John Christie’s Witchcraft in Kenmore prints extracts from the kirk session records of this Perthshire parish on Loch Tay, covering 1730–1757. The opening case gives the reader a useful surprise. Elspeth NcIlgorrive comes before the local church court because a tailor and his wife have called her a witch, and she wants something done about it. The session hears both parties and sends them away with a mutual rebuke. Here the supposed witch is the complainant, asking the court to clear her name.
The longest case, from 1747, turns on an eggshell. A woman entering a neighbor’s house at dawn is met with the challenge, “are you come my lass with the egg shell in the Devil’s name”. She is welcome in God’s name, her neighbor adds, but not in the Devil’s. Watched as she opens her breast, she draws out an eggshell filled with milk, a charm to recover the “substance” of milk believed to have been taken from cattle. One woman caught up in the affair supplies the apt comment: “Alas! it is not in the best name that people go with that.” The session orders a public admonition before the congregation.
Elsewhere a bottle of water, stopped with a stone, is left at a cairn in connection with lost cattle, and a servant’s suspicious early-morning movements become a matter for the clerk. The cases preserve magical belief at the level of household anxieties and quarrels between neighbors. Much of their interest lies in the detail of the exchanges, still sharp enough to hear across the intervening centuries. Several witnesses, the clerk notes, could not write their names.
Christie, a local antiquary, published the extracts at Aberfeldy in 1893. This nineteen-page pamphlet retains its plain printed wrappers, wire-stitched as issued. The text is available digitally, but the original seldom appears in commerce. It is an approachable way into the local life of Scottish witch belief, with a partly legible Edinburgh college library stamp and withdrawal stamp recording this copy’s later history.
CHRISTIE, John (compiler). Witchcraft in Kenmore, 1730-57: Extracts from the Kirk Session Records of the Parish. Aberfeldy: Published by Duncan Cameron & Son, 1893. First edition. Physical Description: Octavo (180 x 125 mm). 19, [1] pp. A single gathering, wire-stitched as issued. Small wood-engraved tail-piece (a fruiting sprig) at the foot of the final page; the closing case ends with the editorial line, [No further reference to this case is found in the Kirk Session Records.]
Binding: Original printed paper wrappers, the upper wrapper repeating the title within a double-rule frame.
Condition: Wrappers toned and lightly dust-soiled, with creasing and small chips and short tears at the corners (a short tear with slight loss to the lower outer corner of the upper wrapper). Staples oxidized, with light rust-staining at the inner margin of the central opening. Text clean and fresh throughout.
Provenance: Penciled shelfmark and note to the upper wrapper (“Y.e.8 … Duplicate”). Title page with a circular Edinburgh college library stamp, its wording only partly legible (“… COLLEGE LIBRARY … EDINBURGH”), canceled with a “WITHDRAWN” handstamp. No other marks.
John Christie’s Witchcraft in Kenmore prints extracts from the kirk session records of this Perthshire parish on Loch Tay, covering 1730–1757. The opening case gives the reader a useful surprise. Elspeth NcIlgorrive comes before the local church court because a tailor and his wife have called her a witch, and she wants something done about it. The session hears both parties and sends them away with a mutual rebuke. Here the supposed witch is the complainant, asking the court to clear her name.
The longest case, from 1747, turns on an eggshell. A woman entering a neighbor’s house at dawn is met with the challenge, “are you come my lass with the egg shell in the Devil’s name”. She is welcome in God’s name, her neighbor adds, but not in the Devil’s. Watched as she opens her breast, she draws out an eggshell filled with milk, a charm to recover the “substance” of milk believed to have been taken from cattle. One woman caught up in the affair supplies the apt comment: “Alas! it is not in the best name that people go with that.” The session orders a public admonition before the congregation.
Elsewhere a bottle of water, stopped with a stone, is left at a cairn in connection with lost cattle, and a servant’s suspicious early-morning movements become a matter for the clerk. The cases preserve magical belief at the level of household anxieties and quarrels between neighbors. Much of their interest lies in the detail of the exchanges, still sharp enough to hear across the intervening centuries. Several witnesses, the clerk notes, could not write their names.
Christie, a local antiquary, published the extracts at Aberfeldy in 1893. This nineteen-page pamphlet retains its plain printed wrappers, wire-stitched as issued. The text is available digitally, but the original seldom appears in commerce. It is an approachable way into the local life of Scottish witch belief, with a partly legible Edinburgh college library stamp and withdrawal stamp recording this copy’s later history.
CHRISTIE, John (compiler). Witchcraft in Kenmore, 1730-57: Extracts from the Kirk Session Records of the Parish. Aberfeldy: Published by Duncan Cameron & Son, 1893. First edition. Physical Description: Octavo (180 x 125 mm). 19, [1] pp. A single gathering, wire-stitched as issued. Small wood-engraved tail-piece (a fruiting sprig) at the foot of the final page; the closing case ends with the editorial line, [No further reference to this case is found in the Kirk Session Records.]
Binding: Original printed paper wrappers, the upper wrapper repeating the title within a double-rule frame.
Condition: Wrappers toned and lightly dust-soiled, with creasing and small chips and short tears at the corners (a short tear with slight loss to the lower outer corner of the upper wrapper). Staples oxidized, with light rust-staining at the inner margin of the central opening. Text clean and fresh throughout.
Provenance: Penciled shelfmark and note to the upper wrapper (“Y.e.8 … Duplicate”). Title page with a circular Edinburgh college library stamp, its wording only partly legible (“… COLLEGE LIBRARY … EDINBURGH”), canceled with a “WITHDRAWN” handstamp. No other marks.
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