Listening to a fresh voice in witchcraft studies is always a pleasure, and Emma Wilby has approached the subject in this and her earlier book, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits (2005), from the point of view that the voices in witchcraft records need to be listened to very carefully, albeit with caution, and that one of the things they are revealing to us is the existence of shamanic practices in early modern Scotland. Very detailed studies of individual witchcraft cases, where quantity of evidence allows, can throw a great deal of light not only on witchcraft and magic in a particular place at a particular time but also on personal psychologies and relationships, in a way that illumines more than their immediate concerns. Thomas Robisheaux’s The Last Witch of Lagenburg on Anna Schmieg and Joyce Froome’s Wicked Enchantments on the Pendle cases in Lancashire are, in their different ways, good examples of this. And information about Isobel Gowdie’s examinations on charges of being a maleficent witch is sufficiently detailed to permit a similar study of time, place, and people and to piece together a portrait of each in relation to its subject, Isobel herself.

According to her four confessions, which are reproduced in full in Wilby’s book, Isobel met the Devil in the church of her native Auldearn, a township that lies between Inverness and Elgin, where she swore him allegiance. Thenceforward, she did what witches usually did but generally after her own, rather than traditional, fashion. Thus, she claimed to meet in a coven of thirteen, both “coven” and “thirteen,” in spite of popular misconception, being highly unusual and more or less peculiar to Isobel. She also rode to the Sabbat on a straw, used elf arrows to shoot down Christians who saw her and did not make the sign of the cross, enjoyed sex with the Devil—most witches found it unpleasant—turned the soil of a field with a plough pulled by frogs, and interacted with the King and Queen of the fairies. Between April and May 1662, Isobel appeared before the minister of Auldearn and ten other officials to be questioned about her beliefs and conduct, and it is the plenitude as well as the originality of her recorded replies that make her case especially interesting and susceptible of detailed study.

An older generation of scholars tended to dismiss her as demented unless, like Margaret Murray, they leaned on her for evidence to support their own theories, but Wilby has preferred to listen to what Isobel was saying and ask, who was this woman, what was her background and experience in magic, why did she say what she did, how did she come to employ her imagination and speech in these highly distinctive ways, and how was her evidence heard and received by her examiners? In being prepared to listen judiciously and follow where her own multifarious questions led, Wilby has managed to draw and then color in a portrait of a cottar’s wife living in an area of Scotland riven by war and closely monitored by Calvinism. Wilby links her with a tradition of talented oral performance of stories and legends, some of which sometimes involved fairies, all of which required the teller to have a vivid imagination (in an entirely nonpejorative sense) and an uncommon skill with words, a knowledge of charms and curses, and the ability to enter a trancelike state. In such a state, her visionary experiences made such an impression on her, and indeed her listeners, that the relationship between the factual and the imagined, strictly drawn to put a barrier between “fact” and “nonfact” in modern Western psychology, is blurred, and the two merge into one another, producing a single experience that may then be narrated as real. Wilby discusses various other strands that can be said to influence or impinge on this mode of perception, such as dreaming; visions; belief in the existence of a second, subtle body that travels and experiences while the physical body lies inert; the Devil in Calvinist religious and personal life; and the sense of entering into a mystical marriage with Christ. She thus comes to the conclusion that Isobel was not “demented” but rather a woman of certain exceptional abilities who interested rather than repelled her interrogators.

All this is immensely engaging and rich with the promise of allowing us a better understanding of witches and their craft, particularly in the north of Scotland. One’s major reservation lies in the use of the word “shamanism” to describe Isobel’s abilities or the tradition to which she may have belonged. “Shaman” is a difficult word to define. It refers either to a specific category of magical practitioners from Siberia, or it becomes a catchall so loose in its meaning and so liberally applied to a great variety of persons, groups, and traditions that it stands in danger of losing meaning altogether. “Dark,” too, is a peculiar word to apply to it. Best, therefore, perhaps, to avoid them, or at least their combination, altogether. Nevertheless, this book makes an invaluable contribution to its field of study, and everyone involved in writing about witches and witchcraft should be sure to read it.