Fairies and Witches

Every class I am taking here - and by every class, I mean the two classes I am taking - gets to go on an excursion to someplace awesome, and today was my excursion for the class on witchcraft. We went to two local, small villages to see some sights relating to fairies and witches.

We started by heading to Aberfoyle, which is just a great name for a town associated with fairies. Or at least I think it fits well. I'm not sure why, but it's just a weird name for a weird place. The town itself was very cute though. Our first stop was visiting the grave of Robert Kirk, who was a protestant priest in the area many years ago, sometime during the 1700s. Kirk is important when talking about fairies, as he wrote and published a famous book detailing the lives of fairies. And I mean detailing. He wrote about what they looked like, where they lived, how they live, what they ate, what they did, etc. And everyone took this to be fact. They took it as a legitimate book. Robert Kirk went out to visit the fairies often, on top of a hill just outside Aberfoyle. He met them at what is now considered the "clootie" tree, or holy well (not really sure why they refer to it as a well, but whatever). He even brought people along with him who verified that he talked with the fairies.

Now this may seem weird to us, but fairies were just thought to be real. People avoided them, as they could be quite scary. It may also seem weird that a man of the church would write this book all about fairies, as it would be considered heresy. But in those days, if a person confirmed the existence of fairies, you confirmed the existence of God. How this connection was made, I don't know. But it is very strange.

The tree that Robert Kirk visited is thought to be the entrance to a Fairy Queen's palace. I guess they had more than one queen? But the sight itself was slightly unsettling. Many trees in the area are just draped with ribbons, covered in small trinkets as offering, and surrounded by pieces of paper with wishes written on them. Originally people would write wishes or even secrets and sorrows they wanted to forget on pieces of linen. The idea was that the linen would disintegrate over time, causing the wish to come true or the troubles to go away. Of course people left these here because they thought the fairies would help take care of them. Now people just seem to write wishes down - a surprising number of people want cats - or they bring trinkets of remembrance for those who have died, perhaps to ask the fairies to watch out for them. So yeah, it is kind of a creepy spot. Robert Kirk even died at this spot. His body was found near it, only dressed in a night gown. It is commonly believed that the fairies came for him, since he revealed all their secrets...

And that was Aberfoyle. Kind of interesting. Our next stop was very short, and took us to the small village of Dunning. Here we visited a memorial of sorts to a woman named Maggie Walls. This memorial is literally right off the road, but it is in the middle of fields of sheep. So a strange location. Another strange thing about this is how it is built. There is a bottom, cairn-type part that looks pretty old. The next part is a long slab of rock that looks more recently placed than the cairn. Finally, it is topped with a cement cross. The cross is fairly new, as cement has not been around long. No one knows who put the cross up there, or when, but it is strange.

More strange things about this place. There is writing on the rocks, detailing that a Maggie Walls was killed there in 1657. It is painted on, and my professor said that every few years the paint is touched up, and again, no one knows who does it. The second weird thing is the cross. Why would a cross be put on a memorial to someone who was supposedly killed because of involvement in witchcraft? I think it is a way for people to sort of apologize for what happened to those people back then, as most, if not all, of the people killed during the witchcraft craze of the 16th and 17th centuries were innocent. It is a way of trying to be forgiven, by putting the cross on there and declaring their innocence. The third and final strange thing - there are absolutely no historical records anywhere of a Maggie Walls. So who was she? Was she real? Was she just a symbol for anyone accused of being a witch and executed at this spot?

This was a very strange excursion, but it was kind of cool. It was like learning about the local history in a very strange way. But Scotland was a very hot spot during the witch craze, and many, many lives were taken during it. Mostly I think the places we visited today were creepy, but interesting...so yeah. That was that. The other weird thing about today was the weather. It reached 80 degrees today and was super sunny, which never happens here. And of course, no one believes in air conditioning here, so everywhere was super hot. There really was no relief. But I survived. I just hope it doesn't get that warm too often. This was not the weather I expected coming here at all! But whatever. Until next time...