Abstract
The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, completed in 2003, is a new resource that allows researchers to combine qualitative and quantitative themes.’ The project created a database with 634 active fields, documenting cultural, economic, social and trial information about people accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736.2 The researchers conducted an exhaustive survey of witchcraft-related documents and collated information about witchcraft suspects that was already known. The data can be viewed and studied either through online web interfaces (with searching, graphing and mapping capabilities) or by downloading the full database.3 This chapter describes the database, provides a summary of the project’s main findings and aims to correct many commonly held misconceptions about Scottish witchcraft that are not supported by the evidence collected for the database.
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Notes
G. F. Black, A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland, 1510–1727 (New York, 1938)
C. Larner, C. H. Lee and H. V. McLachlan, A Source-Book of Scottish Witchcraft (Glasgow, 1977). The Survey team is also grateful to the early work done by Dr Stuart Macdonald, who revised Larner et al.’s information and created an electronic version of it. This enabled the team to generate a basic framework containing core biographical and bibliographic data, which was then incorporated into our database.
C. Larner, Enemies of God: the Witch-hunt in Scotland (London, 1981), 63.
I. D. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution: an Economic and Social History, c.1050–c.1750 (London, 1995), 117.
L. Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, Conn., 2004), 160–4
cf. R. A. Houston, The Population History of Britain and Ireland, 1550–1750 (Cambridge, 1992), 41.
B. P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (3rd edn, London, 2006), 155–7.
J. Goodare, ‘Women and the witch-hunt in Scotland’, Social History, 23 (1998), 288–308, at p. 290.
Women were usually categorised with reference to their husband’s occupation or status, but some women’s occupations were described in their own right: L. Martin, ‘Witchcraft and family: what can witchcraft documents tell us about early modern Scottish family life?’, Scottish Tradition, 27 (2002), 7–22.
A. Hanham, ‘“The Scottish Hecate”: a wild witch chase’, Scottish Studies, 13 (1969), 59–64 mentions that she gave the Grahams a blue bead rather than a ring. It is possible that the stone she spat out was then turned into a ring, hence the local legend. MacNiven may also be a version of Nicneven’, a name for several witches; interestingly the Gaelic MacNaoimhín (MacNiven) means son (or Nic — daughter) of the holy one.
D. Harley, ‘Historians as demonologists: the myth of the midwife-witch’, Social History of Medicine, 3 (1990), 1–26.
J. Miller, ‘Devices and directions: folk healing aspects of witchcraft practice in seventeenth-century Scotland’, in J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002)
J. Miller, ‘Cantrips and Carlins: Magic, Medicine and Society in the Presbyteries of Haddington and Stirling, 1603–1688’ (University of Stirling PhD thesis, 2000); O. Davies, ‘A comparative perspective on Scottish cunning-folk and charmers’, Chapter 8 below.
M. Murray, The Witch Cult in Western Europe (Oxford, 1921).
S. Clark, Thinking with Demons: the Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997), 590.
I. Whyte, ‘Ergotism and witchcraft in Scotland’, Area, 26 (1994), 89–90
K. Duncan, ‘Was ergotism responsible for the Scottish witch hunts?’, Area, 25 (1993), 30–6
W. F. Boyd, ‘Four and twenty blackbirds: more on ergotism, rye and witchcraft in Scotland’, Area, 27 (1995), 77.
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© 2008 Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller
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Martin, L., Miller, J. (2008). Some Findings from the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft. In: Goodare, J., Martin, L., Miller, J. (eds) Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591400_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591400_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35376-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-59140-0
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