Patrick Stewart, 2nd Earl of Orkney, called Black Patie, believed his brothers were plotting against him. A servant's confession, got under torture, was used to bring in others, and Alison Balfour was named. The accounts say she was held in a heated iron device called the caschielawes for about 48 hours. Her husband was tortured with the lang irons. Her son's legs were put in an iron boot and hammered 57 times. Her daughter, who was a child, had her hands crushed in thumbscrews.
It was the torture of the daughter, according to the surviving record, that broke her and made her confess to witchcraft. She had been promised mercy, and it did not come.
At her execution on 16 December 1594 she is recorded as having proclaimed her innocence and gone through the torture inflicted on her family, and withdrew her forced confession. She was strangled and burned at Gallow Ha' in Kirkwall.
This is one of the best documented Scottish witch trials. It also shows how the charge was used in a political fight over the earldom. The pin is in Kirkwall. Her family home was in Stenness.
Comments