‘Charms against Witchcraft’: Magic and Mischief in Museum Collections

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.