Forres: A Hotbed of Witches?

This essay examines from a historical perspective the long-standing reputation of Forres, Moray, for being a place of note for witches. Famous for being mentioned in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the site of his meeting with three witches is commemorated in a local landmark called Macbeth’s Hillock. A study of Shakespeare’s’ sources from ancient chronicles and an examination of early performances of the play suggest this meeting was not a historical event but the fruits of the Imagination of more than one playwright. Another local landmark called the Witches’ Stone is remembered as the final resting place of one of three witches burned for their involvement in the bewitching of King Duff in the late tenth century. The earliest chronicles make no mention of this. Duff was later killed at Forres by Duncan abetted by his scheming wife, on whom Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is largely based. The last witch burned in Forres is said to be Dorothy Calder. This story, believed to be factual, is a fiction, the name of an innocent pauper plucked from the kirk session records to create a parable on the dangers of evildoing. Missing from the traditional accounts are the names of Isobel Elder and Isabel Simpson, who are the only women known to have been burned at Forres, during the 1662/3 Restoration witch hunts. It is very likely that the stone was placed to commemorate their last resting place rather than an event that may or may not have happened a thousand years ago. Alexander Brodie of Brodie examined Elder and Simpson and other witches. His, and other contemporary accounts suggest that, contrary to popular belief, Isobel Gowdie, the most famous of the Auldearn witches, was not burned in a period when reason and rational reluctance overcame religious zeal and superstition. The only time in history when Forres appears to be a hotbed of witches is the present day when the concept of witches and what it means to be a witch have been appropriated, sanitised and commercialised.