INTRODUCTION

Janet Irvine was one of over a dozen people to be tried for witchcraft in Orkney and Shetland in 1615 and 1616. These trials were evidently connected with the new regime being established in the islands in this period. The royal government had imprisoned the last autonomous earl of Orkney, Patrick Stewart, in Edinburgh in 1609. Royal authority was tightened after the defeat in 1614 of a rebellion led by the earl's illegitimate son Robert Stewart; father and son were executed early in 1615. These political events were important, not just for the prosecutors, but for Irvine herself.

Irvine seems to have lived in the town of Kirkwall, latterly at least, but when we see her working for a living it is in rural occupations: being employed to herd and milk cattle, carrying a load of corn, stacking her own peat, and gathering shellfish on the shore. She was clearly an older woman. There is no mention of a husband or children.

Most of the evidence against Irvine came from her own confession, but several instances of harm to named individuals were mentioned, and these people may have given information against her. She was twice evicted or threatened with eviction, so she had difficulties with neighbours, and she was stated to have a reputation as a witch. She herself related that the Devil had taught her a ritual to obtain ‘hir heartis desyre’ (vengeance) upon people with whom she had quarrelled. Usually, she was said to have inflicted illness. She was also alleged to have sunk a boat coming from Westray, drowning several people, but she denied this. The assize acquitted her of this charge, but they convicted her of the other charges, and she was executed.

Irvine confessed to a relationship with the Devil that contained a mixture of stereotypical and idiosyncratic elements.