Scottish Witches (waverley Scottish Classics)

This book of Scottish ghosts, superstitions and folklore consists of stories that range in time from the seventeenth century to the recent past. This anthology introduces some of Scotland's best ghosts. Drummers, bagpipe poltergeists, hillsides, islands, battle sites, ruined churches, hotels, houses and castles - in Scotland that have escaped an odd atmosphere or a haunted appearance. In this collection of over 140 stories of Scotland's rich and varied folklore, ladies, grey ladies, spectral kings and queens, mischievous ghosts, whispering ghosts, calm washerwomen and phantom dogs among many other assorted ghosts and stories. Scotland's vibrant storytelling tradition is captured here, with tales of sightings, noises, specters past and present. The author reports sightings that have convinced the most skeptical of unbelievers. Whether of over-fertile imaginations, the desire to keep the memory of a colorful character alive, good yarn by the fireside, or whether they are actual sightings is for you to decide. Let warlocks grim, an wither'd hags, Tell, how wi you, on ragweed nags, They skim the muirs an dizzy crags, Wi wicked speed; And in kirkyards renew thier leagues, Owre howkit dead. Robert Burns's famous poem "Address to the Deil" describes the hag-like appearance and demonic presence that for most people epitomizes the image of the witch. But just what is a witch, and who are the figures that scotland has accused of witchcraft? Scottish Witches aims to explain. All over Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries a wave of paranoia and hysteria was taking hold. All the ills of society were blamed on witchcraft, and Scotland did not escape this obsession with the supernatural. This book gives the stories of Scotland's witches, the accused, the confessed, the trials, and the superstisions. This fascinating book will also explain about the beliefs of modern white witches and the place of Wicca in society today. Witches in Scotland received vicious treatment in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and this book helps to explain the background to Scotland's persecution, the infamous trials and the perceptions of witchcraft that contributed to why witches were deemed 'enemies of the state and church'.