There’s just one recognized grave of a condemned witch in Scotland. It belongs to a lady named Lilias Adie from Torryburn in Fife. After being accused, interrogated and tortured, she confessed to committing witchcraft. She died in jail in 1704. Due to her confession, she was denied a church burial. Villagers buried her by the ocean as a substitute.
The historian Louise Yeoman, the presenter of BBC Radio Scotland’s Witch Hunt podcast, went on a mission to search out Adie’s grave in 2014. She tells Nosheen Iqbal that Adie was simply one in all 1000’s of girls who suffered horrible deaths after being accused of witchcraft between the sixteenth and 18th centuries. Now, greater than 300 years after the Witchcraft Act was repealed, Scottish campaigners similar to Zoe Venditozzi, the co-founder of Witches of Scotland, say it’s time to reckon with this forgotten and shameful episode of their nation’s historical past. About 3,837 individuals, 84% of whom have been ladies, have been tried as witches, and the bulk have been then executed and burned.
Three centuries later, the persecuted ladies could lastly have their names cleared. A member’s invoice launched to the Scottish parliament lately to take action secured the help of Nicola Sturgeon’s administration. The Guardian’s Libby Brooks has been following the marketing campaign and she or he notes the Scottish authorities’s historic therapy of witches nonetheless holds classes for immediately.
Assist The Guardian
The Guardian is editorially impartial.
And we need to hold our journalism open and accessible to all.
However we more and more want our readers to fund our work.
Assist The Guardian