In 1563 the Witchcraft Act became law in Scotland. From the 16th to the 18th centuries between 4,000 and 6,000 people were tried on charges of witchcraft. Over three-quarters of these were women.
Of the 1,500 found ‘guilty’, the majority were garrotted; their bodies were then burned and the ashes thrown out to sea. The last trial took place as late as 1727 and the Witchcraft Act was not repealed until nine years later.
Prick is a new play by Laurie Flanigan Hegge (Light the Match Productions and New Celts Productions), aiming to give a voice to thousands of wrongly accused people. It shows us in horrific detail what went on in those terrible times, times in which a casual remark could raise fatal suspicions, and families were too scared to come to the aid of their own mothers and daughters.
On a simple stage, three women face the audience. One sings a song listing the numerous places in which trials took place. It’s a very long list, and a sobering one. (And reminded me of the Proclaimers’ Letter From America, another song about widespread injustice.) The women then repeat many of the accusations levelled against them; even bearing in mind the widespread belief in magic at that time, some of these are bizarre to say the least.
In the guise of a sensationalist modern day television show, a journalist (Lev Siegel, outstanding in each of his many roles) announces to camera that:
‘North Berwick is in the grip of a deadly invasion of witches.’
He interviews a local farmer (David Clarkson) who claims a witch has cursed his cow so that ‘the butter won’t churn’ and has cursed him too by ‘stealing his manhood.’ But when the farmer’s wife (Abigail McDonald) says she’s seen the woman dancing with Old Nick in the kirkyard, things don’t turn out quite as the farmer intended; his wife is also arrested and tried as a witch. You didn’t have to say much in the 17th century Lowlands to get yourself in trouble.
It is thought that a number of factors contributed to the country’s obsession with witches. Economic times were hard, the kirk of the day may have seen women as a moral threat, and King James had his own reasons for diverting attention onto bothersome females. Prick seems to favour the view that women who stepped out of place, who were different in any way, were instant targets:
‘They get too curious, they want to know things, it goes back to Eve in the Garden of Eden.’
Although most of the action in Prick takes place in the 17th century present, we are also transported to the Liminal Space, the gap between life and death, a threshold, the so-called Purgatory for those who have been denied a Christian burial. Here two women stand; one is the famous Isobel Gowdie (Lisa McIntyre, magnificently strong – ‘I can smell the terror of every man in this room’ ), who confessed to witchcraft at Auldearn in 1662 and admitted to so many bizarre things, including not only sleeping with the Devil but also turning into a jackdaw and flying through the air on a magical horse, that the fact that she was believed shows us just how irrational and hysterical these witch hunts were.
While Isobel is loud and brazen, the second woman, Marioun Twedy (Abigail McDonald), who was accused in 1649, is quieter. All she did, she says, is offer her neighbours ‘cures’ for their cows’ ailments, but:
Men say the Devil gives a woman the power to cure.
The two of them have conjured up the Unknown Woman (Carys Turner) to protect her, but all she wants is to find her baby, and to tell her story. She is a simple girl, one who did her best to appease the fairies, but now she doesn’t even know her own name; she has no headstone because her ashes have been cast into the sea (no chance then of her being resurrected). Her name is not even in the record of her trial. She has been erased from history.
The girl’s story, heartbreakingly told by the excellent Turner, is one of torture, desperation and despair, and it’s echoed again and again throughout the play. Director Meggie Greivell didn’t want to show a real woman being physically tortured on stage, so with the help of puppet artist Madeline Helling she devised an ingenious way to convey it. As each woman describes her ordeal, men shout out accusations and a puppet on a plinth is manipulated by another member of the case. These puppets are extraordinarily eloquent; even in their prone state they somehow make us feel the women’s agony and exhaustion. When one of them is seen in a head brace, despite knowing that this is a puppet we are truly shocked.
Meanwhile, between scenes, model jackdaws on sticks are paraded around the stage, adding further layers of menace and superstition.
Methods of torture used on accused people varied, but sleep deprivation was common, and a ‘Watcher’ was employed to keep them awake. A rope was tied around the woman’s neck, ready to be jerked if she dared close her eyes. Lev Siegel takes this role, and is joined by the Farmer, who has asked to be allowed to watch his accused wife. (Clarkson brings real feeling to this scene, as he is forced to watch his own wife suffer and is unable to help her, and his character develops in an interesting way as he witnesses at first hand what careless accusations can do.) The Watcher explains the job, telling him that the accused is made to pay for the Watcher’s candle and for the Pricker’s wages. Later, they will have to pay for the execution. The concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ didn’t have too many fans in the 1600s.
After three days of sleep deprivation a person will hallucinate. Some of these women were kept awake for thirteen days:
‘I was delirious; no food, no sleep, no hope. I would’ve said anything.’
Pricking was a form of torture peculiar to Scotland. The (male) Pricker would break the woman’s skin all over with a needle or bodkin, trying to find an area that did not bleed. This was ‘the devil’s mark’. David Clarkson’s Pricker is both sinister and terrifying, as he stands waving a large iron pin. Twedy describes the men of the village looking on as the Pricker touches her all over, finally pricking her genitals:
‘I feel the burn of their eyes on my body. His breath smells of eels and ale.’
And McDonald is on fire in this role; we are burned by her passion and stung by her resignation:
‘I will not confess. I am simply a woman who has nothing left to lose.’
Of course one of the biggest supporters of the witch trials was none other than King James himself (Ewan Jardine) who provides a very entertaining interlude when he is invited onto a chat show to discuss his book Daemonologie (much of which is believed to have been used by Shakespeare in the writing of Macbeth, and this is touched on later), which he probably wrote at least in part to keep women away from political power. In his ‘interview’ James channels 21st century politicians; witches aren’t just a threat to him, they ‘threaten the whole of Scotland.’ In other words, we’re all in this together. Except the accused women of course. They’re not. Ring any bells?
When one of the two women stands up to the King, she is arrested – and her colleague instantly disowns her. It happened then, it happens now. As the old saying goes, you soon find out who your friends are, and sometimes what you find out is that you have none.
These ’televised’ mini-scenes, of which there are several, are a clever device; they make us laugh, they relieve the almost unbearable tension, but they also bring the main action into sharp focus. Before we know it we are back in the Tolbooths, and nothing is funny any more.
Laurie Flanigan Hegge’s Prick forces us to confront some of the most appalling wrongs suffered by innocent people in Scotland. And finally, the women remind us that although we may see this all as ancient history, it isn’t. Witches may, for us, now be cartoon figures or even branding for skincare products, but just six months ago two women were beaten to death in Kenya, accused by their fellow villagers of being witches. Misogyny is alive and well. It’s not over yet.
On International Women’s Day in 2022, after a campaign by Witches of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon officially apologised on behalf of The Scottish Government to those accused under the Witchcraft Act. Later that year, the Church of Scotland issued its own apology.
Prick is at theSpace on the Mile (Radison Hotel, Royal Mile) at 11.15am on alternate days (7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 22, 23, 25) until 25 August. https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/prick
