Folkloric motifs relating to Isobel Gowdie and Scottish witchcraft.

First presented at the Museum of Witchcraft and magic conference – May 18th -19th 2019

Many of us here will be familiar with the haunting “I sal gow intill a haire …” incantation which once drifted around the museum from the old “wise woman’s” tableaux soundtrack… and indeed in the course of my background researches for this paper I was continually surprised by my familiarity with much of the material in the confessions of Isabel Gowdie. So much of her story seems to have seeped in to both popular culture and Neo-Pagan practice alike. There may however be another reason for this apparent familiarity.
The story as we know it has no prequel or record of what happened following the event, but only a set of four unusually explicit confessions from a woman called Isobel Gowdie, taken apparently without any form of coercion before a group of local dignitaries in the Spring of 1662 in the far north east of Scotland.
In 1833 Robert Pitcairn published them as a kind of legal oddity but it didn’t really emerge again until about a hundred years later when substantial references to the confessions appeared in Dr Margaret Murrays “The God of the Witches”. Here she used them as evidence for her theory that witchcraft was neither fabricated or imagined but was an actual physical survival of a prehistoric fertility cult. This is where I first came across Isobel Gowdie.
To try and navigate a path through these confessions I am following the lead taken by Joyce Froome in her 2010 “Wicked enchantments”, in which she turns to not only contemporary magical beliefs as a means by which to unpick the Pendle witch trials, which took place fifty years prior to the Isabel Gowdie case… but also to contemporary folkloric beliefs.
In examining the folklore of the Isabel Gowdie confessions, the first port of call seems naturally to lead us to the world of ‘fairy’. In the first confession she tells of going to the “Downie hillis” to feast with the king and queen of “fearie”, and it is there that she also encounters the fearsome “elf bullis”. This account appears again in her third confession but without any specific references to fairy.
In the second confession - in the section where she famously states that the witches gather in a coven of thirteen at the end of each quarter (of the year) she lists the covens spirit familiars; one of which was called “Thomas a fearie”. In the second confession she also gives an intriguing account of her encounter with what amounts to a fairy “elf arrow” making factory in which the “divell” makes the said arrows before passing them on to his team of “Elf boyes, who whyttes and dightis them with a sharp thing” before handing them on to the witches. These last two references are again reiterated in her fourth and final confession.
But before we continue, let us examine briefly what we mean by “fairy”. The world of fairy is known by many names and appears in one form or another in the myths, religions and the folklore all over the world. The etymology of the word ‘Fairy’ is uncertain, but it is generally used to denote the near- universally held folk belief that there is some kind of unseen world, co-existent with our own and inhabited by a race of beings of which under certain conditions we may encounter. The word “Fairy” (in its many forms and spellings) is generally used to denote both the fairy “beings” and the fairy “world”. The fairy and the human world seem to exist in an uneasy symbiotic state regulated by a complex and sometimes surreal system of taboo and ritual.

“In almost every case of so-called Witchcraft, from Joan of Arc in 1431 down to the middle or end of the C17, the most damming evidence against the accused was acquaintance with the fairies.”

- Murray 1931 p50

The world of fairy would have been very familiar to Isabel Gowdie and her community. It is from around this place and time that the well-known fairy ballads: “Tam Lyn” and “Thomas rhymer” emerge. About thirty years after the “Confessions” in the Scottish Highlands a highly educated Scottish Episcopalian minister by the name of Robert Kirk wrote an intriguing book called “The secret commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and fairies”. The book is essentially a natural history of the world of fairy and the psychic phenomenon known in Scotland as “the second sight”. In this treatise Kirk gives us a clear insight in to his own idiosyncratic view of fairy in C17 Scotland.
It was a dangerous time and place to have dealings with either witchcraft or the world of fairy. At that time the two were seen as being inextricably linked. In Scotland in the C17 fairy underwent a transformation from ‘folk belief’ to ‘Satan’s Kingdom’. This was enshrined in the work of many of the theologians of that age; Ettiene de Bourbon, Gervaise of Tilbury, Giraldus Cambrensis …and most importantly James 1st.
Harsh anti-witch laws set in place by Mary Queen of scots and latter ramped up by James 1st (V1) meant that torture was openly and legally used, and the death penalty could be applied not only for being a witch but also for experiencing witchcraft (and/or fairy) second hand. In 1597 the paranoid and pedantic James 1st (V1) wrote “Daemonologie” stating both the reality of Witchcraft and the moral imperative to wipe it out – by all means necessary! Scotland was in the grip of a particularly grim form of Calvinism which was seeking to make its mark and on top of this we have the aftermath of the English civil war and a mini ice-age; all of which contributed to make a ‘perfect storm’ for witch persecution. In this period, even though witch persecutions were nearly non-existent in the Scottish Highlands, it was said that the lowlands were second only to Germany in their extent and severity. Isabel Gowdie was in the midst of this.
Dr Margaret Murray stated, “In almost every case of so-called Witchcraft, from Joan of Arc in 1431 down to the middle or end of the C17, the most damming evidence against the accused was acquaintance with the fairies.” (Murray 1931 p50). Jeremy Harte speculates that out of all those accused of witchcraft in Scotland in the C17, about forty (about 1 in every 100) admitted to dealings with fairy. (Harte 2004, p151)
It’s hard to know the full extent of the belief in the crossover between fairy’s and witchcraft, but it seems that in many of the remaining records of the more well-known cases; Bessie Dunlop (Ayrshire), Alison Pierson and Andro Man (Fifeshire), Christian Livingstone (Leith), Janet Drever (Orkney), Jane Weir (Eden borough) to name but a few; dealings with fairy played a major role in their identity as a witch. This belief was not just limited to Scotland. Here down west around the same time we have the famous case of Ann Jefferies of St Teath who not only received her healing powers from the fairies but was also fed by them. In Dorset in 1566 John Walsh too visited the fairy hills to receive instruction in the magical artes from the fairies.
Canon J.A.Macculloch in his 1921 paper “The mingling of Fairy and Witch beliefs in C16 and C17 Scotland” stated – “Beside this assigning of parallel attributes and actions to different orders of beings (i.e. fairies and witches), there is a tendency to mix the two groups, clear evidence exists of this in C16 and C17 Scotland.”.
To paraphrase his paper: The supernatural powers attributed to both groups are essentially the same; invisibility, shape shifting, the stealing of the ‘Essence’ of food and drink. The stealing of children and sometimes adults whilst leaving false replacements. The taking of horses by night, the shooting of invisible deadly arrows. The gathering on certain nights such as may eve, midsummer and Halloween for orgiastic gatherings. The night flights…the list goes on! One may add to this the ability to heal or curse and the fact that many of the stories attributed to witches and fairies overlap. Here in the museum; Joan whytte the witch of Bodmin was also known as the fighting fairy woman of Bodmin.
In this light let us examine some of the elements in the Confessions of Isobel Gowdie.
Firstly, there is the entering in to the Downie Hill to meet the King and Queen of Fairy. The King and queen of fairy appear repeatedly in folktales and ballads as an embodiment of the epitome of ‘Fairy’; they are sexual, and they are dangerous and an encounter with them is always transformative. They appear in the ballads of “Tam Lyn” and “Thomas Rhymer” …she appears as ‘Nicneven’ – “Regarded at once as fairy queen and Hecate or witch-mother” (Macculloch 1921). In the Trial of Bessie Dunlop (1576 Ayrshire) the queen of fairy emerges as a woman begging for drink, who latter introduces her to the “gude wytchis”. Alisoun Pearson (Fifeshire 1588) too was introduced to the world of witchcraft by the Queen of Elphame. Andro Man (Aberdeen 1597) not only met the Queen of Fairy who “has a grip of all the craft” but also sired several of her children. The king and queen of fairy were no strangers to the witches.
The entry in to the fairy hill is once again a common folkloric motif. We see the fairy hill as a place of fairy dwelling, an entrance in to the fairy world and a place of transformation in the mediaeval Irish and Welsh tales. Kirk records in his ‘Secret commonwealth’ – “there be many places called fairy hills, which the mountain people find it impious to peel or uncover by taking wood or earth from them.”
The fairy hill also was well known to the witches. In the trial of Isobel Haldane (1623) when asked if she had dealings with the fairies she replied that she had been taken to a hill which opened, and in 1687 Donald Mac Michael entered the fairy hill where he met the king of the fairies and feasted for a month, for which he was hanged. James 1st was familiar with these tales, in “Daemonology” he states – “sundry witches have gone to death with that confession, that they have been transported with the faery to such a hill, which opening, they went in, and there saw a faire queen, who gave them a stone which had sundry virtues, which at sundry times hath been produced in judgement.” Intriguingly, even though the latter part of this account implies that there was physical basis for this tale, he goes on to say it is a dream or illusion …but even so, it still involved submitting to diabolical influences and thus should not go without punishment.
The “Elf bullis crowtting and skoylling” at the gates of the fairy hill is a compelling image. In the confessions the ‘bull’ is mentioned as one of the forms the “Devill” may take, but there are other possible sources of the reference. In the mediaeval Irish tales two faery Bulls appear in the form of the white horned bull of Connacht and Ulster’s brown bull of Cooley, who locked in bloody and terrible battle over the lands of Ireland. There was much interchange between the Irish and the Scottish population, in fact the Highlanders were known to the lowlanders as the Irish: this could provide a link between Irish folklore and the C17 witch tradition in Scotland.
A verse intriguingly links the idea of a bull sacrifice, fairies and the fairy hill In the C10 Icelandic ‘Cormac’s saga’. The protagonist says – “There is a knoll a little way from here where the elves dwell, though shalt take thither the ox that Cormac slew and sprinkle the blood of the ox outside of the knoll and give the elves a banquet of the meat; and thou shall be healed.”. There was also much interchange between the Scottish, Norwegian and Icelandic peoples… so maybe here by the Downie hill the ghosts of the sacrificial bulls still dwelt!
The “Elf arrow” is another common folkloric phenomenon found throughout Britain and Ireland and even turns up as the “Ylfagescot” in the C10 Anglo Saxon charms. In Scotland they were known as the “saighead sith” – the fairy arrow. They are prehistoric Neolithic knapped flint arrow heads.
Unaware of their origin Kirk describes them thus – “Their (the fairies) weapons are most solid earthy bodies, nothing of iron, but much of stone like soft yellow flint and shaped like a barbed arrow head but flung like a dart with great force. These arms, cut by art and tools it seems beyond human skill, have somewhat the nature of a thunderbolt, subtly and mortally wounding the vital parts without wounding the skin.”
These were considered to be deadly projectiles used by the fairies, or in the case of Isobel Gowdie by the witches. In an ingenious fusion of diabolism, fairy and witch lore they were made by the devil, finished by the “Elf boys” and then passed on to the witches who would “spang them from the naillis of owr thowombes.” At their unfortunate victims.
The final direct reference to fairy is in the second confession where Isabel tells that each of the witches is accompanied with a servant spirit, she lists each one in turn describing what they wore and who they served, but unfortunately by the time the notary gets to “Thomas the fairy” he loses interest and merely puts in an “etc”.
The concept of a witch being accompanied by a “Familiar spirit” is a common theme throughout British and Irish folklore. The familiar is often ambiguous in its form and nature; being at once an animal, a ghost, a spirit or even sometimes a person. Kirk refers to the fairies often taking this role – “The ‘tabhaidher’ or seer that corresponds with this kind of familiar, can bring them with a spell to appear to himself or others whenever he pleases, as readily as the Endor witch did of her own kind.”
The warp and weft of fairy are ever present skeins which weave through the fabric of witchcraft! Perhaps the most compelling cross over between the world of fairy and witchcraft in the confessions is not that which is explicitly named but that which is implicit in the narrative. Much of the action appears to be a physical impossibility but paradoxically has physical consequences, so thus it seems to take place not entirely in the physical world but in a liminal space typical of the fairy world.
We hear of the night flights - “We would fly like straws when we please, wild straws and corn straws would be horse to us when we put them betwixt our foot and say, ‘horse and hattock in the devil’s name’.” (The horse and hattock charm appear in a folktale recorded by the Wiltshire antiquarian John Aubrey in 1692 in which the hapless Laird of Duffus hears the charm from within a whirlwind, He repeats it and is taken off with the fairies when after much drink was taken he was unceremoniously dumped and left to nurse his hangover. It is a tale which turns up in variant forms throughout the country, even in East Cornwall! )
The casting of the fairy arrows, the appearances in people’s houses (and even a boat whilst still at sea) in order to steal and curse, and perhaps most interestingly the accounts of blasting crops all imply some form of invisibility or bi-location. In the first and third confessions we have accounts of crops being both simultaneously cursed and stolen at the same time (the first being the well-known curse in which a bone plough is drawn by a toad through a field ), one is tempted to say that you can’t have your cake and eat it. But the witches evidently can and do!
This however ties in with the idea much associated with the fairy mythology that the fairies have the ability to extract the subtle essence out of food, in Gaelic this was called ”Toradh”. Kirk tells that the fairies are “feeding on a pith or quintessence of what man eats”. Once the vital substance of the food is extracted the remaining physical bulk is left empty and without sustenance.
With reference to the witch’s theft of food, one’s attention is drawn to an account in the first confession of the witches stealing milk – “We take the tedder in betwixt the cow’s hind foot and the cows forder foot, in the devils name and thereby we take the cows milk”. Kirk also describes this - “Some skilful women do convey the pith of the milk from their neighbours’ cows, to their own cheese hold, through a hair-tedder, at a great distance by art magic.”
All discussions of ‘fairy’ seem to naturally bring us to the big question – What is fairy? Macculloch suggests – “The fairy belief is formed of many strands – the belief in divinities, in nature spirits, in ghosts, and as far as Dwarfs are concerned, in dim memories of older races, probably of a pygmy kind: while dream experiences, hallucination and human fancy and imagination have aided in creating it.”
Dr Margret Murray was clear in her suggestion that not only the witches were a Flesh-and-blood reality, but so too were the fairies and that the Confessions of Isabel Gowdie was one of her clear proofs of this theory. She believed that the fairies were the remnants of an old aboriginal race which once inhabited this land, who were also the custodians of a prehistoric fertility religion which provided the basis for the witch cult. The idea of a secret diminutive dart throwing, mound dwelling aboriginal race was first mooted by David MacRitchie in his 1893 “Fians, fairies and Picts”. This idea was enthusiastically taken up by Gerald Gardner (Who devotes nearly a chapter to this idea in his 1954 “Witchcraft today”) and thus it became embedded in the Wiccan/neo-Pagan revival.
Kirk however took quite a different view and perhaps was the originator of the ‘esoteric’ view of fairy. The fairies he says are “said to be of middle nature betwixt man and angel, as were daemons thought to be of old.” Although they may on occasion have the appearance of physicality and by ‘sympathy’ sometimes effect physical change, they are essentially etheric and otherworldly in nature and can only be perceived by means of the “Second sight”.
Cecil Williamson held the belief in which these two beliefs conjoined. Behind the flesh and blood of the witch was an unseen spirit world. It was from this that the witch drew her power and her being, and it was also from this realm that their familiar spirit would emerge creating a catalyst by which her spells and charms could take form.
Whichever view Isobel Gowdie took, the spectre of fairy permeates her confession. One could even go so far as to say that there is little in her confessions that were not present in the fairy lore of her time. This begs a number of questions; was she, as Emma Wilby (2013) suggested a practicing story teller, who was just regurgitating the common tales of her day? Or was she so steeped in these beliefs they had become a reality to her. These questions can never be answered, but all we can know for sure is that the confessions of Isabell Gowdie bridged a gap between commonly held folk belief an a tragic episode in our history.

© Steve Patterson