Anna Tait

Anna Tait or Anne Tait, also known as 'Hononni', was accused of witchcraft in Haddington, East Lothian in 1634 and executed in 1635. Her case revolved around her feelings of grief and guilt which caused her suicidal thoughts for the murder of her first husband and the death of her beloved daughter following a botched home abortion.^[1]

Background

Louise Yeoman, the historian and witch expert, states that Tait's name does not feature in the Sourcebook of Scottish Witchcraft by Christina Larner, the most authoritative reference book on Scottish Witchcraft since 1977. This was because Tait and almost a hundred other named witches were unknown to the book's compilers. Instead, they were named in an overlooked National Library of Scotland Advocates manuscript. When the huge task of preparing volumes of Scotland's Privy Council records was being undertaken at the end of the last century, and the National Archives of Scotland plundered for source material, it transpires that one volume of the Register of Commissions for 1630-1642 were accidentally omitted. As a consequence, hundreds of Privy Council commissions which had led to criminal trials. Anna Tait was one such criminal trial.^[2]

Yeoman credits Dr Michael Wasser, a historian of crimes of violence in 16th-17th century Scotland at McGill University, with the find and with highlighting the manuscript's significance.^[2]

Hononni

At sometime in her life Tait had acquired the alias ‘Hononni’, a Scottish variant of the English ‘Hey nonny no!’ often heard in songs of the period. Yet this nonsense-sounding nickname was an ironically jolly one for Tait whose "life was characterised by murder, tragedy and despair".^[2]

Biography

Tait was married to William Johnston, a miller.^[3] Her pre-trial notes indicate that she was first arrested on 18 December 1634 for trying to kill herself by "hanging [herself] in [her] courch [kerchief or headdress]."^[1][4]

Yeoman recorded that:

"In 17th century terms suicide was one of the most heinous acts one could commit. It was like witchcraft, considered to be a particularly odious crime against God’s law and it was punishable by forfeiture of the entire goods of the victim and by a dishonourable burial in unconsecrated ground."^[2]

John Coltart

Under questioning at the tolbooth, Tait was made to confess to the ministers and baillies of Haddington that 28 years earlier^[2] in England she had murdered her first husband, John Coltart, 'ane aged man' and nolt driver [cattle drover],^[2] which she did with a drink made of foxtree leaves.^[5] This caused him to depart his life within three hours of drinking it.^[2] Tait had married Coltart in a place called 'Furd Kirk’ in England in 1606.^[2]

Elisabeth Johnston

She also confessed to the murder of her daughter from her second marriage, Elizabeth Johnston.^[4][1] Elizabeth, it seemed, had died during a botched home abortion. Tait had made her a drink, 'ane mutchkin', which was a pint made of white wine and salt mixed together to help her with the unwanted pregnancy.^[2][5] Tait then gave to her drink to her beloved daughter Elizabeth.^[1]

Tait had been unwilling to tell who the father of her unwanted child was and was therefore accused that she "sought all means to kill, to murther the child in her belly, that it might not come to light who was the father thereof, or how it was gotten, whether in adultery or incest, or what other unlawful way."^[2]

Once Elizabeth had drunk the mixture, she soon swelled and shortly after both she and her child had died.^[2]

Detention and interrogation

The leading questions during her interrogation led her to confess that she had consulted with the devil in carrying out all these crimes and that the Devil had told her how to make both drinks.^[5][1] The Devil had manifested at her home in the likeness of a man, and she had sex with him in her own bed. The Devil would then reappear to her again to her bedside on the 11th of December 1634, 'gripped her by the hair of her head' whereupon he marked her with a 'nip' on her left cheek.^[1][2]

Initially, she had arrived at the tolbooth on 18th December 1634 as suicidal and “trublit in conscienc[e]”.^[1] The coercive questioning she endured led her to additionally confess to murder, witchcraft and adultery.^[1] The relationship with her second husband, William Johnstone, had begun while she had been still married to her first: "before the marriage she had sundry times committed fornication with William Johnston, her present husband, and that within the time of the marriage she had likewise committed adultery with him.^[2][5]

In the Haddington records, Anna Tait, the only accused witch during this period whose trial is recorded in Haddington’s burgh court records, was recorded to have attempted to hang herself whilst awaiting her trial. Blaming herself for Elizabeth’s death, Anna no longer wanted to live. She continued to try to take her own life “by putting a knife [to her] throat”; even when with bound hands and her feet put in stocks, she still tried to harm herself by banging her “heid to the wall and stokkis.”^[1] Whilst detained in prison, the court book claimed that Anna had again met with and had sex with the Devil in the form of a black man and in the form of the wind and had made a covenant with him.^[2]

The trial

Tait's trial took place on 6 January 1635.^[4]

The prosecutor of the case asked Tait if she wanted to call anyone to speak in her defence. Tait refused and is recorded as responding that she wanted:

“nane [none] but God in heavin.”^[1]

Tait was found guilty and sentenced to death.^[4]

Death

Anna Tait went to her death "in despair, unreconciled with her community and with God."^[1]

It was given for doom [sentence] by the mouth of William Sinclair dempster [pronouncer of sentence] that the said Anna Tait should be taken, her hands bound behind her back and conveyed by William Allot, lockman [executioner] of Haddington to the ordinary place of execution, and there wirried [strangled] to the death at ane post and thereafter her body to be burnt in ashes, desuper act.^[2]

Tait was strangled and her dead body burnt at the stake in Haddington.^[4]

Legacy

For Yeoman the case of Anna Tait poses the question as to whether the tragedy would have happened if Anna Tait had lived in a different time.

"To a 17th century society she was such a paragon of horror that the Devil had to be invoked to explain her conduct. In a society which stressed a woman’s subordination to her husband and saw her only rightful adult roles being those of a wife or a mother, Anna was a monster.... In 21st century Scotland, Anna would have been able to obtain a divorce from her first husband and her daughter would have been able to obtain an abortion. So the whole catalogue of tragedy might not have happened at all, or then again, perhaps it might. Was Anna a victim of a society which stacked the cards against women through its interpretation of the Bible or was she the sort of callous person who might have murdered a spouse despite all the advantages of a modern legal system. After all, the murders of spouses still occur. These are questions the historian can only raise and cannot answer."^[2]

Professor Julian Goodare records that the case of Anna Tait should be seen in the light of the general assembly of the Scottish church declaring in 1643 that the causes of witchcraft ‘are found to be these especially, extremity of grief, malice, passion, and desire of revenge, pinching povertie, solicitation of other Witches and Charmers; for in such cases the devil assails them, offers aide, and much prevails’.^[6] For Goodare, most of these can be thought as predictable enough in terms of thinking at the time, especially ‘malice'. However, what jumps out is that ‘extremity of grief’ rather than malice headed the above list. For historians, this case exemplifies the need to look more closely at the links between accusations of witchcraft and the psychological trauma of the accused.^[6]

These links seem obvious for Anna Tait... Tait had an awful domestic background, was ‘thrie several times deprehendit putting violent hands in herself at her awne hous’, and was convinced that her wickedness was due to the Devil, before she was accused of witchcraft in 1634.

J. Goodare, Witchcraft and belief in early modern Scotland

Thirty years after Tait's death

It would be thirty years later, during the panic in 1662, that later generations of Scottish Privy councillors would re-examine the issue of confessions of witchcraft from the suicidal and mentally disturbed and come to a different judgment. It became strictly instructed that commissions for criminal trials and the executing of convicted witches must only be approved where "At the tyme of their confessions they were of right judgement, nowayes distracted or under any earnest desyre to die’. ^[2]

This change, and a growing sensitivity, had come to late for Anna Tait.^[3]

References