Bessie Millie — also spelled Bessie Miller — was a celebrated wind-seller who plied her trade from Brinkies Brae, the hillside overlooking Stromness harbour in Orkney, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For the sum of sixpence, she would offer prayers and perform a little 'artistic flim-flam' to call up a favourable wind for sailors about to embark on their voyages. Fishermen and mariners would climb the brae to her cottage before setting sail, paying for her intercession as routinely as they would provision their ships.
The story
In 1814, Sir Walter Scott visited Stromness during his tour of the Northern Isles and called on Bessie in her home. By then she was extremely old — reportedly over a hundred years of age — but she was sharp enough to tell him stories of the pirate John Gow, whom she had briefly known as a young woman many decades earlier. Scott was so taken with her character that she became the inspiration for Norna of the Fitful Head in his 1822 novel 'The Pirate.'
Bessie's profession was not unique to Orkney — wind-selling by cunning women is documented across the Northern Isles and Scandinavia — but her longevity, her connection to both piracy and literature, and the vivid specificity of her sixpenny trade have made her the best-remembered practitioner. As a young witch, she was reportedly hired by Orcadian smugglers to curse a revenue cutter, frightening the government sailors into staying in port.