The three discs were illustrated by us and cast in bronze. We chose to be a little bit playful with the subjects - in part to portray how ludicrous the notion of dancing with the devil was. The discs contain some decorative elements that relate to herbalism and and the story behind each of the discs summarise the tragedy and plight of the victims.
Confession made, Lilias told her tale. The story grew into a fantasy told by a tired and ordinary woman. As she danced the years fell from her and once again she was filled with joy. Her meeting with him before sunset and at harvest time. There he with one hand on the crown of her head, the other on the soles of her feet, she became his forever. The stork like feet and scaly skin never questioned. The dance was all she loved.
Lilias Adie was held in prison for the crime of practising witchcraft.
Her story is preserved in the 1704 Kirk session minutes. Illness among local residents created a brief but intense period of witch-hunting in the Fife area. A woman named Jean Bizet had accused Adie of witchcraft, proclaiming "beware lest Lilias Adie come upon you and your child."
This resulted in the arrest of Adie, who was likely upwards of 60 at the time.
Adie was taken to the local minister, Rev. Allan Logan to answer to the crime of witchcraft. For over a month she was imprisoned and subjected to day after day of rough interrogation before she finally 'confessed'.
Adie's 'confession' explained how the devil had been wearing a hat when he first visited her in a cornfield at sunset the first time they met. Under the minister's questioning, she described how the devil had lain with her carnally and made her renounce her baptism. She detailed his physical appearance as having "cold pale skin and cloven-hoofed feet like a cow".
Lilias, the devil and her coffin.
“Oh keep me - there she is coming”. Sweet smelling flowers have long lost their scent. A past belief in demonic possession and revenance. A heavy slab preventing tired Lilias from rising again. Her last resting place found. Eternal sea remorseless, that once washed over the feet of those she called friends. The face of a witch revealed as a tired ordinary woman.
Interest in Adie's story encouraged the historian and BBC broadcaster Dr. Louise Yeoman and Douglas Speirs, an archaeologist at Fife Council, to look for her burial site. Using 19th-century historical documents, they found a seaweed-covered slab of stone exactly where the documents described: in a group of rocks near the Torryburn railway bridge lay "the great stone doorstep that lies over the rifled grave of Lilly Eadie", and a rock with "the remains of an iron ring".
Lilias Adie had been buried on the beach at Torryburn Bay, in a "humble" wooden box, under this sandstone slab between the low and high tide marks.
Her remains were dug up by antique-collecting grave robbers in 1852.[9][10] At the time, it was reported that the coffin was 6 feet 6 inches (about 1.98 m) long.
Her thighbones were found to be of comparable length with those of a man who was 6 feet (about 1.8 m) tall. She still had most of her teeth, which were "white and fresh". The skull was in the private museum of Dunfermline antiquarian Sir Joseph Noel Paton in 1875.
It was exhibited to the Fifeshire Medical Association in 1884 by a medical doctor from Dunfermline named Dow. It was eventually held at the Museum of the University of St Andrews, but has since disappeared. The skull was exhibited in 1938 at the Empire Exhibition at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow, its last known location.
Adie's coffin was also a source of souvenirs: a walking stick, believed to be made from the wood of her coffin and with a silver band near the handle engraved with "Lilias Addie, 1704", was donated to the Pittencrieff House Museum in Dunfermline in 1927.
Reconstruction of Lilias Adie’s face
Using these photographs, in 2017 Dr Christopher Rynn and a team of forensic artists at the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification (CAHID) at the University of Dundee constructed a 3D virtual model and created a digital image of what Adie's face might have looked like.
Fife Council has launched a campaign to find out what happened to Adie's remains and give them a proper burial. Wooden walking sticks constructed from the pieces of the coffin have since been recovered following the campaign launch with Andrew Carnegie a notable recipient given one such walking stick.[
Torryburn and the 32 innocent accused represented by tiny crosses.
Plants abundant and smelling of good things. Tansy the sweet smelling herb treating roundworm and threadworm infections. Do not obey the sniffles, take the common and everyday Rosehip. I thread my way through the places of lost women. Those ordinary women I know not their names. A landscape of good Christian women and men I thought of as my home.
Councillor Julie Ford, leading the campaign, said: “It's important to recognise that Lilias Adie and the thousands of other men and women accused of witchcraft in early modern Scotland were not the evil people history has portrayed them to be. They were the innocent victims of unenlightened times. It's time we recognised the injustice served upon them. I hope by raising the profile of Lilias we can find her missing remains and give them the dignified rest they deserve. On 31 August 2019, 315 years after Adie died in custody, a memorial service was held in Torryburn and a wreath laid at the site of her grave to raise awareness of the persecution these women and men endured in Fife during the witchcraft panics.
