Before They Were Called Witches

Dear Reader,

My research began with an apology.

In 2022, I learned that the Scottish Government had formally apologised to those accused, convicted, vilified or executed under the Witchcraft Act of 1563. I later discovered that the Church of Scotland had apologised too.

But an apology and a legal pardon are different things. A proposal to pardon those convicted was brought forward in 2022, then withdrawn in April 2023 before becoming law.

That unfinished work stayed with me. Recognition mattered, but I wanted to understand what would follow the words.

What had happened to these people? How had their neighbours, their communities and their churches come to regard them with such fear? And what does an apology ask of us, centuries after the people who needed to hear it have gone?

As a Registered Nurse I cared for people whose bodies had been injured by fire. My work was practical and immediate: attending to wounds, easing pain, accompanying people through recovery. I knew that what happened in a moment could change a life for years.

That understanding was one of the reasons I went on to become a counsellor. I wanted to care for the emotional wounds too, and accompany people as they found their way through what had happened to them.

Now, as I write Whispers Beneath the Flame, I find myself returning to fire through another doorway.

I am researching people whose lives survive in records of suspicion, accusation and punishment. Reading about them, I am conscious of how little those records may tell us about the person who existed before the proceedings began.

A name. A place. Something a neighbour claimed.

Sometimes these are the fragments from which we must begin.

During a visit to the Scottish Witchtrial Museum, Leonard Low wrote down several names for us from his database. He is also the author of The Lowdown on Witches: True Stories of Scottish Witch Trials, a book I have been reading as part of my research.

Among the names he wrote was Elspeth Baird, of Leith, in 1628.

I had already named a character Elspeth.

She is a mother in my novel accused of witchcraft, a fictional woman whose life I am developing through the story. I had chosen her name without knowing about the historical Elspeth Baird.

Seeing it there left me awed.

Elspeth was familiar from my manuscript. Baird was the surname I carry. There was no evidence of a family connection, but the encounter made me pause. I wanted to understand the woman behind the name.

Further research brought me to the University of Edinburgh’s Survey of Scottish Witchcraft. It records Elspeth as widowed. Her age and occupation are unknown. Its notes describe her seeking meat, milk and bread at another woman’s home. A linked case describes her as having been burned for witchcraft in Leith.

I read those details slowly.

They offered glimpses of her circumstances, but very little of her own voice. I could not tell from them what she believed, whom she loved, or how she understood what was happening around her.

That absence is difficult to sit with.

It is tempting to imagine an answer, particularly when a discovery feels close to the story I am writing. But historical Elspeth and fictional Elspeth are different women. I need to respect the boundary between what the evidence tells me and what belongs to my imagination.

The museum notes also included men named Walter Baird.

Their names widened my questions. Although women are central to my novel, I wanted to understand the men caught within these accusations too. Each entry deserves attention to its own circumstances.

One related record describes allegations that a couple consulted Walter Baird and another man, John Philip. Questions of help, healing and practices regarded with suspicion appear in the material. The details remain complicated, and I am still following the sources.

In Leonard Low’s book, a passage about people experimenting with herbs and medicine particularly caught my attention. He argues that persecution hindered medical progress by destroying people and their knowledge.

His claim raises historical questions I want to investigate carefully. Yet it also left me thinking about something familiar from my own work: the importance of being able to observe, ask, learn and share.

What might a community lose when those activities become dangerous?

I do not assume that everyone accused of witchcraft was a healer. Nor does an old remedy become effective simply because it is old. Care requires discernment, and writing about care requires it too.

But I keep wondering about knowledge that was never written down, experiences never passed on, and people whose lives became reduced to an accusation.

These questions are shaping Whispers Beneath the Flame, the first novel in Wisdom’s Unbroken Thread. Through its historical and modern stories, I am exploring faith, women’s voices, and the courage it can take to seek understanding.

My years in nursing and counselling accompany that work. They have taught me to attend to the person, to listen carefully, and to recognise that healing may continue long after an immediate crisis has passed.

I cannot restore the lives these records only partly preserve. I can approach them with care.

And before I read the word “witch,” I can remember to ask about the human being whose name came before it.