By: Caitlin Scally

Keywords: early modern, Scotland, fairies, supernatural, witches, witch trials, early modern Scotland, ghosts

Doomed forever to go betwixt the heaven and earth (1). An examination of the connections between ghost and fairy belief in 16th and 17th century Scotland - with reference to some witch trials.

There were several cases during the Scottish witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that included collaboration and collusion with a ghost and/or the fairy world. The connection between ghosts and fairies is murky and tangled, with some believing that fairy belief originated as ancestral cults and the worship of the spirits of the dead eventually developed into fairy belief (2). Ghosts and fairies appearing together in certain witch trials highlights this connection and gives some insight into how the folklore developed in the public imagination. In this short piece I will examine the influence of the reformation and the background of religious change in the period just before the witch trials and believed demonic influence, encouraged by James VI especially, in connection to folkloric narrative. I will look at the belief that those who died suddenly, and babies who died without being baptised, went to live with the fairies and conclude by briefly discussing liminal spaces and times - essential to ghost, fairy, and witch belief.

In the sixteenth century, Scotland went through profound religious change. In 1560 the Reformation Parliament was set up, passing the basics of Protestantism into legislation and repealing the acts outlawing it and in turn outlawing Catholicism (3). Julian Goodare points out in his 2005 article that as Protestantism was still in development as a discipline, the Reformation council made no attempts to construct a church organisation or to give any moral direction or structure to the new church. In 1563 though, the Scottish Witchcraft Act was passed, making the ‘using of Witchcraftis, Sorsarie and Necromancie, and credence gevin thairto in tymes bygane…’ illegal (4). As Goodare again notices, witchcraft was not included in the list of ‘horibill vices’ from 1562 and suggests that John Knox was likely a key figure in the drafting of the Scottish Witchcraft Act (5). Knox was a key figure in the Protestant reformation, and was influenced by both Luther and John Calvin, both of whom spoke out against, and endorsed capital punishment for, witchcraft (6). Witchcraft, in this sense then, was seen as a remnant of Catholic belief, with its belief in transubstantiation, and was demonic because it was Catholic worship (7). The words in the preamble ‘…credence gevin thairto [witchcraft] in tymes bygane…’ suggest this (8). It is notable then that in the trial of Bessie Dunlop, a woman from Ayrshire who was burnt at the stake in Edinburgh in 1576, it is mentioned that when she first meets the ghost of Thomas Reid he greets her with “Sancta Maria”, a Catholic salutation (9). It is possible that as a man who had been dead for 30 years, Thomas Reid was Catholic because it makes sense historically (10). It could also reveal a connection between remnants of Catholic belief and folklore concerning ghosts and fairies – as Thomas Reid lived in Elfland with the fairies after his death.

James VI was a seminal and incredibly influential figure in the Scottish witch trials. His role in the North Berwick witch trials and the publication of his book, Daemonologie, in 1597 is credited with encouraging the assimilation of continental witchcraft beliefs into Scotland and the demonization of fairy belief (11). James VI believed that witches used folktales and fairy narratives to distance themselves from their crimes and thus avoid punishment (12). In Daemonologie, James VI’s Devil is drawn in the likeness of a fallen angel, who would transform into a goat or a man at witches' Sabbats, while he believed that ghosts, fairies, and other spirits were merely demons in disguise. This is contrasted with the folk and peasantry, who appeared to view these as distinct entities (13). So, when these witches told their stories of encounters with fairies to the courts, their prosecutors told them that they had in fact been meeting with demons. Elspeth Reoch from Orkney, who was executed in 1616, described her encounter with a man calling himself a fairy and a dead relative of hers named John Stewart. Though she described her encounter with a fairy as just that, in the dittay of her trial it reads ‘she confest the devell quhilk she callis the farie man lay with her’ (14). Though Elspeth herself believed her meetings to have been with a fairy, the courts asserted that it was the Devil instead. Additionally, Bessie Dunlop’s story has all the markers of a folktale narrative. She encountered Thomas Reid when she was overcome with worry over her sick child and husband and was crying aloud. This, as Lizanne Henderson points out, has pointed similarities with folk narratives like ‘Whoopity Stoorie’ and ‘Ceann Suic’ where a woman is lamenting her misfortune when a supernatural figure appears and does the work for her (15). To the inquisitors on the other hand, their stories had resonances with stories of the Devil in disguise, appearing in times of trouble to lure people into witchcraft (16). While these women believed that the ghosts, fairies, and other spirits they encountered were distinct entities, their prosecutors believed that demons, or the Devil, were in fact masquerading as all these creatures in order to tempt people into sin.

People who died a sudden or violent death were often believed to have been carried off by fairies (17). The phrase ‘to shute to dede’ (e.g. “to die suddenly”) is often thought to mean a sudden illness or even death due to a fairy dart (18). Alaric Hall concludes, through reference to the Dictionary of the Scots Language, that while the phrase most certainly indicates a sudden death there is no direct connection to witchcraft in the etymology (19). This being said, a sudden or seemingly unnatural death could certainly encourage accusations of witchcraft. Some Irish beliefs surrounding realms of the dead, have wandering spirits and the returning dead living with the fairies or alternatively in purgatory (20). Witches entering the fairy world would either go physically, where the physical body was replaced with a fairy one or completely disappeared, or spiritually, where the spirit or soul travelled to fairy land and left the material body in the human world (21). The spiritual descent into the fairy realm, as opposed to bodily, corresponds with ideas connecting fairies and the dead. Alisoun Pearson of Byrehill was visited by her dead uncle who taught her medicine and magic and she claimed to see other dead relatives and friends who now resided in Elfland (22). Elspeth Reoch’s ghost, the spirit of a dead relative, was described by MacCulloch as neither living nor dead and ‘doomed forever to go betwixt the heaven and the earth’ i.e. with the fairies. This man is also believed to have been murdered, ‘…slain be Mc Ky at the doun going of the soone’ (23). Murder could definitely be construed as an unnatural and sudden death, leading to John Stewart’s residing with the fairies, stuck in limbo instead of moving on to an afterlife.

The period surrounding pregnancy and childbirth was considered dangerous in Scottish tradition, both from a medical and spiritual point of view (24). The act of carrying a child and giving birth was seen as a liminal time in a woman’s life – giving birth and creating ‘life’ putting her dangerously close to the threshold between realms - leaving her and the child vulnerable to supernatural attack or suggestion. The belief that pixies were the embodied souls of children who had died unbaptised existed in the nineteenth century and can be assumed to have roots in some comparable earlier belief (25). Jonet Boyman, a witch from Edinburgh who was executed in 1572, foretold the death of a baby and attributed it to the mother not blessing the child before leaving the house. As a result, the infant was ‘tane away’ by the fairies through ‘ane blast of evill wind’ (26). Jonet saw this happen at least twenty times in her career as a witch (27). Though, as suggested by Henderson, there could be implications of changeling folklore in stories like these, the unnatural and sudden death of the infants, who then go on to live in the fairy realm – possibly as spirits, or possibly as fairies themselves – corresponds with other beliefs of the fairy land as a place for the dead. This further attests the connection between ghosts and fairies in the folk imagination.

In addition to liminal times such as childbirth, both ghosts and fairies can be found in liminal spaces; in what could be construed as the same spaces. In Campbell’s ‘Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland’ he says that the fairies are said to live in ‘round, green, eminences’ known as Síthein (28). Tolman, he says, is the Gaelic name for a ‘small green knoll, or hummock, of earth’, cnoc, knock is a knowe, and dún is a ‘rocky mound or heap’, while he states that while hills and rocks could be inhabited by elves, caves most certainly could not (29). In Early Modern texts, trows - the Orkney and Shetland cross between a troll and a fairy - are described variously as sociable creatures residing in hills, spirits risen from a graveyard or cemetery, or demons associated with Satan, a range which I believe illustrates the connection quite nicely (30). Donald McIlmichall of Inveraray in 1677, mentioned in his witchcraft trial that he had seen fairies inside a hill and as such was charged with ‘consulting with evill spirits’, though he was originally only accused of stealing horses and cattle (31). Thomas Reid, Bessie Dunlop’s ghost, was seen to enter a narrow hole in a dyke ‘that no earthly man could have gone through’, at which point Bessie realised he was not human. All of these dwellings bear striking resemblance to Neolithic cairns or burial mounds, which would then make the residences of the ancient dead and the land of the fairies the same essential place.

Though I have not attempted to trace the origins of the connection between ghost and fairy belief here, I hope I have shed some light on some of its development and the inclusion of witchcraft. The reformation and demonization of Catholic belief definitely impacted how these narratives were treated in the trials. Both fairies and ghosts are claimed to be demons in disguise, intent on seducing the unwitting into witchcraft. While sudden or unbaptised death could leave souls being taken to the fairy realm instead of ending up in either heaven or hell, making the residences of fairies and dead souls the same place – an argument fuelled by the descriptions of the dwellings of the fairies resembling Neolithic cairns. The liminality of these spaces in the landscape and in the times during which these creatures appear is consistent with traditional belief and folklore.

I find these transitional times of belief fascinating and I hope to do some further research into this topic. In the future I intend to examine the connections between fairy residences and Neolithic cairns and burial mounds further and in more depth. Additionally, I would like to explore the differences between peasant and aristocratic belief and education – connecting this with necromancy and the traditional role of a witch or a seer.

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Endnotes

1. MacCulloch, ‘The Mingling of Fairy and Witch Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland’, Folklore, 1921, 32(4), 236.

2. Silver, ‘On the Origin of Fairies: Victorians, Romantics, and Folk Belief’, Victorian Literature and Culture, 14 (1986), 149.

3. Goodare, ‘The Scottish Witchcraft Act’, Church History, 74.1 (2005), 40.

4. Ibid, 39.

5. Ibid, 46.

6. Henderson, ‘“Detestable Slaves of the Devil”: Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland’, in A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600 Vol. 1. Series: A History of Everyday Life in Scotland., ed. by E. J. Cowan and L. Henderson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 11.

7. Goodare, ‘The Scottish Witchcraft Act’, 49.

8. Ibid.

9. Henderson, ‘Witch, Fairy and Folktale Narratives in the Trial of Bessie Dunlop’, in Fantastical Imaginations: The Supernatural in Scottish History and Culture, ed. by Lizanne Henderson (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2009), 19.

10. Ibid, 13.

11. Ibid, 6.

12. Ibid.

13. Henderson, ‘”Detestable Slaves of the Devil”: Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland’, 9.

14. Wilby, ‘The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland’, Folklore, 111.2 (2000), 284.

15. Henderson, ‘Witch, Fairy and Folktale Narratives in the Trial of Bessie Dunlop’, 21.

16. Ibid.

17. Macculloch, ‘The Mingling of Fairy and Witch Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Scotland’, Folklore, 32.4 (1921), 235.

18. Hall, ‘Getting Shot of Elves: Healing, Witchcraft and Fairies in the Scottish Witchcraft Trials’, Folklore, 116 (2005), 21.

19. Ibid, 22.

20. Tait, Death, Burial and Commemoration in Ireland, 1550-1650. (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) 155.

21. Wilby, ‘The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland’, 291.

22. Henderson, ‘”Detestable Slaves of the Devil”: Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland’, 7.

23. Wilby, ‘The Witch’s Familiar and the Fairy in Early Modern England and Scotland’, 284.

24. Henderson, ‘Witch, Fairy and Folktale Narratives in the Trial of Bessie Dunlop’, 19.

25. Silver, ‘On the Origin of Fairies: Victorians, Romantics, and Folk Belief’, 144.

26. Henderson, ‘”Detestable Slaves of the Devil”: Changing Ideas about Witchcraft in Sixteenth Century Scotland’, 27.

27. Ibid.

28. Campbell, The Origin of the Fairy Creed, The Scottish Historical Review, 1910, vii, 11.

29. Ibid, 12.

30. Grydehøj, ‘Ethnicity and the Origins of Local Identity in Shetland, UK-Part I: Picts, Vikings, Fairies, Finns, and Aryans’, Journal of Marine and Island Cultures, 2 (2013), 44.

31. Henderson, ‘Witch-Hunting and Witch Belief in the Gàidhealtachd’, in Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland, ed. by J. Goodare, L. Martin, and J. Miller (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 12.