Gilded Dragon

Not My Granie!:

The granddaughter of the "last person in Britain to be tried as a witch" has vowed she and her family would never give up the fight to clear her relative's name. Helen Duncan, of Niddrie, Edinburgh, traveled the country performing seances at which she claimed to contact people killed during World War II. In 1944, she was convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act of "pretending to raise the spirits of the dead" and sentenced to nine months in jail. Her granddaughter, Mary Martin, applied in 1999 to Jack Straw, then home secretary, for a posthumous pardon. Straw refused. Legend notwithstading, Duncan was not the "last person to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act." It was invoked as late as December 1944, when police warned Emily Johnson of the Redhill Spiritualist Church that if her activities continued she would be liable to prosecution. The charge must have stopped -or slowed down- her "activities," as no trial record exists.

By Herb McSidhe The Witches' Slmanac Spring 2008 to Spring 2009

Death By Fairies:

A document listing deaths from 1656 to 1663 in the parish of Lamplugh, Cumbria, was found in archives as part of a national campaign to uncover treasures of local history. The single sheet of paper from a parish burial register paints a gripping and sometimes comical picture of England in the mid-seventeenth century. Four people were "Frighted to Death by fairies," according to the verbatim report. Another perished after he was "Led into a horse pond by a will of the wisp." Cumbria county archivist Anne Rowe said: "I've never come across anything like it before. Many people have been terrified of fairies, but I'm not sure whether this list reflects ancestral superstitions or sense of humour."

By Herb McSidhe The Witches' Slmanac Spring 2008 to Spring 2009