Hello.
It's noisy
Good morning and welcome to the beautiful Dornoch beach.
Do you know where the name Dornoch comes from from?
From here.
No, but do you know how they came up with it?
I have no idea.
It actually means Pebbly Place.
Pebbly? There's no pebbles here
Ahhh but there is.
Back in the day
when the committee who were walking around Scotland naming places,
Right.
got here,
[Laughs]
what?
Go on.
They did, in those days it was known as, where are we Mr. Stewart.
[Laughs]
But no,
when the committee that was walking around naming places got here,
they noticed huge pebbles
and a lot of these pebbles were as big as your fist,
they were huge.
Don't you start laughing.
Because fist in Gaelic, in Scottish Gaelic is Dorn,
Ahh right.
so you see where it comes from.
Now some of these pebbles were so huge, as big as your fist,
that they used to be used as weapons,
because they didn't have tactical nuclear missiles back then.
[Laughs]
So they used to use these big rocks as missiles, so technically
I suppose if Dorn is fist,
if you were throwing these pebbles, you were fisting weren't you?
[Laughing loudly]
No!
you can't say that!
Or you could just call it, Pebbly Place
[Laughing]
[Sound of the ocean waves]
it's said that people have been living in Dornoch,
even though it wasn't called Dornoch back then,
since the 8th century.
What was it called?
I don't know, something fist, or something like that, I don't know.
And there's evidence to support that,
about 25 years ago some archaeologists
uncovered, what am I thinking of, not industrial estate,
[Laughs]
like industrial workings kind of thing, like iron ore and stuff like that
Right.
and they also dug out an old whale.
What did they do with it?
Well they chucked it back in, because it had no spokes in it.
[Laughing]
If I could do a Birmingham accent that would have sounded a lot funnier than it was.
It would yeah.
It is a lovely little place though.
In the town itself there's this 13th century cathedral
right in the centre of town it's beautiful.
Just over the road from that is the old town jail and the Bishops Palace,
there's a brilliant golf course,
which is, I think it's like the 5th best golf course outside America.
Really?
If you're a golfer that probably means more to you than it does to us
I have no idea.
and it's even got its own little airstrip
that looks like somewhat out of Allo Allo or Dad's Army.
[Shaun] Allo Allo!
As lovely as Dornoch is,
it has got a bit of a shady past.
Ooooh, who lives here?
You know what I'm like, I like to dig up a little bit of
Ewww, what's that,
[Laughs]
in our vlogs
and we actually passed the place it happened
Oh right.
on the way down here to the beach.
Oooh!
Which means we've got to go backwards to it now,
have you taken your anti-dizzy pill?
My anti-dizzy? Is it a cafe?
[Music playing]
Back in the 16th century
there was a new craze sweeping across Scotland.
A new craze?
[Gasps]
Donny Osmond!
No not Donny Osmond, he was a bit earlier than that I think wasn't he.
[Laughs]
Witchcraft we're talking about, Ooooooh!
not the Frank Sinatra song, actual witchcraft
was kind of spreading across, well not just Scotland but England as well.
To give you an example,
near Fife there was a woman called Elizabeth Dick.
[Laughing loudly]
I didn't call her that,
don't laugh at me
and it was thought she was a witch, because she used to go begging
at the nearby mill where she used to, I don't know, cook things in a cauldron
and she used to go begging at the nearby mill,
but the gaffer chucked her out one day.
So she put a curse on the mill
and a few days later all the grain turned red.
Vimto, it must have been Vimto.
It wasn't vimto, Idon't think Vimto was out back then.
But it was a sign of what was coming and they thought she was a witch.
That's not it though, there's more.
Maggie Mungo from Dingwall, they thought she was a witch as well,
she reckoned she could predict the future
by hanging a sieve
over a pair of cooking scissors and seeing which way the sieve swung.
I can do that in the morning, I can tell
if it's going to rain on it on the morning by which way I'm swinging,
can you do that?
[Laughing]
I knew something like that was coming.
A lot of it to be honest back in the day was harmless,
it was just eccentric old women selling potions
that were supposed to guarantee you a happy marriage or make you live longer.
But some things never change,
some people are gullible and taken in by misinformation and propaganda
Yeah.
and unfortunately
that made eccentric old women like Maggie Mungo and Elizabeth Dick,
it just made them easy targets for the witch hunters.
Back in 1727 there was a lady called Janet Horne,
who named these people?
They've all got strange names.
Although she might not have been called Janet Horne, because back in the day
they used to call a lot of the witches that they didn't know the names of, Janet Horne,
you know, a bit like John Doe or Jane Doe.
Did they?
Yeah a little bit like that.
So anyway, Janet Horne had a daughter
and her daughter had this kind of
thing with a hand it was a deformity and one of her hands looked like a hoof,
like a horse's hoof Really?
and Janet Horne was going a little bit senile, she had dementia as well.
Now, to the witch hunters
this was evidence that they were both witches.
It's obvious isn't it?
It was wasn't it
and to make it even more so,
the witch hunters then went to the authorities
and said we've got evidence that these two are witches,
because Janet Horne turned her daughter into a horse
and rode her daughter
to the witch's meetings, where satan himself re-shoed her hoof.
[Laughs]
What?
WHAT??
He did, he re-shoed her hoof
and the evidence that they're witches,
is that when they got back.
[Sound of a car]
Hello. [Sound of a car]
[Sound of a car]
When they got back
Janet couldn't quite transform the daughter
back into a human, which is why
one of her hands was still shaped like a hoof.
They were taken to the jail at Dornoch and thrown in the cells
and there was a trial a few days later
and the judge found them both guilty of witchcraft
Madness!
and they were both to be burned alive the next day.
Now they were put back in the cells, but that night the daughter escaped
and they couldn't catch her.
But have you ever tried running after a horse?
I mean you're not going to get very far are you?
But Janet wasn't so lucky, she had dementia, she didn't know what was going on
and the next morning she was stripped naked,
covered in tar, put in a barrel and paraded
through the streets of Dornoch
till they got here,
where there was a fire burning ready.
Now Janet didn't know what was going on,
she had dementia, she was smiling at people and warming her hands on the fire
Oh no!
and when they asked her what her last words would be,
she said,
and with that,
she was burnt to death.
Her only crime was having dementia.
[Music playing]
Here between two parts of the golf course in Dornoch,
is where Janet was killed
and just in the garden behind me there's a stone
to commemorate her death.
It says 1722 on the stone, it should have been 1727
it's probably a Friday afternoon job for the stone mason.
[Laughs]
But it's been there since 1727.
Now nine years later in 1736,
the witchcraft act was repealed
and so Janet was the last person to be killed as part of the act.
WOW!
Music playing]
Just recently a bill was passed in the Scottish Parliament,
which cleared everybody that had been accused of witchcraft in the past
and earlier this year the First Minister of Scotland
officially apologised on behalf of the Scottish Government
for everybody that had been accused over the years.
Even the church apologised for their part the persecution
that they laid upon these witches too.
Well they weren't witches were they? That's why they were apologies to.
It's a bit of a sad tale really
but I guess every place you go has got some sort of sad tale attached to it.
Yes.
Dornoch is amazing,
it's beautiful
and I know you're going to be writing in the comments,
oh you missed this, you didn't go here, you've got to go there.
There are so many stories and we will cover them all eventually.
Just at the cathedral right behind where you are now, where we're sat,
it's where just over 20 years ago, Madonna had her son christened in this cathedral,
the next day she married Guy Richie
just at a castle up the road.
They used to have a railway here in Dornoch, it connected to the main far north line.
Now that's the story I'm wanting to tell,
because Thomas Telford's involved as well.
But that's all we've got time for in this one, we hope you've enjoyed it.
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Is that it?
four o'clock on a Friday.
He's always been limp wristed, I'll tell you.
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[Sighs]
I think we're done aren't we?
Shall we nip in that cafe, I thing we will.
We'll see you later, bye bye.
Ta-ra!
[Music playing]
Are you're alright?
It is a lovely little town though,
I forgot, I've already said that.
Got to wait for a car.
Dum di di dum!
We need a song, we need like a song,
like a, like a back in a moment,
you know like the test card,
with the girl and the teddy,
we need something like that for when we pause for when cars go by,
[Sound of a car]
like that.
We're gonna be here all [Beeeeep!] day!
Can't say that!
PEOPLE!
Go away!
They were both throwed into the local jail here at Dornoch.
Throwed?
Throwed into a local jail here at Dornoch.
[Dog barking] SHUT UP!
Just recently a bill was passed at the Scottish Government
and I can't remember what it was about because I only read it about four seconds ago.
And four times.
[Music playing]