This chapter is concerned with supernatural belief systems and traditions, such as witches, fairies, brownies, and second sight, and the ways in which they have manifested in various forms of Scottish traditional literature. This chapter will be concerned primarily with folk narrative, which can be split into two main genres of folktale and legend, and further divided into various sub-genres. Folktale, for instance, includes the märchen or wonder tale, animal tale, novella, jocular tale (numbskull or noodle tale), schwänke, or merry tale, and the tall tale. Legend can incorporate aetiological, religious, supernatural, historical, personal (anecdote and memorate), and place. Within these broad categorisations there is much overlap and inter-relatedness.Like folk literature, folk belief has also undergone several scholarly attempts towards a definition. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when arguably folk belief was under attack as never before, the agenda was primarily concerned with separating 'supernatural or magical beliefs, as held by the folk, from supernatural or magical beliefs, as expressed in religion'. 1 By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus was redirected predominantly towards debasing folk beliefs as relics of superstition and signs of backwardness, no longer befitting of the enlightened and civilised world. Somewhat

During the era of the Scottish witch-hunts, Dumfries and Galloway was one of the last regions to initiate witch prosecutions, but it was also one of the most reluctant to completely surrender all belief in witches until a comparatively late date. In the late seventeeth and early eighteenth centuries southwest Scotland, better known for the persecution of covenanters, took the practice of witchcraft and charming very seriously indeed, and for perhaps longer than other parts of Scotland, though the area has received surprisingly little scholarly investigation. The trial evidence is not incompatible with that found elsewhere though there is less demonic content. Accusations of witchcraft in this region were mostly concerned with the troubles of everyday life, agricultural problems, family tensions and disagreements between neighbours. From 1670 to about 1740, the very decades that were giving birth to the Scottish Enlightenment, learned interest in the supernatural was actually on the increase and the topic received an unprecedented level of questioning, investigation, and scrutiny. Ironically, the 'superstitions' that both church and state had been attempting to eradicate for some two hundred years were now being used to defend religion against the growing threat of atheism. The zeal of the ministers does seem to have contributed to the endurance of witch beliefs in the South West, as elsewhere. Against this backdrop, the survival of witch belief and the continued prosecution of witches in southwest Scotland is examined, thus contributing to our understanding of the individualistic nature of witch persecution and the various dynamics at play within the Scottish witch-hunting experience.

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