Ode to Alison (Author’s Note)
With this novella, I have created a fictional account of a story recorded in history. The facts are known and widely available online. Most of the characters in this story were real people (though they may not have been as I described them). I have simply woven a story around the known facts – with two exceptions:
Thomas Paplay is said to have been tortured for eleven days before “confessing” and giving Alison’s name to his torturers;
Alison is said to have been strangled before she was burned at the stake.
I decided to write this story – Alison’s story – after a trip to Scotland with my wife Ashley. It was our honeymoon – not quite the thing to compare to witch burnings so I’ll move on quickly – and we found ourselves in Edinburgh. There we signed up for a ghost walk tour of the Old City and while on the tour, in the “catacombs” of Edinburgh, our guide told us of a story about a suspected witch named Alison Balfour from the Orkney Islands. The guide explained to us that Alison and her family had come to Edinburgh from the Orkney Islands in the late sixteenth century. He told us that there was a witch hunt craze gripping Edinburgh (and Scotland) at that time and that Alison was seized by witch hunters on suspicion of being a witch. He told us that Alison was tortured in order to get a confession from her. He told us that, when she did not confess, her eighty-one year old husband, ten year old son, and six year old daughter were also tortured. He told us that it was on account of their Orkney Island accents that the Edinburgh torturers could not understand the Balfour family and vice versa and that the torture was essentially the result of poor translation... I was so haunted (and moved – what pain this Alison woman must have endured, I thought, not to mention her husband and children) by this story that I began researching it the following day. My wife and I had driven to Kirkcaldy by then to continue on our honeymoon road tour of Scotland. It was in researching the story that I learned the true facts. Yes, Alison Balfour did live in the sixteenth century and yes she was accused of being a witch and yes she was tortured and later executed. And yes her husband and children were also tortured in an attempts to exact a confession from her. However, this story did not take place in Edinburgh. Au contraire. It took place on the Orkney Islands – which makes much more sense considering this is where the family was from. (Why would a mother move herself, her eighty one year old husband, and two young children move from the Orkney Islands to Edinburgh? Especially at a time when such a move would have been extremely difficult and especially considering that Edinburgh – or Auld Reekie as it was then nicknamed - was one of the dirtiest and most unsanitary cities in Europe?)
Our fascination with the Scottish Isles had begun when Ashley (my wife) learned of ancestral connections to the Isle of Skye through the famous MacLeod and Maccrimmon clans. Orkney Islands – the name, the location (so far north, so near to Scandinavia), the history (lots of Viking history), the mystique (Google the Standing Stones of Stenness), the lore (this story and many more)...we had to go! We hastily juggled around a couple of bookings and rejigged our already packed itinerary so that we could get six hours on the Orkney Islands. In that six hours we visited Stromness, the Standing Stones of Stenness, ancient paleolithic settlements, and Kirkwall, the capital. It’s a shame we didn’t make it to Heiding Hill (Gallow Ha’ or Clay Loan) where Alison Balfour is believed to have been burned at the stake. (Google Street has since rectified that.)
Knowing that this tragic story – and many others quite similar – unfolded on the ground upon which we walked, amidst the people whose faces we now looked upon made me wonder. Had Alison been to the Standing Stones? Surely she must have gone there at least once having lived so near. The people of Orkney. The shopkeepers and bar staff and fishers and farmers - were their ancestors amongst the crowd of spectators at Heiding Hill on that dark day in December 1594? Or worse – were they linked to Earl Patrick Stewart, Master John Stewart, Henry Colville, and the rest?
We visited one of the local cemeteries (cemeteries are great places to research family ancestry and research for writing). There we found a number of “Flett’s”. A friend of mine here in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada is a “Flett” and his paternal ancestors hail from the Orkney Islands. Fascinating how we spread out over time! Among “Flett’s”, there appeared to be many other common family names including Craigie, Aim, Rendall, and Clouston. I bestowed these names upon minor characters in the book. I bestowed the surname “Clouston” on one of the priests in this story – my apologies to those Clouston’s out there if I have offended!
Apart from this however, all the other names (characters) mentioned in this story – Patrick Stewart, John Stewart, Henry Colville, Patrick’s wife Margaret, the Bellenden’s – these were real names and these were real people. Whether their personalities were as I described – only those who were there at the time can confirm. However, their actions as laid out in this story were largely their actions and I think this is one story that would look good on the big screen. Stories such as these – indeed, cases such as these – need exposure, need to be brought into the light. This is how we prevent (some of) these kinds of things occurring again in the future. I won’t presume to think for a minute that human beings aren’t capable of the things in this book because they once were – in our not too distant past – and sadly, things like torture are still very much a reality. But this is about Alison and whoever Alison was – whatever sort of person she was (perhaps a little quirky? Perhaps a little weird? Perhaps a kind woman who treated people with herbs and homemade remedies?) – I hope she found the peace in death she was deprived of throughout her final days. Rest in peace, Alison Balfour.
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