Getting shot of elves: healing, witchcraft and fairies in the Scottish witchcraft trials

Folklore, April, 2005 by Alaric Hall

Abstract

This paper re-examines the evidence of the Scottish witchcraft trials for beliefs associated by scholars with "elf-shot." Some supposed evidence for elf-shot is dismissed, but other material illuminates the interplay between illness, healing and fairylore in early modern Scotland, and the relationship of these beliefs to witchcraft itself.

Introduction

The study of popular belief in early modern Scotland is in good health. The unusually numerous attestations of Scottish fairy-belief in the witchcraft trials, on which this paper focuses, have recently received close attention (Purkiss 2000, especially 85-157; 2001; Wilby 2000; Henderson and Cowan 2001; cf. Maxwell-Stuart 2001; Hutton 2002, especially 27-32). Open-access web resources now include the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (hereafter DOST), the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots and the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft (hereafter SSW), conceived as "an extensive database of all people known to have been accused of witchcraft in Scotland between 1563 and 1736," published in January 2003. [1] These resources facilitate and invite the critical reassessment of our inherited assumptions about the subject: accordingly, I consider here our earliest Scottish evidence for one aspect of this subject, elf-shot.

Scholarly usage of the term "elf-shot" varies. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (sub Elf n.1) offers "a disease, esp. of livestock, attributed to the agency of elves," adding that in Scots elf-shot could be synonymous with elf-arrow, "a flint arrowhead (regarded as an elves' weapon)." Perhaps in consequence, "elf-shot" is sometimes understood to mean disease caused specifically by elves using projectiles (for example Jolly 1996, 134). On the other hand, it is sometimes used to denote witchcraft effected by means of projectiles but not involving elves or fairies (for example Bonser 1963, 159-60), or even ailments with no implication of elves, witchcraft or projectiles, as by Cockayne in his translations of the Old English medical texts, who used it in the sense "dangerously distended by greedy devouring of green food" (1864-6, vol. 2, 291 and 401). Finally, the SSW used "elfshot" to mean "prehistoric arrowhead thought to be used by fairies/witches to cause harm, [which] could also be used as a protective amulet." [2] Unsurprisingly, then, scholarship touching on elf-shot is rife with confusion. Thus the SSW routinely identifies "elfshot" according to definitions other than its own, and misses instances which fit it.

In this article, I avoid a specific definition of "elf-shot" as a scholarly term; what I am studying is the association between fairies, illness, projectiles and their necessary concomitant, healing, in the Scottish witchcraft trials. Projectiles themselves are a complex issue. The concept of harm being supernaturally inflicted by projectiles--whether physical or metaphysical, or even metaphorical--is widespread (Honko 1959). As to how such projectiles might have been envisaged in early modern Scotland, I wish simply to assess the evidence of the sources. Having limited my sources primarily to Scottish witchcraft trials, I hope that comparison of my findings with later Scottish evidence, English evidence, or with folklore from elsewhere in Europe, will not be compromised by circular argumentation. Besides reassessing the evidence regarding "elf-shot," however, I aim to improve our understanding of the constructions of harm, healing and witchcraft in early modern Scotland by suggesting plausible models for the developments and functions of the traditions attested. Ronald Hutton in particular has offered some suggestions for interpreting the relationship between fairies and Scottish witchcraft beliefs (2002, especially 27-32); my own analysis offers a new point of entry into the material, allowing us to begin to test some of his ideas and to propose more specific models which future analyses may substantiate, complement or modify.

Studies of Scottish popular belief in the trials have hitherto emphasised narratives. Henderson and Cowan (2001, especially 35-105), and Purkiss (2000, especially 85-157; 2001), have argued that fairy-narratives were involved in demarcating boundaries and threats in Scottish society, and in providing modes of discourse for comprehending their transgression. Here, however, I concentrate more on the evidence of language. This encourages linguistic precision in analysing the trials; moreover, early Scottish narratives also contain few details of fairies' roles in the aetiology of illnesses (although see Henderson and Cowan 2001, 74-105), but the semantics of the words used in these narratives can reveal new information. It is worth noting in this context that scholars of Scottish fairylore have not hitherto distinguished between the words elf and fary in their sources--the SSW, for example, took "the terms fairy and elf to be interchangeable" (compare Henderson and Cowan 2001, 17). [3] Most use modern English "fairy" of both. This is certainly defensible: fary is a French loan in English which over time has tended to displace the etymologically English elf (Oxford English Dictionary, hereafter OED, sub Elf, Fairy), and it seems likely that Older Scots exhibits this process. Even so, the synonymy of elf and fary should be regarded as a working assumption which requires fuller examination. Trow in the Northern Isles could also be considered (compare. DOST, sub Troll). Fortunately, my sources use fary only once, and never trow, so I maintain the scholarly tradition with minimal misgivings. Presumably the dominance of elf- in compound words denoting ailments is because these, or their models, predate the use of fary in Scots; but social variation may have been involved as well, presumably exhibiting the usual English pattern whereby French loans spread from higher to lower social registers of speech. It is also worth stressing that neither elf nor fary is etymologically Celtic, since there is a long-standing scholarly tradition of associating fairy beliefs in Western Europe with "Celtic" culture, which belies the possible range of sources for such beliefs in Scotland. In particular, Maxwell-Stuart recently opted to use sithean as his standard term, and seems to have assumed that fairy beliefs were distinctively associated with Highland culture (2001, 10-17). But this Gaelic term never occurs in the material studied here; where we do have relevant trials from Gaelic-speaking areas, they are recorded in English.