John Buchan: Witch Wood
Witch Wood by John Buchan is a historical novel that will give you a glimpse of the tensions in Scotland during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-51). It also reveals some of the popular magical beliefs underpinning a period of witch hunting in Scotland (1563-1736). This is the story of David Sempill, a young presbyterian minister assigned to his first parish where he encounters the royalist marquis of Montrose as a fugitive. He finds Montrose a sympathetic and chivalrous character, in contrast to his narrow-minded clerical colleagues. He also witnesses local practices marking the pre-Christian festival of Beltane that he interprets as demonic. The book reflects on the strictness of presbyterian beliefs and the social tensions created when a presbyterian resistance movement pushed through two widely-sworn oaths, the National Covenant in 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant in 1643, promising to uphold a presbyterian church and limited monarchy, triggering civil war with royalists who remained loyal to Charles I. Buchan's representation of supernatural beliefs is imagined, so don't read him as a historian, but this book will give you a novelistic impression of early modern Scotland. If you enjoy it, try also Buchan's more famous novel, 39 Steps, an early spy thriller that was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. For more on Witch Wood, check this blog by the National Library of Scotland!
