Noone o' thaim witches
“Noone o’ thaim witches” is the result of my BA Computer Arts honours project. I used an online campaign aiming to pardon the victims of the Scottish witch trials as my topic to educate an audience through the medium of comics.
Since graduation the comic has gathered a lot of interest from those interested in the Scottish Witch trials and campaigns like “Witches of Scotland”. The comic is currently available on itch.io and can purchased physically from Out of the Blueprint. It is also available free for schools and non-commercial use, along with my commissioned comic “The Calder Witch Hunt”, from the project “The Calder Witch Hunt”.
The comic is displayed at the Calder Kirk for tours.
I came up with the project idea because of an online campaign, “Witches of Scotland”, I found during the summer but I didn’t know much about the Scottish witch trials, so I began looking into sources to have some baseline knowledge in order to be able to write the comic. “The Scottish witch-hunt in context” is a series of essays about the witch hunts focusing on the historical context surrounding the events, such as Scottish culture and changing politics. It was very helpful for me to understand why the Scottish witch hunts were so different to the more well known Salem witch trials. For example, witches weren’t people who were demonised in Scottish society - partly because they were an important part of the community as healers and also because if something went wrong people were more likely to blame fairies than witches. On a similar note, “The Witches: Salem, 1692” gives the context of major differences between early America and Scotland. It’s also interesting that Scottish witch trials predate Salem as well. “The Weem Witch” focuses on the witch trials in Pittenweem, which is helpful for my research into local cases to use as the narrative for my comic. “The Demonology of King James I” goes through and explains King James’ explanations of witches and how to catch them. This was helpful in giving historical context of how witches were seen and how people expected to catch them - such as witch-pricking and the “Devil's Mark”. Finally, “Where are the women” sticks out as it isn’t strictly about the witch trials. However, the author mentions women who were accused of witchcraft, mainly in the Edinburgh section, and also gives a good explanation about why female representation in history is so important in a world where people genuinely think women have had less impact on history than men. This is something I’ve kept in mind during this project because I think it’s important to explain why people should care about remembering the Scottish witch trials.
Beginning to try and write the script was something I really struggled with and it took a lot longer than I originally anticipated it taking. I found it hard to first find a story I could turn into a narrative since there is often not a lot of information on the women accused, often not even noting their names. I looked through my research and wrote notes on some of the cases I had found and noted what I thought of the story and if it could work as a comic. In the end I included three women’s stories and managed to show how women from different classes in society and in different stages of life were still accused and tried of witchcraft.
These are from my sketchbook where I’ve used post-it notes to try and figure out a good way to portray torture in on of my pages. It was something I had been worried about because I had conflicting thoughts about keeping the audience safe from triggering themes but also wanting the audience to feel how serious the topic of women being tortured into “confessing” that they were witches. The arrows ( => ) show how I move from one idea and expand the idea - like the middle images on the first page where I think “maybe we could further emphasise the power of the torturer by making them loom over the woman”. The stars ( * ) are my way of remembering what I think are better images for the next time I look at them. I decided that the better image overall was the one on the top right of the second image where it’s the shadow of the woman in the foreground with the torturers in front of her before they hit her. I liked this because it shows the intention of the action (whipping for torture) without glorifying violence for entertainment or being graphic enough to trigger the audience.
The witches of Scotland campaign achieved one of their goals on International Women’s day 2022 when Nicola Sturgeon gave an apology to those killed in the witch trials. This impacted my comic script as I had mentioned how “to this day no apology or pardon has been made”. This change meant that I could edit the script to show how people support the campaign and its relevance in modern day politics. It also added a more hopeful note to the comic ending.
The title and speech in the comic is written in Scots to give more historical context and because I think it’s an important part of Scottish culture. The title “Noone o’ thaim witches” translates to “none of them witches” which is a little easter egg to one of my favourite horror movies “Rosemary’s Baby” where there is a book called “All of them witches”. It’s a little silly but I think it works! The comic also has a glossary of some of the terms used and translations of the Scots words used. I used Scots poet Len Pennie who posts a “Scots word of the day” on social media, the Scots dictionary and some translation sites to write the script.
There are three accused women in the comic; Geillis Duncan, Barbara Napier and Agnes Sampson. The three women are different ages and from different parts of society, which is really interesting to look at in context to how widespread the hysteria of the witch trials were.
Geillis Duncan was in a way easy to design because of the information I wanted to show to the audience. Geillis was a young teenager working as a maid servant when she was accused of witchcraft and killed. I wanted to show just how young she was and give a sense of fear and innocence, as if she doesn’t know what's going on. One of my influences was an illustration of Tiffany Aching from Terry Pratchett’s “The Wee Free Men”, which was a favourite when I was younger.
In contrast to Geillis Duncan, Barbara Napier was a lot harder for me to finalise a design for and so has more pages of sketchbook work. I realised really quickly that I had never really drawn an older woman before so I had to figure out a good way of showing age first before settling on more aesthetic decisions for the design. Barbara Napier was an elderly wealthy woman who was most likely accused as revenge or a way for others to take a powerful position in the community - she had inherited money from her father and her late husband. I wanted her to have a bit of a temper and not put up with much. I could imagine her being a lot more aggressive to the claims of witchcraft and I wanted that to show in her design. I liked the idea of showing a “unattractive” idea of a victim, as in someone who lashes out when hurt and doesn’t just cower as I think people see too much of one kind of victim in media. These sketches was when I started feeling like I was nailing the age range. The sketch on the left in particular became the strongest influence for the final design. At the bottom you can see a study of the fairy godmothers from Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty”. I had been trying to get a good body shape and the shapes used for the godmother characters was the kind of shape I wanted to work from for Barbara.
I didn’t get the design for Agnes Sampson straight away like I did for Geillis but it didn’t take as many iterations as Barbara did. Agnes was a well known traditional healer in the community so was an easy target for witchcraft accusations, she was also a widow with children. I knew I wanted her to have a more weary and tired look about her with something a little mysterious as well to hint to her knowledge of traditional medicine. I wanted that to show through the more angular eyes and cheekbones. I liked the top left on the left page but it looked too much like one of the reference images from the research board but that led to the design I decided on. I like it because it’s not conventionally “pretty” or attractive to a viewer. I also felt like it showed tiredness well also.
When researching the three women for the character design process I found an old publication that talked about their trials. The images used in the publication in an old wood cut style inspired me to use lino print techniques as the art style of the comic. My background is in traditional illustration and I do a lot of linocut prints in my free time, so the idea of using it in my comic excited me a lot.
I knew early on that I wanted to have the comic printed because I think that having a physical copy of your art is very satisfying, and also because I liked the idea of giving the copies out at the graduate show. I had came across “out of the blueprint” a few years ago and I wanted to get the comic printed there because they use risoprint. I have zines made using risoprint and I think the quality makes it seem a lot less mass produced and I thought that style would suit the lino print style of the comic.
Throughout the project I used a blog to document my process and updates I made which helped a lot in thinking about my ideas and explanations for my decision making.