Chapter Five - Ghosts in Popular Culture

Summary

Stories were told long before they were written down. The historian is always constrained by the limitations of written records, but this is particularly evident when it comes to looking at popular belief: it is difficult to determine the place of ghosts in Scottish culture when, for centuries, few considered ghost stories worth recording. Matters improve somewhat over the course of the eighteenth century. The end of the witch trials removes one body of sources, but this is outweighed by the development of print culture and antiquarian studies. This chapter uses ballads, cheap pamphlets and folklorists’ accounts to assess popular perceptions of ghosts (although these three categories are not perfectly delineated: most obviously, ballads were often printed as broadsides). Within these sources, ghosts appeared in a multitude of forms. Corpses rose from their graves to return to their former sweethearts, flesh rotting and worminfested; deceased villains bewailed their crimes, with eyes burst from their sockets, or genitalia leaking poison. Forsaken lovers drifted and lamented. There were stories of headless horses thronged in flames, of Highland spectres greedy for travellers’ blood, of white ladies and fairy-ghosts and will o’ the wisps. Ghosts were diverse, too, in their meanings: they sermonised about death or criminal behaviour, glorified love, subverted social hierarchies, upheld family or community traditions, and served as comedic figures.

It is important to note that all of these bodies of sources have drawbacks. Ballads offer the most direct window into folk culture, but they are difficult to trace and date. Cheap print culture is useful because it was targeted at a popular market, and could be read aloud, meaning that it was accessible to the illiterate. Adam Fox, Edward J. Cowan and Mike Paterson have demonstrated how cheap print can be used as a window into Scottish popular culture. However, pamphlets were still composed by educated men, and it is difficult to judge how far they circulated. Finally, folklorists’ accounts come diluted by the perceptions and preoccupations of their author. This chapter takes a broad view of popular culture: it includes stories that were produced by and for elites provided that they were demonstrably widespread in Scottish society. The aim of the chapter is not to avoid educated culture altogether, but to assess the ways in which ghosts were understood by the majority of the Scottish population.