Thursday, April 3, 2014

Quick: How many accused Scottish Witches were primarily accused of maleficium? (Answer: not that many)

Anyone and everyone can download the entire "Scottish Witchcraft Database" from here: http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/45. And, oh, in case you didn't already know, this database is an amazing resource.

Unfortunately, the database is in Access format. However, it can easily be converted to a real database using the handy tool BullZip. Of course that assumes that you have either MariaDB (aka MySQL) or Postgresql installed, and if that is not the case, then you might want to go get MariaDB here:
https://mariadb.org/.

As always, there are many different ways of accomplishing this kind of thing. Your mileage may vary, etc, etc. The important thing is this: to properly work with any database you need it in a format where you can use some form of SQL. You could also try downloading the SQL schema and tables that are provided on the same page where you can download the Access database.

Before proceeding to the details, please note the following information, taken from the website of the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft in their "How To Cite Us" section:

If you use information from this website in something you have written, please acknowledge us as your source.
Please use your normal citation conventions for websites. We suggest:
Julian Goodare, Lauren Martin, Joyce Miller and Louise Yeoman, 'The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft', http://www.shca.ed.ac.uk/witches/ (archived January 2003, accessed '[your date]').
The information in this website may be used freely for the purposes of private reference, research or study, but please remember that it is copyright. See Authorship and Copyright.


If we read through the documentation put together by the team at the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft, we find that there are three different flavors of "maleficium" used as a characterization of the cases against accused Witches:
  • Maleficium_p refers to cases where it was decided that maleficium was "the main theme".
  • Maleficium_s refers to cases where maleficium was "mentioned" in the documentation, but it was decided that this was a secondary characteristic.
  • Maleficium (without a trailing _p or _s) refers to cases in which there were allegations of "collective maleficium organized or committed" at Witches' meetings (without distinguishing between "primary" or "secondary").
These characterizations are all found in the table "wdb_case". So in order to discover how many cases during the Scottish Witch-hunts were primarily characterized by accusations of maleficium, all we need is a simple SQL query like the following:

SELECT FROM wdb_case
WHERE Maleficium_p=1

And the result is that we get a grand total of 40 rows. Ahem. That is out of over 3,000 recorded cases.

What? Only 40? Let's double check, but this time we'll jazz things up a little by getting the names of the accused Witches as well as the counties in which they resided and also the dates of their trials:
 


SELECT wdb_accused.FirstName, wdb_accused.LastName,
 wdb_accused.AccusedRef, wdb_case.Case_date,
 wdb_accused.Res_county
FROM wdb_accused join wdb_case
ON wdb_accused.AccusedRef = wdb_case.AccusedRef
WHERE wdb_case.Maleficium_p = 1
ORDER BY wdb_case.Case_date_as_date, wdb_accused.Res_county,
 wdb_accused.LastName;

+-----------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+
| FirstName | LastName      | AccusedRef | Case_date  | Res_county |
+-----------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+
| Johnnet   | Wischert      | A/EGD/2067 | 17/2/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Isobel    | Cockie        | A/EGD/2066 | 19/2/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Christen  | Michell       | A/EGD/2077 | 9/3/1597   | Aberdeen   |
| Isobell   | Strauthaquhin | A/EGD/2105 | 21/3/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Katherine | Gerard        | A/EGD/2096 | 15/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Christian | Reid          | A/EGD/2095 | 15/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Margret   | Reauch        | A/JO/2954  | 17/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Issobell  | Richie        | A/EGD/2110 | 24/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Helene    | Rogie         | A/JO/2898  | 24/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Agnes     | Wobster       | A/EGD/2107 | 24/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Margrat   | Cleraucht     | A/JO/2951  | 25/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Helene    | Frasser       | A/EGD/2097 | 25/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Ellen     | Gray          | A/EGD/2106 | 27/4/1597  | Aberdeen   |
| Marion    | Peebles       | A/EGD/2261 | 21/3/1644  | Shetland   |
| Janat     | Cuj           | A/EGD/2294 | 16/11/1646 | Elgin      |
| Margaret  | Murray        | A/EGD/2295 | 26/11/1646 | Elgin      |
| Helen     | Small         | A/EGD/2297 | 18/1/1649  | Fife       |
| Beatrix   | Watsone       | A/EGD/2299 | 19/8/1649  | Edinburgh  |
| Marioun   | Twedy         | A/EGD/1832 | 21/11/1649 | Peebles    |
| Jonet     | Coutts        | A/EGD/1791 | 4/1/1650   | Peebles    |
| Margaret  | Merchant      | A/EGD/1821 | 19/3/1650  | Forfar     |
| Elspet    | Gray          | A/EGD/1968 | 21/3/1650  | Forfar     |
| Jonat     | Couper        | A/EGD/2318 | 11/4/1650  | Forfar     |
| Catharin  | Lyell         | A/JO/2825  | 11/4/1650  | Forfar     |
| Margaret  | NcLevin       | A/EGD/1519 | 14/2/1662  | Bute       |
| Issobell  | NcNicol       | A/EGD/1513 | 21/2/1662  | Bute       |
| Margrat   | NcWilliam     | A/JO/3084  | 7/5/1662   | Bute       |
| Marjory   | Craig         | A/EGD/1727 | 20/2/1677  | Renfrew    |
| Margret   | Jackson       | A/EGD/1729 | 20/2/1677  | Renfrew    |
| Jonet     | Mathie        | A/EGD/1732 | 20/2/1677  | Renfrew    |
| Jon       | Stewart       | A/EGD/1731 | 20/2/1677  | Renfrew    |
| Bessie    | Weir          | A/EGD/1728 | 20/2/1677  | Renfrew    |
| Annabell  | Stewart       | A/EGD/1730 | 4/4/1677   | Renfrew    |
| John      | Gray          | A/EGD/1740 | 19/7/1677  | Stirling   |
| Janet     | McNair        | A/EGD/1741 | 3/12/1677  | Stirling   |
| Thomas    | Mitchell      | A/EGD/1742 | 3/12/1677  | Stirling   |
| Mary      | Mitchell      | A/EGD/1739 | 3/12/1677  | Stirling   |
| Janet     | Wharrie       | A/JO/2888  | 7/11/1699  | Dumfries   |
| Janet     | Cornfoot      | A/EGD/2371 | 15/2/1705  | Fife       |
| Andrew    | Ratter        | A/JO/2879  | 11/6/1708  | Shetland   |
+-----------+---------------+------------+------------+------------+
40 rows in set (0.01 sec)

MariaDB [witchdb]>

In future posts I will dig more deeply into what the data actually has to say concerning the prevalence, or lack thereof, of actual accusations of maleficium during the Scottish Witch-hunts. But for now these results obviously should give pause to anyone who wishes to continue to claim that Witchcraft must be defined primarily in terms of malefic magic.