Scottish Supernatural Beliefs: witches, ghosts and fairies in the early modern period

Greg Jenner is joined by Dr Martha McGill and comedian Marjolein Robertson in early modern Scotland to learn all about beliefs in witches, fairies, ghosts and more. Jacobean Scotland is famous for witch trials, partly inspired by King James’ obsession with witches – he even published a book on the subject, ‘Daemonologie’. But beliefs in other supernatural beings existed in early modern Scotland too. Protestant ministers discouraged and then encouraged the telling of ghost stories to reinforce the faith of their congregations. One minister theorised that fairies were halfway between men and angels. People worried that the devil might enter through their pores or eyes. And at his trial, a man told a story about his voyage to fairyland and relationship with the Faerie Queen herself. This episode explores these myriad beliefs, asking what cultural and social purpose they served, and how they came to be recorded in the nineteenth century by writers like Sir Walter Scott. If you’re a fan of gothic ghost stories, histories of magic and superstition, and scary fairies, you’ll love our episode on Scottish supernatural beliefs. If you want more from Marjolein Robertson, listen to our episodes on Robert Bruce and the Epic of Gilgamesh. And for more Scottish history, check out our episodes on the Jacobites, and King James I and VI. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Siobhan-Michelle Smith Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Studio and Edit Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:39Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me with a Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are donning our fairy wings, rereading our copy of Demonology, and heading north to learn about supernatural beliefs in early modern Scotland. And to help us sift through the facts and the folklore, we have two very special guests in history corner, and also Orkney corner. She's a research associate at the University of Cambridge, where she researches the history of memory. She's also an expert in British supernatural beliefs in the early modern period. And you may have read her wonderful book, Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland. It's Dr Martha McGill. Welcome, Martha.

• 2:18Speaker 04

  Thank you very much, Greg. I'm delighted to be here.

• 2:20Greg Jenner?

  Very excited to have you in. And in comedy corner and Shetland corner, she's an award-winning comedian, actor and storyteller. You might have seen her sell out Edinburgh shows. You may have caught her on Breaking the News, or Rosie Jones's disability comedy extravaganza, or her new Radio 4 show, Human Watch. You'll definitely remember her, of course, from our episodes on Robert Bruce, not Robert the Bruce, and our episode on the Epic of Gilgamesh, and of course, our live tour about Alexander the Great. It's the wonderful Mary Elaine Robertson. Welcome back, Mary Elaine.

• 2:48Speaker 05

  Hi, thanks for having me back.

• 2:49Greg Jenner?

  Ah, it's always a pleasure to have you in. And we've done Scottish history together before, but I think we're on your territory today.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Yes, yes. I call Shetland and Orkney history.

• 2:59Greg Jenner?

  I mean, the folk tale thing is what I'm thinking. You are, you know, I've seen your shows live, I've seen you doing work in progress stuff. You love to tell a story, and often they're drawn from folklore.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think being raised in Shetland folklore is kind of how you are explained to look after yourself in the outside world. It's quite nice, so.

• 3:18Greg Jenner?

  So they're functional?

• 3:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I always was told trawi stories as a child for being safe up in the hills, or nuggal stories by the water to be safe by the burden, so.

• 3:28Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  Excited about it today.

• 3:30Greg Jenner?

  So, what do you know?

• 3:36Greg Jenner?

  This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, or viewer, hello, might know about today's subject. And I imagine you're all immediately thinking of the Loch Ness monster. Well, we're not talking about that today, sorry. Maybe you're picturing haunted castles and graveyards, or perhaps even the infamous Scottish witch trials, and King James VI's obsessive crusade against black magic. But what supernatural entities did people actually believe in? Is Scotland really more haunted than the rest of Britain? And what's the best way to scare a man into marrying you? Let's find out. Right, Mary Elaine, today we're talking about the 16th to the 18th centuries. Do you know much about Scotland in this period? I'm guessing you do.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  I know a lot about Shetland in this period.

• 4:17Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 4:18Speaker 05

  And it's kind of turbulent times because we've been given over to Scotland in 1469. So we're kind of, and for the first couple 150 years or so, we were relatively left to our own devices in Varnie. But then, from about 1600, Scotland just starts meddling. They do, they don't want to admit it, but they do.

• 4:38Greg Jenner?

  Okay. I mean, Martha, I mean, this is a period in Scottish history which is pretty turbulent for numerous reasons. Can you sort of guide us through some of the tumult?

• 4:47Speaker 04

  Oh, absolutely, yeah. There's a lot of political chaos in the 16th century. You've got periods of warfare with England. You have a series of child monarchs, which creates political instability. Getting up to 1603, you have the Union of Crounds, when Scotland, England and Ireland are joined into one kingdom. And later on, in the 17th century, a couple of revolutions, periods of invasion and occupation by the forces of Oliver Cromwell, the beginnings of the Jacobite Rebellion towards the end of the 17th century. Those continue into the 18th century. And in 1707, you also have parliamentary union between Scotland and England, when Scotland loses its independent parliament. So it's a period of a lot of seismic changes in one way or another.

• 5:30Greg Jenner?

  I mean, it's a lot of history just crammed into those 200 years, isn't it?

• 5:33Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 5:34Greg Jenner?

  I mean, civil wars, change of kings, you know, and we get, you know, obviously religious changes too, which we perhaps we will touch on later. But let's talk about culture then, in this period, in terms of the Reformation and how people believe or identify at this time.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Scotland's Reformation happens in 1560. It's a cleaner process than we see in England, where things are sort of drawn out messily over several decades. But of course, it's not a complete overnight transformation by any means. In Scotland, the Highlands and the Lowlands are culturally distinct in this period. The Highlands are largely Gaelic-speaking, the Lowlands are largely Scots-speaking. They're different economically. The Lowlands tend to view the Highlanders as a bit primitive and barbaric. And we see that the new Protestant teachings take a lot longer to reach many of the more northern parts of the kingdom. It takes a while to implant new Gaelic-speaking ministers who can preach the reformed doctrine. It takes a while to get vernacular bibles up north and so forth.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  So we have a sort of fairly neat process of reformation, but it still takes time for the new kind of religious policies to be embedded. And within the Protestant Kirk itself, there's plenty of division as well, particularly between the factions of Presbyterians and Episcopalians. So again, it's a period of tumult.

• 6:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 6:57Speaker 04

  And there are plenty of ministers saying that God is punishing the nation because everybody's very, very sinful, and that's why everything is chaotic all the time.

• 7:05Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's one answer, isn't it? Let's get some sort of basic understanding. Mary Elaine, what do you understand by the term supernatural? Because we call this episode, you know, Supernatural Scotland. So what does supernatural mean, do you think, in this context?

• 7:20Speaker 05

  But really, like an everyday occurrence. But yeah, so I, you kind of grow up surrounded by folklore and stories and creatures in Shetland that can kind of explain weather or the dark nights or things happening. I've always kind of grown up with it just like quite hand in hand with your everyday life. I like it. I like it because it makes you feel less lonely when you're walking through the hills at night to know that you're being followed by dozens of strange little creatures, or the piri-fark, as we might call them.

• 7:50Greg Jenner?

  Beautiful. I find that's very charming. Martha, is there a sort of, an official historian's definition of supernatural in this period?

• 7:57Speaker 04

  I mean, broadly, supernatural is anything that transcends the natural order. You mentioned the Loch Ness monster already. A belief like that, it's difficult to trace back to 16th century Scotland. Many beliefs like selkeys, kelpies, strange water spirits and so forth, probably do have this very old lineage, but we just don't have the source material for them in the early modern period.

• 8:21Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 8:22Speaker 04

  So I tend to focus on things that I can ever think of from at least the 16th century. God, the devil, witches, angels, ghosts, fairies primarily.

• 8:32Greg Jenner?

  I mean, we did an episode on medieval saints as well, and I think we talked about the supernatural there in terms of like, what is a miracle, what isn't a miracle? So it's, there's sort of interesting reflections in this episode, hopefully, that will match with that episode. But let's start with the witch trials, because those are probably the most well-known to our, to our listeners. We did an episode on the European witch craze way back in series one, back in 2019, I think. So let's, I think we might need a refresher course, not just for Mary Elaine, but for me too. So what do we need to know about Scotland specifically and the witch craze, if that word is appropriate?

• 9:06Speaker 04

  So in Scotland, following the Reformation, and in the late 16th century especially, there's this concerted effort on the part of both the Kirk and the secular authorities to create a godly nation. And over the subsequent decades, there were various periods of clampdown on all sorts of sinful behaviour, swearing, blasphemy, drunkenness.

• 9:28Greg Jenner?

  All the fun stuff.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  Sabbath breaking, fornication.

• 9:31Greg Jenner?

  Oh, no.

• 9:32Speaker 04

  But also superstition and witchcraft. And so we see a fresh wave of interest in persecuting sort of questionable forms of behaviour. King James VI fans the flames of this. He gets involved in witch hunts himself. And in 1597, he publishes this work, Demonology.

• 9:50Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  Which sets out this theory that the devil and witches are involved in this conspiracy against the Scottish nation.

• 9:56Greg Jenner?

  I mean, he's convinced that his wife is nearly sunk by witches right at sea when she comes across from Denmark.

• 10:01Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. They encounter bad storms on the crossing, and he believes that's the work of witches.

• 10:05Greg Jenner?

  So he's a king writing, writing a sort of pamphlet about how to hunt witches, which is kind of extraordinary. And of course, he's also James I of England, but James VI of Scotland. And so the Witchcraft Act is in, is in legal statute at this point?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Yes, from 1560 up until 1736. And over that period, we see something in the region of 4,000 accusations of witchcraft in Scotland.

• 10:31Greg Jenner?

  That's a lot.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  It is.

• 10:33Greg Jenner?

  So of the accused, 84% are women in this period, which, does that mean 16% are men?

• 10:39Speaker 04

  Well, sometimes the records are ambiguous, so it's actually 15% were known to be men, 1% are completely unknown.

• 10:45Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  Execution rates are really hard to establish, but might have been in the region of about two-thirds. And that means Scotland basically has pretty severe patterns of witch hunting. That's about 10 times as many people executed per head of the population as we see in England, or about five times the European average.

• 11:03Greg Jenner?

  That's bad.

• 11:05Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 11:06Greg Jenner?

  That's really, that's really interesting. I mean, Mary Elaine, obviously, that's horrible, you know, the such high rates of execution, and specifically 84% of the accused were women.

• 11:17Greg Jenner?

  That's sad, and we're a comedy show, so let's move on from that quite quickly.

• 11:21Speaker 05

  I know, I'm just gonna add more sad facts, but maybe we don't want facts, maybe when I add facts they're sad.

• 11:26Greg Jenner?

  You can go for sad facts.

• 11:28Speaker 05

  Well, it was just about the witch trials in Shetland as well.

• 11:31Greg Jenner?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Because we had them on Gallo Hill. I think we had very late hangings as well in Shetland. I just won't do it.

• 11:40Greg Jenner?

  And Scotland is where burnings happen, isn't it? The witches are burned, they're not burned in England, but they're burned in Scotland.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Yes, not alive is, that's a common misconception.

• 11:49Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Typically, you would be strangled first, and then the body is burned.

• 11:53Greg Jenner?

  I see.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  Which is slightly more humane than burning people alive.

• 11:58Speaker 05

  I think that's when the last people burnt was a mother and a daughter, and they said that black bile came out one of their mouths, so that was them just to find the burning of the body, because they're like, look, that's black magic coming out. It was absolutely brutal.

• 12:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's horrific.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  I mean, traditionally, in the Middle Ages, burning was the punishment reserved for heretics.

• 12:13Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  And it's a sort of final, ultimate punishment. Your body has been dissolved into nothing. There's nothing left to pass on to the afterlife or anything.

• 12:22Greg Jenner?

  How do you identify a witch in this period? What are they, what are prosecutors looking for? And then I guess what are the legal mechanisms for proving or disproving?

• 12:32Speaker 04

  So people often think about the famous swimming test, where the accused is submerged in water, yes. If they sink, they're innocent. If they float, they are guilty. But this wasn't commonly used in Scotland at all. There were perhaps a few instances in 1597, but we don't know of any outside of that. More common was the search for a devil's mark.

• 12:51Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  The accused would be stripped and closely examined for an insensitive blemish, a sort of quasi-baptismal sign placed upon them when they made a demonic pact. Sometimes they would be pricked with pins in an effort to identify this spot. That said, the most common way in which people came to be accused is simply because neighbours suspected them of harmful magic. And these are probably suspicions that have built up over many years, perhaps based on roges that have fermented over some time. And these neighbours would then report the individual to the local authorities, usually the Kirk, sometimes a local laird,

• 13:32Speaker 04

  and they would then be taken in and interrogated. In theory, torture was illegal unless authorised by the central authorities, but in practice it does get used, especially sleep deprivation.

• 13:42Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 13:43Speaker 04

  Deprived people of sleep for long enough, they start hallucinating, they'll start confessing to whatever you want, essentially.

• 13:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  So they would basically try to get a confession out of them, and then be able to get a warrant to hold a trial.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  In Shetland, aren't there ways to gain power, ways to gain magic? Because they thought you're either a witch because you're born a witch, or you're taught the magic of the witch, or you're given powers. And it's really interesting, because there's a spell I've come across in books, and either, like, older versions say the magic's coming from the trowes, which is our fae creatures. There's like translations of that where it says it comes from the devil. Well, the Orkney spell I've come across to get your magic from the trowes, or the devil, is you go to a beach in a full moon, and you sit on the sheer mill between high and low tide, where the waves lap over, so you're between two worlds. You take nine stones, and you have to lay down and put the nine stones in nine certain parts of your body, by your hands, your feet, and all over, certain parts of your chest, and you repeat this spell. And then you stand up and you throw each stone into the water,

• 14:39Speaker 05

  and each time you say a special incantation for each stone. In Shetland, the same spell to give yourself over the trowes for magical powers, you just go to a beach naked, and you sit there, and you put a hand on your head and a hand under your feet and say, "That's what my body is for the trowes." And you say that nine times. Much easier, much simpler. You don't even need to find stones.

• 14:59Greg Jenner?

  Hand on the head, hand on the head, hand on the bottom of the foot, is it?

• 15:02Speaker 05

  And give all of yourself over to the trowes.

• 15:05Greg Jenner?

  Lovely.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Say it nine times, and they'll pee and give you magic.

• 15:08Greg Jenner?

  Great, you heard it here first.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  But some versions of that are like, it's not trowes, it's the devil. So it's that kind of making it evil.

• 15:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, we see that same hand on the head and hand on the sole of the feet in some witchcraft confessions, about how people gave themselves over to the devil.

• 15:21Greg Jenner?

  Mary Lane, when you say trow, what's your definition for that, for our listeners?

• 15:25Speaker 05

  Ah, yes, trow is like Shetland's fae being, so simplified terms, it's like our version of our fairy, the trow.

• 15:32Greg Jenner?

  Oh, that's interesting. Okay, so that's not just a Shetland tradition, that's in wider Scottish sort of cultural traditions as well, or in, at least in the sources you've seen.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. We see it with Janet Gibson, who was accused in Liberton in 1661. She says, "The devil came and had sex with her, and then he makes her do this. Hand on head, hand on sole of foot, and renounce everything to him."

• 15:50Greg Jenner?

  I mean, you say the devil had sex with her. Actually, that's my next question for Mary Lane.

• 15:55Speaker 05

  No.

• 15:58Greg Jenner?

  Not in that way, Mary, and obviously.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  Very personal question, Greg.

• 16:02Greg Jenner?

  You know, I'm, you know, I'm not.

• 16:03Speaker 05

  I'm an engaging betrothed to a human.

• 16:05Greg Jenner?

  I know, and I, you know, you've got a lovely fiance, and he's very nice.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  Very, very mortal.

• 16:10Greg Jenner?

  But actually, do you know what, how the devil's technique was believed to be described?

• 16:17Speaker 05

  Well, they carried in some chocolates, like a romantic, I would hope.

• 16:21Greg Jenner?

  You think he was the milk train man coming into the window with chocolates?

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, not the milkman, just coming with nothing, or a milk you paid for. I would like to think, you imagine a dark and stormy night.

• 16:32Greg Jenner?

  Mm-hmm. And do you think?

• 16:34Speaker 05

  A text, "You up."

• 16:37Greg Jenner?

  Oh, you're one of those, yeah.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  I don't think he, I don't think he woos necessarily.

• 16:41Greg Jenner?

  Sure. And in the, in the act itself, in the sack, do you think he's a red hot lover, or dark lord?

• 16:47Speaker 05

  You'd hope so, if it's costing you your soul. You'd hope it'd be worth it.

• 16:51Greg Jenner?

  I mean, Martha, from the descriptions, it doesn't sound great, actually.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, quite the reverse of red hot, generally. When accused witches did describe the act of sex with the devil, they most commonly said it was cold and painful. I mean, according to your natural philosophers, the devil has no innate body, he is a spirit. So in order to have sex, he can either animate a corpse.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Oh, dear.

• 17:14Speaker 04

  Inhabit it. Or he can create himself a body by condensing the element of air. Either way, it's gonna be cold, basically. But because the devil creates these bodies out of air, he can appear in whatever form he wants. So a man is most common, but you see all kinds of devils in the witchcraft records. There are cases of female devils, a baby devil.

• 17:37Greg Jenner?

  A baby devil?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  Lots of animals as well. Lots of dogs, cats, deer, beasts, a bumblebee in one case. I love the idea of a buzzing bumblebee devil.

• 17:48Greg Jenner?

  Surely wasps. Everyone hates wasps. Bees are lovely.

• 17:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, bees are quite nice on there.

• 17:52Greg Jenner?

  Hornets.

• 17:53Speaker 05

  Interesting, because when you go into the magic, and the magic people in Shetland and Orkney, they can transmute, is that the word? And turn into like porpoises or seals.

• 18:04Speaker 04

  I mean, again, this is part of the idea that these things don't have innate bodies, they are spirits, so they can take different forms, yeah.

• 18:09Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so the devil, actually a very disappointing lover, is what we've learned, which is interesting. And what do we mean, you know, consorting with the devil? Is that, is that essential to a prosecution for a witch? You know, do you have to have proved that as a lawyer?

• 18:24Speaker 04

  No, not necessarily. Most witchcraft accusations revolved around harmful magic, what's called maleficium. So neighbours would accuse other neighbours of having placed curses on them, perhaps made them impotent, made them sick, injured their children or their livestock, made them fall into poverty, things like this. These are the most common sort of elements at the core of witchcraft files. And we see this as well in King James VI's demonology. He's frightened of witches because he thinks they're part of this much bigger picture, about this demonic endeavour to overturn all of Christendom. So it's not just, you know, your creepy old woman down the lane tinkering around with a cauldron

• 19:07Speaker 04

  or something, it's part of something much more serious and sinister.

• 19:10Greg Jenner?

  Right. It's conspiracy. It's going all the way to the top. So the devil is sort of everywhere. I guess he's the kind of great existential threat. And we do have Presbyterian church ministers in the Kirk, frequently preaching about Satan being physically inside his congregants. And actually, Mary Lane, how do you think the devil gets inside his congregation? Not just sexual acts.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  No, if you're hungry and you eat him.

• 19:34Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay.

• 19:35Speaker 05

  No, I will, so we've talked about the hand on the head, hand on the feet, give yourself over. How else, do you think it's something as simple as the old belief of when you sneeze and no one says, "I bless you," and the devil swoops in?

• 19:48Greg Jenner?

  Oh, that's cute.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  Is that why you have to say, "I bless you" when you sneeze?

• 19:51Greg Jenner?

  Not in my script, but I love that. That's very charming.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  I say that's a fact. And not like a historical fact, a scientific fact.

• 19:58Greg Jenner?

  Scientific fact, okay.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  If you sneeze and no one blesses you, the devil swoops in.

• 20:01Greg Jenner?

  We'll have to get the Royal Society to check it, but I'm not aware of that one. Martha, how does the devil get into people?

• 20:08Speaker 04

  I mean, there are different possible interpretations here. A lot of ministers, when they talk about this, are saying it metaphorically. So they talk about Satan besieging the hearts of Christians, and they probably don't mean he's literally there with his battering ram inside your chest. But there is a school of thinkers that do argue he can literally inhabit people. In the most extreme cases, this leads to demonic possession, a sort of full-blown condition, wherein you lose all control of yourself, and you might start levitating, or speaking in tongues, or, you know, spitting up strange objects. But the milder cases are where the devil is sort of infiltrating you, and just stirring up melancholic moods, anger, implanting wicked thoughts into your mind, perhaps.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  And there are different theories about how this works physiologically. So in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, some Scottish ministers speculate that perhaps he infuses himself into the bloodstream, or he invades the brain and draws out images from it to cause frightening hallucinations. Or in mid 17th century England, you have natural philosophers debating whether he enters through the pores of the skin, or through the eyes with the light, or through the nostrils with the breath.

• 21:19Greg Jenner?

  Oh, the sneeze.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  Maybe sneezing could come in. Yeah, but the famous philosopher Henry Moore, for instance, speculates that probably only good spirits could enter through the eyes, because only they would have the requisite fineness and purity to get into the eyes. But he thinks perhaps evil spirits suffuse into the pores of the skin, what he terms seminal matter, basically a kind of demonic semen.

• 21:46Greg Jenner?

  Oh, great.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  To corrupt the workings of the human being.

• 21:49Greg Jenner?

  Lovely. All right. Well, that's, that's, that's gross.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  Just trying to work out how I draw that.

• 21:54Greg Jenner?

  Yes, yes. How does one draw demonic semen?

• 21:56Speaker 04

  Little devil horns on the top.

• 21:57Greg Jenner?

  Oh, yes, very good.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  That's exactly what I did.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Little big tail with a fork.

• 22:02Greg Jenner?

  Yes, you have. You've drawn really very cute little satanic sperm. That's great. Okay, so that brings a new meaning to Satan's seed, doesn't it?

• 22:10Speaker 04

  So you've done right there then.

• 22:12Greg Jenner?

  So we've got lots of different theories here there. You can, I guess we're sensing that there's different traditions and different interpretations. It's not one size fits all. Are there any other theological views of the devil we need to know in this period? Now, for example, are there differences within Protestantism? You know, do we have Calvinism that's more one way? Or, you know, what is the, the range?

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Well, the Reformed Scottish Kirk adopts this predominantly Calvinist theology.

• 22:36Greg Jenner?

  It does, right?

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, which does hold that the devil is not omniscient. This is very important. He is bound by God, but God does permit him to tempt and torment Christians.

• 22:47Greg Jenner?

  So he's a fallen angel? Is that the sort of?

• 22:49Speaker 04

  He's a fallen angel. And he is filled with anger and rage and jealousy, because he has abandoned all of the joys of heaven, and he would love to be able to get back there, but he can't, because he can't let go of this anger and this rage, even for one moment. But yes, essentially, all human beings are themselves corrupt. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, the seed of sin is within everybody's soul. And they're basically irredeemable unless God's Holy Spirit comes and purifies the soul. So people will be tempted by Satan throughout their lives, and most people will succumb to these temptations. And we do see pious Scots laying their misdemeanors on satanic temptation, as well as their own corrupt hearts.

• 23:34Speaker 04

  In 1684, James Nimmo of West Lothian has a wee baby boy, and he gets some money from his dad just to celebrate the birth. And instead of consulting with God what he should do with this money, he just rashly goes ahead and invests it. And this presumably doesn't go very well, because later he's cursing himself for taking this, this impervent step, and saying that Satan drew him into it by infusing him with greed.

• 24:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so if you open an Isa, you're basically doing the devil's work.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Unless you pray a lot first.

• 24:05Greg Jenner?

  Fine, yes, check with God first, sorry.

• 24:08Speaker 05

  Like the fallen angels, because one of the beliefs in Shetland is that selkies are fallen angels, and Otney as well.

• 24:13Greg Jenner?

  What's a selkie? Talk us through.

• 24:14Speaker 05

  The selkie are, well, it's very confusing in Shetland, because selkie is the folkloric creature which, a folkloric creature which appears as a seal, but they have the ability to come on land, pull off their seal skin and be a human form underneath.

• 24:28Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 24:28Speaker 05

  So their true home is beneath the waves, but they can transand and be in our world. And if you were to steal their skin, you kind of, they can't return home to the sea. So they live between two worlds. There's many, many different folklore stories about them and relations of humans. But selkie in Shetland is also just our word for seal.

• 24:46Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  So if you go to Shetland and the Shetlander tells you they've seen a selkie, they've not liked.

• 24:51Greg Jenner?

  They haven't seen a mobile.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  They're not lost in marbles. They've seen, or they have, and you should believe them. But yeah, so a selkie is a word for a seal, but also a word for a mythical sea creature. One of the beliefs is they're the angels that fell from heaven but landed in the sea.

• 25:04Greg Jenner?

  Ah, I mean, so the devil made me do it is, you said James Nimmo, sort of, he didn't invest wisely. And so he's like, oh, the devil made me do it. What's our modern equivalent of the devil made me do it? What's our secular excuse that we go to?

• 25:16Speaker 05

  Oh, the algorithm made me buy it.

• 25:18Greg Jenner?

  The algorithm, ah, very, that's good.

• 25:20Speaker 05

  The algorithm made me spend all my money on this leaf blanket that looks nothing like a leaf and is not warm.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Well, the chatbot told me it was a good idea.

• 25:27Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 25:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just the devil.

• 25:29Greg Jenner?

  Let's talk about something else that's, that's related to the kind of devil work. Do you know what flighting is?

• 25:34Speaker 05

  No, what's flighting?

• 25:36Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, Martha, what's flighting?

• 25:38Speaker 04

  Flighting is a sort of exchange of insults, basically, a verbal argument. You've also got cursing, which is more one-sided, one person flinging curses at another. And this is another area in which we see the devil cropping up frequently within early Mum's Scottish culture. People would often call upon the devil when they were insulting others. I like the example of Agnes Wallace in mid 17th century Edinburgh. She goes to one of the Kirk elders and tells him, she hopes the devil draw his puddings, that is, his bowels or his entrails, and his guts down through his legs and feet. Oh, sounds like a heinous torture, doesn't it? But yeah, the, the devil is part of this kind of common language for insulting or for wishing harm on others.

• 26:23Greg Jenner?

  So is flighting a kind of ritual? Like, do you, is it like roast battle? Is it, you know, do you?

• 26:27Speaker 04

  It could be, absolutely. And it's done in that rather formulaic way within the setting of the royal court. You'll get two of your great poets in and they'll have a flighting battle.

• 26:35Greg Jenner?

  Nice.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, where they toss insults back and forth at each other. But yeah, it could also just be two folk down the street having a little ball.

• 26:42Greg Jenner?

  Excellent. Have you ever flighted?

• 26:43Speaker 05

  So I would, I'd love to be so poetic with my insults. I can't, though. I'm one of those people who fights in my head. I couldn't do it to someone. But to lay a curse is a terrible, terrible thing.

• 26:53Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  It sits on a family for like nine generations.

• 26:56Greg Jenner?

  Nine generations? That feels very long.

• 26:57Speaker 05

  Three to nine.

• 26:59Greg Jenner?

  Okay, I mean, I love that range there, three to nine.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  Oh, it could last for like 60 years, it could last for a century, a few centuries.

• 27:06Greg Jenner?

  I love that you have to give like a little caveat afterwards, like, this could last between three to nine generations, that's a sort of legalese at the end of the end.

• 27:12Speaker 05

  Be careful before cursing, you will also lose your own house.

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• 29:25Greg Jenner?

  Okay, let's move on a little bit. Let's, let's go all Dan Brown. Let's talk about angels and demons. Okay, let's, let's get on to the angels, because of course this is the, the flip side of, of the satanic fear, I suppose, is that angels are in the world. They are, they are there to guide and to save people's souls. Can you tell us more about, I suppose, the Catholic and Protestant versions of this? Because presumably there are similarities but differences.

• 29:49Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yes. So after the veneration, your Protestant reformers are keen to clamp down on what they view as terrible Catholic superstitions, including praying to angels and worshiping them. And a lot of your early generations of reformers especially argue that there have been no angelic appearances on earth since the biblical times. So if you think you're seeing angels, it's actually the devil playing tricks on you.

• 30:13Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 30:13Speaker 04

  That said, people do still tell stories of encounters with angels who come to offer perhaps help, assistance. There's a few stories of people falling down wells as children, and then angels come along and pull them out. I don't know why it was such a common peril in early Mum's Scotland, but there's quite a few cases.

• 30:30Greg Jenner?

  I mean, it happens a lot in, in Lassie, doesn't it? So I mean, my.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  Lassie's an angel or devil.

• 30:35Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  Modern incarnation, yeah. Yeah, they also come to make terrible warnings, though, and pass judgment. I enjoy the story of John Duncan, an Edinburgh merchant, who in the early 18th century goes down to the baths in England. And he has this vision of a pair of angels bearing between them this great white sheet. And they drag it over the morning grass until it's all heavy with dew, and then they wring it out. And Duncan hears this voice saying, so shall God wring out his judgments upon this land. And he's then struck blind and mute for three days. So this is a pretty scary and intimidating encounter with angels. And they often have that kind of character in early Mum's Scotland. And there's a fair bit of debate about precisely what they are,

• 31:20Speaker 04

  the extent of their powers, the nature of their bodies. The Aberfoyle minister, Robert Kirk, is an interesting case. In 1691, he writes about his parishioners' fairy beliefs and conflates them to a degree with angels. He says that fairies are of a middle nature, betwixt man and angels. And that's very much not orthodox Protestant theology, but it shows that there is scope for difference in opinion, basically.

• 31:47Greg Jenner?

  I mean, Martha, you, you've done me a service there, because you've mentioned fairies, which allows me to then pivot back to Mary Lynn. You know, give us a fairy story, because there must be plenty from Shetland.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  I know, you're asking me biblical stories and I, fairies is my, my.

• 31:59Greg Jenner?

  Okay, give us a funny one, if you've got one, or scary if you want.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  Oh, what would you prefer, Martha, scary or funny?

• 32:06Speaker 04

  Funny.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  Okay, well, because our fairies, our most predominant creatures, the fairies are the Trowes, which are the hill folk, the good folk, kind of Shetland's version of the fae being. And there's lots of beliefs about them, and one is at night you don't lock your doors because they want to come into your house. And the story goes that the whole family had gone to sleep in the bane side of the house, and a child was left in the kind of kitchen side, we call the butt. And while he was sleeping under the table, he woke up to two Trowie women and a Trowie baby coming into the house, and they wanted to wash their baby, but the family neglected to leave any water, fresh water, so they washed in the bland their milk drink. So they washed the baby in his dirty clothes, and when it came time to leave, they couldn't leave, for the child was watching them, and he couldn't escape to Trowland under the mortal eyes of a human.

• 32:49Speaker 05

  So they went to pretend to prod out the child's eyes with a poker, in which the child shut his eyes in fear. When he opened them, the poker clattered to the ground and the fairy woman had disappeared. When the family came through to the kitchen in the morning and went to drink the bland, it tasted a lot like pee. And the boy was like, it wasn't me, the Trowes did it. So that's scientifically factual.

• 33:12Greg Jenner?

  A lovely story.

• 33:13Speaker 05

  If your milk is full of pee, that was the Trowes.

• 33:16Greg Jenner?

  That's the Trow fairies, good to know. Amazing. I mean, Martha, I mean, you're from Orkney, you grew up in Orkney, you are from Shetland, obviously I'm from Tumbridge Wells, not remotely helpful, so I'll stay out of it, but is there a national culture in the 17th and 18th centuries? Or are we talking here about lots of different interlocking Venn diagrams of local culture that have some commonalities, but really it depends where you are in the mainland and in the islands?

• 33:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's difficult to be sure with the available source material. Probably there is significant regional variation, and in fact, the Trowes, we can trace back to the early modern period, but so many of the beliefs that were associated with particular regions only get written down in the 19th century, so it's very hard to say for sure that they were embedded earlier. In general, the Highlands are a bit more associated with fairy stories relative to the Lowlands, but that's the most we can say with any real degree of certainty. But yeah, across Scotland, we do see fairy stories appearing in source material from the late Middle Ages, often beginning with stories of Thomas Rhyma, this 13th century Scottish laird and prophet who supposedly went on this amazing voyage to Elphland and met the fairy queen.

• 34:27Greg Jenner?

  Oh, nice. Martha, when you say laird, is that the equivalent to the lord of the manor? We're talking here about noble?

• 34:33Speaker 04

  Yes, your landowner, basically.

• 34:35Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  They also have lots of different names they get called by. We've said peewee folk, peedy folk in the islands. You hear subterranean people, fair folk, good folk, good neighbours, silly whites, which means the lucky spirits, little people, green goons, or lich nobius people, meaning the people who live by lamplight, which is beautiful.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  I love that.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, you see these differently named fairies as well sometimes, so brownies are a subset of fairies, but there's also an individual figure called Brownie. Brownies typically come and help you out with chores and things.

• 35:14Greg Jenner?

  That's what brownies do, my daughter's a brownie and she's very helpful.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Absolutely. But they can also be quite scary, they can get angry with you.

• 35:21Greg Jenner?

  Yes, my daughter's very scary, yes.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  If you don't leave out the, like, kind of food and water for them or regress them in the right way and things. But yeah, there's also a spirit specifically called Brownie. In Legends from Strath's Bay, he has a wife called Meg Mullach, and Brownie, the stories about him coming to help people play cards and win things at gambling. Meg Mullach is a kind of defender of men's rights. She will go around the house, sort of scolding the good wife if she hasn't done her cleaning up and making her do it, or if she doesn't go to bed when the husband calls her, Meg Mullach will push her into the room. So yeah, there are certain creatures that are...

• 35:59Speaker 05

  Not a feminist.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 36:01Speaker 05

  We have brownies, but call them brunies, and we have Brunies Town where the brownies, and there's, we've got a really famous Brunie where brunies don't wear clothes, and he helps all the crafts in this area, and they all have a great harvest, so they want to thank him, so they make him clothes to wear. And he's so offended, he vanishes and never helps them again.

• 36:21Greg Jenner?

  Ah.

• 36:22Speaker 05

  Because he likes...

• 36:23Greg Jenner?

  He likes being naked.

• 36:24Speaker 05

  He likes a free roam. He likes the air.

• 36:26Greg Jenner?

  I mean, that's the obvious, I mean, obviously, you know, fairies in, you know, my daughter's got a little fairy garden in the garden, which we, you know, painted, and she loves fairies and Tinkerbell and all that, and that's, these are the kind of tiny little Tinkerbells in beautiful dresses with wings. Is that a early modern Scottish tradition too? Or are fairies more human in shape and size? You know, are they five foot eight and terrifying?

• 36:48Speaker 04

  You see both traditions, so there is an idea that they can be tiny, and that they associate in this little world of insects and make themselves clothes out of the wings of butterflies and things, those stereotypes are there, but they can also be quite big and quite scary. You see in some testimony, Alison Pearson, who has tried for witchcraft in Fife in 1588, describes meetings with fairies that go back over some years, and for her, they were quite scary creatures, they used to come and beat her up, on some occasions quite severely because they accused her of talking to other people about them, and that wasn't allowed. There's another story told by Robert Kirk, who we've mentioned already, who chronicles his position as fairy beliefs in 1691 to 2.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  He speaks about how a woman is lying in her child bed, so the place you rest after giving birth, when she's stolen away by the fairies.

• 37:40Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 37:41Speaker 04

  They leave a kind of imitation of her.

• 37:42Greg Jenner?

  Oh, amazing.

• 37:43Speaker 04

  In her stead. But she's probably taken away to suckle fairy babies, they were very ravenous for breast milk, is one theory, and the fairies couldn't produce it themselves. And she's kept in this fairy house, but she can't see anything, it's all sort of dim and hazy. And then she notices this ointion or ointment on the bedside table, and she comes and dabs one eye with it, and then she can start to see things around her. But the fairies get very angry that she's trying to pry into their secrets, and they come along and blow in that eye. And she eventually manages to escape, and she goes back to her husband and has several more children with him, but all the rest of her life, she is blinded in that eye.

• 38:22Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 38:23Speaker 05

  We have versions of that story that are different in Shetland, and it's usually a howdy wife. So, because we have stories of women being taken away to produce airs for Trowes and feed Trowie babies.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 05

  Often it's howdy wives are taken away because howdy wives are like the old name for midwife.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 38:41Speaker 05

  And it is versions of that, sometimes they get back up when they still have the magical ointment on their eye before they're blinded, and then they can see weather miles out to sea, or they can see the fishing boats miles out to sea and see when the men are safely returning, until they're always eventually the Trowes when they find them and blow in their eye.

• 38:58Greg Jenner?

  Amazing.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  I mean, this is a theory as well, that the fairies can gift you second sight.

• 39:01Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 39:02Speaker 04

  Which allows you the ability to peer into the future.

• 39:04Greg Jenner?

  But they can also take your sight, so they're, I mean, they're kind of pretty scary, aren't they?

• 39:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 39:09Greg Jenner?

  Because they've got this sort of, I mean, Sir Thomas Rhyma, you mentioned before, he also tells a pretty gross story of being abducted by, seduced by the Queen of Elphland, and having to wade up to his knees through blood.

• 39:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:19Greg Jenner?

  It's very gothic.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  One of the ballad recountings, that he spends 40 days and 40 nights wading through this river of blood, essentially, until he reaches Elphland.

• 39:28Greg Jenner?

  And then in 1598, we get the story of Andrew Mann, put on trial in Aberdeen, accused of witchcraft, and he tells...

• 39:35Speaker 05

  Sorry, how, how, my surname is Mann.

• 39:37Greg Jenner?

  Yes. He's accused of witchcraft, and, and what do you think he tells the court about his time with the fairy queen, Mary Lane?

• 39:45Speaker 05

  Really great. He had a lovely time, he's only there for a second.

• 39:50Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 39:51Speaker 05

  All he did was eat one cake.

• 39:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so you think he's just, he popped in for a...

• 39:54Speaker 05

  He popped in for what he thinks was just a slice of cake and a cup of tea, and he is out halfway through the news that it was already...

• 40:01Greg Jenner?

  Well, it's more of a sort of sexual relationship with the fairy queen. Is it consensual, or is he abducted too?

• 40:07Speaker 04

  It is consensual, yes. He's a man probably in his 60s by the point he's getting tried.

• 40:11Speaker 05

  He's lying. She didn't want him. Sorry.

• 40:16Greg Jenner?

  She likes him older, you know.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Well, he says that many, many decades ago, he first met the fairy queen when he was just a boy, and she came to him and said she could teach him to know all kinds of secret things, and she could teach him to do lots of different kinds of healing, except raising the dead, which is a power reserved just for God. But he accepts her offer and he learns from her, and subsequently they become lovers, and he says he fathers multiple children on her. But Mann has this sort of host of different supernatural beings he's in touch with. He also has this angel called Christ Sunday, who associates with the fairy queen sometimes. Mann says he's God's godson, but he's fallen out with God, they had a big argument, so now he's hanging out with the fairy queen. And he comes to Mann sometimes...

• 40:59Speaker 05

  The gossip.

• 41:00Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Sometimes looking like an angel, sometimes in the form of a young horse, and he also has lessons and instruction for Mann.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  I mean, he sounds like a fairy himself, because if you're like, hey, fairy man, what's your name? Like, no, I'm definitely Robert, what's your surname? Mann.

• 41:18Greg Jenner?

  Andrew Mann.

• 41:19Speaker 05

  A normal human name of Mann. What's your address? House.

• 41:25Greg Jenner?

  Andrew Mann is also given advice by his angel friend on harvesting, handy, but also the breeding pattern of crows.

• 41:33Speaker 05

  What?

• 41:34Greg Jenner?

  Is that useful?

• 41:34Speaker 05

  The answer, egg.

• 41:38Greg Jenner?

  Okay, let's move on from that because that's just, that's icky. Let's talk about ghosts. Mary Lane, give us a ghost story, a nice Shetland ghost story.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  Here's a fun one. There was this hill which was said to be tormented by the ghost captain of a ship that had wrecked decades prior. And one night a man was walking through the hills, he's a trapper, so he laid traps and he'd shoot. And he gave him, and he hears it running away. And he's walking back through the hills with his gun, it was still loaded actually because he hadn't successfully shot something. And he's walking through the dark night back to his home, he comes across the ghost of the captain and he's terrified and this ghostly figure appears in front of him. And the man is so scared because this ghost would ask for something, but often people can't understand the tongues of the dead. So no one knew what it wanted, it just haunted people. And the trapper, in his fright, shot at the ghost. And there's a cloud of smoke, when the clouds cleared,

• 42:32Speaker 05

  the ghost had been shot and he had all this, the gunpowder marks on his face and the ghost just went, "That's some damn good snuff." And he finally smiled and disappeared because all he was after was just one, one last sniff of snuff.

• 42:47Greg Jenner?

  One final hit.

• 42:48Speaker 05

  Gone from this round.

• 42:51Greg Jenner?

  That's a lovely story, thank you for that, I appreciate it. One last snuff hit is...

• 42:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, right, that ghost was after it.

• 42:58Greg Jenner?

  It's very addictive.

• 43:00Greg Jenner?

  I mean, we should talk about ghosts because, oh, we did an episode on medieval ghost stories, which, you know, our listeners might remember. And we were looking more about England at that time. In Scotland, you know, we talked about that, the purgatory is not a Protestant belief. So ghosts shouldn't really exist in Protestant faith or theology, but they sort of do.

• 43:17Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. Again, your first few generations of reformers tend to try and clamp down on this.

• 43:21Greg Jenner?

  Sure.

• 43:21Speaker 04

  And say, "Well, after death, you go directly either to heaven or hell."

• 43:25Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 04

  No one would ever want to leave heaven, no one would ever be allowed to leave hell. So ghosts can't exist. If you're seeing ghosts, it's the devil playing tricks on you, or it's a wily Catholic priest trying to extort money out of you from an exorcism or something. That said, they actually do start to make a comeback even among Protestant ministers, particularly in the second half of the 17th century.

• 43:45Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, I mean, and obviously the sort of classic in Gothic literature in the 19th century, you know, the ghost is a royal trope, isn't it? So why would Protestant clergymen allow these stories to be told or even want them to be told? Is there, is there something useful to them? Do they, can they be, you know, can they be moral lessons?

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yes. So this period, the second half of the 17th century, there's lots of philosophical change going on. The teachings of Rene Descartes start becoming prominent within universities. Descartes had this vision of a broadly mechanistic universe, divided between mind and matter, with no third category for spirit. And for many orthodox theologians, natural philosophers, this is all a bit scary. They worry that people are going to turn into atheists. And ghosts are a way of proving that there really is an afterlife and that there really is a world of spirits. So you get this assortment of ministers and philosophers in, again, the second half of the 17th century and the early 18th century, who start rehabilitating ghosts and publishing stories of them to deliver sort of solid moral messages

• 44:49Speaker 04

  and to prove that Christian theology is broadly correct.

• 44:52Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so actually the fear of the atheist is worse than the kind of theological transgression.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, the atheists are a bigger threat than the Catholics.

• 44:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  What ghosts and shandals usually always fuck with unfinished business?

• 45:02Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 45:03Speaker 05

  And I just think that you'll get lots of ghosts now because the amount of people with ADHD who procrastinate on tasks they need to finish and then pass on. They'll be like, "Oh, I did not turn off the fridge. I have learned no ironing and I have to write some jokes for this podcast."

• 45:18Greg Jenner?

  Neurodivergent ghosts.

• 45:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. Please finish all my worldly tasks.

• 45:24Greg Jenner?

  I mean, Martha, I mean, we've done in an episode the past, we talked about revenants, kind of the undead coming back to the earth. Are there any other type, I mean, poltergeists? We haven't talked about poltergeists, is that a Scottish tradition?

• 45:35Speaker 04

  Yes, but although it does mean literally noisy ghosts, they were more commonly associated with the devil. Particularly, again, in the 16th, the 17th centuries. There's a story I like from Edinburgh from 1659. A minister and his son are terribly troubled by strange noises. They find their bedclothes all strewn about. They get up in the morning and they find that their linen has been spread out over the tables and there's napkins that have been used, cups with traces of liquor left in them, so someone's been feasting overnight. They never see anything. And one day, one of the maids from the household says, "I'm going to take this calf cannonball that they kept for breaking coals to bed with me." And she says, "If the devil appears in the night, I'm going to brain him with this."

• 46:20Speaker 04

  She goes to bed. Sure enough, the noises start up and she throws the cannonball across the room and it just vanishes completely. So yeah, something spooky going on, but again, it's blamed on the devil primarily rather than on ghosts. When we do see ghost stories, it's more usually the sort of unfinished business theme again. It's people coming back to their friends and relatives, looking more or less like normal people as they had when they were alive. Perhaps revealing a crime, saying who their murderer was.

• 46:50Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  For instance. Or there's a case recorded in 1685 from Edinburgh about a woman called Helen Brown, who returns to her philandering husband saying, "Look, I've only just died and you're already courting this other woman, what are you playing at?" And she says, "Why don't you come and join me, as you should." And then he falls very ill and he dies.

• 47:09Greg Jenner?

  Oh, that's great.

• 47:10Speaker 04

  And is buried less than a month after her. So yeah, they come to right wrongs, basically, and get people back on moral facts.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  So you'd move on in less than a month?

• 47:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:18Greg Jenner?

  Well, you're Helen. He's obviously, there's an overlap there, come on.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  But he gets his punishment.

• 47:24Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 47:25Speaker 05

  Eternity with her.

• 47:28Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah, come and spend.

• 47:29Speaker 05

  I love that the poltergeist in the house is the opposite of a Bruni because it's basically they're partying and drinking and eating every night, like a ghost in it. We didn't leave that mess, ghosts.

• 47:39Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it's definitely ghosts. I mean, there was skepticism, there are, there are people who are skeptical, who are ghostbusters, who are like, no, no, this is nonsense. There is a lovely story from 1737, a minister discovers, he hears reports of a dead mother haunting her son. What do you think the story is here, Mary Lane?

• 47:58Speaker 05

  Oh, she doesn't like any of his new girlfriends.

• 48:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, classic mum behavior.

• 48:01Speaker 05

  None of them are good enough.

• 48:03Greg Jenner?

  Okay. Martha, can we have the spooky deets, please?

• 48:06Speaker 04

  It's the right kind of theme. Yeah, so this is a story from Aberdeenshire. The minister Gilbert Gerard is approached by one of his parishioners, a man by the name of Geordie Watt. And Geordie says that he and his brothers have been haunted by the ghost of their dead mother. And this ghost is telling them in this shrill heavenly voice that unless Geordie Watt marry Tibby Mortimer, he and his brothers will all be consumed with fire from heaven. Now Tibby Mortimer is the only female servant in the family. And she and Geordie had seemingly been up to some fornication, possibly she was even pregnant. So the minister decides to go and investigate these reports and he goes along to the family's farm, he sits up with them at night.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  And sure enough, this ghost appears outside the window and starts saying, "Geordie Watt must marry Tibby Mortimer." And the minister rushes outside. And the ghost, when it sees him, starts to run away.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  And he gives chase and the ghost eventually trips over. And he charges over and the records sort of coyly state that "He made such a trial of the apparition as he thought agreeable to the principles of Christian revelation and true philosophy." By this, they mean that he prodded her with a stick and thus ascertained that she was no incorporeal spirit. And he strips off all of these sheets of linen the ghost is wearing and they find Tibby Mortimer herself.

• 49:29Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  Go Tibby.

• 49:31Greg Jenner?

  She's been, she's been haunting her own boyfriend.

• 49:33Speaker 04

  She has. I mean, it's quite a poignant story. Geordie is fined for fornication, Tibby is also fined for blasphemy, for acting the part of a ghost. And she has to spend quite a long period, about a year and a half or something, appearing before the congregation in sackcloth, this coarse, uncomfortable cloth as a form of penance. And she's very, very defiant initially, the session has to keep sort of clamping down on her until she finally agrees to go through this process of penance.

• 50:03Greg Jenner?

  It is very Scooby Doo, though.

• 50:05Speaker 05

  That is a Scooby Doo, imagine they put off in it with a land chart.

• 50:10Greg Jenner?

  That'd be way scarier than a ghost.

• 50:11Speaker 05

  That's amazing that she was just up to that to bits of Tamaria.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, again, there was a decent chance she was pregnant. You didn't usually get fornication convictions without a pregnancy there to prove it. So again, it's probably rather a sad story of this servant who's got involved with her master, not even necessarily consensually, and then is trying to find a way out of the situation that she finds herself in. But yeah, it's kind of amazing as well, just the ingenuity of it.

• 50:39Greg Jenner?

  You're being a very humane scholar there, whereas I'm just thinking, this is just a classic jape. This is just, you know, how do I scare my boyfriend into marrying me? I know, I'll haunt him.

• 50:48Speaker 05

  Because there were cases in Shetland of lairds who had cleared land and pulled down people's houses to build their laird houses. And there's one terrible laird who's in the island of Fettler, and he decided to build a summer house. He was plagued by ghosts and trowes through the night, knocking at his windows and howling. So he spent one night there and never went back. And I was like, that was the people. And that's what we should do to billionaires.

• 51:11Greg Jenner?

  Yes, let's haunt billionaires. In the 19th century, we get Sir Walter Scott, you know, this incredibly famous, beloved Scottish author, who is collecting some of these stories. You know, we did an episode on the Odyssey, and we talked about the way in which those stories evolve and change, and eventually they're written down. Do we get people like Scott and folklorists setting these in stone and romanticising them?

• 51:35Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. This is a thing we see in the second half of the 18th century and into the 19th century, that increasingly authors, folklorists start collating these stories, and probably in some cases, inventing them. What we see with Scott is a fascination with Highland culture. It's romanticised, it's marketed to English folk as this sort of strange mystical land with all these curious beliefs. And Scott writes down these stories about violent Highland ghost warriors and strange sort of romantic ladies gliding around on desolate moors and in castles and things that we don't find any trace of in the earlier Calix source material and so forth. So there was a debate there about to what extent these

• 52:20Speaker 04

  are genuine beliefs that are just finally getting written down, or to what extent it's a sort of set of stereotypes that's getting imposed on the region. And there's this cruel irony to it as well, because this period, the later 18th, the early 19th centuries, is also the time of the Highland clearances.

• 52:37Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 52:37Speaker 04

  So your Highlanders are getting driven away from the land at the same time that there's this theme of Highland ghosts who are romantic and desolate and wandering around the hills and so forth, getting popularised as a kind of tourist attraction.

• 52:52Greg Jenner?

  Yes, absolutely. That's such an interesting point, because obviously Queen Victoria is in love with Scotland. She loves the romance of it, and there is the restoration of the tartan and so on. But it's quite, it's quite an English romantic trope, almost in some ways.

• 53:03Speaker 04

  Yes, absolutely. And it follows the suppression of actual Highland culture in the wake of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.

• 53:09Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, which again, is a very somber note to end on. But it's kind of interesting, isn't it? What survives, what gets permeated, what people want to tell stories about. It's interesting, isn't it?

• 53:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that lots of the stories, when you look at Trowes and Selkies, maybe it comes from some kind of truth element of people travelling in the past and interacting with other cultures, and looking at archaeological remnants from the past. But I kind of just like the fact that you can believe that the world's alive and there's a magic out there you can't explain. And so we kind of almost personify it through different beings to explain what happens in the dark night, or in the sea, or elements of weather. And I am going to hold on to that. There's so many beautiful stories, and I like it. I think it's part of Shetland and Arne's cultural history. It's great.

• 53:56Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely. It's really wonderful. And what's nice about this episode, I think, is we've talked about the islands, the lowland, the highlands, and actually, they've all got their own traditions and tropes. And it's been really interesting. And as an Englishman, I've learned a lot. So thank you both. It's been fascinating.

• 54:16Greg Jenner?

  Time now for the nuance window. This is where Mary Lane and I sit quietly, placating the fair folk for two minutes, while Martha takes centre stage to tell us something we need to know about the Scottish supernatural beliefs in the early modern period. You have two minutes. Take it away, Dr McGill.

• 54:32Speaker 04

  Thank you. I think one point that's worth making is that this is not a story about people who were ignorant and superstitious because they were uneducated. Your most educated, highly rational university scholars and so forth, believe in a supernatural world in this period, and are very carefully theorising it all to make sure it all hangs together logically. So belief in the supernatural was broadly rational within the prevailing intellectual climate at the time. Equally, when we talk about something like witch hunting, misogyny is an element, but it's not just a story about how a patriarchal society is trying to control women, or how the Kirk is trying to stamp down on miscreants cynically

• 55:15Speaker 04

  to, again, have a level of social control. People hunted witches because they believed in witches, and they thought that doing so would keep their communities and their families safer. And I think it's just useful to remember that people can commit atrocities without having to be stupid and evil. You know, people can end up believing odd things and persecuting other people on the basis of those beliefs, while also being clever and thoughtful and well meaning. So it's kind of incumbent on us all to keep interrogating our own beliefs about how the universe operates and how we view other people within it.

• 55:48Greg Jenner?

  Amazing, beautiful. Thank you so much. A good message as well, I think, isn't it? You know, people can be smart, and they can be selfish and dumb at the same time, simultaneously. We see plenty of that.

• 55:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I also totally believe in trowes.

• 56:06Greg Jenner?

  Great. It's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Mary Lane to see how much she has learned. I mean, you knew a lot anyway. You were bringing all sorts of wonderful stories and analogies from other parts of Shetland culture and Icelandic culture, which has been amazing. You're famed as the only guest who does visual notes. You draw. You have drawn a lovely ghost.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 56:28Greg Jenner?

  And you drew our lovely ghost here as well. So thank you for that.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  It's an accurate depiction.

• 56:32Greg Jenner?

  Okay, 10 questions for you, Mary Lane.

• 56:33Speaker 05

  10 questions. Okay, I'm going to try not to use my notes because they're words and I don't like them.

• 56:37Greg Jenner?

  Some of these are things we talked about briefly, and to be honest, I've forgotten half of this. So let's see where you get to. Question one, how many people were accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland?

• 56:47Speaker 05

  Four thousand.

• 56:48Greg Jenner?

  It was four thousand? Is it four thousand?

• 56:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, rounding up slightly. 3,800 odd records have been found.

• 56:54Greg Jenner?

  Good historian pedantry, thank you. Question two, what was the name of the book on witchcraft written by King James VI of Scotland?

• 57:00Speaker 05

  Demonology?

• 57:01Greg Jenner?

  It is Demonology. Question three, what was the devil like in bed, according to witch trial records?

• 57:05Speaker 05

  So cold.

• 57:07Greg Jenner?

  Cold and painful.

• 57:07Speaker 05

  Which is wild. It's like when hell freezes over. It's when he... Yeah.

• 57:11Greg Jenner?

  Yep, no, absolutely.

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Stop myself.

• 57:15Greg Jenner?

  Question four, name two ways it was believed the devil might get inside your body.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Oh, through your pores with a seat. And, well, they said eyes, but then they discounted eyes, didn't they?

• 57:27Greg Jenner?

  No, I'd accept that.

• 57:27Speaker 04

  Some debate over it.

• 57:28Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely, very good.

• 57:29Speaker 05

  The eyes are the souls to the hole. What? Nones to the soul.

• 57:35Greg Jenner?

  That's a t-shirt, isn't it?

• 57:36Speaker 04

  The devil's knocking.

• 57:37Greg Jenner?

  Question five, what did Episcopalian minister Robert Kirk say that fairies were?

• 57:43Speaker 05

  Oh, I maybe wrote this down. Oh, he said a worm stolen away by fairies. So a worm? Fallen angels.

• 57:52Greg Jenner?

  Yes, that's right. Halfway between men and angels.

• 57:54Speaker 04

  Middle nation.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  My quote was nothing. Oh, that would be what worm is. Okay.

• 57:59Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, that's very good. Question six, can you name for me two early modern Scottish names for fairies?

• 58:06Speaker 05

  The pity folk?

• 58:08Greg Jenner?

  Yep.

• 58:08Speaker 05

  Or pity folk, if an Arne, and the good folk.

• 58:12Greg Jenner?

  Lovely. You could have also had the subterranean people, a good name for a folk band, and the lich...

• 58:18Speaker 04

  Lichnobius.

• 58:19Greg Jenner?

  Lichnobius people. It is nice. Oh, I love that. It's so pretty. Question seven, about what subjects did an angel supposedly advise Andrew Mann to remember?

• 58:28Speaker 05

  Andrew Mann. Oh, yes, I remember the birth of crows, how crows have babies, and healing powers.

• 58:34Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, and harvesting too. Very good. Yep. Question eight, in theory, why is the belief in ghosts not compatible with Protestant theology?

• 58:43Speaker 05

  Because they believe you either go to heaven or hell, so you wouldn't be wandering about here.

• 58:47Greg Jenner?

  Yep, there's no purgatory, and so you shouldn't be on the earth. Okay, question nine, how did Tibby Mortimer try to get a marriage proposal from the man who had impregnated her?

• 58:56Speaker 05

  She disguised herself as a ghost, which is also how I got Jack to propose to me.

• 59:04Greg Jenner?

  True. And question 10 for a perfect 10, Mary Lane, let's see if you can do it. Which famous Scottish author collected and romanticised traditional folk stories in the 19th century?

• 59:16Speaker 05

  Oh, well, you just said it. You just said it. You said it. You said it so many times. And I was like, yes, they talked about ladies on moors and I was going to say William Hill, but that's a gambling change.

• 59:29Greg Jenner?

  That's a gambling shop.

• 59:30Speaker 05

  Sir Arthur, no, Cullen Dyle, not him.

• 59:32Greg Jenner?

  Begins with a W.

• 59:34Speaker 05

  You're being too nice to me.

• 59:35Greg Jenner?

  I am, because I want you to get 10.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  I know, I want to get 10 too. Sir Walter Scott.

• 59:38Greg Jenner?

  There we go. I knew it was there.

• 59:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't deserve that 10, but I will immediately take it.

• 59:43Greg Jenner?

  9.7 out of 10. No, I'm giving you 10. You're having a 10, because the other answers were a lovely one. Well done, Mary Lane. Very good. And thank you, of course, Martha, for our lovely history lesson. Listener, for more of Mary Lane, of course, listen to our episode on Robert Bruce and the Epic of Gilgamesh, both wonderful, sort of fascinating, funny, quite different stories, weren't they, really? And of course, we've got episodes on the Jacobites and their cultural traditions, and we have one on King James VI of Scotland, of course, James I of England. Lots of lovely stuff to rummage through in the back catalogue. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I would just like to say a huge thank you

• 1:00:27Greg Jenner?

  to our guests. In history corner, we had the marvellous Dr Martha McGill from the University of Cambridge. Thank you, Martha.

• 1:00:32Speaker 04

  Thank you very much.

• 1:00:33Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, we had the miraculous Mary Elaine Robertson. Thank you, Mary Elaine.

• 1:00:37Speaker 05

  Cheers.

• 1:00:38Greg Jenner?

  And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we dig through the archives in search of more forgotten folktales. But for now, I'm off to go dress as a ghost and haunt my local bookshop so I can terrify people into buying my own books. Bye.

• 1:00:53Greg Jenner?

  You're Dead to Me is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4. This episode was written and produced by Dr Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow, me and series producer Dr Emma Nagouse. The research was by Siobhan Michelle Smith. The studio and edit producer was Steve Hankey, and our production coordinator was Gill Huggett.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  A new series of rarely heard tales from World War II. This was a suicide mission, deep into enemy territory. This was a crazy mission. And by goodness gracious me, these men had guts. I'm Helen Labon Carter, and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Secret Heroes. Anyone who crossed the threshold was immediately entranced by her. She was very sexy. She

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  was obviously close to power.

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  How do you build a career you're proud of? It's easy to get caught up in the impact you hope to have or the legacy you want to leave behind. But how much of that is actually within your control? Something that I believe is that legacy is totally out of your control. Like, legacy is something that other people determine. But what is in your control is, is contribution and your actions around that. I really grew up, you know, into my 20s, maybe even 30s, thinking that, that like, if I didn't do something that meaningful and important, then like, I hadn't done something worthwhile. Find out how to build a career you're proud of in this episode of my podcast, Work Life, featuring actress and director Bryce Dallas Howard. And don't worry, we'll

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  get into the nepo baby conversation. I'm Molly Graham, and you can find Work Life, a podcast from TED, wherever you listen.