You are listening to The Otherworldly Oracle Official Podcast, a Burning Hallows production. We are your Otherworldly hosts, Kitty Fields and Laura rain. If you like what you're hearing, hit that subscribe button to be notified of future episodes, head on over to patrion. com slash burning hallows to grab your exclusive book of shadows pages to go along with each episode, pay a visit to other worldly oracle.
com to meet even more famous witches throughout history and grab your tarot reading or custom candle on a Laura's website at a Laura rain. com now onto the show. If you lived in the 17th century during the witch trial times and were accused of witchcraft, would you be so quick to confess, perhaps to escape torture or death? And if you were to confess, how long and detailed would that confession be?
I would venture to say not very long and as simple as possible, which is quite the opposite of Isabel Gowdy, a Scottish woman who readily and elaborately confessed to witchcraft during a time when people were being executed left and right. In this thought provoking episode, we meet the woman called the devil's mistress. So grab your broom and prepare to fly. Do you like how I wrote number one, friendly banter? Yeah. Yeah. I think we know what to do once the music stops.
Yeah. Yeah. I just figured you would like that. You'd find that entertaining. Okay. All right. So do you feel like you know anything about Isabel? No. Yes. A little bit, not a heap. Okay. I know that you do, I feel like I know some. Yes, I, I have, I've gotten like a hundred pages into the book written by. Emma will be, it's called the visions of Isabel Gaudi or Gaudi. It's pronounced different ways depending on where you live. And I feel like I'm like, I've only began to scratch the surface.
The book is 600 pages for anyone who's curious. And it is a work an academic look at Isabel's confessions. So it's pretty heavy. Right. So I know some but not all. So before we get to discussing Isabel herself, set the scene for us as in what's going on in Scotland right now. Okay. So Isabel's life isn't until the 1600s, but. Looking at Scotland during this time period, witch hunts, which, which trials were very common starting around 1563.
This is due in part to Mary Queen of Scots, Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563. And the superstition of witchcraft and witches, you know, out there to get everybody was kind of continued by her son, King James. who ended up writing a couple of works about which, which is in Malaficia and who was also heavily involved in the witch hunts and trials, including the North Berwick trials of 1590, that saw at least 70 people convicted and executed.
And then the great Scottish witch hunt of 1597, where there were at least 400 people convicted. And of course, you know, the number of those who are actually executed is conveniently unknown.
So the belief and very real fear of witches and witchcraft and basically harm that can cause was, it was a very real fear essentially during the early modern period in Scotland and was fueled by the likes of the church as well as politicians, which is interesting because this is a hundred years before the Salem witch trials. Oh yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I feel like.
It when you start to really dig into the dark ages and all of the witch hunts and trials They were going on for centuries before Salem happened. Salem is kind of like one of the last hurrah hurrahs, I guess Yeah, but Which trials were huge in Scotland, I think another one of the big countries that did a lot of we saw a lot of of trials and deaths because of this was in Germany as well. But Scotland was well known for this.
Yep. So in addition to this, like, overarching fear of witches during this time, you also have some rural areas of Scotland that hadn't quite been touched by the staunch sort of Presbyterian or Christian outlook about Spirits and so some of the old beliefs and fairies and the old folklore are still holding strong in some of those really country areas during the 1600s when Isabel is born. Gotcha. Which is no different than being, you know, born in the country versus born in the city. Oh yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. You have your superstitions and your home remedies and all that good stuff. Oh yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Isabelle's life. Okay. So we've already said she was a Scottish woman. She lived in the 17th century. We assume she was born sometime between the 1620s and 1640s, as there's no records of her birth to speak of. When she actually comes on record is when she's accused of witchcraft and she stands trial in the early 1660s.
So scholars say she could have been in her late teens, but she was more than likely in her late twenties to early thirties at this point. Okay. So Isabel has a husband named John Gilbert and they live in on a farm or land, excuse me, in Aldairne, Scotland. They live on a Lord's and they basically work the land together and their tenants. Of this land. So they are working in order to stay right in order to have a place to live.
And just to keep this in mind, the crops that they were likely working, the fields there were grains like bear. It's actually spelled B E A R like the animal. It's a form of barley. There could have been oats and possibly even a little rye. So make a mental note of that for And we, and we know how that goes. Right. Because that can mold. Exactly. So that's what, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Put a pin on that. We're going to talk about theories too, for sure.
Okay. Because things get wild, all right, with Isabel's confessions, but still painting the scene of her life. She's Of childbearing age and most women of childbearing age, their primary concern at that time was likely to bear and raise children as was the custom. And that was, you know, the woman's role at the time.
This also means she's just as busy as her husband, since we're also talking a time without modern technology and advances, her chores were probably milking, making bread, preserving, weaving, weeding, plus caring for the kids as well. Hmm. Let it also be noted that as far as we know, Isabel was not literate and could not read or write yet. We see most of her confessions are they point that to the fact that she has a very vivid imagination at the least.
And she was able to eloquently express herself. Okay. Even being that she was. A very poor woman too. So keeping that in mind as well. So the Lord on whose land they live was well known to be a believer in witches since a few of his family members claim to have been injured and or killed because of supposed witches.
So how Isabel came to be accused, no one really knows exactly what led to the accusations that brought her to trial, but there's a belief that she was accused of a conspiracy to basically F or screw with the local minister, meaning like using witchcraft to like mess up his life. Okay. Okay. He was a religious, religious extremist and had a massive phobia of witches. Hmm. So we see him in quite a bit of her trial, if that tells you anything.
Okay. But here's where it gets interesting, interesting. So Isabel confesses to many things, including, and we're going to get further into this. We're going to go into detail, but she confesses to meeting and having intercourse with the devil. She names at least two other women who were also witches alongside of her. She says that she goes into a pact and allows the witch's mark to be put on her body.
She admits to spoiling crops and grave robbing with a coven saying she's entertained by the queen of the fairies, using healing remedies, as well as shifting into animals. Like the hair, jackdaw, cat and horse, as well as having a familiar spirit. She called it Reed Reaver. Okay. That's a lot to like unfold there as it is, but here's the deal.
Why Isabel's case is so much different than the others and why scholars have actually been studying it with a fine tooth comb for years, including Emma Willoughby is because Of the elaborate flowery detail that Isabel goes into with her confessions. It's unlike any other confessions on, on document basically. Right.
So with open ended questions at her trial, obviously with open ended questions, you know, we can't just answer yes or no. We have to answer them with at least one or two simple sentences, right? But with Isabel, instead of saying, you know, when they asked her about the devil, how did he look instead of her saying, I don't know, or I don't remember or something to that degree, she goes into basically a full on monologue, like prose mode.
Like a long flowery sonnet, you know, so that's basically one of the reasons that scholars have studied it. Cause it's, it's fascinating and it's the way that she talks and confesses to these things is poetic. Even Hmm. Yeah, it's pretty wild. So over the past 200 years, since the confessions were first transcribed, different scholars have used words like startling, striking, sensational, extraordinary to describe her confessions. Basically, I've said that they're poetic.
They're long and elaborate. In fact, they're the longest on record and they're the only confessions recorded in first person. And so it comes off, like I said, more like a monologue. In addition, it covers a rich and wide variety of subject matter. And Isabelle just doesn't describe events and people and spirits, but she does so in this very narrative, like distinctive linguistic style completely unlike, like I said, any other confession out there.
And lastly, according to Emma will be in her book, the visions of Isabel Gaudi, Emma says, her confessions are exceptional because they're one of the small minority in which the passages pertaining to harmful magic are so vivid and idiosyncratic that they point firmly beyond the artifice of the interrogators or the projections of neighbors to the possibility that Isabel herself believed.
Herself to be a malevolent, which, yeah, well, why would she confess to all this if she knew it was going to end in her death, right, right. That's one of the main, that's one of the huge questions. So knowing this, and before we get into some of the confessions. Let it be known that I believe that there's many facts, factors to this case.
It could be any number of things that led to her confessions, including a theory that Isabel herself didn't even confess to this, but maybe someone wrote these things as her confessions. And I don't know if Isabel was a witch or thought herself to be a witch, but I think it's possible. Okay. Do you want to take the next part? Just the number 4. Okay. So, for the rest of the episode, we are going to be reading a confession and discussing it.
So, these confessions are available for the public to read and more specifically, for Are broken down and analyzed by Emma will be in her book, the visions of Isabel Gowdy, magic, witchcraft, and shark shamanism in the 17th century Scotland, which we highly recommend reading. It will just take you a while because it's like 600 pages, but yeah, it's pretty big. Okay. So one of the first major confessions was centered around Isabel meeting the devil.
And so the interrogator asked Isabel, what was the devil like? And Isabel answers. He was a tall, rough, oh, I was gonna, I was just gonna read it. Do it. It was a tall, rough, black, hairy man, very cold, and I found his nature as cold within me as spring well water. Sometimes he had boots and sometimes shoes on his feet, but still his feet are forked and cloven. Thanks. He would be sometimes with us like a deer or a row and it goes on, but this is just a small portion of what she had said.
Yes. And that's more or less translated into, you know, English, how we can understand it. But her language was very flowery and some of it even supposedly rhymed. It's like crazy when you think about, okay, if she was really confessing to this, Why would she be putting it in a rhyme? Was she, it doesn't even sound like she was scared or worried. Like what you said, why would she confess to all this? Yeah. This makes me wonder. Yeah. This makes me wonder if somebody just wrote this. Right.
Which is, which is a concern and you know, a theory, but okay. Another one, another confession, another theme behind her confessions had to do with fairies and being taken to fairy land. So the question posed to her, another question posed to her was, did you visit the fairy folk? So instead of just saying yes. She says, I went to the Downey Hill and got meat there from the queen of the fairies more than I could eat.
The queen of the fairies is barely clothed in white linens and white and brown clothes. The king of the fairies is a bra man, well favored and broad faced. There were elf bulls roting and scoiling up and down there, which frightened me. And it goes on and on and on. But again, I'm just pulling like tidbits from each confession to, to give you the, the gist of it. Right. So yeah, some of these confessions are like a page long. So instead of just being like, yeah, I went there.
She goes into this whole Shakespearean, whatever, to me, it's almost like, I wonder just a theory here, but I wonder if she knew that she was going to be convicted anyway. And it's almost like making a mockery of everyone, you know, like, oh, they want to hear it. They want to, they want to show, like, I'll give them a show kind of thing. Prolonging the agony. Yeah. Who knows? Another part. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, no. What about beneficent magic?
Yeah. So it's interesting in the second group of confessions, she also discusses healing charms and rituals, what actually, which actually puts her confessions into another minority of which trial documents and which beneficial magic is discussed during the trial. Most of it's always focused on the malevolent side, right? Right.
So in one confession, Isabelle speaks of sickness transference from a sick child or baby into a dog or a cat, which sounds bad, but it was a common practice or belief of cunning folk in that time period to take an illness out of something and put it in a something else form of healing. Right. So her confession says, and if a child be forspoken, we take the cradle and just to let you know that there are some damage and missing words, of course, in the beneficial magic part.
But anyway, there's some missing words here. And then it says, child throw it thrice and then a dog throw it and shakes the belt above the fire. Then there's some more missing words down to the ground till a dog or cat goes over to it. That the sickness may come. Damaged words, cat. So what she's basically talking about here is transference of a sick child, an illness taking out of the child and going into a dog.
And then I guess basically being grounded, put into the ground is what I'm kind of gathering from that. But I do think it's interesting that a lot of the missing words are from that part of the confession. Yeah. Like anyway, but it's also interesting too. It's like, well, if she was so malevolent, it sounds like. She was, she could have been a cunning woman if she was performing healings and things could have for sure.
So now we can get into the theories as to what actually happened in this trial. We've kind of started touching on that, but obviously one is psychosis. A lot of scholars think that maybe Isabel was just playing crazy. You know, and she was having a psychotic fit. Maybe she was hungry or hadn't slept, you know, and all of those things can be a factor into how people act. Right. And then you were talking about the rye earlier. Do you want to touch on that a little bit? Yeah. So when.
Rye molds, it's called ergot poisoning, and this is actually also one of the theories behind the Salem witch trials as well, but basically being exposed to ergot poisoning causes hallucinations and could account for the rich imagination that Isabelle seemed to possess. Yeah. Like maybe she felt that those things actually happened because she saw them, right? Hallucinated them. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Could very well be.
I mean, there's also the aspect that she could have confessed under torment or torture. For me, that's hard to believe because of how elaborate it is. Right. Exactly. If you're being tortured, you're not going to go into a page long confession. You're just going to say yes or no. Exactly. Just give them what they want to hear and be done with it. Right. Right. I mean, very little of what they want to hear, but you know, yeah, that, that part doesn't really make much sense to me.
And then another theory, you know, we could say someone else wrote this and falsified the whole thing. Possible. You know, what about maybe Isabel was a cunning woman and wrongly accused. Right. Right. And someone, again, maybe exaggerated her confessions. Possible. I think that one might be getting a little closer to the truth for me. Just what I believe. Well, especially if it was somebody who, you know, I don't know, she helped deliver a baby and the baby didn't make it.
Yeah. Something like that. Mm hmm. Which happened quite a bit, right? Back then. Mm hmm. Another part of this is, you know, people talk about Isabel was so well spoken and well versed in the bardic arts. It was actually common practice back then that many people would sing while they worked. They sang as a form of telling stories around the fire to preserve their memories, that kind of thing. I mean, that was entertainment back then.
True. So for us to be like, Oh, this is so flowery and, and, you know, elaborate, it actually might not have been for her, especially if, you know, she was like, there's some people that have really great memory when it comes to songs and things like that, you know, that could be part of it. She was just telling a story. Yeah. You know, sure. But again, telling a story, maybe to, to it's like a mockery of the, of the court or who knows, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Another aspect of this is we could entertain the idea that she really was or thought herself to be a witch and took part in astral travel or visions of which flight, which would explain the visions of fairy land, the shape shifting. A lot of that. She also talks about flying and using her broom to trick her husband into thinking that she was there, but it was actually the broom. That one's kind of funny. That's pretty funny.
Yeah. Yeah. And then, like I said, I think if she could have just known that she was going to be executed and she just wanted to F with everybody and it was like her last hurrah. If I'm going down, I'm going down in flame. All right. Like she went down in history, if that was the case, right? I mean, it's, it's the most interesting confessions we have on record.
Yeah, I think that next to Bridget Bishop, she's the most well known individual, which Yeah, and there's been, there was a play that was made about her, which I think that's where the devil's mistress name comes from and people have written her into stories and I'm sure there's been shows made about her, but yeah, I think, Oh, sorry.
No, no. Oh, I was just going to say as far as shows are concerned, I think that show Salem was probably probably the most historically accurate you you're going to see on a TV. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just from the, just from the way that they portray Salem at that time. Right. There was no roads. It was all mud. It was disgusting. Like, yeah. I think. Yeah, definitely. So if you really want to know what Salem was like back then, watch that, watch the show Salem. Right. Agreed.
Oh, and here's another part of this. I believe, and let me just double check this. Well, I believe she was convicted because of all the elaborate confessions, but no one knows if she was actually executed or not really, really. So it says, although she was probably executed in line with usual practice, it's uncertain whether this was the case or if she was allowed to return to the obscurity of her former life as a cotter's wife. I kind of doubt that they let her go. That's just me. Interesting.
Or maybe they did. Maybe they thought, okay, this lady's psychotic and we can't, you know, who knows it is interesting though. And did she have kids and did they have kids and or is anybody a descendant of hers alive today? Yeah. I was going to say, if anybody's listening to this and you have Isabel Gaudi in your Let us know. Yeah. Exactly.
I feel like that would be hard to track down though, because like I said, she doesn't even come into the records until her trial, you know, unless, unless her kids were at least recorded in a Bible or something. Yeah. I have no idea. It's pretty crazy. So what do you think? Did you, did you say what you, how you felt about her? What do you think? I, I don't know. I think Ur got poisoning. Makes the most practical sense. But who knows?
I mean, yeah, that there's a reason why scholars study her the most. Because it is so out of the norm to have page long confessions to this kind of stuff. Agree. But yeah, I don't, I don't have a definitive conclusion. Yeah. I mean, either, I think it could be any number of things. Honestly, I like to believe. That she might've been a witch or believed herself to be one, but that's the fanciful side of me. Right. All right. I think that, I think that's the fanciful side of all of us.
True. Very true. All right. Shall I wrap it up? Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you enjoyed this installment of our ongoing famous witches series and remember whether you're in the land of the Fay or the land of the ancestors, stay other worldly.