Witches of Fife

by Stuart MacDonald

  The witch-hunt is a fascinating topic in its own right. It also needs to be recognised that by studying the witch-hunt we gain a greater understanding of the nature of society in Scotland in the period from 1560 to 1710. It is a lens through which we can view such different areas as village life, the functioning of the legal system, and the activity of the church. Further, it is hoped that such a study will shed some light on how we as a society have persecuted those considered to be on the ‘outside’. Those defined as being on the outside may no longer be old women called witches, yet today there are still people defined as outsiders. Seeking someone to blame may not be as distant as we had hoped.

  *

  The play, Moses Law, was written by David Kinnaird and performed by members of the Heritage Events Company, Stirling, in the summer of 1994. I am indebted to members of the cast for discussion and to David Kinnaird who answered several of my questions by correspondence.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Scottish and European Witchesg

  Janet Brown. Beatie Dote. Lilias Baxter. None are names which automatically lead us to remember a story about Scotland’s past. None are names likely to be glorified by Hollywood stars in a big budget movie. Sometimes we don’t even have a name but only a passing reference that a ‘witch’ was tried and executed in a particular parish in Scotland. In other situations we know of these women only in relation to their spouse. The ‘wife of Thomas Wanderson’. The ‘wife of John Crombie’. Names. And yet it is through these names that an important part of the Scottish past can be told. This is part of Scotland’s past which until recently has been ignored. In a historical literature dominated by discussions of reformers and covenanters, the politics of the Stewart monarchy, and the looming crisis of the parliamentary union with England, there has been little room to discuss the fate of old women who were seen by their communities as witches.1 Yet in the seventeenth century itself concern about witches was widespread, affecting all levels of society from the parliament to the national church, from Edinburgh to the Orkney islands. Indeed, Scotland’s witch-hunt was only part of a much broader concern which included almost every corner of Europe.

  Lilias Baxter who fled her home in Dysart, Fife when an accusation of witchcraft was levelled against her was one of only thousands of women who found themselves accused of the crime of witchcraft in the three hundred year period from approximately 1450 to 1750. Estimates vary as to how many women found themselves in this situation, as well as how many were executed. The earlier estimates of nine million women executed have been replaced with the more moderate estimates of approximately 110,000 accused, and between 40,000 and 60,000 executions throughout Europe.2 In most of Europe the accused were primarily women, although in Estonia, Finland and Iceland the majority of the accused were male. The predominance of women among those accused as witches has become one of the major questions in the study of the European witch-hunt. Accusations could fall against a solitary witch, or an entire region could be swept up in a fervour of fear. One of the most famous witch-hunts was the one which occurred on the soil of what is now the United States of America at Salem, in Massachusetts. Salem, while sharing many features of other witch-hunts, had its own unique qualities. What is particularly noteworthy was the role played by adolescent girls in the accusations, as well as the relative lateness (1692). It is hunts such as Salem, or the events surrounding the trial of the North Berwick witches (1590–91) in Scotland, where the hunt moves out in a serial fashion from one accused to another, which have gripped the popular imagination. Yet accusations of witchcraft often were made against troublesome neighbours, or older impoverished women who survived by begging and knowing various charms and cures.

  Historians have struggled to explain what occurred over these three centuries. Early writings attempted to explain the entire witch-hunt across all of Europe. The title of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s influential 1967 essay ‘The European Witch-craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ is very revealing.3 At a time when few regional studies existed the essay covered Europe over two centuries. The term ‘witch-craze’ also suggested we were studying abnormal human behaviour, a ‘craze’ something like Beatle-mania, not beliefs, values, or social systems. Historians also struggled to deal with the popularity of the theories of Margaret Murray who had earlier in the century posited that the witch-hunts had been directed at organized covens of a pre-Christian pagan religion.4 Single causes for witch-hunting were put forward, causes which ranged from the effects of hallucinogenic substances (for example, ingested from wheat that had particular types of mould), to the shock of syphilis being introduced into Europe, to a cunning and successful plot by the political oligarchies of Europe to deflect criticisms of themselves onto the supposed witches.5 These outbreaks of persecution could be seen as the last outbreaks of mediaeval superstition until it was shown that one of the large mediaeval witch-hunts had, in fact, never occurred. Massive persecution of witches was not a product of the mediaeval period, but an early modern phenomenon.6

  While historians continued to suggest broad themes and adopt interesting approaches in order to study witch-hunting in early modern Europe,7 more and more of the studies came to be done on particular geographical regions of Europe. This was in many ways not surprising. While early writers could paint in broad brush strokes, any attempt to prove these arguments as either correct or incorrect required more modest aspirations and a greater concern for detail. Europe was simply too large a field of enquiry. Historians naturally began to study the witch-hunt within particular regions. Works on Germany, France and Switzerland, Salem, Massachusetts, Spain, England and Scotland all appeared in the 1970’s and early 1980’s.8 Regional studies demonstrated the kinds of resources that were available and raised important themes. A pivotal point came with the publication in English in 1990 of the collection of essays Early Modern European Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries,9 key parts of which had originally been published in Swedish three years previously. The essays in this volume, as well as others which appeared elsewhere, have been central in demonstrating the variety of experiences across Europe and its colonies.10 Regional studies continue to challenge our conceptions of the dynamics and forces behind the European witch-hunt.

  Another major contribution to the study of the European witch-hunt has been the realization that historians must distinguish between the preconditions for witch-hunting and the triggers that caused a particular region to begin seeking out and executing ‘witches’.11 Brian Levack has identified the preconditions (the factors needed before witch-hunts could occur) as: a new conception of what a witch was; increasing social tensions; and, changes in legal and religious systems. At the same time he argued it was essential to go beyond these

  general causes of the hunt and explore the specific circumstances and events that triggered individual witch-hunts, for the European witch-hunt was really nothing more than a series of separate hunts, each of which had its own participants.12

  Earlier historians had felt compelled to try to explain every detail of the witch-hunts, from the intellectual pre-conditions to why a particular woman in a particular village found herself accused. This distinction between the preconditions and the triggers which caused a witch-hunt to break out in a particular region at a certain time, has given historians more freedom to focus on specific themes and study them intensely. For example, Stuart Clark’s recent book Thinking with Demons, is an excellent study of the ideas in Europe in the early modern period and their relationship to witch-hunting, while Ian Bostridge explores the decline as a mainstream force of the idea of witchcraft in Witchcraft and Its Transformations.13 On the other hand, recent studies such as the current one, have been more concerned about the form which a particular witch-hunt took. Neither approach is better, but they are different and that difference needs to be understood and respected.

  Finally, the study of the European witch-hunt h
as necessitated the adoption of a distinction between the cultures of the elite and the cultures of the general populace. For example, Richard Kieckhefer challenged historians to distinguish clearly between the learned theories, popular traditions and actual practice of witchcraft in Europe.14 His clear distinction between elite and popular cultures, as well as consideration of how they interacted, allowed Kieckhefer to see that the population at large was far more interested in village problems and sorcerers than any demonic theory.15 Similarly, Carlo Ginzburg in The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries demonstrated that the concerns of the interrogators and the concerns of those accused as witches were markedly different.16 This distinction has become the working understanding of almost all historians working in the area of European witchcraft. To give but a simple example: what precisely was understood by the term ‘witch’? For those who lived in the villages and burghs, the word would have many meanings, but a witch was usually considered to be someone who knew various charms and cures, someone who could heal and harm. The witch was both a valued and a feared member of the community. There were various popular understandings of the witch, but generally the witch was welcomed as long as she used her power for good (as a white witch) and not to do harm (black witchcraft). It was those with more education and power who gradually changed this idea, arguing that all witchcraft, whether white or black, was destructive to the community. It was also the elite which introduced the idea that to be a witch one had to have gained one’s power from the Devil. Witches thus became, at least in the eyes of some among the elite, the shock troops of a demonic conspiracy intent upon overthrowing society. If we are to understand the witch-hunt at all we need to recognise how different these understandings were.

  The study of the European witch-hunt, while moving in various directions, has coalesced around these themes: the importance of studying particular regions; the distinction between pre-conditions and triggers (although different terms may be used); and the acceptance of distinctions between elite and popular cultures, as well as the importance of their interaction. No new consensus as to the meaning or ‘causes’ of the hunt has emerged. Works of sweeping scope, such as Carlo Ginzburg’s Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath (1991) and Stuart Clark’s Thinking with Demons (1997) continue to raise new questions.17 There are now many general historical surveys which give a fuller background to the events of Europe during these three centuries.18

  The study of Scottish witches has been part of this larger study of the European witch-hunt. It is estimated that there were 1,337 executions for witch-craft in Scotland, although this figure may have a margin of error of 300 either way.19 The number of people known to be accused of witchcraft stands at over 3,100 and although new cases are being discovered the increase is relatively modest.20 While the topic was of considerable interest in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century,21 few serious books were published before the results of Christina Larner’s research appeared, first in articles, and finally in her book Enemies of God which was published in 1981.22 Enemies of God remains a milestone, both in its contribution to Scottish history and the broader European understanding of the witch-hunt. In her writings, Larner stressed that it was the ruling elite who ‘controlled and manipulated the demand for and supply of witchcraft suspects’.23 She also suggested that witch-hunting was an idea before it became a phenomenon, and suggested that, in practice, witch-hunting was equivalent to woman hunting. To illustrate and demonstrate these themes Larner discussed the geographical and chronological patterns of witch-hunting, the dynamics of witch-hunts and the process that led from accusation to condemnation, the belief system, and offered some conclusions. She argued that in many ways what we were witnessing was the results of the ‘Christianization’ of Scotland and the subsequent suppression of popular beliefs. As a ‘political ideology’ Christianization meant, in practice, the suppression of deviance, an activity in which the nobility, as much as the clergy took part:

  The pursuit of witches was an end in itself and was directly related to the necessity of enforcing moral and theological conformity. The fact that a high proportion of those selected in this context as deviants were women was indirectly related to this central problem.24

  Witches were indeed, as the title stated, perceived to be enemies of God and of the godly state. While individual ideas put forward in Enemies of God will be challenged within this book, it is important to note what a vital contribution it and Larner’s other writings made and continue to make.

  As members of the elite leave behind books, tracts, letters and other written documents, their values and fears tend to be the easiest for historians to deduce. It is far more difficult to study the values and attitudes of those who may not have been able to write, or whose writings have not been preserved. To even begin to study what documents may exist it is necessary to know where and when witch-craft accusations occurred in Scotland. Christina Larner’s contribution in this area was a project conducted with the contribution of research assistants Christoper Lee and Hugh McLachlan and a grant from the Scottish Social Science Research Council. The project involved searching the central government records and codifying all of the known cases of witchcraft allegations in Scotland. The result, A Sourcebook for Scottish Witchcraft (1977)25 gave researchers a valuable tool which not only added to the number of cases previously known through George Black’s A Calendar of Cases of Witch-craft in Scotland,26 but organised and standardized the information. The work done since Christina Larner opened the field in such a significant way has been, until recently, somewhat limited. The current book represents the first regional study at a village, parish or shire level to be done for Scotland.27 Only one of the major hunts, apart from the North Berwick trial, has been investigated. Brian Levack’s ‘The Great Scottish Witch Hunt of 1661–62’ serves as a model of how the study of a major hunt can be conducted.28 This hunt involved over 660 individuals, making it the largest hunt in Scottish history. Levack argued that this hunt was a turning point, coming as it did after the end of the English occupation. Those accused generally continued to fit the stereotype of the traditional witch (old, widows, quarrelsome) despite the fact that one of the driving dynamics of the hunt was the activity of the witch-prickers, including the infamous John Kincaid. Michael Wasser has taken a different approach, looking at a period when relatively few cases occurred and tried to determine the role which some members of the judicial elite played in stemming witch-hunting during this period.29 Various aspects of the Scottish witch-hunt are being actively studied by historians and the results of this research should soon reach publication.

  A consensus has emerged in the literature on Scottish witchcraft, which gives us a general picture of the nature and shape of the witch-hunt in Scotland. Scotland had a major witch-hunt, even in European terms, in which the main victims were overwhelmingly women. Several major peaks of intense hunting have been recognised. The witch-hunt in Scotland is understood as more ‘continental’ than that which affected England, largely as a result of the use of judicial torture and the pervasive notion of the demonic pact. Elite interest in the latter has been distinguished from the common people’s interest in malefice, or the harm caused by the suspected witch. The central government is understood to have restrained regional witch-hunting. There is still some question as to which group among the elite were the most enthusiastic witch-hunters, although at the moment the role of the local nobility has been emphasized. This study like all studies, began with an awareness of these themes and certain assumptions. The main ones included: the belief that it was the nobility, in particular the local lairds who were the major witch-hunters among the elite; the suspicion, after the initial runs on the database had been conducted, that torture would not be a factor in all cases; the assumption that witch-prickers would be key; and, the expectation that Satan woul
d be a dominant player in witchcraft confessions after 1610. On this final point, research for an essay done during my Masters in 1981 on the initial phase of the witch-hunt had led me to argue that the idea of the demonic pact had taken some time to spread throughout Scotland after its introduction in the 1590’s. A period of about twenty years was assumed as adequate for this to have occurred. One way to test these themes is through an intensive study of one particular region, a task to which we will turn after re-examining the shape of the witch-hunt in Scotland. We will discover how many of these assumptions have proven incorrect.

  Notes

  1.

  Gordon Donaldson, James V-James VII (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1965) makes only passing references to the subject. This reference occurs in the context of the political strife between Francis Stewart, Earl of Bothwell and James VI and the former’s imprisonment as a suspected sorcerer in 1590 (p. 191). Donaldson attributes the decline in witch-hunting prior to 1638 to the ‘restraint’ of the bishops, p. 354. The word ‘witch’ does not even appear in the index of W. Croft Dickinson Scotland from the Earliest Times to 1603 3rd edition revised by Archibald A.M. Duncan (Oxford: Clarendon 1977). More recent surveys have devoted space to the topic.

  2.

  Brian P. Levack, The Witch-hunt in early Modern Europe 2nd ed. (London: Longmans, 1995), 24–25. Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Harper Collins, 1996; New York, Viking, 1996), 8.