Witches of Fife

by Stuart MacDonald

  3.

  H.R. Trevor-Roper, ‘The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in H.R. Trevor-Roper, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change and other Essays by H.R. Trevor-Roper, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan Press, 1972). Peter Burke has argued that this article summarized what was known at the time it was written just as an explosion of new themes and interpretations emerged. Peter Burke, ‘The Comparative Approach to European Witchcraft’ in Bengt Ankarloo & Gustav Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres & Peripheries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990): 435.

  4.

  Margaret Murray, The Witch-cult in Western Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921). Though discredited among academics, this thesis continues to thrive in popular circles, in particular among those wishing to make connections between early-modern witches and neo-pagans today. See, for example, Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and other Pagans in America Today Revised edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986); and Raymond Buckland, Scottish Witchcraft: The History and Magick of the Picts (St. Paul, Minn: Llewellyn, 1992). Penethorne Hughes, Witchcraft (Longmans, Green, 1952. Penguin, 1965) represents an earlier and learned defence of Murray’s thesis. The weaknesses of the Murray thesis are most eloquently expressed by Norman Cohn in chapter 6 of Europe’s Inner Demons (Sussex: Sussex University Press, 1975; Granada, 1976).

  5.

  Marvin Harris, Cows Pigs, Wars & Witches: The Riddles of Culture (New York: Vintage, 1974). Geoffrey Quaife, Godly Zeal and Furious Rage: The Witch in Early Modern Europe (New York: St. Martins, 1987), offers a summary of these various positions and theories in his first chapter.

  6.

  Richard Kieckhefer. European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300–1500 (Berkley: University of California Press, 1976), ix, 16–18. Norman Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (Sussex: Sussex University Press, 1975; Granada, 1976), Chapter 7.

  7.

  Julio Caro Baroja, The World of the Witches (1961) translated by O.N.V. Glendinning (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1964). Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Wiendenield & Nicolson, 1971; Penguin, 1982). Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge K. Paul, 1970). The anthropological work which was particularly influential was E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (Oxford: Clarendon, 1937). Also, J.R. Crawford, Witchcraft and Sorcery in Rhodesia (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), Edward Geoffrey Parrinder, Witchcraft: European and African (London: Faber and Faber, 1963).

  8.

  On Germany, H.C. Erik Midelfort, Witch Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562–1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972). On France and Switzerland, E. William Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: The Borderlands During the Reformation (London: Cornell University Press, 1976). On the Basque region of both France and Spain, Gustav Henningsen, The Witches Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609–14) (Reno: University of Nevada, 1980). On England, Macfarlane Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970). On Scotland, Christina Larner, Enemies of God: The Witch-hunt in Scotland (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981). While Salem seems to have a literature all its own as part of American history, several works are worth noting from this period: Paul Boyer & Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974); John P. Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.); Richard Weisman. Witchcraft, Magic and Religion in 17th century Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984); and, Richard Godbeer, The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

  9.

  Ankarloo and Henningsen, Early Modern European Witchcraft.

  10.

  The regional studies in Early Modern European Witchcraft include Bengt Ankarloo, ‘Sweden: The Mass Burnings (1668–76)’; Francisco Bethencourt, ‘Portugal: A Scrupulous Inquisition’; Kirsten Hastrap, ‘Iceland: Sorcerers & Paganism’; Antero Heikkinen & Timo Kervinen, ‘Finland: The Male Domination’ ; Jens Christian V. Johansen ‘Denmark: The Sociology of Accusations’; Juhan Kahk ‘Estonia II: The Crusade against Idolatry’; Gabor Klaniczay ‘Hungary: The Accusations and the Universe of Popular Magic’; Maia Madar, ‘Estonia I: Werewolves and Poisoners’; and, Hans Eyvind Naess, ‘Norway: The Criminological Context’. There were also two interpretive essays directly related to these regional studies E. William Monter, ‘Scandinavian Witchcraft in Anglo-American Perspective’ and Peter Burke, ‘The Comparative Approach to European Witchcraft’. Other regional studies of note include, Susanna Burghatz, ‘The Equation of Women and Witches: A Case Study of Witchcraft Trials in Lucerene and Lausanne in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ in The German Underworld: Deviants and Outcasts in German History ed. Richard J. Evans (London: Routledge, 1988), 108–140; Marijke Gijswist-Hofstra, ‘Witchcraft in the Northern Netherlands’ in Current Issues in Women’s History ed. Arina Angerman (London: Routledge, 1989), 75–92; Annabel Gregory, ‘Witchcraft, Politics and ‘Good Neighbourhood’ in Early Seventeenth-Century Rye.’ Past and Present 133 (Nov. 1991): 31–66; Ruth Martin, Witchcraft and the Inquisition in Venice 1550–1650 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Robert Muchembled, ‘The Witches of Cambrésis: The Acculturation of the Rural World in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,’ in Religion and the People, 800–1700 ed. Jim Obelkevich (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 221–276 ; Jonathan L. Pearl, ‘Witchcraft in New France in the Seventeenth Century: The Social Aspect.’ Historical Reflections 4 (1977):191–205; J.A. Sharpe, ‘Witchcraft and Women in seventeenth-century England: some Northern evidence’ in Continuity and Change 6 (August 1991):179–199; Irene Silverblatt, Moon, Sun and Witches: Gender Ideologies and Class in Inca and Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987); and, Janet A. Thompson, Wives, Widows, Witches & Bitches: Women in Seventeenth-Century Devon (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). A new study of English witchcraft has recently been published. J.A. Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness; Witchcraft in England 1550–1750 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996).

  11.

  Brian P. Levack, The witch-hunt in early modern Europe, 3.

  12.

  Ibid., 3.

  13.

  Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997). Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformation c.1650–c1750. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997).

  14.

  Kieckhefer, European Witch Trials, 3.

  15.

  Ibid., 105.

  16.

  Carlo Ginzburg, The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966), trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1983).

  17.

  Carlos Ginzburg, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (1989) trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon, 1991).

  18.

  Quaife, Godly Zeal (1987). Levack, The witch-hunt in early modern Europe (1987, 1995). Geoffrey, Scarre, Witchcraft and Magic in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe (New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1987). Joseph Klaits, Servants of Satan: The Age of the Witch Hunts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze: A New History of the European Witch Hunts (New York: Pandora, 1994). Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours (1997).

  19.

  Larner, Enemies, p. 63.

  20.

  Christina Larner, Christopher Hyde Lee, &
Hugh McLachlan, A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft (Glasgow: Sociology Department, University of Glasgow, 1977). George F. Black, A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland 1510–1727 (New York: New York Public Library and Arno Press, 1938). Black’s list offered excerpts from cases in a roughly chronological order. The Sourcebook listed the cases by court level and coded certain basic information, such as gender, fate, and marital status. Dates and geographic data were given whenever known.

  21.

  F. Legge, ‘Witchcraft in Scotland’, The Scottish Review 18 (1891), reprinted in Articles on Witchcraft, Magic and Demonology ed. Brian P. Levack. Vol 7, Witchcraft in Scotland (New York: Garland, 1992), 1–32, summarized interpretations to that point. In the same year J. W. Brodie Innes published a less than useful exploration of the subject in which he argued that hypnotism explained the witch-hunt. J.W. Brodie Innes ‘Scottish Witchcraft Trials’ in Witches and Witch Hunters (1891) ed. A.E. Green (Reprint by Menston, Yorkshire: Scholars Press, 1971). R.D. Melville, ‘The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland,’ Scottish Historical Review 2 (1905). W.N. Neill, ‘The Professional Pricker and His Test for Witchcraft,’ Scottish Historical Review 19 (1922). J.A. MacCulloch, ‘The Mingling of Fairy & Witch Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland,’ in Folklore: The Transactions of the Folklore Society xxxii (December, 1921). John Gilmore, Witchcraft and the Church in Scotland. (Ph.D. diss., University of Glasgow, 1948). On North Berwick, Margaret Murray, ‘The ‘Devil’ of North Berwick,’ Scottish Historical Review 15 (1918). Edward J. Cowan, ‘The darker vision of the Scottish Renaissance’ in The Renaissance and Reformation in Scotland ed. I.B. Cowan and D. Shaw (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1983) and ‘The Royal Witch-Hunt’ in The Sunday Mail Story of Scotland, Vol 2., Pt 15(1988) are two of the better articles on the subject. Also, Margaret Carol Kintscher, The culpability of James VI of Scotland, late James I of England, in the North Berwick witchcraft trials of 1590–91 (M.A. diss, San Jose State University, 1991). Mody C. Boatright, ‘Witchcraft in the Novels of Sir Walter Scott’, University of Texas Studies in English 13 (1933 ): 95–112. Stuart Clark, ‘King James Daemonologie: Witchcraft and kingship’ in The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft ed. Sydney Anglo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). Isabel Adam, Witch Hunt: The Great Scottish Witchcraft trials of 1697 (London: Macmillan, 1978). In many ways Adam’s Witch Hunt is reminiscent of Marion Starkey’s popular retelling of the Salem witch-hunt, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949). The poor books on Scottish witchcraft are voluminous, often written for the popular market in the hopes of feeding into the notion that Scotland was a uniquely superstitious place. Raymond Buckland, Scottish Witchcraft, explains how to become a witch. More bothersome than the how-to manuals and the obviously tourist-inclined pocket books, are those which make some pretension to scholarship, For example, Godfrey Watson, Bothwell and the Witches (London: Robert Hale, 1975); and, Ronald Holmes, Witchcraft in British History (Plymouth: Frederick Muller, 1974). Nicholas MacLeod, Scottish Witch-craft (Cornwall: James Pike, 1975) completely endorses Murray’s thesis, arguing a relationship between witches and pygmies.

  22.

  Larner, Enemies of God. Christina Larner, ‘James VI and I and Witchcraft’ in Alan G.R. Smith, ed. The Reign of James VI and I (London: Macmillan, 1973), 74–90; ‘Two late Scottish witchcraft tracts: Witch-Craft Proven and The Tryal of Witchcraft’ in Sydney Anglo, ed., The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 227–245. ‘Crimen Exceptum? The Crime of Witchcraft in Europe’ in Crime and the Law: The Social History of Crime in Western Europe since 1500 ed. V.A.C. Gatrell, Bruce Lenman, and Geoffrey Parker (London: Europa, 1980), 49–75. Published posthumously, Christina Larner, Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984).

  23.

  The quote is taken from ‘Crimen Exceptum? The Crime of Witchcraft in Europe’. See also Enemies of God, 22, 60.

  24.

  Larner, Enemies of God, 102.

  25.

  Larner, Lee, & McLachlan, A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft.

  26.

  Black, Calendar of Cases. Black list offered excerpts from case’s in a roughly chronological order. The Sourcebook listed the cases by court level and coded certain basic information, such as gender, fate, and marital status. Dates and geographic data were given whenever known.

  27.

  One other source of information is contained in the writing of local historians. James Wilkie The History of Fife: From the Earliest Time to the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1924) has a good chapter on witchcraft. The topic is also discussed in two recent local histories on Fife, Stephanie Stevenson, Anstruther: A History (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989) and Eric Simpson, Dalgety – The Story of a parish (Dalgety: Dalgetty Bay Community Council, 1980).

  28.

  Brian P. Levack, ‘The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62’ in Journal of British Studies 20 (1984), 107. For the stereotype of the witch see p. 101–102 while the role of nobility versus clergy is discussed p. 96–97.

  29.

  Michael Wasser, ‘Law, Politics and Witchcraft: The Curtailment of Witchcraft Prosecutions in Scotland, 1597–1628’ (Unpublished paper, 1996).

  CHAPTER TWO

  Village Tensions and Elite Fears: The Patterns of the Scottish Witch-Hunt

  In 1597 Andro Man was accused of being an ally of Satan and a witch. He was one of the many individuals charged during the great hunt for witches which swept Scotland during that year. An old man who lived in Aberdeen, Andro claimed to have visited the fairy-queen over a period of sixty-years prior to his arrest and interrogation. Over the years he had attended many revels and feasts in the company of the elf-queen and others many of whom, like James V and Thomas the Rhymer, were ‘deid men’. Andro Man received secret knowledge and power to heal as a result of his association with the queen of fairyland, yet it was claimed that his real master was a mysterious figure named Christsonday: ‘The queen has a grip of all the craft, but Christsonday is the gudeman and has all power under God’. Christsonday – understood by Man’s inquisitors as Satan in disguise – appeared as a stag alongside the elf-queen at revels, and had power such that he was able to show Andro the fires of hell. Andro Man was eventually executed for the crime of witchcraft.1

  Seventy-five years later and at the other end of Scotland, Elspeth Thomson also found herself accused of witchcraft, a crime against ‘the divyne law of the almightie god, set doune in his sacred word, especiallie in the 20th chapter of Leviticus and 18th chapter of Deuteronomie’.2 Specifically, Elspeth was accused of a series of incidents that had taken place over a number of years. For example, seven years prior to her being charged it was claimed that after John Corsbie & Rosina Mcghies had neglected to invite her to either the birth or baptism of their child she had vowed to ‘doe them ane ill turne and to cause them rue it’. After this curse Rosina fell ill and in a vision saw Elspeth and another accused witch, Janet McMuldroch, standing beside her ready to murder her and her child. Her husband’s response was to go and take some thatch from above Elspeth Thomson’s door and burn it before his wife, ‘This being the ordinar course qrby your neighbours used to remove any seiknes which they apprehendit to be laid on themselves or yr beasts by yor witchcraft’. This time the remedy failed, and the child died. John himself took sick and was only cured when Elspeth came at his invitation to his bedside, touched his body, and prayed to God to ‘send him health’. Their troubles continued, however, when Rosina again became ill. Other accusations made against Elspeth included: casting a sp
ell on a child’s cradle which only failed to harm the child when the suspicious mother threw a dog in the cradle first (the dog ‘immediately’ lost the use of his back legs and had to be destroyed); causing the death of Donald McGhie after he accused her of being a witch; destroying the health of James McGhie after he refused to hire her for a day’s work; and other acts of hostile magic directed against her neighbours. Long suspected as a witch, Elspeth Thomson was tried and executed in Dumfries in 1671.3

  These examples represent only two of the more than three thousand cases where accusations of witch-craft were made throughout Scotland during the period from 1560 to 1758. Both cases are familiar, having become part of the secondary literature on the Scottish witch-hunt. What is more difficult to determine is how they – and other well known cases such as the Berwick trials of 1590, Bessie Dunlop, Alison Peirsoun and others4 – fit within the larger reality which was the Scottish witch-hunt. This chapter will reassess the overall pattern of the Scottish witch-hunt using the data collected in Christina Larner, Christopher Lee & Hugh McLachlan, A Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft (1977)5 and supplementing it with other relevant data and information. The focus will be on examining the chronology and the geography of the existing cases. In order to do this adequately, it will be necessary to use some tables, charts, and maps. Hopefully, the numbers and statistics will help us to gain insight into the experiences of Andro Man, Elspeth Thomson, and so many others, and allow us to position their individual narratives within a clearer picture of what occurred throughout Scotland during this period. A better understanding of the national scene will also help us to study the witch-hunt in the particular regions of Scotland.