HERESY THEY SAY?

Witches, of the pointy hat and broomstick variety, have long dominated popular culture but for the people of early modern Scotland, the fear posed by witchcraft and maleficent goings-on was genuine and omnipresent.

Thousands of terrified, innocent folks were tried by the God-fearing judiciary, encouraged by the Kirk and authorised, on occasion even presided over, by the King. Here, we take a look at how and why King James VI of Scotland involved himself so in the horrifying Scottish witch trials of the 16th century.

Witch panic ebbed and flowed across Europe between the late-15th and mid-18th centuries with Scotland emerging as especially fertile and dangerous ground during the 16th and 17th centuries. Dr Louise Yeoman, historian and co-presenter of BBC Scotland’s podcast (available on BBC Sounds), says that “the way witch hunts worked is that you got a big witch ‘panic’ then things went too far, everybody