This book is about other worlds and the supernatural beings, from angels to fairies, that inhabited them. It is about divination, prophecy, visions and trances. And it is about the cultural, religious, political and social uses to which people in Scotland put these supernatural themes between 1500 and 1800. The

This pioneering collection concentrates on witchcraft beliefs rather than witch-hunting. It ranges widely across areas of popular belief, culture and ritual practice, as well as dealing with intellectual life and incorporating regional and comparative elements.

The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century brought a radical shift from a profoundly sensual and ceremonial experience of religion to the dominance of the word through Book and sermon. In Scotland, the revolution assumed proportions unequaled by any other national Calvinist Reformation, with Christmas and Easter formally abolished, sabbaths

The first detailed examination of the vibrant culture of literature produced by Scots in Latin in the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

This is the first academic overview of witchcraft and popular magic in Ireland and spans the medieval to the modern period. Based on a wide range of un-used and under-used primary source material, and taking account of denominational difference between Catholic and Protestant, it provides a detailed account of witchcraft