the Craft of Isobel Gowdie: A Look at Scottish Folk Magic in the 1600s
by Keziah
Those of you readers familiar with Scottish Folk Magic and Traditional Scottish Cunning Ways, or perhaps with the history of witch trials in Scotland, will likely know the name Isobel Gowdie. For those of you who don’t, allow me the honor to introduce you. Known as ‘the Queen of Scottish Witches’ and ‘the Witch of Auldearn’, Isobel Gowdie was a woman whose confessions of witchcraft have gifted us perhaps greater insight into Scottish folkloric beliefs and the folk magic practices of her time than any other account accessible to us.
Little is known about the life and background of Gowdie, aside from the facts that she was the wife of a peasant farmer (John Gilbert), she resided in Lochloy in the Scottish region of Auldearn, and that she gave detailed testimony of her practice of witchcraft in 1662 (the first trial having taken place on the 13th of April). The confession was made in four parts over the course of six weeks. In this piece, we’ll take a look at some of the spells and practices that Gowdie revealed during her trial, diving into the magical craft of Isobel Gowdie.
On Becoming a Witch
In her first confession, Isobel details how she came into the practice of witchery by forging a covenant with the Devil. She states that she first encountered the Devil whilst walking ‘between the farmsteads of Drumdewin’. She then promises to meet the Devil again that night at the kirk, meaning church, in Auldearn. On this night, Isobel made a pact with the Devil, which she describes thusly –
‘The first thing I did was deny my baptism. Then I put one of my hands upon the crown of my head and the other to the sole of my foot and renounced all between my two hands to the Devil. He was in the reader’s desk’ – meaning at the pulpit – ‘with a Black Book in his hand.’
She then tells of another woman present, Margaret Brodie, who was already in covenant with the Devil and who served as a sort of assistant in this ceremony, mentor in Gowdie’s craft thereafter, and a high-ranking member of Gowdie’s coven. Throughout her confessions, Gowdie names other members of her coven along with practitioners from other covens and their locations.
‘Margaret Brodie from Auldearn held me up to the Devil to be baptized. He placed his mark upon my shoulder and sucked my blood from the mark. He spat the blood into his hand. Sprinkling it [the blood] on my head, he said, “I baptize thee, Janet, in my own name.” Her baptism concluded with her being given the baptismal name Janet.
The belief of inheriting the role of Witch through a pact with the Devil is one that appears often in Scottish, English, and Irish folk beliefs from this era, and also appears throughout the Appalachian and Southern United States and other regions of Europe. The act of touching one’s hand to one’s head and the other to one’s foot whilst ‘freely giving all between my hands’ to the Devil is not uncommon in these baptismal rites.
Gowdie states that her powers and the powers of her fellow coven members come directly from the Devil.
‘We get all our power from the Devil. When we ask him for it, we call him ‘Our Lord’.’
On the Devil
Gowdie gives detailed descriptions of her interactions with the Devil and of his appearance. She depicts herself as a servant of the Devil and lists many magical acts she carried out in the Devil’s name. She described him as being cold to the touch and ‘a meikle, blak, roch man’ – being large and hairy with coal-black skin – who ‘had boots and sometimes shoes on his feet – but his feet were always forked and cloven.’
She also explains that the Devil would sometimes appear to her and the others who served him as an animal, and she states that the Devil would come to her house sometimes in the form of a crow or deer ‘or in any other shape, now and then.’ Gowdie goes on to state that the Devil was present at the Sabbats held by Gowdie and her company. She recounts one Candlemas –
‘The Devil sat at the head of the table, and all the coven about.’
In her testimony, particularly during her third confession, Gowdie speaks of having sexual relations with the Devil, as does a fellow coven member, Janet Breadhead, in her own confessions. Isobel gives further detail into the Devil’s anatomy and the instances when she partook in intercourse with the Devil, as well as describing orgies with her coven –
‘He would lie with us in preference of all the multitude; neither had we nor he any kind of shame, but especially he has no shame with him at all.’
On Spirit Companions
Isobel reveals during her second confession, ‘There are thirteen people in my coven, and each one of us has a spirit to wait upon us, when we please to call on him.’ As an aside, many believe that the standard of having 13 members to a coven comes from Isobel Gowdie’s confessions.
During this confession, she describes some of the spirits (though some of the descriptions were omitted from written record) –
Swein: always dressed in grass-green
Rorie: always clothed in yellow
the Roaring Lion: always dressed in sea-green
Mac Hector: a young-looking devil, dressed always in grass-green
Robert the Rule: always dressed in faded dun. He seems to be in command of the rest of the spirits.
Thief of Hell Wait Upon Herself: of whom she gives no description
the Red Reiver: He’s my personal spirit. He waits upon me and is always dressed in black.
Robert the Jacks: always clothed in dun and seems old. He’s a glaikit, goukit (simple-looking, stupid/dumb) spirit!
Laing: of whom she gives no description
Thomas, a Faerie: of whom the description is not included in the written testimony
On Sympathetic Magic
Isobel Gowdie describes an act of sympathetic magic – that is, when one uses an image or item to represent someone and then performs actions (be they symbolic or literal) toward this item or image, actions which will then affect the intended person – that she performed with members of her coven.
She tells that they made a clay effigy or clay doll, with which they intended to ‘kill the Laird (Lord) o’ Park’s male children’. She states,
‘All the Laird’s male children will suffer by it if it isn’t found and broken, as well as those who’ve been born and died already.’
‘John Taylor brought the clay home in his plaid and his wife broke it up into small bits, like meal. She sifted it through a sieve and poured water into it, in the Devil’s name, and kneaded it until it was like rye dough.’
The dough was then shaped and made to resemble the Laird’s sons.
‘It wanted none of a child’s features, and its hands were folded down by its sides. Its texture was like crab or a scraped and scalded piglet.’
In her third confession, Isobel reveals the words that were recited whilst the clay doll was made –
‘The words which we spoke, when we made the doll, for destroying the Laird o’ Park’s male children were thus: ‘In the Devil’s name, we pour this water in among this meal, For lang dying and ill health; We put it into the fire, That it may be burnt both stik and stowre* It shall be burnt, with our will, As any stubble upon a kill.’
*Stik: a stick-like implement or object / (in this context) to be burnt to the point of being destroyed; I’m not sure how stowre should be interpreted from Pitcairn’s work and have had difficulty finding a meaning for this.
‘The Devil taught us the words; and when we learned them, we all fell down upon our knees with our hair about our eyes and our hands lifted up, looking steadfast upon the Devil and still saying the words thrice over, ‘til it [the doll] was made. And then, in the Devil’s name, we put it in the midst of the fire. After it had shriveled a little before the fire, and when it was red-hot like a coal, we took it out in the Devil’s name. ‘Til it be broken, it will be the death of all the male children the the Laird o’ Park will ever get.
‘Cast it over a kirk (church), it will not break until it be broken with an axe, or from such a thing, be a man’s hands. If it is not broken, it will last a hundred years.’
Isobel goes on to describe what actions they performed upon the clay figure, such as putting it in hot embers, holding its face near the fire until it shriveled, and roasting it or parts of it ‘every other day’.
She concludes by informing those at her trial that the doll was still being practiced upon and roasted when she was taken in, and that they can find the doll hanging upon a peg in John Taylor’s house, with ‘a clay cradle around it’.
Her account is corroborated by the testimony of Janet Breadhead. After describing the doll, she shares,
‘It was put near the flames until it was dry and wrinkled. Then we placed it on the hot coals until it was hard. Then we took it from the fire and wrapped it in a cloth and hid it away on a shelf or sometimes under a chest. Every day, we would wet it then roast it and bake it, and every other day we would turn it at the fire, until the bairn was dead. Then we hid it [the doll] away and didn’t touch it until the next bairn was born.’
She states that they would do the same with the doll within six months of the child’s birth, continuing their practice of roasting the doll ‘until the new bairn died too.’
In a later confession, Isobel reveals their purpose in doing this was to make the Laird o’ Parks heirless.
On Taking the Form of an Animal
Isobel Gowdie mentions taking on the shape of various animals, an act she performed along with members of her coven. Though she mentions multiple types of animals she can take the shape of, the animal she is most famously remembered for presenting herself as is the hare, the form which the Devil had her take when he sent her on an errand, as relayed in her third confession. To this day, artworks in honor of Gowdie still feature the hare.
She describes an instance when she took on the form of a jackdaw to gain access to the dye-house of a neighbor in Auldearn, while two other women with her had taken the shapes of a hare and a cat.
During her second confession, Isobel describes how she would take on the shape of a hare –
‘When we go into hare-shape, we say: "I shall go into a hare, With sorrow and sych (sigh) and meikel (great, much) care; And I shall go in the Devil’s name, Aye while I come hame (home) again." And instantly we start into a hare.’
To change back, she would say:
‘Hare, hare, God send thee care. I am in a hare’s likeness now, But I shall be a woman even now. Hare, hare, God send thee care.’
To turn into a cat, she recited this three times:
‘I shall turn into a cat, With sorrow and sych and a black shot; And I shall go in the Devil’s name, Aye while I come hame again.’
To turn back from a cat:
‘Cat, cat, God send thee black shot. I am in a cat’s likeness now, But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now. Cat, cat, God send thee black shot.’
To turn into a crow, ‘we say three times:
I shall turn into a crow, With sorrow and sych and a black throw; And I shall go in the Devil’s name, Aye while I come hame again.’
And to turn back from a crow:
‘Crow, crow, God send thee black throw. I am in a crow’s likeness now, But I shall be in a woman’s likeness even now. Crow, crow, God send thee black throw.’
Isobel also explains that when she or her fellow witches are in their animal forms, they can cause whomever they like to join them in that form by saying, ‘I conjure thee, Go with me!’ whilst with them or in their house. ‘And they instantly turn into what we are, either cats, hare, crows…, and go with us wherever we want.’
On Raising the Wind
Isobel explains how she and her coven members would raise and control the wind by wetting a cloth rag in water. They then took a laundry stick and ‘knocked the rag upon the stane (stone), saying three times:
I knock this rag upon the stane, To raise the wind in the Devil’s name – It shall not lie until I please again!’
When they wanted to calm or lay the wind again, they would dry the rag and say three times:
We lay the wind in the Devil’s name It shall not rise ‘til we like to raise it again!’
On Fevers
To rid one of a fever, Gowdie revealed that she would say three times:
‘I forbid the quaking fevers, the sea-fevers, the land-fevers, and all the fevers that ever God ordained; out of the head, out of the heart, out of the back, out of the sides, out of the kidneys, out of the thighs, from the points of the fingers to the nibs of the toes – out shall all fevers go. In Saint Peter’s name, Saint Paul’s name, and all the saints of Heaven. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!’
On Magical Travel
Accounts of magical travel across great distances or into the realms of the sidhe-folk are not uncommon amongst folk and traditional practices throughout the United Kingdom and Ireland. Gowdie gives a few such accounts. In the first, she describes how her coven met and yoked a puddock-plough (a plough drawn by frogs).
‘The Devil held the plough and John Young from Mebelstown, our Officer, drew it. Puddocks drew the plough, like oxen. The traces were made of dog grass. Its coulter was made from a half-gelded ram’s horn and a bit of horn was used as its blade. We went around two or three times with all of us in the coven going all the while up and down with the plough, praying to the Devil for the fruit of that land, and that thistles and briars might grow there.’
In another account of magical travel, Gowdie details how her coven would place a blade of grass, straw, or a cairn stalk on the ground between their feet and stand over it, saying, “Horse and Hattock, in the Devil’s Name!” or “Horse and hattock, horse and go; horse and pellatis, ho! Ho!” This would transform the grass or straw into a horse that they could then ride. The horses would also be able to fly –
‘...and we would fly away wherever we would, like straw flying about on the highway.’
She also proclaims that if they were to pass anyone and be seen during such a flight, that unless the person was quick in blessing themselves, the coven would ‘shoot them dead if we want. Anyone shot by us, their soul goes to Heaven but their body stays with us – they will fly to us like horses as small as straws.’
These accounts are but a portion of what Isobel Gowdie spoke on in her confessions. While I would love to dig into everything she revealed, that’s simply far too much for a blog post. I highly recommend, though, that you do look into the records of her confessions if this piece interested you. You’ll find explanations as to how she and the women of her coven used charmed broom sticks in their beds to keep their husbands from noticing their absence in the night; the making of Elf-shots or Elf-arrows, and how Isobel and others were instructed in how to use said tools against others; explanations as to how one can take the strength from someone’s ale and put it in the drink of another, and how one can steal the yield from another’s farm; along with the ‘salacious’ accounts of Isobel’s intimate encounters with the Devil, and so very much more.
Sources & Further Information:
‘Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, Vol. 3, Pt. 2’ - Pitcairn, Robert, Esq.
'The Black Book of Isobel Gowdie and Other Scottish Spells and Charms' - Mills, Ash William
'Narratives of Sorcery and Magic - Volume 2' -Wright, Thomas
‘The Visions of Isobel Gowdie: Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland’ - Wilby, Emma
‘1Scot1Not’ podcast episode ‘Isobel Gowdie: the NAUGHTIEST Girl of the Entire 17th Century’