Review article: Witches and Fairies in Early-Modern Scotland

Abstract

P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Satan's Conspiracy: Magic and Witchcraft in Sixteenth- Century Scotland, East Linton, Tuckwell Press, 2001, pp. 225, pb. £16.95, ISBN 1862321361; Lizanne Henderson and Edward J. Cowan, Scottish Fairy Belief: a History, East Linton, Tuckwell Press, 2001, pp. xi + 242, pb. £14.99, ISBN 1862321906; Lawrence Normand and Gareth Roberts, Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches, Exeter, Exeter University Press, 2000, pp. 454, pb £16.99, ISBN 08589388X, hb £47.50, ISBN 0859896803Scotland always figures in any general survey of witchcraft in these isles because of the stress which is, rightly or wrongly, placed on the figure of James VI. His central role in the North Berwick witch trials in the early 1590s, coupled with the publication of his Daemonologie later in the decade, place him as a central figure in the debates of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Because of this it has been postulated that he was a driving figure in the witch-hunts of the 1590s in Scotland, and was subsequently instrumental in fuelling similar events after his accession to the English throne in 1603. Although two English editions of the Daemonologie were put to press in the year he took the throne and there was subsequent public interest in the subject, James himself can not really be charged with fuelling interest in witchcraft after he came to the throne of England. As James Sharpe points out, 'A closer examination of James's track-record in instances of witchcraft while king of England . . . reveals that his attitudes were far removed from the propensity for rabid witch-hunting that has been attributed to him'.1James's presence, perhaps unsurprisingly then, is keenly felt in all the books under consideration here, and two of them - Maxwell-Stuart's Satan's Conspiracy, and Normand and Roberts's Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland - closely engage with the question of James's role in the North Berwick trials and the subsequent witch hunts. In the former it is considered as part of a survey of magic and witchcraft in the later sixteenth century, while the latter is solely concerned with the trials themselves; and in both books Daemonologie is convincingly shown to have had its genesis in the trials which preceded its composition. However, neither paint the picture of James as the instigator of the witch-hunts that followed in Scotland, but rather see them as driven not by the king but the Kirk. Of course the events at North Berwick no doubt lingered in the minds of the populace and had some bearing on what followed, but it was by no means part of a personal quest by James. Indeed the publication of Daemonologie actually marks the end of the witch trials, with James disbanding all the standing commissions to try witchcraft in August 1597, only a few months after the book was published in Edinburgh.James's treatise is one of the key texts for any study of Renaissance occult works in English, and Lawrence Normand and the late Gareth Roberts have certainly provided scholars of witchcraft with a very important and useful resource by reproducing not only the text of Daemonologie, but also Newes from Scotland, and transcripts of the dittays as well as the examinations, confessions, and depositions of those accused of witchcraft. The latter are not found in Pitcairn's Ancient Criminal Trials and appear here in print for the first time. I am also much pleased to find they have even reproduced all the illustrations that accompanied Newes from Scotland. The texts themselves are richly annotated and thorough bibliographic descriptions are provided. I do however have two complaints with the edition. Firstly the documents themselves are not indexed in the bibliography, but only the introductions to the documents and the essays on the context, which together form the first part of the volume. Indeed even when dealing with the secondary material the Index is not as complete as one might wish it to be: for example the entry for 'Hemmingsen' makes no reference to his debates with King James in Denmark, which are mentioned in the text on pp. …