Cowgate, Edinburgh EH1 1RP
Janet Boyman (d. 1572), lived in the Cowgate, and was married to William Steel. She had a visionary relationship with various spirits including the ‘good neighbours’ (fairies), and the fairy-like ‘seely wights’ (a phrase meaning ‘magical beings’). She performed rituals to summon spirits at an ‘elritch’ (spooky) well on Arthur’s Seat. It was there that she first learned her ‘craft’, when Maggie Denholm in Potterrow healed her of an illness. Boyman used her visionary powers in healing ‘supernatural’ illnesses, fortune-telling and finding lost and stolen goods; at her trial she was said to have practised for twenty-four years.

Cowgate Arch of George Iv Bridge, built in the 1820’s. Prior to the bridge Cowagte was simply a dip between the royal mile and old town
©National Galleries of Scotland Commons, Wikimedia Commons
She became involved in 1568 in a political conspiracy by Sir William Stewart of Luthrie and Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston, providing prophecies to the conspirators who hoped to free the imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots. Boyman predicted that Mary would escape and would regain her throne and marry Stewart, but that Stewart would ultimately be overcome by his enemies. The conspirators also employed a Norwegian witch, who contradicted Boyman’s prophecies. On the conspiracy’s exposure in 1569 she fled to Irvine but was captured and executed for witchcraft in 1572.
Sources:
- Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin, Joyce Miller and Louise Yeoman, January 2003.
- Wikipedia: Janet Boyman
- Elizabeth Ewan, Rose Pipes, Jane Rendall and Siân Reynolds (eds.), New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), p. 50.