the witch oppressors !

I used to know a woman from Tranent and she was mental, in a nice way.

Are they all like that, Proudy?

(By the way, that programme looks great.)

- Trout

This is all very spooky. My wife used to work in Tranent. Is this a mysterious 2000ad hotspot? (God knows, it's gotta be something - the expression "arse end of beyond" springs to mind whenever I think of the place).

PS Do you like my icon? Took me ages to find.

A one word answer would be 'Aye'( quick look over the shoulder). If you haven't been through the town recently there is now a statue of a woman in the town square, (its to do with the 'Tranent Massacre' I think,that was when the Edinburgh Milita mowed down the locals). She's striding out banging a drum,a small boy running along side, I think it's a spot on description of the wiimin o the toon. bless.
You should hear their 'toon song'.

Hee, DXB, he does look like Howard doesn't he, but no, he's my canny little chum Penfold, and I animated him myself, kewl eh!

Dr X, I'm liking your icon too.

Joolz

ta

This is the first of a witchburning season apparently according to my tv guide.  Although I'm sure there was an element of misogyny to it (Lots of women were happy to point the finger too but maybe they were just trying to avoid being witched up as well, or they were being torured at the time), more often or not I think it was just revenge for petty quarrels and money the overiding reason for these things that were then whipped up (puroosefully or not) into a hysteria that would become uncontrollable.  

Sadly the prime suspects were usually old women who lived on their own, you probably couldn't find an easier target.  Though they did go after younger women, men, vicars, minor nobles - often where there is talk of some grudge mentioned.  I suspect the old women were just scapegoats.  After all I'm sure most of us have had an eccentric elderly family member, well, someone like that on their own, with no-one to look after them, they are a bit different aren't they?  They won't be missed or damage the community and hey, someone could have their cottage.

I'm really interested in this subject because it shows just how rotten average people can be.

I'll be watching, I don't know as much about scottish witch trials, they are supposed to be largely harsher than english ones (soft on witches and the cause of witches, that's our trouble).  And of course torture was illegal for the purposes in England (though they found less obvious ways to torture people, like walking people to prevent them from sleeping for days on end) but not Scotland where you were welcome to pull out peoples fingernails before burning them.

Interested to see if the English get blamed for this, it's usually our fault when someone drops a tin of beans on their toes on some remote scottish Island.

Oh and I accuse Bou, she's always going on about that sort of thing, has familiars and once made my best cow go lame.

Aye, and her icon is a talking hamster. What more evidence d'you need?

Posted on behalf of The Witchsmeller Pursuivant

The imfamous 'Tin o' Beans' theory, I've seen proof of it in Rosslyn chapel you know.

Personally I think that a lot of the witch burning were when villages were passing from the Feudal system and as men tended to live short lives in those days and few could read, the font of knowledge wiz old wimmin. The local (Male)powerbroker squire/laird/ minister/priest hated the respect 'speywife'and the power she held in the community, there's nothing worse that a man scorned.

oh, and they would also have a cat called 'Bubbles'short for Bellzabub, proof indeed.

The idea for the Witchhunts came over with King James when he returned fi Scandinavia (?) with his new wife, so your noble countrymen aren't to blame, hopefully the programme will cover this, isn't this where I came in?

Middenpus
 

Yes, that sounds very likely PH.  The church (which would be always male) would probably have little to do with any of the local superstitions  and folklore, while it would most likely be a senior lady who knew the most about 'erbs and strange healing and stuff.

Yes, John was a big fan of the European system of witch finding and we all know that involvement with the Europeans is a bad thing.

Really looking forward to the program now.

Here's a witchy story from Perthshire folklore.

Near a small village called Dunning, there's a cairn built in memory of the last witch to be burned in the area.

She was wrongly accused and the locals came to regret their actions, apparently, building the cairn as an apology.

It's still maintained by someone, unpaid and always unseen, and no-one in the area will admit to knowing who does all the work.

The spot is also the only place in Scotland Ian Brady and Myra Hindley are known to have visited. There is a photograph of them standing by the cairn on a holiday just a few months before they were turned in for the Moors Murders.

Creepy.

- Trout

Well if there is a themed series I hope they are gonna show Witchfinder General... nasty nasty horror flick that, and Vincent Price's finest hour

Link: "Burn the witch!"

hey ho. Ive told this tale before but i'll tell it again. in an eenglish village where i still have an auntie flowers, three wimmin a mom & 2 daughters were imprisoned by the 6th earl of rutland, cos his 2 kids had died of an evil curse. it was obviously my rellies , Mrs & miss's flowers fault because they had a cat called rutterkin. mom died in prison, & the daugheters were hung. (but soon i will avenge them WHAaa haaa haaaa!)

I still take a feminist stance on it all tho. but i haven'ttime toi explain now...

Would this be Joan Flower, much thought of as a particularly unpleasant person and who publicly cursed the Earl for dismissing her daughter from service?  She freely admitted to her wicked deeds (until she realised what the consequences were). She was obviously a witch, as her choking to death on dry bread in court proved!  

Oh I should point out that on my mother side, I'm a Hopkins.  Ahahahahah!  But I'm unlikey to be related to the evil one.  The film IS great by the way, I have it on dvd.

As for saying that it's pure misogeny, as the vast majority of people tried were women then it's hard to deny the numerical evidence.  They definitely had it in for women.  Interested to hear what you have to say about it when you have time Bou.

"Would this be Joan Flower"

cor ? i dunno paul, the village is bottesford linconshire, too far away for me to do research...do tell me more !

sorry too busy in battle with son to get into feminist rant tho... sorry, i can hear it now, "You won't leave the house to let me party, cos i is a male innit"

Heh, well I am intersted in your feminist rant when you have time.

I tend just to pick up books on witchcraft persecutions when they are cheap, so I have a few, and they all ell a slightly different story.

Apparently Joan Flowers was an English peasant (as I assume most of our ancesters were) that died in 1618.  She was supsected of being a witch beforehand and was supposed to be a very unpleasant person (so they say).  She had two daughters, Margaret and Phillipa.

Her daughter Maragaret worked for the sixth earl, and when she was dismissed for staying out late (ooh genetic trait passed down to your son) and stealing food, the mother rather foolishly publicly cursed the Earl.

It is then said that Phillipa who cleaned at the castle stole one of gloves belonging to the Earls eldest son, henry.  She was supposed to have stroked Rutterkin with it, dipped it in boiling water, pricked it several times and burried it.

Henry fell ill and died a few years later and his two brothers became ill also.  They are also acused of preventing the Earl and Countess from having more sprogs by stealing woll and feathers from their bed, boiled them in water and blood and mixed them on rutterkins belly.

The daughters confessed to magic when arrested.  In one book it says Joan never admitted to it, in another she confessed but then repented when she realised her fate.

Joan died before her trial as she using an old anglo saxon test of swallowing dried bread to prove her innocence, but it choked and killed her, apparently in 1618.  

The daughters were hanged on March 11 1619.

I have a rather dark and sinister picture of Joan drawn by Mervyn Peake in a book.  Obviously from his imagination.

Hmm Bottesford's not too far from me...

Brilliant ! cheers Paul , this'll really freak my ma out, its the matriacal line that these ladies come from. wierdly enough my gran & mother (and me & sis ..ahem) have been known to foretell deaths & cure warts etc, all in peasantish matter of fact, 'don't believe in no wierd stuff' manner.

mystic meg is a witch, she always making looking into future - burn her !

Grrr. The "recostruction" style of this is annoying me. Couldn't we have had a proper documenrary instead?

Hmmm.. I had a phone call, so I just let the tape run, but after a few minut4es, it really annoyed me too.

I really liked it.

I know someone who is descended from both a family of witches and a notorious witch finder. Which is nice.

yeah prompted by all this discussion I (skim) read a book about it as well, There was lots of info which was new to me. Although it was symptomatic of a society which wanted to keep women in their place, it was clearly a class oppression too. It does sound that witches sabbats went on in some places, but these were probably no more than peasant folk (& liberal members of the other classes) sneaking away for an anti- feudal oppression hoe down.
What is so bizarre is that the witchfinders & judiciary used the same methodology as the very heresys they so condemned, people with 'special powers ' to find witches, the witchburnings just as much a bloodthirsy public frenzy as any sabbat.

There was one bloke in 17th C, burnt for claiming that the blood circulated around the body. A horse was burnt at the stake, cos its owner had taught it tricks. tiny children were also burnt/ hung/ strangled etc.

It never made it to the north west, we still had witches putting spells on fishermen etc, into the 19thC. but then we had enough to deal with in the clearances.

witch marked Bou'

Re the programme, yeah the mockumentary style was a real turn off for me, 'twould have been better as a period drame sorta thing.  But what especially grated were the white tiles in the dungeon (which was also far too clean and obviously electrically lit)  Were the makers trying to make some clever point about modern torture/interrogation?  In which case it was too clever by half/not clever enough.

Subject matter pretty horrific and intriguing though,  I'd heard of the "North Berwick Witches" as its round here (sort of), but didn't know the full tale.  A great opportunity bungled I'd say.  

"The Devils of Loudun" is a great book by Aldous Huxley (and less great film by Ken Russel) which examines a witch trial in 18thC (I think) France, going into all the political intrigue around the trials and looking into the hysteria on some depth.  Recommended to all interested in the subject.

zeep i think what was going on there was that they were filming in the actuall locations that the events took place, so holyrood was seen as it is now, rather than a pretendy olde one. the white tiley place appeared to be the actuall tollbooth prisiony place. creepy for the actors, cheap for the producers & a bit w*nky for the audience.