A Son of the Rock

Polygon, 2022, 112 p

On a cold December night in Edinburgh in 1591 Geillis Duncan awaits execution in the morning for the crime of witchcraft. She is visited in spirit by Iris, a woman from our own time, who calls herself a time traveller and a modern-day witch.

Historically 1591 was the height of the hysteria against witches encapsulated by James VI’s Daemonologie and Geillis Duncan was one of the victims of the North Berwick witch trials.

The scenario gives Fagan the platform to outline the misogyny behind the witch hunts and its prevalence today.

In the conversations between Geillis and Iris the question arises, “How does he” (the King) “fight the Devil?” The answer? “Via teenage girls. Doesn’t everyone?” The rationale back then being, “We go after the Devil via womb-bearers – they are weak for him.” So the targets were women. Women who were alone, or tall, or ugly, or smart; women who inherited, sassy women, women who were healers. If a woman doesn’t exalt men always she is a threat, “a Demon whore, a witch.”

Despite all her efforts to be polite, docile and unthreatening, not to draw attention to herself, still Geillis was picked on: primarily since she was handy, a servant in the household of a man called Seaton but also suspect because, “I helped women birth, I helped calves, I knew the right herbs to cure a headache.” Seaton was jealous of the fact that his sister-in-law, Euphame, had inherited her father’s estate and wanted a legal reason to eliminate her so Geillis was tortured and abused to implicate Euphame and others.

Fagan has her characters try to explain misogyny. Geillis says, “We bring life from our bodies where before there was nothing,” – that being a kind of magic – and Iris tells her, “Men want to know how they got trapped on Earth,” but the real crime is that, “There is no man on this Earth who didn’t get here except by a woman parting her thighs.”

Apart from the conceit of Iris time travelling Fagan’s tendency to indulge the fantastical sees Iris during the night begin to grow feathers and eventually turn into a crow.

Though Geillis’s prior suffering is never in doubt the set up allows Fagan to treat the witch trials almost indirectly but nevertheless underline that misogyny is ever with us.

This is another of Birlinn’s Darkland Tales (see here) and again was borrowed from the local library by the good lady.

Pedant’s corner:- lightening (lightning,) “filed into a tea-room” (in 1591?) “the thing I had that shined” (shone,) a priest comes to hear her confess at the last (a priest? In Reformation Scotland?) the priest uses a pencil to sign in to the jail (suitable graphite for this purpose was discovered in 1560 so it’s possible; but pencils as such would not, I suspect, have been widely available, a scratchy pen is more likely,) smoothes (smooths,) okay (in 1591?) ditto teenage.