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Scottish
Witchcraft
 The
Witches of Fife: Witch-hunting in a... Scottish Shire, 1560-1710.
Along the coast of Fife, in villages like Culross and Pittenweem,
historical markers and pamphlets now include the fact that some
women were executed as witches within these burghs. Still the
reality of what happened the night that Janet Cornfoot was lynched
in the harbour is hard to grasp as one sits in the harbour of
Pittenweem watching the fishing boats unload their catch and
the pleasure boats rising with the tide. How could people do
this to an old woman? Why was no-one ever brought to justice?
And why would anyone defend such a lynching? The task of the
historian is to try to make events in the past come alive and
seem less strange. This is particularly true in the case of
the historian dealing with the witch-hunt. The details are fascinating.
Some of the anecdotes are strange. The modern reader finds it
hard to imagine illness being blamed on the malevolence of a
beggar woman denied charity. It is difficult to understand the
economic failure of a sea voyage being attributed to the village
hag, not bad weather. Witch-hunting was related to ideas, values,
attitudes and political events. It was a complicated process,
involving religious and civil authorities, village tensions
and the fears of the elite. The witch-hunt in Scotland also
took place at a time when one of the main agendas was the creation
of a righteous or godly society. As a result, religious authorities
had control over aspects of the lives of the people which seem
every bit as strange to us today as might any beliefs about
magic or witchcraft. That the witch-hunt in Scotland, and specifically
in Fife, should have happened at this time was not accidental.
This book tells the story of what occurred over a period of
a century and a half, and offers some explanation as to why
it occurred.
 The
Scottish Witch-hunt in Context... This collection of essays
on Scottish witchcraft and witch-hunting, covers the whole period
of the Scottish witch-hunt, from the mid-16th century to the
early 18th. It includes studies of particular witchcraft panics
such as a reassessment of the role of King James VI, and Covers
a wide range of topics concerned with Scottish witch-hunting
and places it in the context of other topics such as gender
relations, folklore, magic and healing, and moral regulation
by the church and state. The work Provides a comparative dimension
of witch-hunting beyond Scotland - one on the global context,
and one comparing Scotland with England.
 Enemies
of God: Witch Hunt in Scotland For many years the European
witch craze of the 16th and 17th centuries was considered a
subject of almost "bad taste" to study. Then came
World War II and a genocide which was the greatest convulsion
of evil the world had ever seen. Scholars realized that the
witch cult was still with us. This is the story of how a rapidly
growing and civilized European nation could turn on itself in
a frenzy of violence, and marginalize and kill its own people
in a hysteria which became both self-perpetuating and self-justifying;
of how otherwise sober and intelligent people could defend this
killing, and of how a state could use mass murder as an instrument
of state policy.
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