(?1538-99)
Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) is the first English book devoted to this topic, and also has valuable sections on fairies, brownies, demons, and other supernatural beings, and the use of charms. In its ambiguous title, ‘discovery’ means ‘unmasking, debunking’; Scot regarded all alleged magical acts as mere trickery. From his acid comments, it is clear that he had closely observed both rural witches and their accusers. They are, he writes, poor and ugly women who live by begging, going from house to house ‘for a pot full of milke, yeast, drinke, pottage, or some such releefe’, and if refused will curse anything from the master of the house to ‘the little pig that lieth in the stie’; whatever goes wrong after that is blamed on the witch.
Scot's book was loudly condemned by his contemporaries; James I, outraged, wrote his own Daemonologie to refute it. A modern edition by Montague Summers was reprinted in 1972.
