JANET HORNE

(Scotland's last "Witch", executed in 1727)

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 12:11)

Janet Horne and her daughter were the unfortunate co-accused in the last legal witchcraft trial to take place in Scotland, at Dornoch in Sutherland.

The charge, somewhat laughably now, was that Janet had cast a spell on her daughter to put horseshoes on her hands and feet, so that she could be ridden like a pony, thereby solving the familys transport shortage problems at a stroke. A devilishly cunning plan if ever there was one.

It was, the prosecution claimed, as a result of this treatment that the daughter had badly deformed hands and feet, evidence that all could see with their own eyes. Pretty overwhelming stuff. The deformed daughter was acquitted but Janet was found guilty and was executed by burning in a barrel of tar.

On the bitterly cold morning of her execution, she astonished the onlooking crowd by calmly warming her hands at the fire which would soon consume her. Proof of her innocence, as if it were required, would come some years later with the birth of her grand-daughter, a child possessing exactly the same deformity of hands and feet, quite obviously the result of inherited genetic malformation.

In the hysteria that spread throughout Scotland in the seventeenth century and continued until the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1736, it has been estimated by historians of the period that as many as 4500 innocent Scotswomen were killed, quite legally, in the most vile and painful ways, including stoning, crushing, drowning and, of course, the ever-popular burning at the stake.

Ouch.