ABSTRACT
Once upon a time, by a sparkling, spring-fed stream, in the shadow of a great hill where, 'twas said, a dragon once had its lair, there lived an old woman. To understand her story requires that the author examines her world on its own terms – complete with fairies and dragons, second sight and natural magic. Now one thinks of post-Reformation Scotland as a haven of Calvinist orthodoxy, its uniformity of belief and practice strictly enforced by kirk sessions – the lay elders and ministers who comprised the ecclesiastical court in each parish. The very whimsicality of this cosmology was its problem for Christian orthodoxy, which sought meaning in the events of a providential universe. From the 1570s, the author finds at all levels of Scottish government, secular and ecclesiastical alike, increasing concern with 'Egyptians', or Gypsies.
