This paper considers some of the ways in which an examination of the woodblock illustrations of Newes from Scotland, the printed text, and the surviving historical documents may be combined to throw new light on the publication history of the celebrated pamphlet. It was presented at the 1995 international conference of SHARP (the Society for Authorship, Reading and Publishing) held at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In this internet version, endnote references are in square brackets [thus].
More Newes from Scotland – the woodblock illustrations of a witchcraft pamphlet
Edward H. Thompson, University of Dundee
1. Introduction
a. The Text
Newes from Scotland. Declaring the damnable Life of Doctor Fian a notable Sorcerer, who was burned at Edenbrough in Ianuarie last. 1591. ... Published according to the Scottish copie. Printed for William Wright.
This is the earliest known tract on Scottish witchcraft. Few copies have survived of the first edition: John Ferguson knew of only four, two of which were in his own collection (now in Glasgow University Library); there is another in the library of Lambeth Palace. Two other undated editions appeared probably in the same year. Roxburgh Club editions (ed. H. Freeling) were brought out from 1816, it was printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine xlix (albeit with the Thomas Nelson listed as the publisher, rather than William Wright), and it was included in Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials. (Pitcairn pp.213-223). Today it is often treated as a footnote to King James’ 1597 Dæmonologie.
The pamphlet is really two separate but linked documents: there is an account of the treasonable activities of the witches of North Berwick, and embedded in this the history of one of their number, the schoolmaster John Fian. There are some curious and puzzling features in the pamphlet, but before looking at them it may be convenient to sketch in a little of the background.
b. The Historical Context
James VI of Scotland married princess Anne of Denmark by proxy in 1589. She sailed for Scotland, but her fleet was driven back by storms which the Danish admiral Peter Munk blamed on witches in Copenhagen.[1] James then went to Denmark to join his bride, where he spent the winter and may have absorbed Continental views on witchcraft; on his return to Scotland in 1590 he again encountered storms at sea, and dense fog off the Scottish coast on 1st May. By 23 July 1590 Robert Bowes, the English Ambassador in Edinburgh, was reporting to Lord Burghley: "It is advertised from Denmark, that the admirall there hathe caused five or six witches to be taken in Coupnahaven, upon suspicion that by their witche craft they had staied the Queen of Scottes voiage into Scotland, and sought to have staied likewise the King’s retorne." (Cal.Scot. p.454) In what may have been initially an act of Scoto-Danish solidarity, the storms were subsequently also blamed on a group of Scottish witches.[2]
By November 28 Bowes was reporting: "The King and Counsaill is occupied with the examinaciouns of sundry witches taken in this contrye, and confessing both great nombers and the names of their fellowes; and also strange and odiouse factes done by them; which upon the full trialls of their causes are intended to be hereafter published. And some of good qualities are like to be blotted by the dealings of the wickett sorte." (Cal.Scot. p.501)
Three things stand out here: (1) King James himself took over some of the interrogation of these people – he enjoyed the opportunity to display his forensic skill, and was naturally interested in their attempts to kill him by raising storms and fog at sea, by working on wax images to make him waste away, and by manufacturing poisons; (2) the intention to publish an account of the affair was very probably the origin of the pamphlet Newes from Scotland. And (3) the trial was acquiring a political dimension with ramifications leading towards ‘some of good qualities’, hinting at the complicity of some within the nobility.
The witch-hunt of 1590-91 really falls into two major parts, which can perhaps be used to date the composition of Newes from Scotland more exactly. Through the winter the accused were principally country people of modest social standing: Agnes Sampson, ‘the great witch’ a part-time midwife and village healer; Geillis Duncan, a servant; Robert Grierson, a boatman; John Fian or Cunningham, a schoolmaster.[3] During the spring the accusations shifted from Lothian towards Edinburgh and up the social ladder: the leading accused were Barbara Napier (wife of an Edinburgh burgess), Euphemia McCalzane (daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, a senator of the court of justice),[4] and Ritchie Graham, who was a fashionable sorcerer on the fringes of the court.
The finger of suspicion wavered at first, searching for a suitable backer for the plot on the king’s life. It started with Satan, of course, then came down to earth on 7 December 1590 when Bowes reported: The King by his owne especiall travell has drawn Sampson, the great witch, to confess her wicked doings, and to discover sundry things touching his own life, and how the witches sought to have his shirt or other linen for the execution of their charmes. In this Lord Claud and other noblemen are evill spoken of. The witches known number over thirty, and many others accused." (Cal.Scot. p.505)
On 23 February 1590/1 the suggestion was that the man behind the witches was the English ambassador himself ‘being a litle black and fatt man with black haire … had bene with them in a celler and given them gold to hange up and charme a tode for the hurte of the King in his life, and to hinder the issue to come of his bodie." and once again Bowes reports that ‘The King will have their examinations printed soon after they are ended…’. (Cal.Scot. p.526)
By April 1591, if not before, the witch-hunt had been hijacked by Chancellor Maitland [5] who sought to link the king’s cousin, Francis, Earl of Bothwell, through his servant Ninian Chirnside to the sorcerer Ritchie Graham, and thus to the witches who had sought to raise storms, work on images and prepare poisons against the king. Two months later, however, after the trials of Napier and McCalzane, the king had to accept that he could not hope to get a conviction against Bothwell, and was content to have him go into exile[6]. The king continued in public to inveigh against Bothwell, haranguing Parliament on 29 May 1592 that Bothwell ‘sought his destructioun, first by witchecraft, bothe when he was in Denmarke, and when he was at home, as the depositiouns of the witches would testify, that he might succeed to the crowne…’ (Calderwood p.160)
c. The Wider Context
To put the pamphlet into another kind of context, its title seems to have been modelled on another pamphlet published in London in 1590: A true discourse. Declaring the Damnable Life and death of one Stubbe Peter, a most wicked Sorcerer, who in the likeness of a wolfe, committed many murders… And it was contemporaneous with, for example, the German single-page woodcut describing the shocking news of 300 women at who turned themselves into wolves, and were duly put down by the authorities after a career of murder and mayhem. The importance of such comparisons is that they suggest that these publications had an established readership and could be used to convey a moral, or make a political statement. The Jülich sheet, for example, was published as a ‘Warnung und Exempel’ to all pious maidens and married women.
It may also be seen as part of the debate about King James’ position as heir to the crown of Queen Elizabeth. If so, it may be speculated that it should be set alongside sheets such as the Life of Sawney Bean, the Scottish cannibal - a mythical figure who was also supposed to have come from Lothian and (in some versions of the text) was brought to justice by King James VI.
d. The author and date
According to Sir James Melville, the Rev. James Carmichael (1568-1628), minister of Haddington, was the author of some kind of account of the North Berwick events.[7] This may have formed the basis of Newes from Scotland, but can hardly be the pamphlet itself, which we argue below was clearly written in England and for an English readership. If we were to estimate the date of composition of the original (‘Carmichael’) text, it would of course be after the execution of Agnes Sampson, John Fian and eight others at the end of January 1590-91.
At this time there were supposedly ‘moe than fourtie apprehendit and under triall and examinatioun’ (Cal.Scot.p.526) and the king was pressing for other suspects to be returned from England; the text of Newes from Scotland agrees that there are more suspects waiting to be tried, but knows nothing of the supposed implication of Bothwell. Satan was behind the plot, not some disaffected member of the nobility.
If we can take Ritchie Graham, Barbara Napier and Euphemia McCalzane as markers, we might consider May 1591 to be the terminus ad quem for the composition of the text, when the importance of Ritchie Graham had not yet emerged. He is mentioned briefly in Agnes Sampson’s dittay ‘Rychard Grahame wes ane vthir of the principallis, quha had wrocht mekle mischeif’ (Pitcairn p.235), but he does not appear at all in Newes from Scotland. Similarly the role of Barbara Napier and Euphemia McCalzane was still simply that of customers of Agnes Sampson (Pitcairn pp.237, 240-1).
After May 1591, when Napier and McCalzane had been tried, and Napier’s jury in turn had been accused by King James of wilful error in their verdict, their names were added to the list of those present at the Halloween sabbat at North Berwick kirk (Pitcairn p.246); Barbara Napier and Euphemia McCalzane were now promoted to be leading members of the group of witches. The text of Newes from Scotland seems to have been altered by the belated interpolation of a paragraph which introduces the two Edinburgh ladies, but does not develop their importance in any way.
2. The Illustrations
There are two woodcut pages in the
Wright edition of 1591. They make it plain that the text of Newes from
Scotland was altered or edited while being prepared for printing.
(fig. 1)
Following the convention of broadsheet illustrations the images are to be read in sequence to provide an outline of the life of Dr John Fian. This ended at the gallows, so the sequence begins with the adjacent illustration which shows Fian casting a spell by making a circle on the ground, and a cow or heifer gazing on with its tongue hanging out. (This section of the block was used, or re-used, well into the next century. It appears, for example, on the sheet for ‘The Jovial Lass, or, Doll and Roger’ and again as an equally incongruous illustration to the ballad ‘Seldom Cleanly’, printed by John Wright Jnr in the late 17th century.) In the present context it relates to an episode which is in the text of Newes from Scotland, but has no parallel in any of the surviving trial dittays (roughly, indictments). It is the story of Fian’s attempt to seduce a woman by having her young brother, who shared her bed, ‘obtaine for him three hairs of his sisters privities’. The boy was clumsy, the girl awoke and complained to her mother who was also a witch and suspected what was afoot. Hairs from the udder of a young cow were then palmed off on Fian, who duly cast his spell, and was subsequently followed into church and around the district by a love-sick heifer. Thereafter people began to suspect that the young schoolmaster was in league with the devil.
It is a good story, and evidently it has been drawn (as Scott noted in Demonology and Witchcraft p.251) from a similar story involving a Boeotian boy and amorous wineskins in Apuleius’ Golden Ass. It adds to the pornographic flavour of the pamphlet, compounded of torture, sex, marvels and moralising - in this respect it is clearly in the general tradition of the Malleus Maleficarum. It adds nothing to the history of the North Berwick witches, but it does serve to define Fian as a lecherous man. This was in fact his reputation, it appears. Fian's trial begins (item 3 of the dittay) with the charge that he was guilty ‘according to his awin confessioune, for the abusing of his bodie with Margaret Spens’ a widow whom he subsequently jilted (Pitcairn p.210); and it ends with his execution, when ‘he confessed onlie he had abused the people … and had committed adulterie with two and thrittie weomen, but denied witchecraft’ (Calderwood p.116)[8] The figure drawing circles on the ground with his staff matches the standard image of a renaissance magus - Faust, say, or Dr Dee - but it may be noticed that since the staff is being used by Doctor Fian in this way he appears to be left-handed. We shall return to this point.
The next image depicts two people on horseback, Dr Fian being on the pillion. It seems to have been a common form of transport, and this is how Agnes Sampson went to the North Berwick sabbat. (Pitcairn p.239) The horse, however, is rigged out with torches and this is uncommon. It relates to an episode which is not in the text of the pamphlet, and indeed must have been completely incomprehensible to anyone who did not have access to the trial documents in the High Court in Edinburgh. Item 11 in the dittay of John Fian runs that when he was coming from Patrik Vmphrais son’s house … at night and passing to Tranent on horseback ‘and ane man with him; be his devilisch craft, raisit vp foure candillis vpoune the horsis two luggis, and ane vthir candill vpoune the staff quhilk the man had in his hand; and gaif sic light, as gif itt had bene day lycht; lyke as, the saidis candillis returnit with the said man, quhill his hamecuming; and causit him to fall deid, at his entre within the hous.’ (Pitcairn p.212) This is not the common case of a publisher making use of an old wood block which more or less fits the text; this is a woodcut designed specifically to illustrate a passage which is in the trial documents but not in the pamphlet. It may be concluded that there was an account of the illuminated horse in an earlier version of the text, but it was removed to make room for something else after the block had been cut.
The church to which the horseback pair seem to be riding is presumably meant to be North Berwick kirk, where the witches had their ‘congregation’ or sabbat. It has a somewhat alien appearance, like the kind of church shown on maps of Austria, Hungary, Carinthia and the like, where the Christian towns are identified by the plethora of crosses on their spires, and the Turkish ones by crescents. This might suggest that the artist was trying to represent something unfamiliar to the English reader, a Scottish kirk.
A similar point might be made about the gallows
illustration, which clearly conveys the idea that the law caught up with John
Fian, but is out of place in that the Scots did not normally hang their
convicted witches: that was the English penalty, and reminds us that the
pamphlet was produced in England. The standard mode of execution in Scotland
was that the witch be wirriet (strangled or garrotted) at the stake,
then the corpse burned to ashes, and the authors of Newes from Scotland
are careful to explain that this is indeed normal, as when Fian was sentenced ‘to
die, and then be burned according to the lawe of that land …beeing first
strangled, hee was immediately put into a great fire'.[9]
(fig.2)
The artist may have had little idea of how to depict an unfamiliar mode of execution, or may have felt it was too elaborate to be incorporated in the print - it can be seen in a German print of the execution of a sorcerer in Munich in 1666 (fig.2 above), whose sentence was to have his right hand struck off then to be ertrosselt und zu Aschen verbrannt (strangled and burnt to ashes) - the hand is about to be removed with a kind of chisel and mallet, and the executioner appears to have his garotte round the sorcerer's throat. To return to the case of Dr Fian, it may be noted that the noose and most of the rope is missing from the gallows, rather as though it had been removed in order to fit the gallows into the woodblock. That is, this has something of the appearance of a jigsaw print in which a number of separate wood blocks are fastened together to produce a single print. This would perhaps explain why the gallows is tilted in its entirety out of line with the church and margins, as is the cross on top of the steeple.
Let us turn now to the other illustration (fig.3 above), which comes earlier
in the pamphlet and depicts the activities of the North Berwick witches. It is
dominated by the curious rounded structure in the foreground. This has been
the subject of some imaginative but absurd interpretations, from the interior of a fairy
hill to an image of the womb. The editors of Scottish Studies, however,
were surely correct to see it as a reference to the introduction to the
pamphlet which sets out and then discounts the ‘incredible’ tale of a poor
pedlar who ‘was in a moment convayed at midnight from Scotland to
Burdeaux … into a merchantes sellar there’ and so led to the discovery
of the Lothian witches. Their suggestion is that Wright may have been in the
process of pirating the earlier ‘written’ account … when fresh
‘news from Scotland’ led him to abandon his original text.(Scottish
Studies 14)
It is of course a simply wine cellar, depicted as a
cutaway view of the basement of a building with an arched ceiling. Similar
structures are common in illustrations of crypts in cemeteries, and it is not
unlike illustration 16 in the Narrenschiff which depicts fools feasting
and drinking in a cellar.[10] The ink and wash sketch of witches in a vaulted
cellar by Jacques de Gheyn II (fig.4 below) is clearly similar.
If the wine barrels and the man lying down inside the cellar can be explained in this way, so too can the figure lying on the ground in the centre-right of the print - evidently the same man. If we are to read the images sequentially, the history begins with the pedlar falling asleep beside his pack and staff in one part of the print, and then wakening in a wine cellar in the next. The three women standing at a table to the rear of the cellar, however, appear to be an afterthought. To judge by the way they overlap both the cellar and the figure of the pedlar, they have been added by cutting into an existing block, presumably because the original discovery of the witches was now to be discounted. The story which Newes from Scotland uses to replace the ‘incredible’ history of the pedlar is that David Seton ‘deputie bailiffe’ of Tranent became suspicious of a servant girl, Geillis Duncan, and tortured her into revealing the witches’ plot. In February 1590/1, King James kept pressing Bowes to have witches who had fled into England returned, and ‘would send David Seaton of Tranent, gentleman – who knows them – to search them out. He has agreed to give Seaton letters’ (Cal.Scot. p.520; 522,526;527,542) This line of inquiry petered out, however, and the witchfinder from Tranent plays no part in Newes from Scotland after the introductory revelation of the plot.
The next image would then be the one on the left and centre of the print where the devil is preaching from a very odd pulpit to a group of women, while John Fian, who appears to be left-handed, sits at a table acting as the Devil’s registrar: ‘he was clarke to all those that were in subjection to the Divels service, bearing the name of witches; that alway hee did take their oathes for their true service to the Divell; and that he wrote for them such matters as the Divell still pleased to commaund him’. Thus far the image matches the text. There is a discrepancy, however, in the appearance of the devil. In Newes from Scotland he appears simply ‘in the habit or likenesse of a man’, and this is how he is described in the earlier trial dittays, where he is ‘in the forme of ane blak mann within the pulpett’ (Pitcairn p.211, 239-240, 245). In the assize of error of 7 June 1591, however, Satan appears in full fig as ‘ane mekill blak man, with ane blak baird stikand out lyke ane gettis baird; and ane hie ribbit neise, falland down scharp lyke the beik of ane halk; with ane lang rumpill; cled in ane blak tatie goune; and ane ewill favorit scull bonnett on his heid’ (Pitcairn p.246)[11] This is surely what the print is trying to depict, and again it suggests an adjustment which has been incompletely carried through.
The pulpit-cum-tree stump is puzzling, and has no justification in the text or in the trial dittays. The likelihood is that it is also the result of haste or economy, recycling a block showing tree-stump which has been imported into the jigsaw separately from the image of the devil.
Above this comes the image of a shipwreck in stormy seas, the purpose of the witches’ activity. The editors of Scottish Studies correctly point out that the witches were unsuccessful and the King's ship was not wrecked, and suggest that this represents the Leith ferry boat bearing Lady Mary Melville with jewels for the Queen which sank after being rammed by a ship in the storm in September 1589. This is certainly possible, but a simpler explanation is that it is a generalised depiction of a storm at sea, which is exactly what was attributed to the witches.
On the top right of the print a group of witches is depicted stirring a very substantial cauldron; they are perhaps indeed the same women as have been introduced into the cellar. If we are to complete the sequence of images, this might suggest the production of poisons after the king had survived the storms at sea. ‘this Agnis Tompson (sic)… by the Divels perswasion, should have intended and put in execution the Kinges Majesties death, in this manner. She confessed that shee tooke a blacke toade, and did hang the same up by the heeles three daies, and collected and gathered the venom as it dropped and fell from it in an oister shell ...’
There is, however, no mention of a cauldron in the pamphlet, nor in any of the trial dittays. The editors of Scottish Studies noted that the cauldron ‘is no doubt a stock idea about witches.’ As I have argued elsewhere, the cauldron was not associated with witches at this time in England or Scotland (Thompson, 1994).[12] The cauldron was a central feature of witchcraft beliefs in Scandinavia,[13] and it is common in the Continental tradition of the grand congregation or sabbat of witches. It is only with the Lothian witch trials that the idea of a such mass assembly of witches was introduced into Scotland: the pamphlet describes how Agnes Sampson confessed that ‘upon the night of Allhollow Even last, shee was accompanied, as well with the persons aforesaid, as also with a great number of other witches, to the number of two hundreth … to the Kirke of North Barrick in Lowthian’. Most probably, however, what this image represents is local colour, conflating Continental and Scottish witchcraft traditions in another attempt to suggest the exotic nature of the events in Scotland.[14]
The woman with the ladle appears to be left-handed, like Dr Fian. Sinister as this may appear to be, I doubt that we are intended to identify these people as followers of the left-hand path. That is largely a product of 19th century occultism, and has no place in late 16th century thinking on witchcraft in Scotland. It is much more probable that this is the result of haste or inexperience, in which someone drew directly on the wood block the images they wished to have cut; they should of course have been reversed.
Finally it may be noted that there is an absence of the familiars which might normally be expected in an English witchcraft print. Familiars were used in English iconography to identify the witch, but they are not common in 16th century Scottish witchcraft dittays. Curiously enough, however, ‘Newes’ is the name of a familiar in the famous Matthew Hopkins print!
3 Conclusion
If we can take the introduction to Newes from Scotland literally (‘sundrie written coppies are lately dispersed’), there was a manuscript account of the North Berwick episode in circulation in 1591; this would seem to be possible, given the then popularity of scribal publication.[15] Whether or not that was the text attributed to the Rev. James Carmichael, minister of Haddington, we do not know; nor do we know whether it was the ‘Scottish copie’ on which Wright’s London publication was based. Given the limited time between the execution of Fian and the publication of Newes from Scotland, however, we should perhaps reduce the number of conjectural texts to a minimum. The fact that ‘Sampson’ (a common Lowland Scottish name) is turned into ‘Tompson’ (a spelling commoner in England than Scotland, where ‘Thomson’ is general) in Newes from Scotland suggests that the composer of the London pamphlet misread a Scottish manuscript account.[16]
References
– Historie of King James Sext of Scotland (1825 ed. Bannatyne Club)
– Newes from Scotland, Declaring the damnable life of Doctor Fian (1592) William Wright, London
Akrigg, G.V.P. (ed.) Letters of King James VI & I (1984) University of California Press
Anglo, S. (ed.) The Damned Art (1977) Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
Bain, Joseph Calendar of Letters and Papers relating to the affairs of the Borders of England and Scotland (1894) General Register House, Edinburgh
Black, G.F. Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland 1510-1727 (1938) New York
Boyd, W and Meikle, H (eds) Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland vol.10 1589-1593 (1936) General Register House, Edinburgh
Calderwood, David Historie of the Kirk of Scotland v.5 (1844) ed.Thomson Woodrow Society, Edinburgh
Cameron, Annie I (ed) The Warrender Papers vol.2 (1932) Scottish History Society, Edinburgh
Clark, Stuart ‘King James's Daemonologie: Witchcraft and Kingship’ in Anglo
Davies, R. Trevor Four Centuries of Witch-Beliefs, with special reference to the Great Rebellion (1947) Methuen
Guazzo, Francesco Compendium maleficarum (16??,1929)
Hanham, Alison ‘The Scottish Hecate: a Wild Witch Chase’ Scottish Studies 13 (1969)
James VI Dæmonologie, in Forme ane Dialogue (1597) Edinburgh
Larner, Christina ‘James VI and I and Witchcraft’ in Smith, Alan G.R.
Larner, Christina C.H.Lee & H.McLachlan Source Book of Scottish Witchcraft (1977) University of Glasgow
Larner, Christina Enemies of God, the Witch-hunt in Scotland (1981) Chatto & Windus, London
Magnus, Olaus Gentium Septentrionalium Historiae Breviarium (1663) Amsterdam: Ioan. Ravensteyn
Masson, David (ed) Register of the Privy Council of Scotland vol.4 1585-1592 (1881) General Register House, Edinburgh.
Melvil, Sir James Memoirs (1929) ed A. Francis Steuart, London
Moysie, David Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland (1830ed.) Bannatyne Club Edinburgh.
Pitcairn, Robert Criminal Trials in Scotland 1488-1624 (1833) Maitland Club, Edinburgh
Scot, Reginald Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) (1930) facsimile ed. Montague Summers, London
Scott, Sir Walter Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft (ed. Morley 1884) George Routledge, London,
Scottish Studies ‘Notes on Collections and Research: the Lothian Witches of 1591 …’ vol.14 pp.188-191
Sharpe, Charles K. A Historical Account of the Belief in Witchcraft in Scotland (London 1819, 1884)
Smith, Alan G.R.(ed.) The Reign of King James VI and I (1973) Macmillan, London
Spottiswoode, John History of the Church of Scotland vol.2 (1851) Spottiswoode Society, Edinburgh
Sprenger, J and Kramer, H Malleus Maleficarum (1948) trans. Summers
Stafford, Helen ‘Notes on Scottish Witchcraft’ in Norton Downs Essays in Honour of Conyers Read (1953) Chicago
Thompson, E.H. ‘Macbeth, King James & the Witches’ Studii de Limbi si Literaturi Moderne (1994) Timisoara University Press pp.127-141
Tytler, Patrick Fraser History of Scotland vol.vii (1845) Wm Tait, Edinburgh
West, Robert H. Reginald Scot and Renaissance Writings on Witchcraft (1984) Twayne, Boston
Williamson, Arthur H. Scottish National Consciousness in the Age of James VI (1979) John Donald, Edinburgh
Endnotes
[1]. The storm which impeded Anne's voyage was also
felt severely in Scotland, and a passage-boat between Burntisland and Leith
was lost ‘… the vehement storm drave a ship upon the said boat,
and drownit the gentlewoman [Lady Melville] and all the persons except twa’.
(Melville) This appears to be the boat lost between Kinghorn and Leith
which was attributed in the trial of Agnes Sampson (and the Napier jury) to
the activity of the North Berwick witches and their allies at Prestonpans.
[2]. The witches were also accused of trying to have the king wrecked on the
coast of England by raising a dense fog: John Fian confessed (Dittay item 8)
that ‘ane thing lyke to ane fute-ball, quhilk apperit to the said Johnne
lyk a wisp’ was thrown into the sea. There may be a link here
with Montgomerie’s Flyting: ‘Nicnevin with hir nymphis …
Quhais cunning consistis in casting a clew’. (Montgomerie also has the
sieve, not found in Scot before or Guazzo after) The ritual of the ‘wisp’
or ‘clew’ appeared to be successful since ‘The king and queen, with
sundry of the nobility and blood-royal of Denmark, accompanied with sixty
gentlemen - being seven great ships - convoyed by the grace of God through ane
great mist by the navy of England - arrivit in the firth of Leith’. (Chambers
Jo.Hist.)
[3]. His account is confused and has Napier, McCalzane and Graham among
those arrested in November and December 1590 (Calderwood p.115-116). cf
Spottiswoode p.411. The supposed Bothwell connection appeared later (Calderwood
pp.127-8, 148-153)
[4]. Euphemia McCalzane’s husband was Patrick Moscrop or McCalzane (he
adopted her surname when they married), heir apparent of John Moscrop, an
eminent advocate who appeared for the defence at the trial of Barbara Napier.
Euphemia, herself the heiress of Lord Cliftonhall, was accused by Agnes
Sampson of trying to make away with her husband’s father.
[5]. Bothwell called Maitland ‘the authour of my calamiti and pest of the
name of Stewart’ (Warrender 68). Also Calderwood pp.148-153
[6]. Bothwell was a preloquitour for the defence when William Leslie and
Violat Auchinleck were accused on 19 August 1590 of murder by witchcraft, but
were not brought to trial because an impartial jury could not be found. This
may have inspired his own behaviour towards potential jurors when he
subsequently faced similar charges.
[7]. ‘The tricks and tragedies he [the
Devil] played then among so many men and women in this country will hardly
get credit by posterity; the history whereof, with their whole depositions,
was written by Mr James Carmichael, Minister of Haddington’. (Melville
p.353)
[8]. Bothwell was also accused ‘that he had abused his bodie in adulterie’
by King James. (Calderwood p.161)
[9]. Considering that Agnes Sampson was sentenced ‘to be tane to the
Castell of Edinburgh, and thair bund to ane staik and wirreit, quhill sche wes
deid; and thaireftir hir body to be brunt in assis’ (Pitcairn p.241) it
is remarkable that one of the most thorough and valuable accounts of the
events of 1590-91 states that ‘so far Dr Fian, Agnes Sampson, and at least
eight others had suffered death by fire’ (Stafford p.103) None of the
accused is known to have 'suffered death by fire', not even McCalzane.
[10]. There is also a curved entrance to cellar in Narrenschiff illustration
81 (also attr. Dürer).
[11]. cf ‘his faice was terrible, his noise lyk the bek of ane egle, gret
bournyng eyn; his handis and legis wer herry, with clawes vpon his handis and
feit lyk the griffon’ (Melville p.395) ‘he appeared to them in the
likenesse of a man with a redde cappe, and a rumpe at his taill’ (Calderwood
p.116)
[12]. It was not used on stage by the witches in Jonson's Masque of Queenes,
and may indeed have been originally introduced in Macbeth and in
Middleton’s The Witch from the woodcut in Newes from
Scotland .
[13]. if we can read the ‘pots’ in Olaus
Magnus as ‘cauldrons’ it was even commoner in Scandinavia. ‘Olla
autem omnium maleficarum commune solet esse instrumentum, quo succos, herbas,
vermes, & extra decoquant, atque ea venefica dape ignavos ad vota
alliciunt, & instar bullientis ollae, navium & equitum aut cursorum
excitant celeritatem’. (Moreover a pot is generally the customary
instrument of all the witches, with which they boil down juices, herbs,
serpents and other things, and with that poisoners' feast they entice cowardly
men to worship; and by bubbling an image in the pot they increase the speed of
ships and horses or runners.) (Olaus Bk.III ch.xiv p.96)
[14]. If we want to read something more into it, it might be noted that the
cauldron of victuals was a unit of account in Scotland: for example by a 1592
Act of the Scottish Parliament a senator of College of Justice (such as
Euphemia MacCalzane’s father) had to have property to the value of
"1000 marks or 20 chalders of victual".
[15]. See Harold Love Scribal publication in 17th-century England (1993)
Oxford; Clarendon Press
[16]. Stafford (pp. 103,280) takes it that the ‘Agnes Tompson’ of Newes
from Scotland is a different witch from Agnes Sampson. But where the text
reads ‘Agnis Sampson was taken and brought ... conveyed away to prison
there to receive such torture .... ITEM, the said Agnis Tompson was after
brought againe ...and she confessed...’ it is patently obvious that
these are one and the same person.