The Witches of Orkney

I have been studying the European witchcraft persecutions for more than 40 years, and I have never read anything on the subject more enlightening than one amazing chapter of Peter Marshall's Storm's Edge: Life, Death and Magic in the Islands of Orkney (2024). This vast book is a detailed (sometimes too detailed) history of Orkney from 1468, when it passed from the Kingdom of Norway to the Kingdom of Scotland as part of a marriage settlement, to the early 1800s. Marshall is deeply learned in the history, language, folklore, geography and documents of Orkney, and his broad expertise is part of what makes his treatment of witch cases so compelling. I highly recommend this 48-page chapter.

I want to dwell here on two particular cases. There is an idea out there that there "were no witches," that is, that the people burned at the stake were just unfortunates caught up in a malignant system. There is a monument in Kirkwall today on the spot where many witches were strangled and burned, and it bears the words "They were cheust folk": they were just people. However, this was not always true. Yes, when the big panics got going and accused witches were tortured until they named their accomplices, anyone could be condemned. But so far as we can tell, most accused witches were people widely reputed to have magical powers, and some of them absolutely did try to harm their neighbors with black magic.

The magic of Orkney, like everything else about the islands, was drawn in part from their Norse past. During the period of the persecution, the 1500s and 1600s, English and Scots were gradually replacing Orkney's old Norse dialect, but the magical formulas that come down to us were mostly in Norn. The witches often spoke of "going with the good wights." The word "wights" is usually rendered into modern English as "fairies," and of course the grim ministers of the Reformation Kirk translated it "demons." But it seems to denote a unique class of beings more like Norse trolls than British fairies. Marshall believes that people "went with" the wights in dreams or trance, and we do have some accounts of meeting them in dreams, but I suspect people thought they could be met in the physical world as well.

This brings us to Oliver Leask, a man who was condemned in 1616 after what looks like a very long career as a healer, enchanter, thief, extortionist, and expert on the spirit world:

Leask's modus operandi involved travelling around, begging money, food, and drink, and making veiled threats when his requests were denied. That he continued in this manner for so long suggests a reluctance to tangle with those thought to possess magical powers. Not everyone complied. During 'bere seed time', Leask  came to John Craigie's farm at Swandale, on the east side of Rousay, 'boasterously' demanding grain. When Craigie refused, bitter words ensued, and Least got a blow from 'the shaft of the Clodmell' – a large mallet for greaking up clods of earth. Since that time, Craigie had found 'ane great number of his horses and beasts all dead.' (192)

One woman responded to Leask's threats by saying, 'If God be with me, what can ye do to me?' Leask answered that he could harm her whether God was with her or not. Leask was also a healer, and one of the charges against him concerned a time when he heard that a wealthy man was sick and travelled a long distance to offer his services as magical physician. Leask was found guilty of witchcraft, but the jury also declared that he was insane, so he avoided the death penalty. Which raises another interesting question: was Leask crazy? If so, what was the relationship between his mental illness and his career as a sorceror? Consider the way he lived, homeless, wandering the islands begging for his keep while believing that he had great magical powers: does that not seem a bit mad? There is a strong association between shamanism and lunacy in many cultures, so it would not be surprising if it existed in 17th-century Orkney

Leask sometimes used an alias, 'Walliman.' This was no ordinary name, but an old word for sorceror likely derived from the Norse völva. Sort of like calling yourself 'Warlock.' And this brings us to our next case, which I find even more interesting. Jonet Rendall was condemned in 1629 for a long bill of charges stretching back 20 years, the most damning of which was regularly consorting with the devil:

Her acquaintance with the Devil began two decades earlier, 'above the hill of Rendall' – somewhere along the windy ridge joining the summits of Hackland, Enyas and Gorseness Hills. . . Satan arrived at a vulnerable moment: Jonet had 'sought charity and could not have it'. He made her an offer, and though the dittay [bill of charges] uses the theological language of a 'pact', the Devil does not seem to have demanded anything in return. He promised to 'learn you to win alms by healing of folk, and whosoever should give you alms should be the better either by land or sea. And those that gave you no alms should not be healed . . . whatever you craved to befall them should befall." Despite this promise of vengeance on the mean-fisted, Satan, it appears, wanted to make Jonet Rendall into a magical healer.

It was, however, the prosecutor who identifiedthe mysterious figure 'clad in white clothes, with ane white head and ane grey beard' as the Devil. Jonet had her own name for him: Walliman. It seems very likely that her life-changing encounter was with a human not a supernatural being: the showman-warlock Oliver Leask, whose professional technique was precisely as described in the offer to Jonet, and who frequented this part of Orkney in the first decade of the seventeenth century. (199)

If Marshall is right, this case is a very important one, because one of the things we know the least about such cunning folk is how they learned their trades. 

It also looks to me like Jonet Rendall shared something else with Leask, a weak grasp on sanity:

If Jonet Rendall learned her secrets of curing and cursing from Oliver Leask, their last meeting must have been prior to Leask's banishment in the spring of 1616. In the succeeding years, he evidently assumed in her mind a more than human status. Jonet's confession spoke of 'praying to Walliman', and in admitting nearly all the charges she emphasised his power rather than hers: 'Walliman took away the profit of the ky'; 'Walliman slew the mares.' (200)

One of the charges against Jonet raises other important themes:

In 1621, Andro Matches of Sundiehous in Hackland Denounced Joney to the sheriff after losing the profit of his milk. Nine months later, he took complaint to the Evie Kirk Session. Matches was clearly unusual in his willingness to cause trouble for Jonet; a few days later, she remonstrated with him for 'always dealing with and complaining' of her, and said he would repent it.

Sure enough, three days later, Andro went out of his wits. His wife's reaction may seem curious to us, but is one commonly met with both in Orkney and elsewhere: she sent for the woman she believed to have cursed her husband. As soon as Jonet arrived, Andro began to feel better, and Jonet was rewarded with a plate of meat. Before tasting it, she spat three times over her left shoulder, and Andro's wife, 'fearing ye had been doing more evil,' spring forward to strike her. 'Let me alone,' Joney snapped, 'for your goodman will be well.'

The image of Andro's anxious wife, unsure if she was witnessing a ritual of healing or harming, captures the uneasy relationship between those who knew how to work magic and those who were eager to benefit from its effects. People in the farms of the West Mainland put up with Jonet's presence because she offered useful services and because they were afraid of her.

I believe that Europe was full of such characters throughout the medieval and early modern periods, and quite likely going much farther back in time. But we can know few of them in the wonderful way Peter Marshall helps us to know Oliver Leask and Jonet Rendall.