The accusation.
Imagine you are a girl in the 16th century. Go ahead, I know you can do it. We all have a 16th century girl deep inside us. I can wait if you need to channel her…
Yeah? We good? Okay. Now that you are a 16th century girl, imagine yourself strolling through the woods in, say, Scotland. You’re gathering wood because it gets cold in the evening, and you want your poor old father and your brothers and sisters to be comfy and warm. You’re a good daughter.
When you have a nice bunch of wood, you start on your way back home when an old man with a beard crosses your path. He stops and looks at you, scratches his beard. Dirt and possibly small insects fall out of it. Then he approaches you and says, “Hello, 16th century girl. I would like to have my way with you. Is now a good time?”
You’ve got wood to deliver back to your hovel, but you’re also a properly raised girl, so you answer politely. “Alas, good sir. My father awaits my return, so I do not have time to be sexually accosted.”
The man frowns and you go on your way. He’s too old to chase after you, and you escape what could have been an unpleasant day in the woods. The old man also goes on his way, but instead of going straight home, he goes to the local witch reporting station where an intern is having the day of his life because he didn’t think he’d ever get to see an actual witch.
The arrest.
The next morning there’s a knock on the door, which scares you. Not for who might be knocking, but you live in a shitty house with a shitty door in a shitty frame. Just one knock too many and you live in a hovel with a big, drafty hole. Your father knows this too, so he hastens to open and he sees several 16th century policemen.
“Hello, sir,” one of them says, “do you have any 16th century girls here?”
Your father, clueless as to what’s going on, says he has four. “And three 16th century boys. Can I interest you in one of those as well?”
After making it clear they are here for you, you get shackled and dragged off to a holding cell because the old man said you’re a witch. You’re not in there for long. Soon you get carted off to Edinburgh where they keep you in the Tolbooth. They can’t just say you’re a witch and be done with it. It has to be proven, obviously.
The trial.
The fair trial begins with questioning. The question begins with strapping you to a chair and crushing your fingers in a device called the pilliwinks, which sounds a lot cuter than it is. Take a moment to stick your fingers in a vice and tighten it.
There you go, that’s a pilliwinks, and you’re an asshole for trying it. Or very method, you 16th century girl with crushed fingers. Other questions might involve extracting your fingernails and replacing them with metal pins, crushing your shins, or having your head crushed with a piece of rope.
Whatever the question, your answer was going to be, “Yes, I’m a witch, and here are fifty other people who are also witches.”
At some point you would see the inside of the court. Unless any of the aforementioned questioning involved your eyes. Somewhere during all of the ridiculous accusations, you would jump up and proclaim loudly an angrily that these confessions you made were extracted under torture and aren’t admissable in court. For a 16th century girl you are very ahead of your time. Yet, you’re making quite a case for yourself, explaining how you thought telling them what they wanted to hear would save you from more excruciating pain, and then your heart sinks because they bring in your little sister.
The testimonial.
Your little sister, also a 16th century girl, is not quite sure what all the grown ups are doing here, but she’s been promised candy if she says a few things she’s been told to say. Seemed like a good deal to her, so now you sit in complete desperation as you hear her say how you made the cow’s milk go sour, and how you levitated into a tree to get her an apple or some shit.
Normally, even back then, a child’s testimonial wasn’t considered good evidence, but your little sister rehearsed her lines very well. She would later become a much loved actress on the stage, but that was after you died, so you wouldn’t know.
Oh, yeah. You’re gonna die, because the judge is buying the whole thing. Hook, line, and sinker.
The execution.
This is where you get lucky. Relatively speaking, anyway. Contrary to popular belief, witches generally weren’t burned alive. Sean Harris’ mother was an exception to the rule. In English speaking countries hanging was the preferred way to dispose of witches, or a variation on the strangling principle. Drowning was apparently also an option, but that seems like a hassle. You’re gonna need a body of water nearby, the executioner is gonna get wet trying to dunk you.
Though if you were hoping for a nice open casket funeral after all, you’re shit outta luck. In Scotland it was common to burn witches, but there’s a case to be made for it not being an English speaking country, so… let’s just not open that can of worms, considering that they at least did you the courtesy of strangling you first.
That’s not to say it never happened, especially if you consider that burning to death was a nice and painful way to die, and the fire was in some cases considered to be purifying. Still, your parents probably want to be standing upwind. Especially at mass executions. A burning human body stinks. Burning hair, melting flesh, popping eyeballs probably. There’s really no angle from which this seems like a fun cookout. Seems overkill to add terror screams of people on fire to that scene.
Nevertheless, people came to see it in droves. I guess that’s why they invented Netflix and Playstations. The smell of a binge watch-victim is marginally more tolerable.