Abstract
A major concern of this study is to investigate the decline or otherwise of witch belief at the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment and its relationship with folk culture. While the philosophes and literati repeatedly rejoiced that superstition was dead or dying, the reality was that witch belief survived long after the views of the sceptics and the deists had been expressed. In this respect the role of the Kirk was crucial. This chapter investigates the rearguard actions of the Church, concerned as it was with issues of atheism and sadducism in the earliest stages of enlightenment. It also examines the ministers and their followers in prolonging witch belief and the lingering presence of demonic interference. From the late sev enteenth century onwards, there was a palpable decline in the number of witch trials and executions, though not, as will be demonstrated, in expressions of witch belief. There are indications that, in the post-1663 phases of witch prosecution, the suspects were primarily accused of malefice. Several cases can be shown to highlight the nature of those accusations and the supposed activities of witches; others suggest that having a reputation for witchcraft could have unexpected advantages, such as in the 1688 case of Catharine MacTargett of Dunbar, who appeared to almost luxuriate in her powers. Some trials are illustrative of how witchcraft could be used to further a particular cause or agenda of the day.
Upon the whole, I do believe that there is scarcely a more rare providence of this nature in any true history, — a more exact caution in any enquiry or trial of this kind, — a more clear probation without confession of the panels themselves, — or a more just sentence, putting together all circumstances upon record.
Francis Grant (1698)1
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Notes
Francis Grant, Prosecuting Advocate in the Bargarran trial of 1697, in A History of the Witches of Renfrewshire. A New Edition. With an Introduction, Embodying Extracts Hitherto Unpublished from the Records of the Presbytery of Paisley (Paisley: Alex. Gardner, 1877) 176.
Trial of Jean Weir, 1670, NAS, JC/2/13. Excerpts from this case can also be found in George Sinclair, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, ed. Coleman O. Parsons (Edinburgh: John Reid, 1685; Gainesville: Scholars’ Facsimilies and Reprints, 1969) supplement; Robert Law, Memorialls; or, the Memorable Things that Fell Out Within This Island of Brittain from 1638 to 1684, ed. C. K. Sharpe (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Co., 1818) 27, and Minstrelsy, vol. 2, 338–9.
See also David Stevenson, “Major Weir: A Justified Sinner?,” Sco ttish Studies 16/2 (1972): 161–73.
On the Aikenhead trial in 1696, see Hugo Arnot, A Collection and Abridgement of Celebrated Trials in Scotland (Edinburgh: The Author, 1785) 324–7; W. Cobbett, T. B. Howell et al., eds., A Complete Collection of State Trials, 34 vols. (London, 1809–28) xiii, 917–40 (no. 401); Michael Hunter, “Aikenhead the Atheist: The Context and Consequences of Articulate Irreligion in the Late Seventeenth Century,” in Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment, ed. M. Hunter and D. Wootton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992);
Arthur Herman, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World (London: Fourth Estate, 2002) prologue;
Michael F. Graham, The Blasphemies of Thomas Aikenhead: Boundaries of Belief on the Eve of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008).
Thomas Pitcairn, ed., Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1638–1842 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Printing and Publishing Company, 1843) 258; Hunter, “Aikenhead the Atheist,” 237.
Bostridge addresses this point eloquently: Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650–c.1750 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) 32–3. Articles supportive of the Renfrew witch persecutions appeared in The Flying Post (23/1/1697 and 8/4/1697); Lloyd’s News (26/1/1697); The Protestant Mercury (19–24/2/1697, 5–10/3/1697 and 19–21/5/1697); Post Boy (6–9/2/1697); and Foreign Post (2–4/6/1697). In March and April 1697, The Flying Post was also advertising Richard Baxter’s The Certainty of the World of Spirits.
See also L. Hanson, Government and the Press 1695–1763 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936).
Hunter, “Aikenhead the Atheist,” 236; letter from James Johnstone to Lord Polwarth, 1 April 1697, HMC, The Manuscripts of the Duke of Roxburghe, ed. W. Fraser (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1894) 132.
Grant, Sadducismus Debellatus, 25; Anna Wood, Bo’ness, January 1704, Thomas James Salmon, Borrowstounness and District being Historical Sketches of Kinneil, Carriden, and Bo’ness c. 1550–1850 (Edinburgh and London: William Hodge and Co., 1913) 119–21.
On the folklore of crows, see Francesca Greenoak, British Birds: Their Folklore, Names and Literature (London: Christopher Helm, 1997);
Charles Swainson, The Folk Lore and Provincial Names of British Birds (1886; Felinfach: Llanerch, 1998) 84;
Robin Hull, Scottish Birds: Culture and Tradition (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2001).
See, for instance, William Bond, The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr Duncan Campbell (London: E. Curll, 1720), a deaf and dumb seer who claimed his mother was from Lapland and his father a Scot. His fame for skilled predictions, finding lost property and curing witchcraft led him to London in the 1690s, where he mingled in aristocratic circles. The Secret Memoirs of the late Mr Duncan Campbell, the Famous Deaf and Dumb Gentleman (London: J. Millan; J. Crichley, 1732) were published posthumously, and include a chapter in defence of the reality of witchcraft. See also Owen Davies, “Decriminalising the Witch: The Origin and Response to the 1736 Witchcraft Act,” in Witchcraft and the Act of 1604, ed. John Newton and Jo Bath (Leiden: Brill, 2008) 214–18.
John H. Pagan, Annals of Ayr in the Olden Times, 1560–1692 (Ayr: Alex. Fergusson, 1897) 106;
Alastair Hendry, Witch-Hunting in Ayrshire: A Calendar of Documents (May 1998; unpublished) 86. Julian Goodare refers to “a dumme boy” who caught the attention of the Haddington presbytery in 1597.
He “gangis about dissaving the people and giving answeris by signes.” Haddington Presbytery Minutes, NAS, CH2/185/2, qtd in Julian Goodare, ed., The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002) 68.
Dauvit Broun and Martin MacGregor, eds., Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, “The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander”? Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (University of Glasgow, 2007) e-publication: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/scottishstudies/ebooks/miorunmor.htm.
James Maidment, ed., The Spottiswoode Miscellany, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Spottiswoode Society, 1844–45) vol. 2, 67; High Court Record Index No. 1 5/2/1656.
Jonet Mathie, her son Jon Stewart, her daughter Annabell Stewart, Margaret Jackson, Bessie Weir and Marjory Craig. Annabell Stewart was reprieved. RPC, 3rd ser. vol. 5, 95, 104–5; Sinclair, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, 1–18; John Graham Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1835) 343–6; Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, A Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland (London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1884) 138–42; Scott, Letters, 196.
S. W. McDonald and A. Thom, “The Bargarran Witchcraft Trial: A Psychiatric Reassessment,” Scottish Medical Journal 41 (1996): 152–8;
Hugh V. McLachlan and J. Kim Swales, “The Bewitchment of Christian Shaw: A Reassessment of the Famous Paisley Witchcraft Case of 1697,” in Twisted Sisters: Women, Crime and Deviance in Scotland since 1400, ed. Yvonne Galloway Brown and Rona Ferguson (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002) 54–83;
Hugh V. McLachlan, ed., The Kirk, Satan and Salem: A History of the Witches of Renfrewshire (Glasgow: The Grimsay Press, 2006).
Michael Wasser, “The Western Witch-Hunt of 1697–1700: The Last Major Witch-Hunt in Scotland,” in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, ed. Julian Goodare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) 146–65.
John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (1982; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 157–65;
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974) 22–30.
For continental examples, see Robert Walinski-Kiehl, “The Devil’s Children: Child Wit ch-Trials in Early Modern Germany,” Continuity and Change 11/2 (1996): 171–89;
Lyndal Roper, “Evil Imaginings and Fantasies: Child Witches and the End of the Witch Craze,” Past and Present 167 (2000): 107–39;
Per Sörlin, “Child Witches and the Construction of the Witches’ Sabbath: The Swedish Blåkulla Story,” in Witchcraft Mythologies and Persecutions, ed. Gábor Klaniczay and Éva Pócs (Budapest and New York: CEU Press, 2008) 99–124.
A psychological approach is taken in Hans Sebald, Witch-Children: From Salem Witch-Hunts to Modern Courtrooms (Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books, 1995).
For more on possession, see Brian P. Levack, The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2013). Volume 9 of Brian Levack’s edited collection, Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology, 12 vols. (New York and London: Garland Press, 1992) deals specifically with “Possession and Exorcism.” Louise Yeoman’s article, “The Devil as Doctor: Witchcraft, Wodrow and the Wider World,” Scottish Archives 1 (1995): 93–105, considers the strictness of the Calvinist religion and problems sometimes encountered during conversion experiences and their possible connection to possession cases.
For wider comparisons, in an English context, see D. P. Walker, Unclean Spirits: Possession and Exorcism in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries (Philadelphia: n.p., 1981);
James Sharpe, The Bewitching of Anne Gunter: A Horrible and True Story of Football, Witchcraft, Murder, and the King of England (London: Profile Books, 1999); Darren Oldridge’s chapter on possession and exorcism in The Devil in Early Modern England (Stroud: Sutton Press, 2000) 111–33;
Philip C. Almond, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
On France, see Sarah Ferber, Demonic Possession and Exorcism in Early Modern France (London: Routledge, 2004).
Brian P. Levack, Witch-Hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics and Religion (New York and London: Routledge, 2008) 147. However, there are indications in the records for Dunrossness, for example, that two women and a man were allegedly possessed in 1756, and another woman supposedly gave birth while in a possessed state. There were also cases of blasphemy in 1766 and 1801 against women who prayed that the Devil would “go down” their neighbours’ throat, which could be interpreted as a residual form of possession.
Extracts from the Kirk Session Records of Dunrossness, qtd in Gilbert Goudie, ed., The Diary of the Reverend John Mill, Scottish History Society (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1889) 19, 133, 136.
27 April 1697, Irvine Presbytery Records, NAS, CH2/197, and Hendry, Witch-Hunting in Ayrshire, 78; Lanark Presbytery Records, qtd in James Napier, Folk Lore in the West of Scotland (Paisley, 1879; Wakefield: EP, 1976) 68.
The harbour itself had been fairly recently repaired in 1687; Anon., An Answer of a Letter from a Gentleman in Fife (Edinburgh: n.p., 1705) 7–8;, Robert Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland: From the Reformation to the Revolution, 3 vols. (Edinburgh and London: W. & R. Chambers, 1858) vol. 3, 299–302.
David Cook, ed., Annals of Pittenweem; Being Notes and Extracts from the Ancient Records of that Burgh (Anstruther: n.p., 1867) 124–5; Pittenweem Kirk Session Records, NAS, CH2/833/3;
Stuart MacDonald, The Witches of Fife: Witch-Hunting in a Scottish Shire, 1560–1710 (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2002) 161.
St Andrews Presbytery Records CH2/1131/1699–1705, 293; Privy Council PCI/53, 247–9, 358–9; Levack, Witch-Hunting in Scotland, 148. On the social status of the accused, see also Louise Yeoman, “Hunting the Rich Witch in Scotland: High-Status Witchcraft Suspects and their Persecutors, 1590–1650,” in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, ed. J. Goodare (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002) 106–21.
Owen Davis, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736–1951 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1999) chapter 2.
There are numerous legends, mostly unverifiable, that end in the witch being lynched by her fellow villagers. For instance, the Wilkie MS, referred to extensively in William Henderson, Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1866) 165–6, furnishes such an example. Harry Gilles, the laird of Littledean, was out hunting a hare, when his dogs suddenly stopped the chase. An enraged Gilles exclaimed that they must have been hunting one of the witches of Maxton, at which point hares appeared all around him, “so close that they even sprang over the saddle before his eyes.” In anger, Gilles killed all of his dogs, save one black hound, for refusing to go after the hares. The black hound set off in pursuit of a particularly large hare and the hunt resumed. Gilles captured the hare and cut off a forepaw. On seeing this, the other hares took off. The following day, Gilles heard that a woman in Maxton had lost her arm. He went straight to her home, produced the paw which, by this time, had transformed into an arm, and applied it to the stump. It was a perfect fit. The woman confessed to witchcraft, “and was drowned the same day in the well, by the young men of Maxton.”
“The event had an extremely unsettling effect on the populace, since pressing to death had never been practised before in New England. It never was again.” Frances Hill, A Delusion of Satan (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996) 184–6.
Anne-Marie Kilday, “Hurt, Harm and Humiliation: Community Responses to Deviant Behaviour in Early Modern Scotland,” in Shame, Blame and Culpability: Crime, Violence and the Modern State, 1600–1900, ed. Judith Rowbotham, Marianna Muravyeva and David Nash (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013) 132–4, citing the punishment of Margaret Petrie in 1721, NAS, JC/26/143–145/2601/2721.
Raymond Lamont-Brown, Discovering Fife (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1988) 160.
Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-Hunt in Scotland (London: Chatto and Windus, 1981) 81–2.
Trial of Katherine Sands, Isobel Inglis, Agnes Hendries and Janet Hendries. All were widows except Sands, who was married, and her mother had “suffered for the cryme of witchcraft” some time before. They were executed on 29 July 1675. NAS, JC2/14; Book of the Old Edinburgh Club (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, 1913) vol. 6, 130; John Ewart Simpkins, ed., County Folk-Lore vol. VII. Examples of Printed Folk-Lore concerning Fife with some Notes on Clackmannan and Kinross-shires (The Folklore Society, London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1914) 99–100.
Stuart MacDonald, “In Search of the Devil in Fife Witchcraft Cases, 1560–1705,” in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, ed. Julian Goodare (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002) 36, 42.
Part of what follows on the Highland region can also be found in Lizanne Henderson, “Witch-Hunting and Witch Belief in the Gàidhealtachd,” in Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland, ed. Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
Lauren Martin’s analysis has demonstrated that, per head of population, the percentage of cases in the Highlands was higher than some other areas of the country: Lauren Martin, “Scottish Witchcraft Panics Re-examined,” in Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland, ed. Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin and Joyce Miller (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) 125.
Lizanne Henderson, “The Witches of Bute,” in Historic Bute: Land and People, ed. Anna Ritchie (Edinburgh: Scottish Society for Northern Studies, 2012) 152.
Ronald Hutton, “The Global Context of the Scottish Witch-Hunt,” in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, ed. Julian Goodare (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002) 31–2; idem, “Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies,” Past and Present 212 (2011): 43–69.
John E. Donaldson, Caithness in the 18th Century (Edinburgh and London: Moray Press, 1938) 36.
Colin MacNaughton, Church Life in Ross and Sutherland, from the Revolution (1688) to the Present Time, Compiled Chiefly from the Tain Presbytery Records (Inverness: Northern Counties Newspaper Printing and Publishing Company, 1915) 15.
Donald Sage’s mother, Isabella, was the eldest daughter of Donald Fraser, minister of Killernan, and afterwards Urquhart. Donald Sage, Memorabilia Domestica; or Parish Life in the North of Scotland, intro. by D. Witherington (Wick 1889; Edinburgh: Albyn Press, 1975) 42–3.
On the calculating reputation of Lord Lovat, see W. C. MacKenzie, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat: His Life and Times (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908);
Sarah Fraser, The Last Highlander: Scotland’s Most Notorious Clan Chief, Rebel and Double Agent (London: Harper Press, 2012).
John Christie, ed., Witchcraft in Kenmore, 1730–57: Extracts from the Kirk Session Records of the Parish (Aberfeldy: Duncan Cameron and Son, 1893) 3–19.
Edward J. Cowan and Lizanne Henderson, “The Last of the Witches? The Survival of Scottish Witch Belief,” in The Scottish Witch-Hunt in Context, ed. Julian Goodare (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2002) 198–217.
Walter Scott, Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (Edinburgh and London: Ballantyne and Company; John Murray, 1830; London: Wordsworth Editions, 2001) 272;
Alexander Allardyce, ed., Letters From and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq., 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood, 1888) vol. 1, 344 (15.9.1808), vol. 2, 6 (2.8.1812);
Hector M. Mackay, Old Dornoch: Its Traditions and Legends (Dingwall: North Star Office, 1920) 110,
W. N. Neill, “The Last Execution for Witchcraft in Scotland, 1722,” SHR 20 (1923): 218–21, is useful only for its discussion of human transformation into animals.
“In what part would the old woman have suffered, had the man cut off the cat’s tail?” Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland in 1769 (Warrington: W. Eyres, 1774; Perth: Melven Press, 1979) 169. Pennant attempted to place some perspective on such accounts by citing the case in Tring, Hertfordshire in 1751 and with reference to the “ridiculous imposture in the capital itself” of the Cock Lane Ghost in 1762; Sharpe, Witchcraft in Scotland, 184–94. There may be some echo of this case in Burt’s account of a Highland laird laying about a collection of feline witches with a sword. One of his victims in human form was found next day bleeding profusely, while under her bed “there lay her leg in its natural form.” Burt, Letters, 249–51. On the folklore of cats, see Katharine M. Briggs, Nine Lives: Cats in Folklore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980);
Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin,” in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984) 75–101;
Fred Gettings, The Secret Lore of the Cat: The Magic of Cats in Myth, Legend and Occult History (1989; London: Grafton Books, 1990);
M. Oldfield Howey, The Cat in Magic (London: Bracken Books, 1993).
Robert Wodrow, Analecta; or Materials for a History of Remarkable Providences, 4 vols. (Glasgow: Maitland Club, 1844) vol. 3, 302. He made no mention of the Dornoch case, which he obviously knew about and which may be noticed elsewhere in the extensive Wodrow archive.
Mackay, Old Dornoch, 110. Black, Calendar, names Janet Horne but gives no reference. Larner, Enemies of God, 78 and Source-Book, 229 cite Burt and Sharpe respectively, but neither names Janet Horne. Virtually everyone who has written since has erroneously followed Larner. A. Gunn and J. MacKay, eds., Sutherland and the Reay Country (Glasgow, 1897) 133–6 mentions the case but does not name the victim.
Janet Horn is identified in Mackay, Old Dornoch, 93, and in C. D. Bentinck, Dornoch Cathedral and Parish (Inverness: Northern Counties Newspaper and Printing and Publishing Company, Limited, 1926) 280, 461–5.
Rev. George Sutherland, Folk-Lore Gleanings and Character Sketches from the Far North (Wick: John O’Groat Journal, 1937) 50.
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Henderson, L. (2016). “Worshipping at the Altar of Ignorance”: Some Late Scottish Witchcraft Cases Considered. In: Witchcraft and Folk Belief in the Age of Enlightenment. Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137313249_7
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