Survey of Scottish Witchcraft
September 24, 2019 6:25 AM Subscribe
Nice!
posted by EinAtlanta at 6:44 AM on September 24, 2019
posted by EinAtlanta at 6:44 AM on September 24, 2019
Thank you for this! I've been working on an Isobel Gowdie piece (here, sorry IG link) following a visit to the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic down in Cornwall this summer. I still need to carve out the "I Shall Go Into a Hare / With Sorrow and Sych and Meickle Care / And I Go in the Devil's Name / Ay While I Come Home Again" stanza given to her by Pitcairn generations later.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:51 AM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:51 AM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is super cool. Also, I hope you don't mind my plugging this book, but I picked it up a few years ago and it's been a fascinating read: The Penguin Book of Witches. It's relevant reading for this time of year. It's filled with various accounts, interviews, testimonials, court transcripts, etc. of people accused of witchcraft.
posted by Fizz at 7:03 AM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 7:03 AM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
RIP Agnes Finnie of Potterrow.
If it helps any, your former home is now occupied by a spectacularly ugly student union building with, what used to be, an eminently climbable plastic domed roof. So I'm told.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:16 AM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
If it helps any, your former home is now occupied by a spectacularly ugly student union building with, what used to be, an eminently climbable plastic domed roof. So I'm told.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 7:16 AM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
Scotland was very hard on witches in the middle ages, as various European countries go. Nothing like Germany, who truly lost their Christian shit, but terrifying nonetheless.
The Visions of Isobel Gowdie by Emma Wilby is a really good read on the subject, although it's over 500 pages long and contains plenty of long passages of 17th-Century Scottish English, so you need to be committed. One of the few books about witches that really focuses on the interiority of the accused.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:31 AM on September 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
The Visions of Isobel Gowdie by Emma Wilby is a really good read on the subject, although it's over 500 pages long and contains plenty of long passages of 17th-Century Scottish English, so you need to be committed. One of the few books about witches that really focuses on the interiority of the accused.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:31 AM on September 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
I'm guessing that Glasgow wasn't much of anything back then, given that Paisley and Ayr seem to be the major trial/execution towns nearby.
posted by scruss at 8:13 AM on September 24, 2019
posted by scruss at 8:13 AM on September 24, 2019
Scotland was very hard on witches in the middle ages, as various European countries go. Nothing like Germany, who truly lost their Christian shit, but terrifying nonetheless.
England had a very different experience: really just two witch specific witch crazes, both in East Anglia - and one associated directly a couple of men and their obsession. It's impossible to generalize across Britain in regards to witch trials (which does make sense, considering that Scotland and England were two different polities, albeit with one crown for part of the time). The other - in either 1563 or 1573 - appears to have been connected to fears for Elizabeth's reign (forgive me if I have details wrong - it's been over a decade since I heard the lecture.)
As far as I recall, elites in Scotland were part of the general European witch-craze, in that they believed there was a devilish conspiracy. Patterns in accusations and the punishment all followed the continental model: apprehension of a witch, torture to know who else was in the conspiracy, and then often spiraling accusations taking in more and more people. The convicted witches were then burned for heresy (devil-worship).
Whereas in England, most trials followed a medieval pattern as opposed to the early modern, in that (aside from the two specific crazes) there were only occasional trials for 'maleficium' - harm caused through witchcraft, which was punished by hanging. It was no less an injustice, but because there wasn't the same belief (elite or popular) in the conspiracy aspect, the persecutors didn't go looking for the witch to name others in the conspiracy and you didn't get the same spiraling of accusations (which is really what we think about when talk about a metaphorical "witch hunt", thanks to Salem and Arthur Miller).
posted by jb at 8:17 AM on September 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
England had a very different experience: really just two witch specific witch crazes, both in East Anglia - and one associated directly a couple of men and their obsession. It's impossible to generalize across Britain in regards to witch trials (which does make sense, considering that Scotland and England were two different polities, albeit with one crown for part of the time). The other - in either 1563 or 1573 - appears to have been connected to fears for Elizabeth's reign (forgive me if I have details wrong - it's been over a decade since I heard the lecture.)
As far as I recall, elites in Scotland were part of the general European witch-craze, in that they believed there was a devilish conspiracy. Patterns in accusations and the punishment all followed the continental model: apprehension of a witch, torture to know who else was in the conspiracy, and then often spiraling accusations taking in more and more people. The convicted witches were then burned for heresy (devil-worship).
Whereas in England, most trials followed a medieval pattern as opposed to the early modern, in that (aside from the two specific crazes) there were only occasional trials for 'maleficium' - harm caused through witchcraft, which was punished by hanging. It was no less an injustice, but because there wasn't the same belief (elite or popular) in the conspiracy aspect, the persecutors didn't go looking for the witch to name others in the conspiracy and you didn't get the same spiraling of accusations (which is really what we think about when talk about a metaphorical "witch hunt", thanks to Salem and Arthur Miller).
posted by jb at 8:17 AM on September 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
I see that one of the witches near where I live came under suspicion as she wasn't a local, and then was sentenced to banishment outside the town limits rather than a trial because it was the cheaper option and she wasn't a local. Judging by the town Facebook group I don't think much has changed.
posted by Catseye at 9:55 AM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Catseye at 9:55 AM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
Wow, any insight on to why Dumfries was such a hot spot? the most I could find in one place.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:59 AM on September 24, 2019
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:59 AM on September 24, 2019
Dumfries was a county town (or equivalent) and would have had its own court and jail. So it's more of a "because they could".
posted by scruss at 2:10 PM on September 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 2:10 PM on September 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
England had a very different experience: really just two witch specific witch crazes, both in East Anglia
That's interesting, because the New England Puritan colonists emigrated mostly from East Anglia (according to Fisher, Albion's Seed). Which means the Salem witch stuff was a straight cultural transplant from its transatlantic epicenter.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:46 PM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
That's interesting, because the New England Puritan colonists emigrated mostly from East Anglia (according to Fisher, Albion's Seed). Which means the Salem witch stuff was a straight cultural transplant from its transatlantic epicenter.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:46 PM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
… and later, the Scots-Irish immigrants to the USA mostly came from Ayrshire, Dumfries and Galloway (via Ireland), so they were all about the witch-suspicion already.
posted by scruss at 3:38 AM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by scruss at 3:38 AM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
The map includes quite a few men so that Scotsman headline is misleading or lazy, there's even a button to show them. My bit of Edinburgh has 19 entries.
posted by epo at 4:10 AM on September 25, 2019
posted by epo at 4:10 AM on September 25, 2019
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posted by terrapin at 6:31 AM on September 24, 2019 [2 favorites]