Bessie Dunlop, The Witch of Dalry
Bessie
Born Elizabeth Dunlop, Bessie was a mother, a skeelywife (or wisewoman), and a healer - someone her community turned to in times of need. She had a gift for healing the sick, and an unusual skill for finding lost things, which, in sixteenth century Scotland was enough to arouse suspicion.
Bessie lived in the Lynn Glen area of Dalry, Ayrshire, with her husband Andrew (Andra) Jack, a farmer, and her children, where she gathered herbs and ingredients from the land around her. She knew the plants, the seasons, and the quiet knowledge that had been passed down through generations of women before her.
On the 8th of November 1576, Elizabeth Dunlop was tried for witchcraft. She was found guilty and sentenced to be strangled and burned. There were no reports - not one - of any harm ever coming from her healings. She had only ever helped people.
In her 'confession', she detailed encounters in the glen with Thomas Reid — a man who had died some thirty years before in the Battle of Pinkie in 1547. It was said that Reid introduced her to the Fairy Folk, and the Queen of Elphame. She said that Thom taught her how to heal during their many encounters. Whether one reads these accounts as folklore, spiritual experience, or the testimony of a woman trying to explain gifts she herself did not fully understand, they were also the account of a desperate woman, under torture. At a time when traditional healing techniques were being viewed as suspicious, otherworldy, even evil.
Her confession is recorded in detail in Walter Scott's Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (1831). As Scott himself noted, "her own confession is the principal evidence against her." In truth, it was the only evidence against her — and it would have been extracted, or concocted, through torture at the hands of her interrogators.
Her case is remarkable for how thoroughly it was documented. For a trial so early in the Scottish witch hunts, the records are unusually detailed, and they have ensured that Bessie's story has never been entirely forgotten. Plays, radio dramas, essays, and news reports have been written about her. Local groups still work to commemorate her life and mark the injustice of her death.
1576 takes its name from the year Bessie was taken from her community. It is an act of remembrance — for her skill, her knowledge, her care, and for all the women like her whose names we may never know.
She helped people. She was here. She matters.
You can find further reading on Bessie's life here:
https://naheritage.co.uk/stories/elizabeth-bessie-dunlop
https://witches.hca.ed.ac.uk/case/C/EGD/29
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bessie-Dunlop-Witch-Dalry-Hodgart/dp/1906841519
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/bessie-dunlop/
Radio play, adapted from The Witch of Dalry by John Hodgart