Isobel Gowdie

This staple-bound pamphlet is a transcription of the trial record from Pitcairn's (1833) Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland, supplemented by some seven pages of annotations, arranged by the editor as a single, continuous narrative. It was the editor's feeling that the narrative constituted a poem, "unrecognized till this time, but still a genuine work of art". The force of Gowdie's story, and the vigor of her narrative, has had a major if not well acknowledged influence in the development of modern witchcraft, from Brodie-Innes through Margaret Murray and so on to the present. This little book presents the "root text" to which so much commentary and elaboration has been added. At the time of its publication, and distribution in "underground" bookstores, it was paradoxically one of the readiest means of access to the whole narration. Since then, of course, much has been done, but the direct power of this text, unimpeded by thickets of analytical or theoretical ponderings, or the (generally anachronistic) re-imaginings of modern authors, leaves it still unsuperseded. Irregular lines do not a poem make, but the power of the text is real -- a power well beyond the merely esthetic.… (mere)