Abstract
This study examines the important charms and amulets collection in the National Museums of Scotland, particularly for their ‘charms against witchcraft’, to offer examples of artefacts said to have been used in witchcraft and exemplifying references in the written evidence of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by surviving material culture. It is suggested that these familiar groupings also give off messages which may in selected instances reveal more about the history of latterday collecting than of witchcraft, and more about the predilections and preoccupations of folklorists. This is not to deny that some of these artefacts have much to tell us at least by inference about the material culture and traditions of witchcraft in the early modern period, or to ignore the texture and colour that they lend to the written evidence. The museum record is here characterised as ‘magic and mischief in museum collections’ to offer a challenge to accepted wisdom and to suggest that, without careful exercise of analysis and interpretation, the value of these objects as historical evidence in such a complex subject may often be low.
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Notes
See for evolving schemes of classification A. S. Bell (ed.), The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition (Edinburgh, 1981), 74, 147, 149.
These are discussed in H. Cheape, ‘Charms and amulets’, in L. Henderson (ed.), Fantastical Imaginations: the Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture (East Linton, forthcoming); see also H. Cheape, ‘Lead hearts and runes of protection’, Review of Scottish Culture, 18 (2006), 149–55.
‘Communication from Joseph Train Esq, Castle Douglas’, in Rev. John Whitson, Parish of Crossmichael, New Statistical Account (Kirkcudbrightshire), iv (1845), 196. Another of Train’s traditions is recounted in E. J. Cowan and L. Henderson, ‘The last of the witches? The survival of Scottish witch belief’, in J. Goodare (ed.), The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester, 2002), 215.
G. F. Black, ‘Scottish charms and amulets’, PSAS, 27 (1892–3), 433–526, at p. 456.
J. Jamieson, An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 4 vols., (ed.) J. Longmuir and D. Donaldson (Paisley, 1879–82), iii, 232, s.v. MARESTANE.
See for example J. Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Oxford, 1922; repr. New York, 1976).
A. Lang (ed.), The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies by Robert Kirk (Stirling, 1933), 69, 76; Rev.
J. Fraser, ‘Notes on the superstitions, customs etc. of the Highlanders, 1702’, Analecta Scotica, i (Edinburgh, 1834), 119; Black, ‘Scottish charms and amulets’, 462–8.
A. Mitchell, The Past in the Present (Edinburgh, 1880), 6.
J. A. Balfour (ed.), The Book of Arran (Arran Society of Glasgow, 1910), 294–5; see also evidence for charmers curing disease and supplying antidotes to witchcraft in Miller, ‘Devices and directions’, 91, 95–8, 104–5.
The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, 2 vols., (ed.) D. Douglas (Edinburgh, 1891), i, 350;
Sir Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (London, 1884), 273.
The Black Book of Taymouth, with Other Papers from the Breadalbane Charter Room, C. Innes (ed.) (Bannatyne Club, 1855), 346–7;
cf. A. Macquarrie, Scotland and the Crusades, 1095–1560 (Edinburgh, 1985), 93–5.
A. Stewart, ‘Notice of a Highland charm-stone’, PSAS, 24 (1889–90), 157–60, at pp. 157–8.
Such items are familiar in other museum collections; see for example R. W. Reid, Illustrated Catalogue of the Anthropological Museum, Marischal College, University of Aberdeen (Aberdeen, 1912), 50.
Six ‘witch stones’ formerly belonging to the ‘famous Ross-shire Witch’ are in the collections of Inverness Museum (Catalogue no. 00/480). The ‘Ross-shire witch’ was Isabella Hay, on whom see J. Brims, ‘The Ross-shire witchcraft case of 1822’, Review of Scottish Culture, 5 (1989), 87–91.
F. M. McNeill, The Silver Bough, vol. i: Scottish Folk-lore and Folk-belief (Glasgow, 1957), 145.
J. Paton (ed.), Scottish National Memorials: a Record of the Historical and Archaeological Collections in the Bishop’s Castle, Glasgow, 1888 (Glasgow International Exhibition, 1890), 338, 340.
R. Black (ed.), The Gaelic Otherworld: John Gregorson Campbell’s Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands (Edinburgh, 2005), 173–4. Cf. L. Henderson, ‘Witchhunting and witch belief in the Gàidhealtachd’, Chapter 4 above.
Some of the processes at work here are analysed for England by O. Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736–1951 (Manchester, 1999), ch. 6.
A number of reports from general practitioners in the Highlands and Islands made sympathetic reference to traditional practices employed at childbirth: W. L. Mackenzie, Scottish Mothers and Children, being a report on the physical welfare of mothers and children, Scotland (Dunfermline: The Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1917).
See for example H. Cheape, ‘Cupping’, Review of Scottish Culture, 10 (1996–7), 135–9.
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© 2008 Hugh Cheape
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Cheape, H. (2008). ‘Charms against Witchcraft’: Magic and Mischief in Museum Collections. 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_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591400_11
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