Unforgotten Highland Women – Isobel Gowdie, Auldearn

In Scotland’s Year of Stories, Museums and Heritage Highland are looking to highlight and amplify stories of important Highland women that have been lost to time, taking them out of museum archives and into the ears of audiences around the world. They are hosting a series of events across the Highlands this June to share these stories with communities and to create recordings for a pilot podcast due for release in the autumn.

This event will focus on Isobel Gowdie (17th century), The Witch of Auldearn. Isobel’s story is embedded in the world of academia as part of the Scottish Witch Trial accounts and she has inspired a music composition by James McMillan and a novel – Bitter Magic – by Nancy Hayes Kilgore. What makes her story different is that she confessed to witchcraft without the usual torture imposed.

Pauline Moore, BBC producer and reporter and experienced podcaster, will be in conversation with Melissa Davies, curator of Nairn Museum, Andrew Grant Mackenzie, Highland Historian and Helen Wright who designed the mural to Isobel that can be found in Auldearn. There will also be an opportunity to view some objects related to witchcraft from the local area.