29/01/2022
INTERVIEW WITH A 19TH CENTURY HIGHLAND WITCH
Today, I thought I'd treat you to an interview with a real Highland witch, Jean Roy, from the end of the 19th century. It's borrowed from "Scottish Witchcraft Lore" by Alexander Polson, published in 1932:
"Nearly forty years ago the writer visited his native parish in a Highland county. When, after inquiry, he heard of a reputed witch, he visited her, and the interview he had is another proof of the fact that that women who get the witch reputation are generally above the average in intelligence and cuteness. They really know the absurdity of the belief in their powers, yet, on their part, they find the keeping up of the reputation quite a profitable affair. The following is the story of what actually took place.
Jean Roy (Red Jean) was a sensible, industrious old woman, and was by no means a bogey to anyone in the parish, yet she was, by all her neighbours regarded as 'uncanny,' and it was thought that it would be interesting to interview her ere the tribe, to which she believed to belong, became extinct.
As interviewers are supposed to know as much as possible of their subject and the person to be interviewed, I made enquiries as to her history and how Jean acquired her reputation. Neighbours quite readily told that Jean Roy's proper name was Jean Mackay, but, on account of her red hair, she was called Jean Roy from her girlhood. She grew up to be a good-looking lass, and at the age of twenty-one married a young crofter-fisherman.
It was noticed soon after his marriage that Jean's man was always successful at sea, and the stock of his croft did wonderfully well. After the villagers had debated the wonder of this, it was remembered that Jean was born at midnight on Hallowe'en, and of course should could not help growing up a 'wise woman.' Besides this, Jean and her husband had their home in the immediate neighbourhood of a fairy hillock, a place where others dare not live, because it was believed that such places are a favourite haunt of fairies.
But even to Jean misfortunes came. Her husband died; soon afterwards her cow was lost in a bog, but she struggled on, doing any odd jobs she could, and accepting help from neighbours rather go on the poor's roll.
One day Jean had no milk, and went to a neighbour's house to ask for some. The neighbour, who had heard all about Jean, curtly refused, as she believed the milk was asked for, not because it was really needed, but that Jean should get a 'fore-taste' of it, and then she would be able to bewitch the cow and get all of the milk for herself. Jean was indignant at the unexpected refusal and said,
'Weel, you cannot expect your cow to be a blessing to you when you refuse a drop of milk to a poor widow.' Within a week that cow was choked on a turnip.
A few days after this she asked a fisherman for a piece of rope, and he gave her thirty yards. When she measured it she said, 'You will bring thirty crans of herring in to-morrow.' He did, and Jean's reputation as a witch was established.
With all this knowledge of Jean, half a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar, I ventured to call on her. She had seen me coming and courteously met me at the door and invited me in. I followed her, muttering the usual Gaelic salutation, 'Peace be here.' When she got me seated, it was a case of being interviewed. I had to tell all I could of my forebears, where I had been since I left the parish, what I did, whether married, etc., etc.
She told me that her father and my grandfather were once nearly caught red-handed smuggling bothy, and that the two of them quickly jumped into a peat bog, and with blackened bodies and faces they chased away the excisemen, and that my grandfather lost his situation as precentor in the church because of the escapade.
All this and much more that she told me was news to me, and I felt it was about time that I should try to turn the tables and get her to talk about herself. I began by bewailing modern degeneracy, and suggested that it was due to too much tea-drinking and the eating of too much soft food. She demurred to my theory of tea-drinking, but greed with the soft bread theory, and suggested that it was the soft food that caused the foreshortening of the jaws which made the coming of the wisdom teeth so painful and caused no end of toothache!
'I am glad you like tea,' I said, 'as I have brought you some.'
'Now that was very kind of you.'
'Not at all,' I answered, 'because I wish to ask you a favour.'
'Weel?'
'I want you to cure my toothache.'
'O, poor man, do you suffer from that? I never thought you would come to me to do that.'
She then became cautious, and added,
'Weel, some people say that I can cure it, but perhaps yours is not of the kind that I can cure.'
After being assured that her cure would be tried, and that people had been telling me of cures wrought by her, she went 'ben' the house, and during the next quarter f an hour I could hear muttered spellings. At length she came out with a paper carefully folded, and told me it was to be worn over my heart and under my waistcoat for seven days. 'You must not tell that you got it or the toothache will be sure to come back.'
But I – heretic that I am – opened it ere I had been half-an-hour away from her, and this is what was written on it in a very shaky hand:-
'Petter sat on a marable ston weaping. Jesus cam by and said 'What ales ye petter?' Petter ansered and said 'Oh Lord the tuak.' Jesus ansered and said 'Be ye weel from the tuak Petter, and not only ye but all that believe on me.' May the Lord bless his own words and to him be the praise. Amen.'
'You can only do two or three other things,' I said 'Oh, well not much. People sometimes say that I can take things out of people's eyes, but it was my good father that told me how to to that; but I will tell you. I need to know the name and surname of the sufferer, and then after the sun sets, and before it rises, I go to a well opening to the north, and at the well mouth I say words in Gaelic which my father told me on his death bed. I then take a mouthful of the water and carry it back to the house, and when I put it out I always find the troublesome speck.'
'But how can that be,' I queried, 'when you haven't been near the sore eye?'
'Oh, well, I don't know; but I could give you names of three or four folk who will tell you that I took things out of their eyes, and I do it because my father said, 'Freely ye have received, freely give,'' and then she added with a trace of bitterness in her voice, 'Perhaps that is why so many people ask me to do this for them, but I never do any harm to anyone.'
'That is not what Effie Macleod says,' I ventured to say. 'She thinks you choked her cow on a turnip.'
'Oh, no, I didn't. How could she expect any good to happen to her when she wouldn't give a poor creature a drop of milk, and me a friend of hers? The cow wouldn't choke if she were not to lazy to cut the turnips as she ought to do.'
'But didn't you give thirty crans of herring to Sandy Macfarlane?'
'Oh, no, I didn't; but everyone wishes well to poor Sandy, as he would give a body anything. The fish were sent into his nets that he might have more to give to the like of me. It's those that give that get.'
'But you could give good luck, though. They all say that,' I contended.
'Oh, well, there are kind people to whom I wish well, and I wish them well openly, and it often happiness as I wish; that's how. Sometimes they wish some token of my good wishes, and I give them a threepenny bit with a hole in it, and they think if they put it in the bottom of the churn they will have more butter, or a fisherman ties it in his nets and thinks he will get on better, but it is only a sign that Jean Mackay wishes them well.
The old folk said that if this were done when the moon was growing it is better, and the old folks knew a lot.'
'Isn't it nonsense that they say about wise women taking the shape of cats and worrying their enemies?'
'Oh, indeed, yes. Did you ever hear of the man t Thurso who said he was worried by black cats, slashed right and left with his sword among them and cut off one of their hind legs, and the woman sent for the leg in the morning?
He gave it back, and the cats never bothered him after that.
Didn't the folk laugh at him when the minister asked what part of the body the woman would have sent for if he had cut off a cat's tail.'
The conversation then turned on the power attributed to some women of taking away the milk-giving properties of cows.
'Oh, I'll tell you how that happened, for I saw it myself. Once some travelling tinkers with their bairns came to stay in one of the small rooms in the 'broch' (Fairy Knowe) out there, and they spent all their money on drink, and had nothing for the bairns when they were crying.
Early in the morning they sent their oldest girl with a pail to the park where the cows were out all night, and asked her to milk any of the cows that would stand quietly for her.
She came back with a pailful, and next day I heard that Chirsty Dhu was complaining that myself or the fairies had taken the milk from her cow, and she came here with a present of cheese for me, and asked me about it.
I told her, but she would not believe me, and I then promised her that I would do my best. I told the tinkers that they were known to have milked the cows, and that a policeman would be after them. They went away, and Chirsty had plenty milk next day, and she gives me a drop ever since when I need it. It's a pity that it's me or the fairies that get the blame when anything goes wrong with the cows.'"