Speaker 1: Diversion audio. A note this episode contains mature content and
Speaker 1: quite graphic descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for
Speaker 1: some listeners. Please take care in listening. When shall we
Speaker 1: three meet again in thunder Lightning or in rain? So
Speaker 1: begins William Shakespeare's Scottish play featuring the power hungry warrior Macbeth.
Speaker 1: But against the rules of most scriptwriting textbooks, our main
Speaker 1: character Macbeth doesn't get those iconic opening lines. Those belong
Speaker 1: to the three Weird Sisters, although in the original text
Speaker 1: they were called the Wayward Sister, which if you say
Speaker 1: weird in a Scottish accent you might notice it sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like wayward. Still, we know the characters today
Speaker 1: as the Witches. The trope of three witches is ubiquitous
Speaker 1: throughout history and popular culture, from the Three Muses and
Speaker 1: the Three Fates to the three Sanderson Sisters. You can't
Speaker 1: really escape the Maiden, Matron and Crone. Shakespeare's Weird Sisters
Speaker 1: just happened to be the most iconic, or at least
Speaker 1: my personal favorite trio of magical women. They say, if
Speaker 1: they hadn't prophesied that he would become king, then he
Speaker 1: never would have gotten ambitious and schemed to depose Duncan.
Speaker 1: But I think those scholars are probably the same kind
Speaker 1: of people who think Yoko Ono broke up the Beatles. Listeners,
Speaker 1: you and I know the real stars of the show, right,
Speaker 1: But did you know those three women, the weird Sisters,
Speaker 1: the three witches who prophesized Macbeth's ascendants? Did you know
Speaker 1: those women really existed? Welcome to the greatest true crime
Speaker 1: stories ever told. I'm Mary Kay McBrayer, author of the
Speaker 1: true crime book Madam Queen, the Life and Crimes of
Speaker 1: Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair. Today's episode we're calling the
Speaker 1: real Witches of Macbeth. It's a thousand year old story,
Speaker 1: which doesn't make it any less interesting, more so, i'd argue,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that source material was extremely hard
Speaker 1: to come by. I was surprised that there were any
Speaker 1: records at all, but they do exist, and so do
Speaker 1: the Witches of Forrest. Still, because of the scarce research,
Speaker 1: this episode will be shorter than most. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: everything I could find right after this quick break. I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person who loves to travel, but I'm
Speaker 1: also a complete dork about it. I read everything about
Speaker 1: the place I can find beforehand, do as much of
Speaker 1: the locals recommendations when I get there, and then write
Speaker 1: about it when I get home. In a way, it's
Speaker 1: like having the vacation three times. So when we booked
Speaker 1: our trip to Scotland in the autumn of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: I picked up a book called The Lowdown on Witches
Speaker 1: by Leonard Low, and I devoured it. The link to
Speaker 1: The Lowdown on Witches is in our show's notes. So
Speaker 1: don't wreck your car trying to take notes during rush hour, Okay,
Speaker 1: just come back when you're at a stopping place. I
Speaker 1: learned from I was researching and planning that most tourists
Speaker 1: land in Edinburgh and pretty much never leave the Royal
Speaker 1: Mile unless it's to golf at Saint Andrew's or hike
Speaker 1: to Arthur's seat. Edinburgh was great, especially Mary King's close tour,
Speaker 1: but you can't beat the Highlands. We drove on the
Speaker 1: wrong side of the road north from the airport to Inverness. Well,
Speaker 1: my husband, the transportation engineer, and my fearless friend drove us.
Speaker 1: Her husband and I white knuckled the shotgun seat and
Speaker 1: I tried to navigate without having a panic attack every
Speaker 1: time I looked up from phone. But the Scottish Highlands
Speaker 1: are amazing for so many reasons. They're exactly the postcard
Speaker 1: worthy landscape they show on Outlander, with the added bonus
Speaker 1: that the landscape extends outside the frame, with lush land
Speaker 1: like that and the kind of fog that portends King
Speaker 1: Arthur's birth. It makes sense that long ago belief in
Speaker 1: fairies and other supernatural beings was taken as fact. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even a question. I mean, we were in the
Speaker 1: car pointing off the shoulder like, hmm, that's a fairy
Speaker 1: hill right there. For sure. Hyda kids and hid your
Speaker 1: wife or they're going to changeling them. Joking aside. Even
Speaker 1: though the worst which hunts of Scotland were in the
Speaker 1: sixteen sixties, I would argue sixteen sixty one specifically, if
Speaker 1: you asked which trials were ubiquitous long before that. And
Speaker 1: the most important thing to remember is this. The trials
Speaker 1: were not to determine whether witchcraft was real. Witchcraft was real,
Speaker 1: that was never a consideration. The trials were to determine
Speaker 1: whether you had committed witchcraft. Shakespeare wrote his Scottish Play
Speaker 1: before those trials. It was published in sixteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: but he wrote it around sixteen o six. That's just
Speaker 1: three years after Queen Elizabeth was succeeded by a new monarch,
Speaker 1: that is James the First. Well, he was James the
Speaker 1: First of England. In Scotland he was James the sixth,
Speaker 1: And with a new Scottish monarch came an English fascination
Speaker 1: with all things Scottish. If you're a dramatist, or remember
Speaker 1: anything from ninth grade literature class, you might remember that
Speaker 1: artists and playwrights, including Shakespeare himself, earned most of their
Speaker 1: living based on the donations of wealthy patrons. Yes, ticket
Speaker 1: entries helped, but not a lot. As I've said before
Speaker 1: in an article I wrote for the Archive, that meant
Speaker 1: writers had to sort of sing for their supper. If
Speaker 1: your patron liked your play, then they'd probably send you
Speaker 1: more money for the next one. Shakespeare had already had
Speaker 1: one extremely wealthy patron in Queen Elizabeth the First. You
Speaker 1: can see how he catered to her interests by representing
Speaker 1: strong fictional women characters and works like Twelfth Night and
Speaker 1: Midsummer Night's Dream. He also wrote a lot of his
Speaker 1: historical plays under her patronage. My point is Shakespeare knew
Speaker 1: how to read the room. And I don't just mean
Speaker 1: that he knew how to read King James sixth. It's
Speaker 1: true that in sixteen oh one Shakespeare visited Aberdeen as
Speaker 1: a guest of James six and he did it specifically
Speaker 1: to do recon on his patron apparent. But like I said,
Speaker 1: the bar didn't just read his patron well. He knew
Speaker 1: his audience. The patrons would be up in the best seats,
Speaker 1: the box seats, and those were few. Most of the
Speaker 1: audience was a rowdy, drunken crowd of peasants, and Shakespeare
Speaker 1: knew this. So imagine Shakespeare, not the man his writing.
Speaker 1: Imagine trying to perform Shakespeare to a bunch of drunk illiterates.
Speaker 1: And I'm not being funny. Most of his audience would
Speaker 1: have been pretty uneducated and ready to take a load
Speaker 1: off after a long day's work. And it's not a
Speaker 1: raucous LaughFest like The Taming of the Shrew. This is
Speaker 1: the Scottish play strategizing for a murderous coup. It's one
Speaker 1: of those plots that requires you to wake up and focus,
Speaker 1: or you won't understand what happens next. He had to
Speaker 1: get their attention somehow, and that's why so many of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare's tragedies start off with a supernatural event. Hamlet had
Speaker 1: his father's ghost, Macbeth had his witches. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but I do remember learning that King Macbeth
Speaker 1: was a real person, or at least that character was
Speaker 1: loosely based on the folklore of a Scottish king from
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages. The real guy was not the power
Speaker 1: hungry king we all know in love, but he existed,
Speaker 1: so did Duncan and Macduff. What I was not ever
Speaker 1: taught was that the witches were based on real people too.
Speaker 1: Here are the facts, as I was able to reconstruct them,
Speaker 1: and this is based on research of my own but
Speaker 1: largely guided by the incredible Leonard Lowe. It's the tenth
Speaker 1: century King Duff is the king. Alternate accounts call him Duffus,
Speaker 1: which my husband actually mispronounced as Dufus when I was
Speaker 1: telling him this, but okay. Alternate accounts call him Duffus
Speaker 1: as well, meaning son of en Duff. Interestingly, Macduff also
Speaker 1: means son of Duff, but there's not a ton of
Speaker 1: parallels between this actual guy and the Shakespearean thing of Fife.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna stick with King Duff as his moniker,
Speaker 1: just for the sake of easy listening. So King Duff
Speaker 1: was King of the Scots from nine sixty two to seven.
Speaker 1: In case mental math humbles you the way it does me,
Speaker 1: let me explicate that a little King Duff was king
Speaker 1: for only five years, and he inherited the crown from
Speaker 1: his own father, who had died while defending the Highlands
Speaker 1: against Viking invaders. Just a fun little piece of folklore.
Speaker 1: Rumor has it that the thistle is Scotland's national flower
Speaker 1: because of its history with Viking invaders. The stories say
Speaker 1: that Vikings attacked barefoot for the sake of quiet surprise,
Speaker 1: but when they stepped on a thistle, they'd cry out,
Speaker 1: which gave the Scots warning of the oncoming invasion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: accounts do say that King Duff was a great king,
Speaker 1: though until he took ill just outside the town of Farres.
Speaker 1: Farres is just a few miles east of Inverness for reference,
Speaker 1: and King Duff was convinced that the sickness was a
Speaker 1: result of bewitching. Let me pause a moment here to
Speaker 1: explain what that would mean to a Scottish audience in
Speaker 1: the early sixteen hundreds. Scotland at the time of the
Speaker 1: play would have been Protestant, specifically Presbyterian, meaning that they
Speaker 1: were largely Calvinist. Calvinism is big on predestination. Read The
Speaker 1: True Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. If
Speaker 1: you want Martis on that hell, you can probably glean
Speaker 1: the thesis from the title alone, if not, anyway, one
Speaker 1: part of Calvinist doctrine was that everything happened for a reason.
Speaker 1: More specifically in the sixteen hundreds, if something good happened
Speaker 1: to you, then that was a reward direct from the
Speaker 1: hand of God for something you did. If something bad
Speaker 1: happened to you, then that was a punishment direct from
Speaker 1: the hand of God for something you did. You might
Speaker 1: be thinking, but what if I didn't do anything to
Speaker 1: deserve a punishment. The fact, as it was accepted by
Speaker 1: Calvinists during the initial production of the Scottish play in Scotland,
Speaker 1: was this, if you didn't do anything to deserve the
Speaker 1: punishment you received, then that punishment was the result of witchcraft.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of qualifiers. I know, and I don't
Speaker 1: know whether King Duff believed that, but when Shakespeare went
Speaker 1: to Scotland and heard this story, he definitely heard it
Speaker 1: from people who believed that. So if the good King
Speaker 1: Duff fell ill for no reason by the transient property,
Speaker 1: there are some witches to blame. In fact, the tenth
Speaker 1: century was well before the Malleus Maleficarum was authorized by
Speaker 1: Pope Innocent the eighth. That's the Hammer of Witches, by
Speaker 1: the way, which was a handbook on both how to
Speaker 1: smoke out witchcraft and how to punish it when it
Speaker 1: was identified. But according to history, as recorded in Kirkyard
Speaker 1: documents and letters, which admittedly could be a revisionist retelling,
Speaker 1: King Doth ordered a search. What exactly his guy searched for,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and by all accounts it does sound
Speaker 1: like the search was conducted by some guys, any guys.
Speaker 1: I'm not confident that they knew what to search for. Really.
Speaker 1: What these guys found, though, was documented as this. In
Speaker 1: the fields outside of Forres, the king's men found three
Speaker 1: women and they were playing with a wax effigy of
Speaker 1: a king. They were melting him into the fire. Even
Speaker 1: in a revisionist perspective in which witchcraft does not exist.
Speaker 1: Bacma melting a wax effigy of the King in the
Speaker 1: middle of a Scottish Highland field looks like witchcraft. The
Speaker 1: women were arrested and they they were carried into far
Speaker 1: As proper. I'll tell you what happened to them after
Speaker 1: this break. But right now I'll tell you this. There
Speaker 1: was no trial. Before the break. I told you that
Speaker 1: three women in the field were arrested for witchcraft and
Speaker 1: carried into town. And as I told you, there was
Speaker 1: no trial. So what does this old wives tale have
Speaker 1: to do with true crime? Scotland saw several official witchcraft
Speaker 1: acts in legislation up until King James. Each of them
Speaker 1: detailed some instances in which witchcraft was punishable by death,
Speaker 1: usually though witchcraft was not punishable by death. And then
Speaker 1: King James got fascinated with witchcraft. To be fair, he
Speaker 1: was absessed with Christianity as a whole. You know the
Speaker 1: King James Bible. Yeah, he's responsible for that edition, but
Speaker 1: he oversaw that after he wrote the pamphlet entitled Demonology
Speaker 1: inform a dialogue divided into three books by the High
Speaker 1: and Mighty Prince James. Yes, that's the actual subtitle, y'all,
Speaker 1: inform a Dialogue divided into three books by the High
Speaker 1: and Mighty Prince James. That pamphlet, which it was three parts,
Speaker 1: can we still call that a pamphlet? That pamphlet was
Speaker 1: reprinted in sixteen oh three, after James became King of
Speaker 1: England in addition to Scotland. I wish I could tell y'all,
Speaker 1: I have read the quote unquote pamphlet. But if you
Speaker 1: think Elizabethan English is tricky to decipher, try a non
Speaker 1: standardized Scott's English from around the same period. For example,
Speaker 1: I was looking through some already translated and transcribed criminal
Speaker 1: documents for another project and I came across this word. Y'all.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of being a good reader, and I did
Speaker 1: teach English composition for several years. I'm pretty good at
Speaker 1: deciphering misspellings, but this word was different. I'm going to
Speaker 1: spell it for you and you tell me what you
Speaker 1: think it means. Cunt er foot. I'm literally crying right
Speaker 1: now writing and reading this because of what I thought
Speaker 1: counterfoot meant. Think about it, counterfoot, Well, here's a hint.
Speaker 1: It's not what I thought it meant. It means counterfeit.
Speaker 1: What the hell? Oh tears of breath? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I have told that story so many times and it
Speaker 1: still gets me. Okay, back to the very series. Yes,
Speaker 1: no laughing matter at hand. Scholars believe that James's Demonology
Speaker 1: pamphlet was a main source of material for Shakespeare too,
Speaker 1: But in real life, King James was especially fixated on
Speaker 1: Exodus twenty two eighteen, the verse that says thou shalt
Speaker 1: not suffer a witch to live, and when he suspected
Speaker 1: that he was the victim of an assassination plot by witchcraft,
Speaker 1: he tightened up. I'd like to mention as well that
Speaker 1: King James's proposed assassination attempt by witchcraft sounds a lot
Speaker 1: like the witches afar as When he sailed to Denmark
Speaker 1: in fifteen eighty nine to collect his fourteen year old
Speaker 1: wife Anne, the journey was racked with storms because James
Speaker 1: had done nothing wrong ever in his life. If you
Speaker 1: hear my sarcasm, you can go ahead on and give
Speaker 1: King James a google. By the way, maybe I should rephrase. Actually,
Speaker 1: because King James had inherited the throne by divine right,
Speaker 1: he could do no wrong. You see the problem here
Speaker 1: without me elaborating, I'm sure in James's mind he had
Speaker 1: not done anything to deserve this punishment the storms. He
Speaker 1: reasoned that the stormy voyage was the result of a
Speaker 1: curse by witches, and this flawed logic resulted in the
Speaker 1: notorious North Berwick witch trials. This abomination of an investigation
Speaker 1: was as crooked as you could expect. But it leads
Speaker 1: to a bigger question. Why were Scotland's witch trials the
Speaker 1: most deadly? This is the short answer. Before sixteen oh four,
Speaker 1: execution was only used as a sentence if the practitioner
Speaker 1: of witchcraft committed a murder. But King James's subsequent Witchcraft
Speaker 1: Act of sixteen oh four made hanging mandatory for a
Speaker 1: first offense of witchcraft. You think that's bad. During the
Speaker 1: time of King Duff, that's back in the tenth century,
Speaker 1: things were different. It was five hundred years before the
Speaker 1: Protestant Reformation in Scotland, six hundred ish before King James's crackdown.
Speaker 1: But the women of Forrests weren't just heretics or witches.
Speaker 1: They were attempting to murder the king. That was a
Speaker 1: direct attack on the crown. So their crimes chopped up
Speaker 1: to not only witchcraft but also attempted murder and assassination,
Speaker 1: and the king was sick already because of it. Those
Speaker 1: three women were executed brutally and publicly. What comes next
Speaker 1: is the reason we give a trigger warning at the
Speaker 1: top of every episode. The torture that these women endured
Speaker 1: is exceptionally heinous, even for the Scottish witch trials. Each
Speaker 1: woman was forced into a herring barrel. Someone is not
Speaker 1: who nailed the barrels shut, and they did it with
Speaker 1: nails that were far too long for their purpose. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they created an iron maiden inside each barrel, and then
Speaker 1: they tipped the barrels on their sides, and they rolled
Speaker 1: the barrels down Clooney Hill, where each barrel came to rest.
Speaker 1: Someone again not clear who piled heather on the barrels
Speaker 1: as kindling and set them on fire. The shredded women,
Speaker 1: or at least their bodies, were burned inside. After the
Speaker 1: blazes reduced the barrels and bodies to ash, each site
Speaker 1: was marked with a boulder. Considering how well the creative
Speaker 1: extreme torture was documented in the tenth century, it seems
Speaker 1: almost intentional that no record Ever mentions the women's names.
Speaker 1: It might seem like our story should end here with
Speaker 1: the deaths of the accused witches, but of course the
Speaker 1: story is far from over. Let's talk about the lore
Speaker 1: of those boulders. One of them disappeared. The second of
Speaker 1: them seems to have never been moved. It rests in
Speaker 1: the corner of a beautiful garden along Victoria Road. The
Speaker 1: old Scots, by the way, had a big superstition about
Speaker 1: the corner of a garden or field. They called it
Speaker 1: the Goodman's croft, and they didn't farm it. They saved
Speaker 1: it to placate the devil. The third boulder rests half
Speaker 1: in Victoria Road in Farrest. It's protected by an iron
Speaker 1: band at the base of the Forrest Police station. Rumor
Speaker 1: has it that this boulder was actually moved. It was
Speaker 1: taken for a nearby construction project and broken up for materials.
Speaker 1: Vin Fever took the person who moved the boulder, and
Speaker 1: the other workers put the boulder back. That's why the
Speaker 1: iron band holds the three pieces of it together. I
Speaker 1: think that's why, even though it's an inconvenient location half
Speaker 1: in the street, the stone was not disturbed by its
Speaker 1: paving there's actually a retaining wall over this marker, and
Speaker 1: now there's a plaque memorializing the murders of the witches.
Speaker 1: As far as it reads from Clooney Hill, witches were
Speaker 1: rolled in stout barrels through which spikes were driven. Where
Speaker 1: the barrels stopped, they were burned with their mangled contents.
Speaker 1: This stone marks the site of one such burning. If
Speaker 1: you're a Scottish scholar, though, and you know more about
Speaker 1: this story, please contact me on Instagram at Mary Kay
Speaker 1: macbrayer and tell me more. Also, if you're interested in
Speaker 1: seeing that boulder along with the memorial of the witches
Speaker 1: burned on Clooney Hill, I have photos of all that
Speaker 1: there as well. Piece the charms wound up. The Greatest
Speaker 1: True Crime Stories Ever Told is a production of Diversion Audio.
Speaker 1: I'm Mary Kay McBrayer and I hosted this episode. I
Speaker 1: also wrote this episode. Our show is produced by Leo Culp,
Speaker 1: theme music by Tyler Cash, Executive producer Scott Waxman. And
Speaker 1: one more thing before I go. If you haven't already,
Speaker 1: I'll love you forever if you pre order my forthcoming
Speaker 1: true crime book, Madam Queen, The Life and Crimes of
Speaker 1: Harlem's underground racketeer Stephanie Sinclair. There's a link to do
Speaker 1: it your favorite retailer in our show's Notes