Show Notes
In 1629, 27 men, women, and a 15-year-old child were executed in Peebles, Scotland — and their ashes cast into the River Tweed. For centuries, their names were largely forgotten. Now, a community theater production called Rope and Flame is bringing their stories back to life, just steps from the river where they were lost.
Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack sit down with the creative team behind this remarkable project: director and co-writer Clare Prenton, playwright and co-writer Anita John, actor Scott Noble, and historian Mary Craig, whose book Borders Witch Hunt laid the foundation for the script.
This conversation will take you into the Scottish Borders, into the streets and kirk of a 17th-century market town under pressure from famine, religious upheaval, and the reach of Edinburgh’s legal machinery. Listeners will come away with a richer understanding of how witchcraft accusations spread through a community, why both accusers and accused deserve to be understood as full human beings, and what a commemorative plaque on Tweed Green sparked in a modern Scottish town.
You’ll also hear how three women writers intentionally pushed back against the framing of female fear and coercion as irrational, how a 15-year-old girl was pressured into naming names, and why one local historian argues that boots on the ground matter more than books when it comes to understanding the past.
From generational trauma to the parallels between 17th-century gossip and why the mechanics of a whisper spreading through a 17th-century Scottish market town are not as distant from our own moment as we might like to think. this episode connects the Scottish witch trials to questions that are urgently alive right now.
In This Episode
- The history of the 1629 Peebles witch trials and what made the Scottish Borders a hotbed of witchcraft prosecutions
- How the 2022 memorial on Tweed Green sparked a community theater production
- The role of Calvinism, political turmoil under Charles I, and economic hardship in fueling accusations
- Why Rope and Flame portrays accusers as complex, frightened human beings rather than simple villains
- The story of Isabel Haddock, the 15-year-old accused whose testimony changed everything
- How community theater is doing what history books alone cannot
If this episode moved you, share it. These stories survive because people carry them forward. Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack are descendants of Salem witch trial victims who helped build End Witch Hunts nonprofit to educate about witch hunts past and present, advocate for the accused, and support the communities doing that work. Subscribe to The Thing About Witch Hunts wherever you listen, and visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more and donate.
Links
- Play Podcast Episode: A History of Scottish Witches with Mary W. Craig
- Play Podcast Episode: Scottish Witch Trials with Mary W. Craig
- Duns Play Fest
- East Gate Arts Theatre
- Buy Books Mentioned in this Episode
- Sign the Petition to Exonerate the Boston 8
- The History of Witch Trial Exonerations in Massachusetts
- About the MA Witch Hunt Justice Project
- Purchase a MA Witch Hunt Justice Project Memorial Pin