Old Photograph Family Dalry Scotland

Old photograph of a family in Dalry in North Ayrshire, Scotland.

On the 8th Nov 1576, midwife Bessie Dunlop, resident of Lynne, in Dalry, was accused of sorcery and witchcraft. She answered her accusers that she received information on prophecies or to the whereabouts of lost goods from a Thomas Reid, a former barony officer in Dalry who died at the Battle of Pinkie some 30 years before. She said she first met him while walking between her own house and the yard of Monkcastle, and after a discussion he then disappeared through a hole in a wall or dyke, apparently too small for a normal person to pass through. She said she was trained by her " familiar " on how to make and use ointments to heal livestock and people. She was said to have cured and advised various people from poor children to gentry. As a " wise woman " her strange efforts at the time attracted the attention of the law. Her abilities were more akin to today’s current psychics, and with an understanding of medicinal herbs, she was identified in a time of witchcraft hysteria. It resulted in a conviction and the tragic outcome was that she was burnt at the stake. at Castle Hill in Edinburgh in 1576.



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