Travelling south

from Aberdeen on a very wet day with little visability we stopped off at Dunning south of Perth in an attempt to bag a blip of St Serf's Church. On leaving the village we passed a memorial.

The stone cross rises up twenty feet at the side of the road. Roughly painted on the stones are the chilling and unnerving words 'Maggie Wall burnt here 1657 as a Witch'.

Who was Maggie Wall?

Backblipped

Nothing is known about her and her name does not appear in any records. Over 4,000 women were executed in Scotland for witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries so why is Maggie Wall the only one to have a monument in her name?

Maggie Wall was unfortunate to have lived in an area synonymous with the persecution of witches, 6 others having been executed in the year 1663, in a village with a population of approx 200.

Each year a wreath and a card is left at the cairn and the inscription repainted. People in the area claim not to know the perpetrator(s) but the tradition seems to go back a long way and a photograph taken approx a hundred years ago shows the lettering exactly as it is now. Some think the task has been handed down through the generations of a local family. Is it done by the same person who lays the wreath?

Why does a woman who died so long ago matter so much to someone today?

Is it all an elaborate hoax?

Backblipped 6 July