The Witches Tartan: A Halloween History of Scotland's Accused
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October in Edinburgh does spooky better than anywhere on earth. But the piece of Halloween that stopped me in my tracks this week wasn't a ghost tour or a carved pumpkin — it was a sign in a shop window, printed in sober black on white, announcing something genuinely new: The Witches Tartan. Recently registered. Now in stock.
A tartan for Halloween sounds like a merchandising idea. It isn't. It's one of the more moving pieces of remembrance Scotland has produced in years, and it turns out the spooky season and the serious history are the same story.
The Sign in the Window
The sign promised scarves, shawls and accessories in a tartan 'crafted with magic, mystery, and history' — 'celebrating the heritage, folklore, and powerful spirit of Scotland's wise women and witches throughout the ages.' More than a tartan, it said: a symbol of remembrance, strength, and storytelling.
Photo: Sharon McMenemy Khan — The Witches Tartan arrives in an Edinburgh shop window
Exclusive to the store, made to order, and — the detail that set my historian's heart racing — officially registered. In Scotland, you don't register a tartan lightly. It goes on the national register, thread by thread, forever.
The Women the Cloth Remembers
The Witches Tartan memorialises the victims of the Witchcraft Act, the law that operated in Scotland from 1563 to 1736.
Under it, nearly 4,000 people were accused of witchcraft — the vast majority of them women — and around 2,500 were executed. Scotland's witch hunts were, per head of population, among the worst in Europe. These were neighbours, healers and midwives: the wise women the sign celebrates.
The people who forced that history back into the open are two remarkable Scottish women: Claire Mitchell, a KC who took the case for the accused to the highest levels, and Zoe Venditozzi, a teacher and writer. What began as their podcast — Witches of Scotland — became a national campaign for a pardon, an apology and a national monument. In March 2022 the First Minister stood in the Scottish Parliament and formally apologised for 'the historic injustice of witchcraft accusations and executions'. And just this month, a Scottish council voted to issue its own formal apology to those persecuted as witches more than 350 years ago. The remembering is gathering pace.
Every Thread Means Something
The tartan itself, registered with the Scottish Register of Tartans, is woven to order in the Highlands by Prickly Thistle, Clare Campbell's Inverness mill, under exclusive permission from Witches of Scotland Ltd.
Nothing in the pattern is accidental:
Red marks the bloodshed of the executions
Pink stands for the legal tapes that bind the trial documents, then and now
Black and grey carry the darkness of the times — and the stone of the memorials still to come
Every square of the pattern counts out 173 threads, one for each of the 173 years the Witchcraft Act was in force
It is, quite deliberately, a cloth you can read — the first tartan designed as a living memorial to the victims of the witch trials, with proceeds supporting the campaign.
Where to Spend Your Witching Hour
If the cloth has you thinking about Edinburgh's side of the story, the city is obliging this October — and my three Halloween picks this year all land on the same night, 31 October:
Tim Burton's Universe by Mystery Ensemble, Greyfriars Kirk, 6.30pm — Tim Burton's fantastical worlds in music, inside the kirk beside Scotland's most famously haunted kirkyard. Tickets on Eventbrite
Whisky & Witches: A Samhain Celebration, The Mother Superior, North Leith, 6pm — an immersive, musical whisky tasting steeped in the real history of the witch trials, five drams and a highball, and nearly sold out. Tickets on Eventbrite
The Howler, Jupiter Artland, 8pm to midnight — dark beats and Halloween mischief among the sculptures, once the little ones have had their fill of the family Grimm Hunt earlier in the day. Tickets on Eventbrite
And the Witches' Well at the foot of the Castle Esplanade — free, permanent, and easy to walk straight past
Halloween, done the Scottish way, isn't just a fright. It's a reckoning with who we were, and a thank-you to the women who endured it.
And if you enjoy this blog, come and find me on Google Maps — I am a Level 6 Local Guide, reviewing my favourite places around Edinburgh and Scotland, one welcome at a time.
Written by Koda, Edited by Sharon McMenemy Khan
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