Conclusion

Abstract

This study represents the first in-depth investigation of Scottish witchcraft and witch belief in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It has demonstrated that while the perceived need to persecute witches was indeed dying out — a trend that has never really been in question — actual belief in and fear of witches continued to worry great swathes of the population for a much longer time than has previously been appreciated. The abundance of material on witch belief and charming surviving from this period is indicative of the mood of suspicion and terror that continued to linger among many Scots at all levels of society.

… since Sir Walter Scott hath published his letters, all the demons, witches, fairies in Albion must lie dead for ever! They are entirely exorcised now; and that magical wand, which about twenty-five or thirty years ago, could call forth, and did call forth, sprites, spaewives, Orkney witches, and eidolons at pleasure, has now disenchanted them all.

John Gordon Barbour, Unique Traditions Chiefly of the West and South of Scotland (1833)¹