The Book of Witching

by C.J. Cooke

In 1594, a woman was accused of assisting a man in his plot to kill his brother. The man was acquitted. The woman was executed at Gallow Ha’ in Kirkwall, Orkney. Her name was Alison Balfour. She was the first of over seventy women to be executed in Orkney on charges of witchcraft.

The more women, the more witches. —Henry Holland, A Treatise Against Witchcraft, 1590