Storm Witch

A novelette based on a true story of Witchcraft in the Scottish Orkney Islands during a dark period of the 1600s.Janet Forsyth played a heroes part in saving a ship and crew from certain death...She was tried as a witch...two hundred years later she would have been hailed a hero not unlike the hugely popular Grace Darling.Folk tales have always existed in island and rural communities, where witchcraft and sorcery was part of everyday life for centuries. Magical powers were considered part of the general lifestile and were not questioned. Attitudes gradually changed towards those who did not conform with increasing religious beliefs and witch-hunts began in the 1550s.In Scotland it is estimated between four thousand and six thousand people, mostly from the Lowlands were tried and executed for witchcraft between 1590 - 1660. Seventy five percent of the accused were women.Lying off the north coast of Scotland, the Orkney Islands (often referred to as the centre of civilisation in Neolithic times) were host to an intensive period of witch trials. From 1615 until 1645, sixty eight (a high percentage of the population at the time) were condemned to death, 90% were women.