For many young people Halloween means running around plastered in green makeup and fake blood, cackling as they fill their plastic cauldrons with trick-or-treat candies. But, as Edinburgh University’s Survey of Scottish Witchcraft reveals, it has a darker side. The Witchcraft Act was in force in Scotland between 1563 and 1736; in that period 3,837 people were accused of witchcraft – 84% of them women. Torture was used to exact confessions, and those convicted were almost always strangled at the stake and their corpse burned. The last witch to be burned was Janet Horne in Dornoch, Sutherland, in 1727. She was stripped, smeared with tar, paraded through the town on a barrel and burned alive. Perhaps 31 October should serve to remind us that there was a period in our history when Christianity had the power to implement Exodus 22:18, and did so on an industrial scale.
Doug Clark
Currie, Midlothian
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