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An abandoned croft by the forest that as children we used to explore and make up stories about. I don& #39;t think it& #39;s there any more...
In the nearby town of Dornoch, there is a stone that can still be seen today marked 1722
This is sometimes called the witch& #39;s stone and is in fact a memorial to Janet Horne, who was the last person in the UK to be executed for witchcraft in 1727 (rather than 1722).
The story of her execution is horrific. She may not have even been called Janet as & #39;Janet& #39; and & #39;Jenny& #39; were names commonly used for witches. She and her daughter were arrested imprisoned in Dornoch, on accusations of witchcraft.
It seemed to come down to the fact that her daughter had a deformity and & #39;Janet& #39; might have suffered from some form of senility. Her daughter managed to escape, but Janet was smeared with tar, paraded through the town and burned alive.
Of course, as a child, I didn& #39;t know the full story. I thought that a & #39;witch& #39; had once lived in the town and so the boundaries between reality and folklore were definitely blurred. But learning the story later, I named the town in Pine & #39;Strath Horne& #39; to remember her.
On the local golf course, there is a deep black pool that used to be called The Witch& #39;s Pool that I used to believe was used for witch trials, but that may not be true at all. @hsteadman1650 has a great blog post about this chapter of history: https://bit.ly/3ksddzP ">https://bit.ly/3ksddzP&q...
The podcast series Witch Hunt is a fascinating look at Scotland& #39;s dark history of witch trials https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07rn41g">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...
This map created by Edinburgh University is also a great memorial to the people who were put on trial for witchcraft and shows how extensive it was: https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/timeline/ ">https://witches.is.ed.ac.uk/timeline/...
First part of this thread: https://twitter.com/FrancineElena/status/1320334290778021892?s=19">https://twitter.com/FrancineE...
