The Witches’ Reel
Trad.

Geilles Duncan, “did go before them playing a reill”

This reel, according to the transcripts of the witch trials held before James VI in 1591, was played at Holyrood at the command of the King by Geilles Duncan, the young and comely maidservant of David Seton, who was deputy bailiff of Tranent during the Scottish crusades against witchcraft. Geilles was known as a competent healer, which to the small mind of Seton could only have been acquired by consortium with the Devil. After unspeakable torture and the finding of a supposed ‘witches mark’ upon her throat, Geilles confessed as a witch, naming 30 accomplices. One of the accused, Agnes Sampson, declared under torture herself, that Geilles played the reel for a dance of witches on Hallow e’en in the kirk at North Berwick, where by raising rain, wind and tempest with the help of Satan, they wished to sink the vessel that would be occupied by the King and his young Protestant bride on their return trip from Copenhagen. Her compliance with the King’s request for naught, Geilles and Alice, among the others, were subsequently strangled, then burned to ashes on the Castlehill of Edinburgh. But take care – on more than one occasion during the recording of this song, the weather has gone awry, producing hail and a fierce rainstorm. “Dormiunt in somno pacis”, Geilles.