Episode One tells the story of two women in Ireland accused of being in league with the devil, persecuted and branded as 'witches'. Alice Kyteler and Florence Newton aka the 'Witch of Youghal'.

'Goody' Glover is accused of being a witch after denying an accusation of theft. Hung on Boston Commons, her public trial was a warning to all women who spoke out.

In Scotland, five times as many people, mostly women, were accused of the crime of witchcraft and executed than anywhere else in Europe. As these same beliefs spread to the North of Ireland, it had terrible consequences for a beggar woman in Antrim.

Scottish settlers arriving in the north of Ireland bring with them a belief in witchcraft that will bear terrible consequences for eight women and one man who will forever be known as the Islandmagee Witches.

The European witch-hunts were coming to an end and women's knowledge of the supernatural was now being belittled as 'superstitious' nonsense by the church and ruling elite.

Biddy Early, a bean feasa and a healer, is a powerful symbol of resistance against the culture that produced the horror of the European witch hunts.