The weekend before last, I took another trip to the LOC to look at some more books. I went to the Law Library to see the 3 books they had containing witch cases, but only got to see 2 as the third was a "rare book" and is only shown by appointment on weekdays (lame). Of the 2 I looked at, one looked more like something I wouldn't look at again until Grad School, but the other (A Calendar of Cases of Witchcraft in Scotland-- $15 on Amazon), seemed like a very good chronological breakdown (though quite brief) about the various cases and trials throughout the country. Could be something that might be very helpful when paired with the database.
After the that I went back to the Main Reading Room across the street and looked at a few books that are rather expensive online: Scottish Fairy Belief (Henderson, monograph), Witchcraft and Belief in Early Modern Scotland (Goodare, compiled essays), and Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Normand, annotated Demonology text + analysis). All three actually looked really excellent, but I needed more time with them. I did find out that they're all in the University of Stirling Library though. I figured I'd just check them out and look at them there, rather than ordering them through ILL, waiting a week and a half, and then only having a couple days to look at them before I leave.
You can request all these books via ILL when you get back to Blacksburg, and then scan them using the history department's very good scanner. I've found having scans of books more useful than photocopies, and you can then print the scans if you want.
ReplyDelete