Particularly, did Scottish witch hunts differ greatly from British and European witch hunts due to local superstitions? And were fairies and elves seen as separate to witches, or was all magic considered diabolical?
Although Scotland had fully converted to Christianity by the 7th century CE, traditional beliefs in local nature spirits, faeries, and folk magic rituals persisted because they did not directly conflict with Christianity [4]. The pre-Christian belief system divided magic practitioners into the malevolent (a buidseachd), benevolent (a fiosaiche), and involuntary (a taibhsear). A buidseachd was thought to derive powers from bargains with the supernatural; after the adoption of Christianity, this was often conflated with the Devil (For this answer, I will use “witch” as a synonym for buidseachd). It was believed that these people could not use their powers to enrich themselves directly, so they lashed out at rivals [4,5]. The two other categories of folk magic practitioners were seen as neutral or benevolent. A fiosaiche provided traditional remedies, advice from augury, or rituals and amulets to ward off misfortune. Taibhsears were those who could involuntarily see ghosts, faeries, or other spirits; sometimes they are also credited with spontaneous prophecy or glimpses of future events [4]. Even Daemonologie, a tract against witchcraft written by James VI, references “these kinde of spirites that are called vulgarlie the Fayrie” in a way which is consistent with earlier Celtic beliefs [9], marking a clear distinction between neutral supernatural beings and evil ones.
Even though belief in magic was widespread, lawyers were generally hesitant to prosecute witchcraft accusations unless there was political motivation or evidence they found convincing, so witchcraft and trials accusations were both rare before the 1590s [6]. One witch hunt was attempted in Angus in the late 1560s, but quickly fizzled out [11a].
Enter James VI and his fascination with the supernatural. This fixation started in 1589, when Anne of Denmark set out for Scotland for her arranged marriage to James (then James VI of Scotland). A storm forced the boat to make an emergency stop in Oslo, where James joined her, and the couple was married as scheduled. During this time, although witch hunts had not been prevalent in Denmark, the Danish court was closely following the Trier Witch Trials, which were of unprecedented size and scope [8]. When James and Anne departed for Scotland, they once again encountered storms and their ship nearly sank. The Danish finance minister was accused of cutting corners on outfitting the royal ship, causing the near-sinking; the minister defended himself by claiming the storms were caused by witchcraft. [7,8]. This set off twin witchcraft trials in Copenhagen and North Berwick. The trials in North Berwick were the first significant use of the 1563 Witchcraft Act in Scotland (Normand and Roberts 5)
In terms of both the logistics of the trials, the accusations, and the demographics of the people involved, the Scottish witch hunts differed significantly from their counterparts in England and mainland Europe. First, the per-capita rate of witchcraft accusations ran higher than other locations. The conviction rate, however, was lower in Scotland than other European countries. While it is difficult to prove causality, the lower percentage of convictions may have been because accused witches in Scotland had the right to a defense lawyer, which was not true in other European nations. Scotland also allowed local officials to try witches, unlike other places in Europe, which may have lowered the barriers to making an official accusation but made conviction less likely [1,2]
Gender played a role in who was accused: 75% of the Scottish accused were women, compared to 90% of the accused in England [11a]. But gender had a more complex effect on the nature of the trials than a simple attack on women by men: most of the accusers were also women, and 80% of the trials with a female accused witch include details of interpersonal conflict, almost always between women from different households. Just over half the trials alleged that witchcraft-induced misfortune had followed the conflict, and in a third of the trials, the conflict formed the core narrative of the accusation. No narratives of interpersonal conflict appeared in the trials of accused men [11b].
Men who practiced folk magic and healing were much more likely than their female counterparts to be at the receiving end of a witchcraft accusation [11c]. Over three quarters of the trials included admission of a relationship with the Devil as a central piece, but only half of the trials with a male suspect involved explicit mention of a relationship between the accused and the Devil [11a]. Although consorting with the Devil was seen as a key element of evil magic [4,5,6,9,10], the accusations and the confessions of accused witches also contain elements directly from pre-Christian Scottish myths. Isobel Gowdie, who turned herself in for unknown reasons, confessed to shapeshifting into animals such as a cat or a hare, which was a power commonly attributed to Scottish witches. She also describes visiting the Queen of the Faeries, a figure of pre-Christian Celtic lore, and seeing tairbh uisge (a bull-like water monster) [3]. Some witches confessed to doing traditional magic, either instead of or in addition to their contracts with the devil. In these cases, the critical distinction from acceptable folk magic was the intent to do harm. Agnes Sampson, for example, confessed under torture that she “tooke a Cat and christened it, and afterward bound to each parte of that Cat, the cheefest partes of a dead man” to perform a storm-raising ritual [10]. This is consistent with older descriptions of witches using magic to raise storms to kill sailors or fishermen [4,5].
So while local beliefs in folk magic and supernatural creatures do not appear to have played a major role in who was targeted by witchcraft accusations in Scotland, it deeply shaped the content of witchcraft confessions and the collective beliefs about the nature of witchcraft. It also shows the persistence of a clear distinction between acceptable folk magic and neutral supernatural beings, and malicious magic.
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